April also brought PSAT exams, the Sophomore Circus, the Annual Lunch-Time Concert, the Chocolate Sale, college acceptance notices, and the first announcements for Grad Nite, coming in June.
Surely there was enough action there to touch on every Ridgemont student’s interests, but none of these special April events meant a thing to Randy Eddo the ticket scalper. Eddo, the man on whom most of the high school depended for their concert tickets, had his own reason to celebrate in April. To Randy Eddo, fifteen, April could tolerate no holiday other than . . . Ritchie Blackmore’s Birthday.
Who, the naïve and leaderless might ask, is Ritchie Blackmore?
Randy Eddo liked it when someone asked that question. “Ritchie Blackmore,” he said, “is the greatest proponent of pure, heavy rock music alive. He is the man to whom I dedicate my life.”
Eddo had found a true hero in Ritchie Blackmore. Blackmore was one of the first English guitarists to begin playing loud hard rock guitar in the late sixties, when Randy was still in the crib. Blackmore went on to form one of the most popular heavy-metal groups of all time, Deep Purple, before finally leaving the band in a fit of rage over the group’s commercial successes. He went on to form another, less accessible heavy-metal band, Eddo’s favorite, Rainbow.
Eddo had gone to the library and found every old interview with Blackmore he could. He knew every story of every time Blackmore smashed a camera, or threw a steak across a restaurant, or told an interviewer he could “cut any guitarist alive.” In making reservations at restaurants, Eddo used the name Blackmore. He had even petitioned Ridgemont High to officially recognize Blackmore’s birthday, April fifteenth, if only by playing his music during the two lunch periods.
Randy Eddo’s request was denied. So it was that every April fifteenth, Randy stayed home and celebrated Blackmore’s birthday his way.
At 8:00 on the morning of Blackmore’s birthday, Randy Eddo walked through the living room and threw open the imitation oak doors of his family’s Magnavox stereo. Then he began playing, one by one, and in chronological order, every record and bootleg record Ritchie Blackmore had ever made or had a hand in.
This year was Randy’s second annual observance, and he began as tradition dictated, with the Screaming Lord Sutch album. Blackmore, Eddo pointed out, was only sixteen when he performed his first recorded solo on that record.
Eddo’s parents had grudgingly decided to go along with the celebration of Ritchie Blackmore’s birthday. They simply asked Randy to keep it as low as possible, for the elderly neighbors next door, and take messages if anyone called. Randy himself did no ticket business on this day.
Mr. and Mrs. Eddo would arrive home from work at six in the evening, and Randy would just be getting into the great stuff: “Woman from Tokyo” and the Made in Japan live album with all those excellent five-minute screams from when Ian Gillan was still in the group.
“Randy!” his mother shouted. “Can’t you go anywhere?”
“No,” said Randy Eddo. “Suffer.”
It took about twelve hours total, but on the evening of Ritchie Blackmore’s birthday Randy Eddo could always look back on a fulfilling and wonderful experience.
Cadavers
“Shock,” lectured Mr. Vargas, “represents your greatest threat to life. Blood collects in the abdominal cavity. A person becomes pale, cold, clammy to touch. Taken to its extreme, death occurs . . .”
Everyone knew what was coming up in May. Mr. Vargas’s biology class had gone through most of the textbook. By process of elimination there wasn’t much left on the class schedule. Except . . .
“Now as you know, we’ll be taking a field trip to University Hospital before the end of the year. I’ve set the date for three weeks from today. I want you all here on that day because it is a mandatory attend for this class, and your grade. We’ll be able to see every facet of the hospital’s life—from birth to death.”
The next two-and-a-half weeks were a whirlwind of controversy. Some students were trumpeting the fact that their parents would write a note; others claimed that they would definitely be sick on that day. No way were they going to stick their hands into any cadaver. No way would they even be in the same room as a bunch of stiffs. Forget all the scientific details you’d learned all year—doesn’t that stuff rub off?
But when the day arrived, there was near-total attendance for Mr. Vargas’s famed and feared University Hospital field trip. The bus took off after third period. It was an eight-block ride.
The class was met by two representatives of the hospital. The first step of the tour took the students to the floor-one lab, where they were given a complete explanation of all the testing facilities. When is this going to happen? The second-floor mental ward was fascinating. They saw the emergency room, an iron lung, a cancer ward . . . but when was it going to happen?
“Now,” said one of the guides. “I’ll leave you with Dr. Albert for your last stop today.”
The class was taken to the basement of University Hospital, to the bottom floor, attainable only through a second elevator. The class descended in three shifts.
“What you are about to see,” said Dr. Albert, “is the human body in a state of transition. These are the preserved bodies of four deceased individuals—mostly derelicts—who died some two or three days ago. They have willed their bodies to our scientific pursuits, and to University Hospital in particular. So follow me, if you will . . .”
Dr. Albert, along with Mr. Vargas, led the class through the steel doors of the refrigeration room. The bodies were stretched out on metal trays, each covered with a single starched white sheet. Dr. Albert approached one of the cadavers and yanked the sheet down to its waist.
It was the orange crumbling body of an old man. His skin looked as if it might rub off if touched.
“Now, Allen here died of a bad liver a few days ago . . .”
“What can you do with the cadavers?” a student asked.
“We perform operations,” said Dr. Albert. “Delicate operations that shouldn’t be practiced on a live patient. We study the causes of death . . . it’s really not a morbid thing. I believe Mr. Vargas keeps formaldehyde animals in his room at Ridgemont High . . .”
Vargas nodded and stepped up to Allen.
“Now class,” he said, “this is a wonderful opportunity that Dr. Albert provides us with. Let’s not cheapen it in any way. This is an opportunity to study and identify actual parts of the human body, which we’ve been studying from textbooks all year long.”
You could tell Vargas was itching to get his hands on those cadavers.
“Now, Steve . . . can you identify the spleen on old Allen here?”
Vargas peeled open Allen’s chest cavity. Several girls gasped.
“That blue thing right in there,” said Shasta.
“Right!”
“Claudia? Where is the human heart located?”
“I don’t see it.”
“Right!” Vargas was loving it. “It’s covered by lung tissue! But, contrary to where we place our hands during the Pledge of Allegiance, the human heart is centrally located and . . .” Vargas pulled out a purplish blue muscle and hefted it in his hand.
“This,” he said, “is the human heart.”
Steve Shasta immediately turned to three friends. “You each owe me five bucks!”
Linda Barrett ran out of the room, holding her mouth. The rest remained through the entire episode, while Mr. Vargas displayed almost all the human body organs. Afterward, everyone boarded the bus for a quiet and reflective ride home. They returned to school like war heroes.