John de la Howe takes to the road

In the spring of 2013, a busload of high school students came twice to Columbia from the John de la Howe School in McCormick, S. C. Both boys and girls, this was a select group in that everybody made the grade to take the trip. Any misbehavior and no go.

The first run to Columbia that spring was to set up a cheeseburger factory on my Terrace Way back deck overlooking Blossom Street, not even a block from Five Points. Following the early supper, the bus took the students to the Koger Center for the opera Tosca, replete with 40-piece orchestra and a European cast.

Within a month the same group came back to Columbia for women’s tennis matches between the University of South Carolina and the University of Tennessee. Following tennis, the McCormick group took their bus to the Devine Pig for live lobsters, eight that could be cut in half for sixteen dinner table places altogether. Live lobsters, however, were new in every way. Conversations didn’t sound like anyone had ever had lobster before, certainly not live ones fresh out of the tank, ones than had to be killed in the first order of preparation.

The suggestion of voodoo was possible with every kill. Each lobster was quietly and secretly named, someone obviously the knife holder didn’t care for one bit, just before the slaughter. Then the knife went into the back of the lobster’s head and down through the face, splitting the brain and mercifully instantly killing the lobster. But somebody somewhere in the world got mysteriously hit with an awful headache.

The distant eight headaches were a magical part of splitting eight lobsters into sixteen halves, all which were slathered with lemon butter sauce and grilled over a gas flame on the back deck.

That was spring 2013. For this past spring we divided the busload of students between the boys and the girls, coming down on two different buses for two different trips.

Seven girls from John de la Howe came down to Columbia on Saturday, March 1, just in time for late lunch on the sidewalk at the Gourmet Shop on Saluda Avenue. The Gourmet Shop is casual enough to let the high school girls feel comfortable but it’s fancy enough as a place that attracts lots of ladies who lunch.

And among the ladies who lunch the John de la Howe girls went window shopping up and down Saluda Avenue.

After shopping and after a tour of a short section of Columbia’s Main Street, including the top floor of the BB&T Tower 25 stories up, the bus took everybody to the Devine Pig, this time to not only get the lobsters, one for every two people, but to pick up 1.5” thick beautifully marbled rib-eyes and whatever else was necessary, such as asparagus, eggs and butter for hollandaise and small red potatoes. With a prepared shopping list the length of a legal pad, every girl was assigned something to find and bring to checkout.

After a steak and lobster supper, again on Terrace Way, the group got back on the bus for the Koger Center, this time for the opera Carmen.

At intermission the John de la Howe students were tapped as assistant barbacks; in other words, they handled everything but the alcohol, a school policy restriction.

Within a week seven handwritten letters, heartfelt thank you notes, arrived on Terrace Way.

More than a month later on Saturday, April 12, the John de la Howe yellow school bus pulled into a parking space across George Rogers Boulevard from the Williams-Brice Stadium. This trip brought fifteen high school boys and their supervisors. The University of South Carolina was having its annual spring game, a full four quarters between two USC squads.

The group sat together on the west side, looking away from the sun, at about the 45-yard-line and halfway up.

Well into the third quarter the boys left to have lunch they brought with them and to make their 2:00 p.m. appointment at the South Carolina Military Museum on the other side of Bluff Road, maybe two blocks from the stadium.

The museum had its assigned docent meet the group and proceed with more than an hour’s visit. Besides all the weapons, uniforms, military memorabilia and miniaturized battle scene models, the boys got close and familiar with full-size howitzers, tanks, armored personnel carriers, jeeps and the like.

The idea of the military as a viable career option took root, no doubt.

The bus took everybody to the curb on Sumter Street between the S. C. State House and Trinity Cathedral where a tour on foot began, starting with the obelisk memorializing Andrew Pickens, Thomas Sumter and Francis Marion and going all the way down to the far side of the Horseshoe to the new home of the journalism school, still under construction. The tour took a lap through some of the student-oriented restaurants on the south side of the capitol and back through the capitol grounds, particularly the recently corrected statue of Strom Thurmond and the preserved 1865 battle scars on the capitol’s west face. Like the John de la Howe girls before them, the boys walked across Gervais Street to the Capital City Club on top of the BB&T Tower.

After a visit with the Richland Library, something on a scale unavailable in McCormick, the group walked down the Gervais Street hill to Motor Supply, one of the city’s best restaurants, where a 5:00 p.m. reservation for 22 places was ready.

The students had to suffer through some etiquette orientation on the bus. Not everybody had ever ordered off the menu in a really nice restaurant, especially one so well-staffed with attractive sophisticated waitresses.

The boys ate well, but they also behaved well. In the end, the tab was almost a thousand dollars. They got their money’s worth. That’s a little over forty dollars each.

Both the girls’ opera night and the boys’ spring game trip were paid for by a group of donors, most of whom attended a cocktail reception at my place on the night before New Year’s Eve, what I called New Year’s Adam. The pitch: Come for conversation and an open bar and leave a check behind for opera tickets. Most party goers paid $36, good for one student opera ticket in the Koger Center’s orchestra section. All told, between the checks left at the party and far-flung mail-ins, we had a little more than two thousand dollars, which was pretty good when considering this was being done for the first time.

Take a John de la Howe student to the opera. Guess that sounded right, somehow.

Anyway, as it turned out this spring, since the school had its new segregated boys-do-this-and-the-girls-do-that policy, only the girls got the opera; but the boys did all right, especially considering that grand and glorious dinner at Motor Supply.

For the spring 2015 trips something similar should happen, maybe the same program or maybe both boys and girls go to the opera together. But the idea of two spring trips to Columbia every year has its own appeal as a permanent place on the John de la Howe calendar. The kids get something special, something most schools like John de la Howe never get.

Speaking of something special, when I finished the eighth grade at Crayton, part of the Richland County public schools, my class went to Washington, D. C., for a week. I still remember the trip as one of my favorites.

Why can’t John de la Howe put together a Washington trip for its high school students? Maybe a four-day stay would have to be our maximum, but it could be an academically demanding and culturally enriching four days. The best time is August when Congress is out and when the president goes on vacation, typically, and the lobbyists are understandably absent. Hotels are affordable in August and the lines are down.

The John de la Howe bus would take us to the Greenville-Spartanburg airport for cheap Southwest seats to the Washington-Baltimore airport. We should return, however, on the train. The Amtrak Crescent, Washington to New Orleans, comes through Atlanta early in the morning, allowing for an Atlanta tour before taking the bus back to McCormick.

Even with August prices and group considerations and student discounts, such a trip to Washington is going to cost big-time. Fine. It should.

The kids deserve it.