Scott Swanson
For eight Sweet Home Junior High art students, the highlight of their nine-day trip to New York City last month was … the Jewish deli where they had lunch?
That acrobatic troupe from Argentina? Coney Island? The beautiful cathedrals?
Or was it Michael?
Yeah, it had to be Michael.
Eighth-graders Sunhee Bitter, Emily Funk, Kate Hawken, Marissa Kurtz, Sydney Mauer, Madelyn Neuschwander, Hayden Nichol and Jake Swanson, along with chaperone Lena Ellis and their art teacher, Trey Hagen, left May 20 for what was intended to be an eight-day trip.
But, noted Jake, “Our flight got cancelled, so we spent the night in LaGuardia Airport.”
The purpose of the tour, Hagen said, was not just art education and appreciation.
“The main goal,” he said, “ was to expose these kids to a culture or a variety of cultures that they had never seen, to overcome some of those stereotypes that they might have. I think Sweet Home can be a bit provincial. It was my goal this year to get a group out of the state of Oregon.”
They got plenty of culture, students said.
“It was so much different from here,” Madelyn said. “There were so many different types of people.”
“I didn’t think they were as friendly as Oregonians,” Jake said.
“They weren’t snobby, they were just kind of rude,” Madelyn added.
“They don’t have any manners,” said Marissa. “They’d bump into you and not say anything.”
“I think it’s just how they live, how they’ve grown up,” Madelyn said.
“There’s just so many people there, it’s like you’ll never see them again,” Jake said.
“The clothes they wore were so different,” said Marissa, who has an eye for style detail. “Like the women’s shoes. I thought they were really ugly but everybody was wearing them. They were like a sandal with a square heel and they would wrap up their legs. A lot of the people were wearing Addidas sweat pants.”
The group stayed in a second-floor brownstone apartment. They rode the subway – where Marissa got left behind at one station, and since there is no cell service underground, she had to wait till the others changed trains and returned to retrieve her from the next station.
“It was scary,” she said. “We were all dressed up nice because we were going to dinner. I went and stood by this old lady.
“She would protect me,” she added, laughing.
That episode was due to a cultural difference too, the students said.
“If Marissa had been rude, she would have gotten on the subway, you know,” Madelyn observed.
“People wre just piling on. She was waiting,” Jake said. “Then it just left. The subway drivers didn’t care if people were still getting on. Sometimes they’d just close the door.”
“They had this little window and they looked out and I was looking at them and tapping on the glass,” Marissa recalled of her attempts to connect with the train operators. “And they just looked at me and put their head back in and the subway took off.”
The subway also brought them up close and personal with the local populace, such as the woman with dreadlocks who boarded with her drums.
“She was playing the bongos and singing,” Jake said. “It was pretty crazy. She’d come around and give you fist bumps and stuff. You didn’t have to pay her.”
“We saw her twice that day,” Marissa said.
Despite the adjustments, they saw a lot of sights and clearly had a good time.
They visited several art museums, they rode the Cyclone and the Thunderbolt at Coney Island – multiple times in some cases.
“At one point you’re going 96 miles per hour,” Jake said of the latter rollercoaster.
They visited Central Park.
“I thought Central Park was going to be, like, nature,” he said. “There were three main roads going through it. You could just see buildings.
“There were sculptures everywhere,” Madelyn added.
They visited the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, discovering – the hard way – that it was closed on Tuesdays.
“It was the weirdest thing,” Jake said.
“It was open every other day,” said Madelyn.
“We saw multi-million dollar paintings,” Jake said.
“Picassos,” said Madelyn. “‘Woman With a Wash Cloth’ or something. That was one of my favorites.”
They saw art movies, glass sculptures “made of little tiny mirrors that this person had cut,” she said. And lots of architecture. “Buildings and stuff. Lots of different cut stone in the buildings,” Madelyn said.
They said the Empire State Building, which they visited at night, was impressive.
“We got to see the whole city,” said Marissa.
The Statue of Liberty was “massive,” Jake said. “It was really big … and green. We didn’t realize how big it was.”
The memorial to victims in the World Trade Center tragedy definitely made an impression.
“It was amazing,” said Marissa. “All the names on the side and the water flowing in. There was this hole that water flowed into and you couldn’t see down it. Mr. Hagen said it went really, really far down.”
“It’s breathtaking,” added Madelyn. “We didn’t tell the seventh-graders that story, but when they go…”
They enjoyed visiting some church buildings as well – St. Patrick’s Cathedral, St. Peter’s and St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church, all in Manhattan.
“We walked a little ways and we saw this church,” Madelyn said of St. Bart’s, as it is known. “It was awesome. I liked it even better than the bigger ones. They were in a service, so it was a little awkward.”
“We had to be very quiet,” Jake said.
“Beautiful stained glass and stuff,” Madelyn added.
“Mosaic on the ceiling. It was gold,” Jake said.
They watched Fuerza Bruta, a postmodern off-Broadway theater show performed by an acrobatic troupe that’s run in New York since 2007.
“That was so fun,” Marissa said. “Different colored lights flashing everywhere.”
“They had this pool on the ceiling with girls swimming in it,” Jake noted. “They’d lower it down to where you were. You could touch it and they’d come around and put their hands on yours.”
Hagen said he’s wanted to do such a trip for five years.
“I finally got a group that was able to shake the bushes for our screen printing business and do stuff through 4-H and other odd jobs to raise money.”
Participants said they raised $1,200 for the trip, plus spending money.
“We were dedicated,” Jake said. “We wanted to go from the start.”
Hagen said he hopes this is the beginning of a tradition.
“I knew if we could get one group to go, in the years that follow, we’d get more and more kids that wanted to go. We’ve got a group of more than 50 kids who are interested this year.
“These kids were like the pioneers, the canary in the coal mine. We had to get this first group to go and come back and say, ‘Hey, we had a blast.’”
So what about Michael?
“Oh, Michael,” said Jake, to appreciative chuckles all around.
They met Michael on the beach at Coney Island.
“Kate Hawken and I were just sitting there and this guy just pops out of the sand,” Madelyn said.
The man wore a leather vest over a plaid shirt, Marissa noted, with “American flag swim trunks” that, Jake chimed in, were “all hiked up” by suspenders. He had a boomerang stuck in his shorts and carried a stick and a bag. He wore a hat, with a sombrero “that he put on the side of his head,” Madelyn said.
He had their full attention as he “was running down and coming back, and running down and coming back, doing backward somersaults and stuff,” she said.
Then Michael chucked the boomerang, which didn’t return to him ,as he obviously intended, as he stood waiting for it, striking elsewhere on the beach.
“The beach was packed, so if he hit somebody…” Jake trailed off at the memory.
“We were like, ‘What is this guy doing?’” Madelyn said. “‘This is dangerous.’ He’s staring, like, ‘Where’d it go?’ Eventually, he sees it and comes running back. Then he just pukes all over the place.”
At this point, Hagen, their teacher, announced that he wanted to meet this man, they said.
“He introduces himself and takes a picture with us,” Madelyn said.
Jake re-enacted the moment: “I’m Michael.”
Eventually, they said, Michael made his exit, pointing his stick and yelling at seagulls, then tripping and nearly falling on the boardwalk.
“It was bizarre,” Madelyn said. “My heart started hurting from laughing so much.”
“It was hilarious,” said Jake. “I would have paid $50 to see that.”