Community High School

A Commitment to Music and Community

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A ‘59 Ford Edsel, widely considered to be one of the most spectacular failures in the history of the United States automobile industry, was lying out on a lawn, abandoned and in an unusable condition.  The property’s owners wanted to get rid of it, and John Patrick willingly obliged them, purchasing the car for twenty dollars.  After spending some time restoring it, Patrick included the Edsel among his collection of items from the past, most of which are in working order.  Among his collection is a Victrola phonograph bought in 1918, a bubble gum machine that dispenses gum for a penny, and five old guitars, including a Fender, a Yamaha, a PV Tracer, an Old Harmony, and an acoustic.  Patrick, though he has since moved out to Stockbridge, has lived most of his life in Ann Arbor, and is now head custodian at Community High, the high school he attended.

He was born in 1959.  “I grew up in Ann Arbor, but we called it East Ann Arbor back in the 60’s and the 70’s,” Patrick says.  “I don’t know if they still call it East Ann Arbor, but some people might.”

Patrick recalls spending a lot of time at Buhr Park when he was younger.  “I remember when they opened that up and that it had a swimming pool.  Some things you just remember all the time from when you’re young.  They played this song, back in ’69, I believe.  It was ‘Sugar, Sugar, Honey, Honey,’ and it was something they played over and over again.”

Patrick emphasizes that music has frequently had a large effect on his life.  He says that it was what kept him out of trouble.

“We didn’t have much TV. … We might have had 5 or 6 stations back in the 60’s.  The 70’s were cool. … I loved the disco.  All the other guys I hung around with were not that crazy about disco,” he says.

Though greasers are generally thought to have been more prevalent in the 50’s, the subculture reemerged in the 70’s in a revival of 50’s pop culture.  Patrick became one of them.  “We all had our hair slicked back.  I was 15 or 16 when Fonzie came out, so we were all talking cool,” he says.  “Everybody thought they were cool.  I never smoked cigarettes but I still rolled them up [in my shirt].  As a matter of fact, at the school they had a lot of greasers. … I kind of went with the greasers and then I grew my hair long. ... I was kind of like borderline.  I didn’t know what way I was going.  It was cool to have your hair slicked back and it was cool to have your hair long. … I really didn’t know whether I was a real greaser or a hippie.”
With nothing else to do, he and his friends generally went around acting tough.  They rode minibikes and occasionally threw eggs at people’s houses.

“Nobody wanted to mess with us,” Patrick says.
Patrick was in a whole series of bands and played a variety of musical styles.  As each new innovation came out, he became interested in it and began to make money off of playing it.

“We just did a lot of different stuff.  I started liking the Beatles and the Beach Boys, and then the Motown came really heavy about ’68 or ’69,” Patrick says.
The different people that he played with mostly moved out of town over time, some choosing music as a career and some taking other jobs.  “The rhythm guitar player that was in our band originally, which was called ‘The Enticers,’ he works for Channel 4 now.  He’s like an executive.  I don’t know exactly what he does because he got divorced from his first wife and he disappeared.  He doesn’t come around much.  As a matter of fact, I talked to those guys who really knew him better than me…they said they hadn’t seen him in 10 to 12 years, ever since he got remarried.”

Patrick recently saw another band member playing a gig at a bowling alley out in Chelsea.  “He’s still doing his music,” he says.  “I do mine as a hobby.  You have fun around the house, or you get together to go to a friend’s house and play acoustic.  We did it professionally.”

Besides the music, Patrick remembers riots.  “I remember this one guy was getting beat up by about thirty people,” Patrick says.  “I think he got away and ran.  There just happened to be some football players down the street and they all came out and scared them off.  Otherwise, they probably would have really hurt that guy. … They were actually hitting him with sticks. … I didn’t even know what it was.  I was 8 or 9 years old.  That was in like ’68 or ‘69 when that happened.  I just remember seeing that when we were playing baseball on a diamond. … We just all got kind of nervous and kind of got away from it. … The cops came later.”

He adds that that kind of thing went on for a while.  “In 1971 and ’72, they always had problems. … You had to be careful riding in the same bus. … It didn’t happen very often, but there was always that going on.  It was a black and white issue.” However, Patrick adds, “Times have changed.”

Staying in Ann Arbor, Patrick began to work a series of landscaping and maintenance jobs, including ones at Arbor Valley Lawn Service and Cut and Care.  In 1984, an uncle pointed him toward the Ann Arbor Public Schools, where he got a job in maintenance.  However, due to his part-time employment status, he didn’t start getting seniority until 1986.  He says that it takes at least a month to become really experienced at cleaning a building.  You have to know what route to take and how to approach the general layout of the building in order to get the job done in a good amount of time.  Patrick says that he plans to retire in several years.

During his time living in town, Patrick heard many famous musicians play in or near Ann Arbor.  In 1976, one year before Elvis Presley’s death, Patrick saw him perform at Chrysler Arena.  His second wife, who was 18 at the time, was in the same row as he was, though Patrick did not find this out until he met her in 2003.  He recalls seeing Alice Cooper perform, too.
Eventually, Patrick moved to Stockbridge, a town near Grass Lake, partially due to rising taxes and overcrowding in Ann Arbor.  He commutes in to Community every morning.  He and his wife like to spend their free time going to parks, hiking, bike riding, and generally staying outdoors.  They own three acres of property, which takes a lot of time to mow, and Patrick works in their garage, restoring automobiles and other antiques.  “If it’s old, I’ll keep it,” he says.  “Most things you want to leave looking old.”