Dr. Leo Jenkins begins this section by describing his experiences at Rutgers University. JENKINS: Then I graduated and I lucked up in a nationalized chemistry test. It was just one of those things. I'm not trying to be modest or anything. But it's one of those things, when one can luckily study the right thing. Sometimes there is a little footnote and you just happen to remember that and one of the questions will just happen to be that footnote. One of those things, just pure luck. I got a very high score. So my professor in chemistry at Jefferson [High School for Boys] insisted that I owed it to my society, I owed it to myself and my family and the school, to major in chemistry. So I went off to Rutgers University to major in chemistry.
It took me only about a semester to find out what a terrible mistake it was. I didn't like the labs. I didn't like the people who were majoring in chemistry. I didn't care for the professors. It just wasn't my cup of tea. So I changed over to a major in political science. And I enjoyed, always did enjoy the politics and economics, that type of course to me were very interesting. I went to Rutgers.
Really in those days they recruited intensely. I had a letter from Lafayette to the effect that I was the type of person they would like to have which I know half my class got such a letter, because they were hungry for students. Really recruiting. As I said before, I couldn't afford the movies, so I was standing in the library one night in the stacks trying to get a book and a Rutgers football hero, the captain of the football team, no less, a real nationally known fellow at the time, came down in the stacks. He introduced himself and he said, "Is your name Leo Jenkins?" I said, "Yes." He said, "I want to talk to you about Rutgers." They had him out dragging kids in. I mean they just, they needed kids in order to pay salaries and keep the school open. They did some real fancy courting to get folks to go to college.
But they were rather strict, most of them, most to my knowledge. There were a few places that we knew were dumps, but most of them were rather strict. A student must have, I think, at that time, sixteen Carnegie units: two in foreign languages, two in algebra, one in solid geometry, one in plane geometry, algebra, of course, four years of English. They made no exceptions generally. You had to have that to get in. You might rescue yourself sometime in summer school if you were shy a half a point or half a unit, but the Carnegie units were the thing. They didn't have SAT and that type of thing, but they did insist on the Carnegie units.
BRATTON: Did you take some Education too?
JENKINS: Oh yeah.
BRATTON: Did you plan to teach?
JENKINS: Yeah, I, I planned, I was planning two things, either to go into business or to make a living, to teach. It was impossible to think about going into business. I worked for Campbell Soup. I was in Rutgers. I was a window dresser. I dressed up windows on Campbell Soups and then went around to various supermarkets. Of course, they didn't have anything like they have today. There would be one in each county at the most. I'd put up a window with streamers and everything else and then go inside and put up a big display. Then I would prepare the man for a Saturday sale, which if you know what prices are now, we were featuring six cans of tomato soup for a quarter. Normally it was a nickel a can, so you were featuring it six for a quarter. Bread was generally the same thing, you could get five for a quarter. But now it is $.98 a loaf. It was kind of different then. And I thought, if I had gone with Campbell's Soup, Lord only knows, I might have made it or may not. You know, you don't know. But I would like to be in business, I'd like that, but I also wanted to make a living.
So I went to Philadelphia, to the agency, 'cause I found it was almost impossible to get a job without help. Every school I went to, there would be one or two jobs open and it would be a class reunion almost. I would go and meet ten or twenty of my friends that I graduated with, seriously, it was almost a class reunion. Then we'd say, "Where are you going to be next?" "Well, I'll be in Madison next" or "I'll be in Cranford next" or "Westfield." We'd go to all the towns and have a family reunion almost, class reunion, not family.
Then I got a little bit wise and went down to see the man in Philadelphia, Bryant Teachers' Agency it was called. He gave me several leads. He gave me a lead of Methodist Pennington Prep or some name of that type. But I didn't feel too comfortable there. Then I got a lead to go to Broadway. There was a club called the Seventy-Seven Steps Club. It was a club that took care of people who were lonely in New York and that type of thing and it was run by the Methodist Church. The man said this might be something of interest to me. So I was interested in it and I went over and tried to get that job, but I didn't get it. So finally, I was told that I might have a chance down in Atlantic City area. It was in Atlantic County, about five miles from Atlantic City. I went down there and they hired me. They hired me to teach senior English and Political Science. Of course, I had not majored in English, but it wasn't too hard to stay ahead, because they gave fifty-five non-academic students. They used to call them non-academic.
BRATTON: Non-college?
JENKINS: Non-college, these kids could not go to college. They wouldn't be recommended because they made sure that they didn't get their Carnegie units. They were just students. And the other teachers had lesson plans and everything else and my instructions were to keep them busy. They didn't care. They were just potential trouble-makers, but in those days the teacher had complete control. If a youngster caused trouble, it would just be a question of throwing him out. No big trials or that type of thing. Not as it is today. It was rather difficult because they just couldn't possibly comprehend such things as a double negative. "You mean if I ain't got nothing, I ain't got nothing?" They would laugh like the devil, you know. So I knew after about three days that it would be impossible to teach Ivanhoe and the things that the state called for were impossible. So the principal said, it doesn't make a bit of difference to him. He said, "You just teach, just keep them quiet, just keep them busy." So I let the school textbook become Esquire and they thought that was a real treat, a wonderful thing. But the more I analyzed it, the wiser I thought it was, because number one, vocabulary. There's some very good stories in Esquire written by famous people. I'd give an assignment, find twenty words you've never seen before or do not know. Find ten words that you cannot spell. Tell me what you think of a story in there and how you would have changed it or whether you liked it or not. So they'd read it which they wouldn't read Ivanhoe. I knew that. Oh, there was another one we were suppose to have, was there one called "The Lady of the Lake?"
BRATTON: Yes, another one of Scott's poems.
JENKINS: Yeah, Scott's "Lady of the Lake." They wouldn't even begin to look at that type of thing, but they did like this. They would look at the girlie pictures once in awhile and think that was real cute. But it was a way of getting them going on a thing. They would do something, just, rather than fight the thing.
BRATTON: [says something]
JENKINS: Yeah, let them them fight the darn thing. It would even be good for composition. I would ask them to get up and tell me some advertisement you saw in there that you think is good, or bad or something. It got them going a little bit, which is more than I could say if I had tried to bang my head against a wall. The principal didn't mind and the superintendent didn't mind. He'd drop by once in awhile.
Then I moved from there to Somerville, New Jersey. I was a teacher and doubled in brass as sophomore dean, which didn't amount to anything. It was just a title. But it meant that I had to watch the guidance of the men in that section. And that was very interesting. I taught American History there.
BRATTON: Now these were still all men, boys?
JENKINS: No, no, they were coed. Down in Atlantic City was coed and Somerville was coed. Then, let's see, after that then of course, the war and the draft and I went in the Marines.
