Freddogg Off The Chain

Coach Fred down in Special Ed, the man who looked and sounded strikingly like Gabe Kaplan, star of the television series Welcome back Kotter. The Cape kids from Lower Delaware 1975 came by my room to get a look, young girls swooned like I was a movie star, and the throw away "Special Ed All Day" students had their games elevated, reflecting in my unearned celebrity which made no sense whatsoever.

Two weeks into my new job I pulled out a tee shirt with a winged foot on the front that read "Mitchell School Track" and on the back the name "Coach Frederick". I hated that shirt and the thought of walking down the street with my name across the shoulder blades. I raffled off the shirt in class-hyped it with a made up history-the bidding ran up to 15 dollars-Vaughn won- I took his money and gave him the shirt-talked of impulse buying-then gave him his money back.

Two days later there was Coach Frederick on the front page of the Morning News Journal along with the rest of the road crew from the local prison picking up highway trash.
“Vaughn may be an impulsive buyer but at least he ain’t in prison doing 10 years for holding up a liquor store,”Blue said, and they all laughed, because they knew Vaughn’s brother was getting that shirt and that it would be a front page statewide story-I never knew how they knew stuff like that but they were always dialed in to future random happenings.
Just before Christmas on a Friday I had my check on the desk. I had gotten paid for being an assistant football coach so the check was fatter than a dead center sticky bun on a cafeteria serving tray.
Big Heavy Joe with thick glasses, who repeated himself so often and relentlessly if he were a Mynah Bird he’d be blow torched by his owner, got way too interested in my check.
“Coach Fred, how much you make? How much you make? Coach Fred don’t make nothing. He don’t make nothing!”
I whispered in low toned confidence to Joe. “Listen Joe, I want to let you in on a secret. I am the George McGinnis of the Cape faculty. The rest of these chumps get paid peanuts every two weeks. I get paid every day, know what I’m saying, every day. I was recruited right out of Philly. I am an all star, I can palm the ball and dunk with either hand, I am under special contract, I am George McGinnis.”
I opened the check envelop and showed the amount to Joe. Maybe it was over $3,000 dollars. I made Joe promise not to tell anyone because the other teachers would get jealous.
“We cool McGinnis,”Joe said. “McGinnis don’t play, no way! That’s right McGinnis! McGinnis be snapping, can’t nobody mess with him. Hey McGinnis, can I have a pass to the bathroom?”
I wrote out a pass and signed it ‘George McGinnis’-a 6’8” power forward who had just signed with the 76’rs after three all star seasons with the Indiana Pacers of the old ABA.
Joe never came back, traveling the hallways with his McGinnis pass, which he flashed in everyone’s face.
The school principal summoned me to the office where Joe had created an emergency by defying all authority figures with mail order doctorates and refusing to go back to class.
“McGinnis don’t play,” Joe kept saying. “Yaw are a bunch of chumps man. I got me a McGinnis pass and I don’t play with you chumps either. Tell em McGinnis! These chumps are sorry bunch of school yard nobody’s. McGinnis is bad man, makes three thousand dollars a day, while the rest of you make 27 cents, ain’t that right McGinnis?”
Joe spent a good part of his adult life inside a confined observation hospital. Two years ago I came around the corner of the IGA into the cereal aisle and there he was, 30 years later, there was no mistaken Joe, he looked the same.
“McGinnis, what’s up McGinnis? McGinnis don’t be playing. McGinnis might buy this whole IGA store. You bad McGinnis! These other chumps be using food stamps buying barbeque chickens and eating them on the way home cause they sorry, but not you McGinnis. McGinnis is bad!”

Perhaps we all have a little ‘McGinnis within Us’? Actually,I doubt it!

Professor Freddogg