by Wil Bosbyshell
I was excited. I was six years old and beginning kindergarten at Newberry High School K-12 the only school in town in 1967.
The year previous there had been two schools: one for African American kids and one for white kids. In 1967 my first year in kindergarten, the schools were combined, and all the kids went to Newberry High School. Newberry didn't have riots or protests over racial integration like other places. My mother's theory on this was that everyone in Newberry was poor: black and white. Everyone was too busy trying to put food on the table to get upset about kids of all colors going to school together.
We were poor. My father was the Episcopal priest for Newberry and several surrounding communities. He didn’t get paid much but had a free house to live in behind the church. To compensate for this, we got free admission at my favorite local attraction Silver Springs where some of the Tarzan movies were filmed. On Sunday night my mother cooked the best meal of every week: spam and spaghetti with white sauce. Like I said, we were poor even if I didn’t know it at the time.
Newberry High School is a museum now. It was built as part of a statewide plan to build a school in every town in Florida in the late 1940s after World War II. It was a two-story brick building: hallway in the middle of each floor, three classrooms on each side of the hall. Kids entered Newberry High School in the first class on the left and moved clockwise to the next room each year until you reached sixth grade. Then you moved upstairs for grades seven to twelve. One room per class, twelve rooms total on two floors. Efficient.
The principal had their office on one end of the first floor and the school secretary on the other. In the 1940s there was no kindergarten so when that grade was added in the 1950s, they built a separate classroom just to the side of the original schoolhouse. That is where my mother dropped me off for Mrs. Bell’s kindergarten class.
Everyone remembers their kindergarten teacher. I loved Mrs. Bell.
Kindergarten was fun. It was only half a day, and we took a nap on the floor or on small cots in the middle of the morning. On Friday of my first week of school, Mrs. Bell made an announcement, “Class we are going to go to the pep rally for the football game tonight. It will be very loud, so don't be scared. It's OK to yell when the cheerleaders lead a cheer, and we will sing a few songs.” At 11:00 o'clock Mrs. Bell said, “line up,” and we walked as a class to the gym. The grades entered by class: senior class first sitting on the top row of bleachers and kindergarten last. When we entered the gym, it was already very noisy with the whole school talking excitedly.
Mrs. Bell and her class sat in the first row of bleachers with our feet dangling above the shiny basketball floor. The instant we sat down the pep rally began.
The cheerleaders ran in with pom-poms, leading a few cheers. I didn't know the words. The kids in my class with older siblings knew the words. The cheers were fun, loud and silly. The boys on the football team came in and stood on both sides of a podium under one of the basketball nets.
They all had their blue and gold varsity letter jackets on with NHS letters on their chests. They were giants to me. The principal came up to the podium, Mr. Pritchett. I knew the principal and feared him. Kids who were bad in school were sent to the principal’s office to be paddled.
He had on a suit and tie in the un-air-conditioned Florida gym in September and was not sweating. He held up his hand and everyone got quiet. He spoke very seriously about how good the other team was. At the time, I did not realize how traditional this was in the south. He said the Newberry football team would have to play hard in order to win. He didn't talk long; the football coach took over talking.
After that, a senior boy who was team captain came to the podium. He only said a few words when the double doors behind him burst open with a bang, both doors hitting the walls on each side.
A caveman ran into the gym, yelling and waving a big club! He had leopard skins on, like Tarzan, and furry boots. His face was blurry and dark. He had long, wild black hair sticking out in all directions. He ran straight up to the team captain and hit him with the club. I cringed, that was going to hurt.
The boy jumped away, but I could see the club was made of foam. The caveman clubbed the coaches, and then charged the cheerleaders who screamed holding their pom-poms up over their heads to shield them from the caveman’s wrath. He clubbed a few more of the team members then ran to center court and let out a roar. The whole school roared back. He then swung from both basketball nets and ran up the bleachers to club a few of the seniors who seemed to enjoy this. “Why aren’t they scared,” I thought.
He ran to the podium and yelled in caveman English, “We win tonight… ugh!” The terrifying caveman jumped around crazily leading the school to chant “N” “H” “S” over and over. The gym went wild, and the caveman ran out the door with one more swing on the basketball net for good measure.
I looked over at Darlene Laird, one of my friends, she was white as a sheet. She was hiding behind Mrs. Bell.
My eyes were wide.
My mouth hung open. I was in shock.
“There is a caveman loose in Newberry,” my six-year-old brain thought. I had seen cavemen in cartoons like Dino Boy, but I thought they were make-believe, not real. No one, including my parents, had told me that cavemen were real and lived in Newberry! If cavemen were real, what about dinosaurs and the yeti?
While I was pondering how dangerous the town was now that I knew about the caveman, the team captain spoke briefly, the band played, and the cheerleaders lead more cheers. Principal Pritchett came back to the podium and seriously wished the team ‘good luck’ finishing with, “School dismissed.”
I came home and told my mom about the caveman. She was not surprised at all. She knew all about the cavemen. “That's the team caveman,” she said. “It's like the second mascot to the school’s Panther.”
I said, “The school doesn't have a live panther running around, does it?” This was not an impossibility in Florida. In Gainesville, at the University of Florida, a live sixteen foot alligator was chained to a flatbed trailer for each game. This was decades before PETA. Parents sat their children on the giant chained alligator and took photographs. What could go wrong? Take a moment to contemplate that scene.
That night my whole family went to the Newberry High School football game. In fact, every person in the town was at the game. In Newberry, the weekly high school football game was the most important event of the week in the fall. I didn't watch the game; I played football on the grass behind the bleachers with my buddies from kindergarten: Bruce King, Alvin Langford and Robert Peirce
I was on the lookout for the caveman. No sighting at the game.
I discussed the caveman with my best friend Bruce King. He was as scared as I was. We were in kindergarten, Scooby-doo scared us. We were genuinely scared by the monsters on Jonny Quest. And both were cartoons on TV Saturday mornings. The next Friday we had another pep rally and the caveman appeared again, as he did for every Friday that fall. After football season the caveman disappeared. Thank God.
Over the summer my friend Bruce overheard his two older brothers say that the caveman was Mr. Pritchett the principal. We were in one of our many tree forts when he told me this. “No way,” I said. “That's what my brothers said,” Bruce replied. I was incredulous; however Bruce’s older brothers did know everything. It must be true. Wow, I decided to be more observant next year.
Mr. James Pritchett was a beloved principal at Newberry High School for many reasons, one being his caveman alter ego. He was principal for several years. The town begged him to return, and he served a second term as principal a decade or so later. I went to a Newberry High School through the middle of third grade when I moved to Seminole Florida.
It's interesting to think about each grade of new kindergarten kids learning about the caveman at their first pep rally. It's an intelligence test. If you didn't figure it out by first grade that the caveman and Mr. Pritchett were the same person, then your parents should worry about your intelligence.
I had many principals after Newberry High School, but never one as good as Mr. Pritchett and his alter-ego the football pep rally caveman. Who could top that?
Note: If you know the years Mr. Pritchett served as principal, let me know.
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