Art wasn't my thing in high school because I didn't understand it. I mean, yeah, I'd seen art because it was all over the place and some of it was OK. If the painting or sculpture looked real, I could appreciate the talent of the artist, but if it looked like some did, just splashes of color or something that looked like it was made out of blocks, not so much. To me, some of that type of art looked more like a first grader's work than that of a professional artist.
I could have taken an art class and learned why some artists painted like that, but I didn't. That was because of the high school art teacher, Miss Dyson. Miss Debbie Dyson, or "Debbie Dyke", as we guys called her, was what we guys all knew to be the stereotypical lesbian who was always "on top". All the female teachers except Miss Dyson wore conservative dresses. Miss Dyson always wore pants and shirts that were obviously made for a man. We knew this because at that time women's pants zipped up the side, not the front, and women's shirts had the buttons on the left, not the right like hers always did.
Miss Dyson never wore makeup and her short, brown hair always looked like mine did when I'd just gotten out of bed. She never wore the low high heels like the other women teachers. Instead, she wore tan, leather moccasins that had the backs mashed down flat so she could just slip them on like sandals and she never wore socks.
Miss Dyson didn't seem to like the other teachers. We'd see the others going into or coming out of the teacher's lounge and they always sat together at lunch. Miss Dyson stayed in her art room from the time she got to school until she left for the day. She didn't seem to like the students either, well, unless you were in her art class. Then she'd tolerate you. I could never figure out why she became a teacher in the first place.
The only student she did seem to like was Frieda Fay McBeal, and Frieda Fay was a real case too.
Frieda Fay - that's what she wanted to be called, Frieda Fay, not just Frieda - Frieda Fay was a year younger than I, so I didn't know her well, but I did see her a lot. Lockers were assigned alphabetically, and my senior year, McBeal came right after my last name, Mason, so our lockers were side by side. I don't remember ever talking to her that year. Doing so would have caused me to endure a lot of kidding by the other guys. They called her "Freaky Frieda" because of how she dressed and how she acted.
Frieda Fay had blonde hair that reached half way down her back and it always looked dirty. She didn't really style it like the other girls. Her hair just pretty much went where it wanted, and she was constantly brushing it away from her eyes so she could see. I don't think she could see very well even then because her black rimmed glasses were really thick, and half the time they slipped down on her nose so far she couldn't have been looking through them right.
Frieda Fay wore dresses or a skirt and blouse to school just like every other girl did in those days because pants for girls were against the school dress code. The only exception was a girl could wear pants under her dress or skirt. That exception was intended to keep the girl's legs warm in cold weather.
Every other girl in the school happily wore dresses or skirts as short as they could get away with and showed as much leg as possible from the start of school until the last day. Some would even roll the waistband of a skirt up a turn or two to bare more leg than their mother thought appropriate.
Frieda Fay wore dresses that went almost as far down as her black, high top tennis shoes and under those dresses was always a pair of baggy pants.
Every other girl wore makeup even though some put that makeup on at school because their mothers wouldn't let them leave home with makeup on. The girls who had mothers who taught them didn't look bad at all. The girls who kept their foundation, powder, and lipstick in their lockers often looked a little strange because their ears and hairline would be lighter or darker than their face. They all sported bright red lips and kept them that way by touching up every time they went to their locker.
Frieda Fay didn't wear any makeup at all, not ever
The other girls in my class and the class after mine were old enough they had pretty nice figures and they did their best to show off those curves like the movie stars of the day did. Their mothers wouldn't let them wear tight sweaters like the movie stars did, but they had a fix for that. Girls wore a lot of blouses and skirts because they were easier to get in and out of for physical education. If she was well endowed, she'd pull both sides of her blouse to the back as far as she could, tuck it into the waist of her skirt to keep it there, and then stand up straight with her shoulders pulled back. If she was less than what she considered to be adequately endowed, she'd stuff her bra full of tissues, pull her blouse back, and stand up straight with her shoulders back.
They all developed a way of walking that made their asses swing. Now, at that age none of them had much in the way of an ass, but the sway of what they did have turned us guys on.
Frieda always walked around with her shoulders hunched forward and her blouses and dresses seemed to be a size or two too big so it was hard to tell if she had breasts or not. It was the same way with her ass. She took little short steps, and her ass didn't move much at all.
Frieda Fay didn't have any friends that I knew of. The other girls talked about her, but it wasn't because they liked her. Frank told me his girlfriend, Janice, said the girls all figured Frieda Fay was either a lesbian or just wasn't smart enough to figure out how to make herself look better. Their bet was on the lesbian thing because Miss Dyson seemed to like her and they were sure Miss Dyson was a lesbian.
Frieda Fay didn't seem all that freaky to me. She just seemed to be really shy and not interested in anything involving making herself look better. I didn't think she was stupid because she kept getting promoted from one grade to the next. I didn't think she was ugly by any means. If she'd had glasses that were a little smaller, did something with her hair, and dressed like everybody else, she wouldn't have made it to prom queen, but she'd have been at least a girl some guy would have wanted to date.
In a town as small as ours was, everybody knew everything about everybody else, warts and all. I figured the way Frieda Fay was had a lot to do with her home life. Her dad evidently had a decent job as a carpenter, but he was known as a drunk. He wasn't one of those drunks who goes on a three day binge and misses work, and the whole town would have known if he'd ever hit his wife or Frieda Fay. He just started drinking when he got home from work and kept on drinking until he passed out.
Her mother wasn't much better although she didn't drink. Her passion was her religion. She went to one of those charismatic churches every Sunday morning, every Sunday night, and every Wednesday night. I worked a couple hours after school stocking shelves at our local grocery store, so I saw her about once a week. She dressed the same way as Frieda Fay, except she didn't wear pants under her dress. She didn't wear black tennis shoes either, but instead of heels like Mom wore when she went shopping, Frieda Fay's mother wore plan black shoes with no heels.
Most people tried to avoid talking with Mrs. McBeal because she always did all the talking. She'd go on and on about the sins people were committing every day and tried to get anyone who would listen to come to her church and confess those sins. She sounded more like a preacher than the preacher at Mom and Dad's church. The women she was able to corner would nod for a while and then make an excuse that they had to get home to fix dinner or something like that so they could get away from her.
It was understood that I'd go to college after high school and study to become an engineer or a scientist. That's what the guidance counselor said I should do. At the time, people thought the world as we knew it would come to an end unless every person got a degree in some type of science, so that September I started college in Mechanical Engineering.
In my sophomore physics class I discovered I liked electricity a lot more than thermodynamics, and switched majors. I graduated after four years with a B.S. in electrical engineering with an emphasis in power distribution and got a job with E & E Construction, a major contractor in the same city as the university.
It was three years after that when E & E Construction got the job of adding a wing to the art building on campus. That building was about thirty years old, and the electrical system was barely keeping up with the current demand. The addition would require either a separate power station or a major rebuild of the old one. It wasn't feasible to shut everything down to rebuild the existing switchgear, so the architect put a separate power house in the plans. My job was to design the electrical system, spec out all the components and then oversee the installation.
The first thing I did was visit the building. I needed a fresh copy of the building electrical prints and I needed to see where the feeders entered the building and how much capacity those feeders had. If they didn't have enough capacity for the additional load, I'd have to design and spec a new service entrance.
The maintenance guy who let me into the existing power room told me to lock the door when I was done and then walked off. I spent an hour writing down the specs of all the equipment and making sure the one-line drawing of the electrical system matched what was really there. When I was done, I closed the door and locked it, then started to walk back to my car.
As I walked through the gallery, a painting on one wall caught my eye, so I stopped to look at it. Like I said, art has never been my thing, but this painting pulled at me for some reason.
