The Monkees Are Here!

"Hey, hey, we're the Monkees!"

With the death of former Monkee Davy Jones yesterday came a number of FB posts from former students who had really liked the group--and especially Davy.  And it reminded me of an event I'd written about some time ago--about the day the Monkees (sort of) came to Aurora, Ohio, where I was teaching (sort of) very early in my career ...  I've pasted the memory below ... with a GoogleEarth map to show the setting ...  (Note for former Aurora students: Until the new Harmon School opened in 1974, the Aurora Middle School was in the old high school building on Rte. 82.)

Selection is from a teaching memoir--Schoolboy--that I will soon be uploading to Amazon/Kindle ...

Friday, 13 January 1967.  Aurora Middle School.  Aurora, Ohio.

            The Monkees are staying at the Inn!

            The kids are sure of it.  They’ve known for months that the group will be performing in Cleveland on 15 January.  And Micky-Mike-Peter-Davy have to stay somewhere while they’re in town, right?  Around the school the story outraces even Rumor himself.

            From my classroom window I can see the Aurora Inn, right across the old football field, now our playground.  The kids will go outside for lunch recess today.  It’s in the forties.  No snow.  No mud.  Later, eating lunch in my room, I watch gangs of girls sprinting across the field (convicts escaping from minimum security!), luckless lunch supervisors chasing behind, arms waving, a wasted effort.  A silent film: Keystone Kops chasing Chaplin.

            Later, the girls trudge back, weighted with the worst news …

            … the Monkees are not staying at the Inn.

            Detentions await them … it’s Friday the Thirteenth, for sure.