Dripping Life

My family moved to the big city of Dallas the summer before my sixthgrade year…and I can truly say, moving from small-town San Angelo and Santa Rita School, where I had been since first grade, to Sudie L. Williams Elementary in Dallas was a culture shock of major proportions.

I knew absolutely no one at that school, not one single, solitary person… and, as I was to find, many of the girls in my class had been in school together since first grade. Many also went to the same church and lived in the same neighborhood. That first semester of sixth grade, I learned the true meaning of the term, “outsider.” I also learned once a clique, always a clique!

Unfortunately for me, my parents had chosen to build a home in far North Dallas, and -- joy of joys -- it would be completed in early December, just in tim for me to repeat the role of being the new girl one mor time.

Oh, and one more thing. No matter what your previous record said, when you transferred into a Dallas public school, you were placed in the lowest achievement class. That meant 6-C. Not 6-A or 6-B, but 6-C, known to our peers as “the dummy class.” All in all, it was an inauspicious beginning for a hard-working straight-A student.

The saving grace for that first semester at Sudie L. Williams (named for one of the first Directors of Music for Dallas Schools) was Sputnik. Yep, thanks to the Russians, even transfer students fell into the same boat as the veteran students. No one knew what a satellite was. Nobody knew what satellites were for. As students, all we knew, as Sputnik beeped its way through the universe, was that people everywhere were decrying the U.S. -- and its institutions of education -- contributing to the shame of being second to Russia in the space race.

This appalling disgrace of being second place meant the birth of the “new math” in time for fall 1958, plus a sudden pedal-to-the metal attitude toward the sciences. Any of this sound familiar? Are we there yet with our STEM programs? It’s only been 65 years!

So, the end of the semester came, we moved and I began school at the new F.P. Caillet Elementary School (named after Fleury Paul Reverchon Caillet, an early Dallas home builder.)

At that time, transfers from other schools in Dallas were placed in the lower achieving class in their grade for their first semester in the new school, so once again, even though my teachers at Sudie Williams said they were moving me to 6-A after the first of the year, Caillet placed me in 6-C.

In my 6th-grade mind, this was just another of many dumb and stupid rules in Dallas schools. So, when school began after the holidays, I was assigned to 6-C. My teacher was a kind lady with endless patience. Her name was Wilma Aday and I’ll always remember how nice she was.

As I would soon learn, Mrs. Aday had a son named M.L. Often when she was teaching at the front of the classroom, she would see her son walking down the hall. “M.L.!” she’d shout. “What are you doing in that hall?”

This would be followed by a mother-son conference before she returned to the lesson.

Mrs. Aday was not a petite woman and her son was a really big boy.

In high school, M.L. played football (our team, the Thomas Jefferson Rebels, was terrible although we kept hoping), but he also was one of those rare jocks who also sang in our concert choir, which had a city-wide reputation for the excellent training the 100 members received as well as the high-caliber stage productions we called “Spring Musicals.”

M.L., which I learned stood for Marvin Lee -- was a nice guy -- a big guy with a big heart -- with a great tenor voice, which he attributed to singing almost all his life in the Walnut Hill Lane Church of Christ. My senior year, I was student director of that year’s musical and M.L. was in my cast, so our friendship grew.

After graduation and college, I heard little news from back home, but during a business trip in the late ‘70s, the gentleman sitting next to me was reading a People Magazine, when I saw the word “Meatloaf” in big letters. Not thinking, I grabbed the book from my seatmate’s hands, apologized and quickly scanned the article. He had made an album. His songs were on the charts. His hair was as long as Tiny Tim’s, but it was M.L. Aday. Dallas boy makes good.

I never had the opportunity to speak with him, but I saw his “Rocky Horror” movie numerous times and was a fan of his album, “Bat Outta Hell.”

So, when I heard about his death last week, I was sad. Meatloaf, in spite of a difficult home life with an alcoholic father (as I’ve recently read), was always smiling and fun to be around. In high school, we hung out at dance parties (he was a great dancer) and local coffee houses, like the Rubaiyat, where we listened to rising folk performers and sang along as often as we could. He seemed to take big bites of life wherever we all ended up and always had fun…was always smiling.

I’ll end by saying M.L. “Meatloaf” Aday, orphaned the year after he graduated, traveled a million miles since his days, roaming the halls of our elementary school, playing for TJ’s crappy football team and being part of a concert choir experience that gave him his first taste of music, acting and show business.

I share the sadness of his fans and family at his passing. He’s gone too soon, but he left a legacy as big as he was. RIP, ML! RIP.