CHALMETTE MIDDLE SCHOOL: 1983 Yearbook - Chalmette, LA.

CHALMETTE MIDDLE SCHOOL - 1983 YEARBOOK:
First and right out the gate I must send a BIG THANK YOU to Dean Kerne, who sent me the CMS Yearbook. Most of us lost this is in the storm (Hurricane Katrina / The Levee Breach)
CHALMETTE MIDDLE SCHOOL was located at 75 East Chalmette Circle in Chalmette, Louisiana 5 miles outside of New Orleans. If you lived on the West side of Judge Perez this is where you went for middle school (7th and 8th grades - although it housed 5th through 8th grade). The kids on the East side went to Trist, but we’d all met up at CHS for our high school years, if you didn’t go to Holy Cross. CMS was the home of the Vikings and wasn’t a magnet or charter school (I don’t even think those were in existence back then), but it was a great place to get an education and get your street smarts too. The parish school systems were still sexually segregated - (The girls disappeared when they reached the 4th grade and their menstrual cycles started and went to their own school). I guess the powers that be though this would deter from teen pregnancies…all this did was produce awkward social skills when it came to talking with girls and opened up entire school years of little boys being class clowns and breaking wind in class.
I remember the first time that we were given a tour of the school when we were still at St. Claude Heights in 1981, they bussed us in and took us to the gym where they were holding a pep rally for the football team. They were kids packed in like sardines on the bleachers against the back wall and all stomping their feet and clamping their hands in unison to the drum intro of QUEEN’s “We Will Rock You”. I remember being amazed by that and hearing the band play “Elephant” for the first time. Those were my first memories of the school…
In Chalmette in the early 1980’s, we still had Parades on Judge Perez during Mardi Gras. It was an incredible place to grow up during that time frame!! In-between summers of hanging out at Mista Creams playing Asteroids, getting your iron on shirt with your name in space tape on the back at McDougal’s, renting movies on beta at Wineski’s video, going to the show and having Dookie yell at us for having our feet on the chairs, going to Grumpy’s and watching MTV when they played videos! You were getting prepped for your 7th & 8th grade years at CMS 1981-83. There were no dress codes, we were kids from the suburbs of Chalmette, we wore tight Levi’s jeans, jersey style concert shirts or polos, white tennis shoes, had our hair feathered and had a comb in our back pocket. We were cool!
I remember joking around with friends like Dean Kerne and Lonnie Tucker and tons of other friends, talking about Mid-South Wrestling everyday with Jeff Rapp and everybody that was into it. Talking about SCTV with Randy Boudreaux (We were the only kids that watched that show), Watching Joey Hall & Ronnie Zeller play air guitar solos on their arm or watching Donovan Punch REALLY play these solos, Dodge Ball during gym class (COACH KING!!!) - listening to our English teacher Mrs. McMiller yelling at us saying “Are you stupid or crazy?” - Getting a “wooly booger” from Mrs. Joiner if you learned the Dewey decimal system. (My mom use to sew these for her & I use to glue the crazy eyes on them), gathering into Mr. Landrineau’s class with a boom box listening to IRON MAIDEN’s “NOTB” on cassette that Chance brought that he borrowed from his brother Sammy when the album came out (I remember how freaked out we were by the intro!). The “who was grosser” debate - OZZY vs ALICE COOPER, jammin' to JUDAS PRIEST, OZZY, SABBATH, ZZ TOP, LED ZEPPELIN, IRON MAIDEN, VAN HALEN, AC/DC and ZEBRA.
And of course, the strange but interesting barter system that the janitor / concession stands operator Mr. Steve had in place with all of us - Mr. Steve was a short stout older guy with bug eyes like Rodney Dangerfield that was hard to understand. There was a deal set into place that if you allowed him to hit you with a paddle, you’d get a free coke. (Paddling was still legal in schools - if that happened today people would have lost their minds, and he probably would have been arrested…interesting how things change over time) Everyday somebody got the paddle; you took 2 hits if you wanted a bag of chips with your coke. We’d all line up and watch the show!! If you forgot your lunch money, this was a quick way to get some food! You could always tell who got the paddle when you looked in the courtyard and saw a kid walking around with a coke in one hand and rubbing his cheeks with the other… CHALMETTE MIDDLE SCHOOL was the gateway to our teenage and high school years and a coming of age for all of us. So please enjoy the yearbook and again thank you Dean for allowing us to visit a simpler time in our lives again!!!
“Elephant” aka “Owl Pride” Courtesy of Rebekah & The CHS Band July 2016