MISTER NUNES

By Michael Fitzgerald 

Going to school amongst hostile townies in the middle of the dusty San Joaquin Valley in Central California was an anxious experience, at least for us Navy brats. We condescendingly referred to the locals as “dirt farmers.” Nowadays, we'd probably call them "rednecks." A few of them thought they were tough guys and liked to bully us.

I remember my freshman year vividly: It was 1966; the Beatles had just released Revolver. I had some spiffy, new threads: paisley shirts, “Sta-Prest” slacks (which my mother thought were a godsend; she loathed ironing) and those cumbersome, wing-tip shoes that for some reason every macho guy at Lemoore High School sported. They put metal taps on heel and toe so you could hear them clicking up and down those long corridors.

The most beautiful girl in school‹probably in the whole town‹was Rosemary Badasci (Ba-DASH-ee), a slim, demure girl with long, golden locks, cobalt-blue eyes, endearingly crooked teeth and pale, Mod lipstick. Her father co-owned a tire store. I had the biggest crush, but I knew she was 'way out of my league. I came face to face with her once in a doorway and was completely dumbfounded. She stood there looking at me curiously, with those unbelievably long lashes, waiting for me to say something. The best I could manage was, “wow, you have blue eyes.” Lame.

That was as I was leaving study hall, where very little studying got done. Mostly kids just sat and whispered, or passed notes back and forth‹or slept. My first real class was English. We had a woman teacher who spent an entire term teaching us to diagram sentences. God, what a bore. Algebra was excruciating as well. Spanish I liked because the teacher, a younger woman, was terribly attractive.

Then there was Mr. Nunes. A small, dashing man of Portugese descent (there were a lot of Portugese-American families in Lemoore), Nunes radiated enthusiasm for his field, which was European history. He was particularly fascinated by what he called “intrigue,” which most people now call “conspiracy.” The three R’s to him were Rasputin, Richelieu, and Robespierre, the infamous powers behind the thrones, the manipulators. Every chapter was dark drama, every story was Shakespeare. Mr. Nunes made it irresistible.

Thirty years later and 2,700 miles on the other side of the continent, I found myself reading everything I could get my hands on about the Knights Templar, European chivalric orders, and secret societies. My idea of fun was reading college textbooks on European history. I developed an insatiable hunger for history, never realizing I was looking for the answers to questions Mr. Nunes had raised.

I was raised on television, where the good guys always win. In my readings, I looked for the good guys. I wanted the stories to be in simple, black-and-white terms. What I finally discovered is that there really are no good guys, just bad guys and worse guys.

My wife, whose weakest subject is history, noticed this obsession with European history. She asked if there perhaps had been a teacher in my past who had instilled this enthusiasm, and I was reminded of Mr. Nunes, whom I had long since forgotten. Sure, I replied, and told her how he turned his class into “Alfred Hitchcock Presents.”

She suggested I consider teaching. I'd gone back to college at 48 and developed a penchant for conversation with educated folks. I made friends with several of my professors. I'd gone through many spiritual phases, and finally settled on humanism, which made the most sense to me. I joined the local Freethought Society and met some truly fascinating, seriously educated people, all very scientific-minded. One of them was Fred Hill.

Most people would consider Fred a nerd. He worked in the city records department and was the kind of guy you’d expect to see wearing a pocket protector. He was socially awkward and a bit strange, but a hell of a nice guy, and utterly brilliant. He’d been corresponding with a woman on an atheist Web site and had driven all the way from Florida to Indiana to meet her. It turned out she had three kids and was on welfare, which scared him off.

I thought Fred was cool, but I doubted most people could appreciate or even ascertain this fact. He could cite any historical event off the top of his head. He could tell you what year Darwin published Origin of Species (1859). There was no aspect of history Fred couldn¹t intelligently comment on. Indeed, his commentaries were well thought-out, cynical and quite funny. Any time our group met, I’d try to sit near Fred to get his take on events, past and present.

Fred had been in the Navy for five years before he settled in Jacksonville. His father too had been in the Navy. I asked him where he’d lived. The list was unbelievable: Greece, Japan, Philippines, California. His family had moved four times in one year.

I asked him if he¹d ever heard of Lemoore. He said he’d gone to high school there. Amazed, I related how I had gone back for a nostalgic visit in 1977, and it had looked like a ghost town. The experience had left me confused and sad. I asked him if the townies still wore wing tips in 1976, his freshman year, and he assured me they did.

I asked him about some of the local merchants, including Rosemary Badasci’s dad, whose name Fred recognized. Then I asked if he remembered any of the Lemoore High teachers, the only one whose name I could recall was Mr. Nunes. Sure enough, Fred had taken Nunes’ European history course in his freshman year, as I had done ten years earlier.

It was no coincidence that Fred had an insatiable appetite for history. Like me, he had appreciated the way Mr. Nunes made history come alive. My wife, astounded by this coincidence, asked each of us if Anthony Nunes had inspired our obsessions with history and intrigue.

Fred and I looked at each other. Without hesitating, we agreed that indeed he had.

 

END

Michael Fitzgerald is a regular correspondent for the Jacksonville Business Journal and an occasional contributor to Jacksonville's alternative Folio Weekly. His work has appeared in national publications The Humanist, Utne, and Left Curve. He is also the creator and editor of Cowford magazine and a lab instructor at the University of Florida’s College of Journalism and Communications.