In the mind-movie there was also a second wife, a newer and better model than the first. Beauty, brainpower, and refinement (“behind every great man…”). When she wasn’t supporting him in his Machiavellian schemes, number two would be a well-rounded person in her own right. Yeah, she gon be so fine! And the school district administration center would be Harold’s seventh heaven of joy—secretaries in short skirts with a little piquant bantering among them by day. A little bit of hanky-panky, while nights and weekends involved a walled country estate with polo, fox hunting, and high society available at his pleasure. Yes, a walled estate! Wasn’t that how the rich did the world over? They put up buffers and walls against the detritus of the everyday life. It was every man for himself in the swinish cesspool of the twentieth century. And why not be absolutely selfish? Was not beauty more pleasing to the eye than ugliness and squalor? To think of this new beginning, to think that it would all take off from a place like Du Bois High School—a veritable war zone, a sinkhole of black despair, a continuous scene of barbarous violence! Well, no problem, Harold would soon have it all squared away. They would have to do a double segment on 60 Minutes to showcase Harold and the new reformation revolution in American schools. Du Bois would become the exemplar ghetto success story. Hope would replace despair. Yes, fairy tales could come true. Harold was going to turn things around on a dime. Only fair that he should reap the rewards.

The bestseller that his thesis would become would provide the means. Written in the snappy, popular vernacular, it would be a multifaceted jewel. Americans would read Harold’s terse, spellbinding prose with a curious admixture of horror and astonishment. The All-New Blackboard Jungle: An American High School in 1999. Probably make a movie, and playing the role of the visionary reformer—the only actor capable of playing real-life John Harold Hammermeister—may I have the envelope please?—ta da! Ladies and gentlemen, the only actor with sufficient authority and range to catch the infinite subtleties—with the scope, the voice, intelligence, maturity, the physical presence—ladies and gentlemen, I present to you…yet another gifted Canadian, Mr. Donald Sutherland. Was it Sir Donald? Well, it would be. The Queen Mother could hop off her ass and beknight the man. The dear fellow. It was high time. Just ’bout time, all right.

Boy oh boy, what the mind could behold, the mind could make real. Hammermeister gave the kids a watered-down version of his visualization techniques whenever it was time to light a fire under somebody’s dead ass. Take pride! Pull yourself up by your bootstraps. It was always in one ear and out the other; they didn’t have a snowball’s chance, but you had to try. Professional ethics required one to take the idle stab.