KCMax wrote:
Tell me more about Lincoln Prep - that's the one that seems to be one of the better schools in KC.
Sorry for the slow response. I went there from my sophomore year on, spending my freshman year in a very strange suburban school district before transferring back home to Kansas City. The quality of instruction was, in retrospect, excellent - quality, experienced, caring teachers qualified to do their jobs and with a tough lot to sell. The facility was awful, and most of the student body had the callous indifference of someone who expects life to leave them behind. (I hate to put it that way, but it's true.) However, the remaining students were simply amazing! Smartest high schoolers I have ever met went to that school - dedicated, diverse, and interesting - very motivated. I compare this to the suburban school where I spent my freshman year, where everyone just seemed to carry themselves with a bland sense of general entitlement. It's kind of gross when I think back on them, particularly when (compared to the students at Lincoln) I realize how really, really good these kids had it.
At Lincoln, we had to enter through a metal detector to get into the building. Most students were treated with hostility, and they gladly returned the favor. It's very interesting how that relationship works. However, that metal detector gave me the motivation to find 3 different ways I could sneak into the school without going through it, and I succeeded in finding 6 or so. Also interesting how borders encourage high school kids to find ways around them, something I never would have thought about otherwise.
I played football there, and the entire KC school district has I believe 3 football fields to their name - Center, Southwest, and maybe one other that I can't remember. They were in shoddy shape and no parents came to see us play. Nevertheless, it was a lot more fun, laid back atmosphere than at the suburban school. The pressure of sports success wasn't nearly as tremendous, and there was a huge amount of emphasis on having fun, and maybe showing off a little. I used to joke that I would never play organized sports with white people again.Â
![Very Happy :D](./images/smilies/icon_biggrin.gif)
Whether we won or lost, we always went to the old Shoney's all night breakfast buffet on Raytown Road to have a good time afterwards. Some of my best memories.
Though by the same token, when we left football games, we were required to put our helmets on while in the bus, and put our heads down in case someone tried to shoot at the bus. (This, ironically, was based on an event in Olathe.) It was ludicrous, of course. No one was going to shoot at the bus because absolutely NO-ONE cared who had won. I remember basketball being a little more competitive.
All in all, there was a lot of talent in Lincoln Prep, but not always a lot of hope. These kids were mostly treated like crap most of their lives, and many of them carried themselves with an "us against them" attitude, often all they knew. It was unfortunate, because almost to a single one of them, they were very, very bright. You have to test into the school, after all. Eddie Griffin used to come and do pep rallies (his alma mater too) to encourage kids that life held for them what they could take advantage of, and it sometimes worked, but it wasn't often enough. This was pre-18th and vine projects (or right at the beginning of them) and the surrounding neighborhood was just stunning, filled to the brim with the ghosts of the past and rarely disturbed by the present. I used to walk down the street to Arthur Bryant's, which at the time also had an ice cream stand and, believe it or not, a seafood stand next to it. The smell range was incredible - the school during a certain period of the day would smell exactly like rancid McDonald's (the smell of the industrial incinerator from the Budweiser bottling plant next door.) As you walked down the street, you would occasionally smell what I believe was from a tar plant nearby, then replaced by the overwhelming sweet smell that Bryant's puts off. My memories of the place are very distinct in this regard.
I had only one negative experience over three years time, and that was the first time I got on the bus for a football game (it was actually a home game, but since we didn't have our own field, every game was essentially a road game), as a sophomore. I didn't really have many friends at this point, and I had to find a place to sit on a bus where (myself included) there were exactly two white guys. I just picked a seat randomly, and the quiet senior who I never even knew his name made it pretty clear that he wished I would move somewhere else. At first I thought he was joking, so I nervously laughed. He not-so-politely pointed out that he wasn't joking, and threatened physical violence. At this point, two of my teammates (also seniors) came to my aid, threatening to perpetrate bodily harm on him if he didn't acquiesce. He got up and went to sit elsewhere, and one of the two guys who stuck up for me took the seat next to me so I wouldn't feel left out. I never really got the chance to say this, but Dave and Arthur - thank you. Pretty tame, eh? It was more of a racial tension thing than an actual violence thing, but I remember realizing how bad it felt and how hard it was to cope with because to one guy I was the enemy, and in a lot of ways, I couldn't argue with him. He thought it was presumptuous of me to sit next to him, and maybe he was right - who knows? He didn't know me from Adam, but to him, I was white, and that was bad news. And even though I obviously couldn't agree, because I wished no ill will towards him at all, how was I supposed to argue? It's the sort of thing I think about when I see lily-white rich folks profess their total color-blindness and their love of all mankind. It's easy to be tolerant towards everyone when you only know people exactly like yourself. But I digress.
Also, a freshman when I was a senior taught me to do the "white boy victory dance" after touchdowns. He was a backup quarterback named Michael Watson, who went on to transfer to Central and be a pretty big basketball star at UMKC. He was a funny guy - not a great football player, though, for being such a great athlete. I was a pretty good player, and he used to joke about my being our Larry Bird. I argued that I was more our Kurt Rambis, a joke anyone familiar with the 1980s NBA will get. Yeah, and I wore those goofy goggles for a while, too.
Anyway, that's my story.