If someone told me when I was a scrawny, scared student at Placerita Junior High in the early 1960s that I’d grow up to become many things, including a historian, I would have given them one of those You’re lit Askew Teenage Looks. I’ve been writing and teaching Santa Clarita history for more than a half-century plus. Oft, I’ve lamented how we celebrate the daft, the bloated, the imbecilic. We name streets after useless bureaucrats and posing generals.
It’s profoundly refreshing when we tip our hats to that rare soul who spends a lifetime joyfully toiling in ordinariness, serving his fellow man.
I’m terribly prejudiced. I’ve known Jim Tanner for 60-plus years. I had a poker face even back to that day I first met him and to share what an effect the man has on me, I still remember that morning in great detail. I had a tumultuous childhood, lived here for a while in 1958, moved around, came back, rinse, repeat.
Jim Tanner was the first person I spoke to at Placerita. Feigning disinterest, he looked at my folder, which I guess got mixed up with someone named, “Manson, Charles.”
“I’m going to take a big chance on you and put you in Track I instead of Special Ed,” said Jim.
My chart noted I had a six-digit IQ and, again, I was enough of a player/scam musician to not burst out, “Mr. Tanner — are you NUTS!?!?! I’m gifted, but not in a little yellow bus with the hydraulic lift sort of way!!”
I did the bureaucratic polite dance thingie and thanked Jim.
“Mr. Tanner,” as I called him to his face back then.
I’d get back at Tanner later in my life. Poor guy. He became my friend.
Tanner’s from Colorado. In 50 years of writing about him for this paper, I never grew tired of claiming Jim was born and raised in Nebraska. Apparently, in the great, unending sameness of the beige Midwest, there’s nothing worse than claiming a Coloradoianite was a loyal Nebraskan with roots going back to the maize-fed Anasazi.
A school principal then, he’d call to politely correct the record.
“John boy. I don’t know where you got that information and perhaps that reprobate Fran Wrage put you up to this, but, I’m from — Colorado, The Centennial State,” Mr. Tanner would explain. “I’ve never heard of Nebraska. Couldn’t find it on a map. Deny its existence. Wouldn’t cross the state line if I did. I automatically deduct two full grades on a student if I discover they’re from Nebraska or their parents accidentally passed through on vacation.”
Profusely, I’d apologize (and blame Fran Wrage, Unnamed Indian Reservation, Nebraska, no ZIP code). I’d run a correction, wait a few months, then find a way to slip Jim’s name in The Signal with the caveat he was Nebraska’s Greatest Citizen and, ergo, what he had been lobbying about passing a school bond should be taken with a grain of salt.
Simply? Jim Tanner was one of the best people I’ve ever met. Along with a handful of men — yes, MEN — Tanner was a big part of the functionally schizophrenic puzzle that makes up who John Boston/Little Walter Cieplik Jr. is today. Other than threatening me with Placerita’s Secret Rubber Room where cud-chewing children go to play with dull scissors and eat glue paste, Jim never told what to do besides study. His life — his everyday actions — were what I attempted to mirror. The guy was unfailingly kind, strong, honest and so darn captivatingly — effortlessly — humorous. He was one of the few souls in town who always asked how my novel writing was going. That meant so much to me. Still does.
Often? Life hurts. But, there are people who make you forget that for the moment. It’s called, Hope. They unveil the great curtain, that life is light, profoundly beautiful, a simple, joyful dance step followed by another.
For years, we shared this kabuki performance. I’d falsely report Tanner was a product of The Cornhusker State. He’d call. It would start innocently, with a fake harsh whisper, “…look you son of a …” then he’d pretend to cough, then extrapolate what a great state Colorado was and Nebraska, on the other hand, was a territory filled with beet farmers sporting 16-inch heads. I’d blame the error on a Signal intern.
From Sierra Vista.
Then, we’d laugh so hard it hurt.
For years, we worked the Boys & Girls Club Auction together, closing the silent auction bid boards. In between sections, we’d have a 10-minute break. I’m in my 40s and went off to grab a beer. I’m walking back to our next section and I see Tanner walking toward me. lit me, I take my bottle of Coors and seamlessly start to hide it behind my butt, catch myself, shake my head and internally scream, “What am I DOING!?!?!” I was transported back to 1964, terrified that Mr. Tanner would catch me walking across campus holding a beer. I told him. We doubled over laughing. The guy touched so many students, so many parents over the years. A friend recently shared about his daughter, years ago, her first day in seventh grade. Tanner said if she wanted make points with the principal, make sure to bring him a tuna sandwich and Snickers bar. Poor kid. She did. Darn Tanner? He ate the sandwich AND the Snickers.
Some say Jim Tanner, 91, made his transition last month. Nope. He lives forever. You see, so many in Newhall, and beyond, have a great Jim Tanner story. That tall, lanky, smiling so-&-so affected — wonderfully — the lives of so many. I’m a better man for having him in my life, for helping to shape what a man should be.
I’m smiling as I type this, but they should really name an entire town, or synagogue, after Jim Tanner.
Like, in Nebraska …
With more than 100 writing awards, Santa Clarita’s John Boston is Earth’s most prolific humorist and satirist. Look for “Naked Came the Novelist” Boston’s long-awaited sequel to “Naked Came the Sasquatch, coming this fall on johnboston-books.com.
About the Author
