1985: The Year In Top 40 Hits (Week 3: 19 January 1985)

Tears For Fears, somebody called This Island Earth, Stevie Wonder, plus The Style Council and guests do their part for the striking miners

Photo by Mylo Kaye on Unsplash

The one big change I had to make after we moved to Lubbock was learning how to wake up in time to catch the school bus. I had gotten spoiled by the fact that Levelland High School was literally on the other side of the gate in our back fence. To get to Monterey High School (nearly four miles away, far too far to walk every morning) on time, I needed to catch a school bus, two long blocks over to Avenue U and two more to 91st Street. It was a pain and it took ages.

But there was a bright side, too. Right around this time during my first semester, I noticed that my homeroom teacher, Mr. Washington, never took attendance. One of the history teachers, Mr. Washington was a genial Black man in his early 60s with an attitude somewhere between “The kids have got to learn for themselves” and “I’m less than two years from retirement with a full pension, so y’all do what you gotta do.” So starting about halfway through this second week of school, after my first-period English class, I slipped out of an underwatched rear door into the student parking lot. This was the only fraught part, but on the one or two…