The Meaning of Mr. Ellis's Smile.

The last day of school at Burton Junior High in Roseville, Michigan, was the most festive mayhem I had ever experienced. This was back in the late 60's, when riots and protests had re-defined the tolerance levels of acceptable student behavior. So much so that after turning in our books, all the students were allowed to pull the contents of their lockers out onto the tile floors. To a kid like me, this felt inherently wrong—sort of like scraping the peanut shells onto the floor at Logan’s—but then as now, I soon got the hang of reckless abandon.

The thought of locker-lined corridors spewing forth bushels of trash and the thrill of parading through the knee-deep debris entertained us until Mr. Ellis, who had been the head custodian for decades, performed his coup de grâce. He took his widest dust mop and pushed the length of each hall into piles to be bagged and hauled away. Seeing his bright smile as we passed was the ultimate “blessing” on this otherwise unruly rite.

Taking that last lap of the halls, I could never resist picking up unused packs of perfectly good notebook paper, pens, pencils, etc. I’ve always been a gatherer of sorts, finding use for cast-off things. There are readers who can relate to this hunter-gatherer instinct and those who can’t. (My wife tends to be in the latter group.) I can only say that walking home with an armful of “finds” added immeasurable pleasure to the event—far more than I ever derived from “back-to-school” shopping for the same items in late August.

It's hard to describe the jubilation kids feel on the last day of school. In our building, we clean out lockers in an orderly fashion, but last Friday I enjoyed observing that "school's out" celebration as our students exited the building. To a certain extent teachers share the joy and relief of that moment. They well deserve it. I enjoy a sense of closure, too, but I must confess I haven't actually had that "school's out" feeling for a long, long time. School's in year-round, it seems, for those who stay in the building... but just the same, I've come to fully understand... the meaning of Mr. Ellis's smile.
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P.S.
I wish I could tell you more about Mr. Ellis. I wish I could recreate some memorable conversation we'd shared, but I don't recall his voice. In those three junior-high years, we exchanged countless quiet waves and smiles but few words beyond vague greetings. I do remember that his children attended Burton with us, and his older son was a track star. I'd never been to their house, but I had ridden my bike to their neighborhood. Virtually all of my black friends at Burton lived there in that clearly-defined neighborhood behind the Spartan’s on Frazho Road. That's just the way it was in Roseville back then. Their neighborhood bordered East Detroit (which was between 10 Mile Road and 8 Mile Road—made famous by controversial rapper Eminem.) I mention this detail here only because it would be unfair to my memory of Mr. Ellis not to. He was respected at Burton—by the office, teachers, and students. He was friendly by nature but firm if need be. During the most racially charged decade of the 20th Century, he transcended the tensions of the day and was “color blind” to all students in the building under his custody…just as his title implied. I hope he sensed the same from me.

I sometimes returned to Burton to visit teachers and wave "hi" to Mr. Ellis, but shortly after I graduated from high school, Burton was demolished--completely razed to make way for a strip mall and interstate I-696 (the Walter P. Reuther Freeway). One day when I was home from college I drove by and it was gone. The entrance to a home improvement store stood roughly where my last locker had been.