It was the end of the Red Scare, the end of the McCarthy Era, but schools in California were still requiring new teachers to sign “loyalty oaths” and affirm that we had no connection to “commonism” (which is how they pronounced it back then). Of course, the authoritarian gate keepers had no idea what Communism actually is, but they enjoyed harassing us and making up ludicrous rules to follow to assert their power and intimidate the new teachers.