I went to my sophomore year of high school in Taiwan at a school that was fairly easy on dress code and personal freedom of the students. I wore blue jeans and t-shirts, my hair was long, I wore sandals or no shoes at all much of the time. We had an open schedule, we had a smoking lounge, and life was good.

My dad got orders to go to Keesler AFB for his remaining two years until retirement. Biloxi Mississippi. I didn’t know about Mississippi coast living. But, I did worry about a completely new place like I always did every time we moved every two years or so. My hair was perfect for a budding rock star and I had an identity in the way I looked and I was satisfied with it, but I feared that would change.

We got to Mississippi about midway through summer vacation and we found a house in Ocean Springs, a small town across the bay from Biloxi. Because it was summer I didn’t get to meet many people, though I did go to a dance I found out about. I met a couple of people there, but until school started I pretty much wandered around by my self. I was looking forward to school and new friends and adventures.

My dad and I went to the high school to get me registered. I still had long hair and was wearing jeans and a t-shirt. The woman at the desk was a prim southern lady, dressed like old women dress was my thinking. She looked at me and she told me that there was a strict dress and hair code, as well as a strict behavior code. She almost sneered at me. All were equally important and enforced with a heavy hand she related to us. My old man was a personal freedom kind of guy, but I think he may have been secretly happy to hear someone else tell me I had to cut my hair.

I’d already figured a serious haircut would be needed, but then she told me jeans were not allowed and t-shirts were taboo as well. And she told me all the rules. My hair could not touch my collar on my button-down shirt, and it couldn’t touch my ears. My slacks needed to sport a crease and there was definitely no smoking lounge. Male students were required to wear socks and she noted my bare sandaled feet. She didn’t tell me “no sandals.” But she did say tennis shoes were not appropriate.

I spent the week before first day of school getting ready. My mom and I went clothes shopping for some slacks and collared shirts, new socks and then I went and got so much hair cut off that I’m sure my hundred yard dash times would be a full second quicker. I was ready.

I just couldn’t get my head around hard-soled, shiny top shoes, so I figured I would be okay with sandals as long as I wore socks. I slicked my hair, tucked in my shirt and went to first day. I joined the throng of kids at the front door. A big round man opened the door and greeted us. He had a serious Mississippi accent, was huge and red-faced, with a short flat-top haircut on his small head stuck on his enormous round body with little or no neck, and he was definitley in charge!

As I was edging past him to enter the door he grabbed my arm and pulled me out of line. He told me my hair was too long and I wasn’t going inside wearing those poor excuse for shoes. He pulled the little hairs at the back of my head and they touched my collar. He pulled the little hairs on the side of my head and showed me how they touched my ears, and told me that would just not do. He told me to go home and get a real haircut, real shoes and a better attitude and then I might return. I walked home.

Mom and I went to correct the problems. I got my haircut again. I got some shoes and I tried again the next day. I got to meet the round man again first period. He was my Chemistry teacher and he told me his name was Coach Thibodeaux. I got the impression he was as much an asshole as I perceived the first day and I was thinking I might have to relocate in order to survive.

Like I always did, I found some like-minded friends soon. And I settled in. Coach Thibodeaux was really okay after I got to know him. He really wasn’t so much a teacher as he was a football coach. I got the idea the school just needed a place for him to be and in a chemistry class wasn’t really much of a struggle to run herd over a bunch of teenagers, so he became the chemistry teacher. I did well in the class as I did in all my classes. And his wife was my English teacher and she liked me, so he let up on me after a little while.

In all my growing up years I loved my stay in Mississippi the most. It was backward from what I’d been used to, but the people generally cared about other people and life was idyllic there. I cherish that time. In the two years I was there I got some of the restrictions on dress altered some, at least for me. My dad and the principal had it out one day, and my dad pointed out to him that this was America and personal freedom was a bedrock in his mind and he’d spent twenty plus years defending the opportunity for people to be free. He was forceful and I took full advantage after that. I wore blue jeans with paisley material sewed in the legs to make them bell-bottoms and my hair once again grew over my collar and ears. I flaunted my freedom loudly! I even willed my ‘hippie pants” to some junior in the yearbook.