(TV) Boarding School , Yes, But No On-board / Just the Facts

["Casey, Leo J" <CaseyL@volpe.dot.gov>]

eRacerX wrote:  "Can anyone name the boarding school 
Verlaine attended?"

Hammond [of Strokes] said: "I think it's funny, because 
some of the biggest punks back in the day in 1978 went to 
boarding school. I mean Tom Verlaine [founding member of 
legendary NYC post-punk outfit Television] went to boarding 
school."

Casey wrote:
"But Hey, what do you expect from young ignoramuses like 
The Strokes (with apologies to Stroke fans). Moreover, in 
a long 1981 Promotion interview ... TV talks about his 
boarding-school experiences---they both lasted only a week 
or two."    

April 26th, Casey: I've got to **partially** take back some of 
back the above. On a **technicality** Mr. Hammond is correct. TV 
and Hell both attended a boarding school for more than a week or 
two. However, as you will read way below, there are extraordinary 
extenuating circumstances (and details), of which the Strokes are 
totally unaware, that make Hammond's original assertion totally 
misleading. 
 
After doing some digging and re-listening to a 1981 TV interview, 
I learned that he was at 2 different Colleges for only a few weeks.  
Actually, TV tells interviewer that at both Colleges he only 
went to the first day of classes! At one of the Colleges he 
said he then left after about a week; at the other, after about 
8 weeks.  When interviewer pressed him to tell her what he was 
doing during those 8 weeks, there is a very long pause and then 
while laughing, "Ah, Ah, I was, I was .. let's just not say what 
I was doing."

The two Colleges in question were Erskine College in S. Carolina 
and---brace yourself---a Military College in Chester, Pennsylvania. 
TV was, however, one of the 40 civilians (including girls) who attended. 
The best I can determine from Google is that this was either Widener 
University or Pennsylvania Military Academy.  
                            ----
>From R. Hell interview:

trakMARX: And from there you went to boarding school where 
you met Tom Verlaine?

Hell: ... they [family] found this school in Delaware. It was a 
boarding school. Basically, the kinds of kids that went there were 
the same ones like me [troubled]. When people think of boarding school, 
they think of ivy-covered walls and people in suits. Tweed, and stuff... 
...... It was a very non-exclusive boarding school. It wasn't 
prestigious or high quality.... 

trakMARX: ... Proust's infinite wisdom espoused endlessly at 
breakfast...

HELL: Yeah, it wasn't like that. Though actually we did wear 
coats and ties. So I was there for less than a year before I left with Verlaine. 
We ran way from school.

trakMARX: ... So how did you and Verlaine make contact? 
Did you run in to each other one day at school? 

HELL: Yeah, he lived in Wilmington, DE, which is where the 
school was. He was a day student. He didn't sleep over. He lived 
in the town. [Even the usually sharp as a tack Monica Kendrick 
got it wrong: ".. Verlaine never hid those long teenage hours 
in his boarding-school bedroom struggling to decipher Coltrane 
solos (even briefly attempting to play the sax) ..."}
...

HELL:  And so I got there half way through 11th grade and we took 
off in October of the 12th grade, just after school got started. 

trakMARX: How far south did you make it?

HELL: Well, we got arrested in Alabama. We started a fire in 
the middle of this big cornfield and it got out of hand. All of 
a sudden there were all these sirens...fire trucks and police cars. 
And they took us to jail. { Attention P. Obbard  :>)  }

trakMARX: So how long a stretch you guys do?

HELL: My mother's family comes from Alabama. Tom's father came 
to pick him up and these relatives from Alabama came to get me. 
We were escorted to our homes and we weren't allowed back in school 
this time. He went to Delaware, I went to Virginia. He eventually 
finished high school in a public school and went to college for a year.
 http://www.trakmarx.com/2003_05/050_hell.htm 

Hammond's insinuation that Verlaine was some rich, snotty, preppie 
teenager is laughable. As Emilie Hsu wrote:  Subject: (TV) Stuff 
they don't teach you in Swiss Boarding Schools:  " -- and Tom 
certainly didn't go to some Swiss finishing school for boys.

OTOH, others maybe have gone too far in the opposite direction:  
"...his [Hell's] desperate mother sent him to a boarding school 
in Delaware, from which he promptly absconded with **a 
like-minded 'slum-kid with big vis-ions', Tom Miller."**
http://pages.eidosnet.co.uk/johnnymoped/punk/rock/HELL_RICHARD.html

Warning for  Run-on Sentence!!: 
My take is that although Verlaine probably faced a future of working 
in DuPont's Wilmington factory if he hadn't left for NYC, a kid who 
takes piano lessons for 5 years starting at age 6, whose parents buy 
him sets of classical records (albeit cheap compilations from local 
super-market) and pay for his tuition at the 'boarding school' and 
whose older brother has a collection of Jazz, Motown, and rock records, 
is not a 'slum-kid'.  My take is that he was probably was a kid with a 
lower-middle-class or middle-class background.
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