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HIGH SCHOOL REUNIONS  Most notable thing about the 25-year reunion of the Santa Cruz High School Class of 1954 were the silly-looking clothes worn by these 42- and 43-year-olds in 1979. |
The older we got, the earlier we went home
of TheColumnists.com
As high school reunions go, my 10th wasn’t bad at all. Quite a few of us 250-plus attendees hung around until 2 a.m., when the hotel stopped serving booze.
A couple of short-lived skirmishes did break out in the bar that night, I was told afterward. Guys dueling over gals. Never mind that the reasons behind the scuffles occurred a decade earlier. Some past slights die hard and still need to be vented.
I never witnessed the action, even though I had done more than my fair share of elbow-bending in the bar that night. That is, I think I missed it, for I had knocked back so many Daniel’s-on-the-rocks by the time the feuds flared up that much of that evening remains but a hazy memory. But I didn’t have any cuts or bruises the next morning, so I must not have been one of the combatants.
I’ll always remember the early part of the evening, however. Eleven of us were singled out for a joint award. Although couched in other terms when presented, the award was strictly for losers. We comprised the only male members of the Santa Cruz (Calif.) High Class of 1954 that June night in 1964 who had never been married. Only nine of us actually qualified. Two were gay, but we didn’t talk about such things then.
To have reached the age of 27 or 28 and still be unmarried in those days was a societal anomaly, even for males. After graduation, I never expected to be part of that line-up 10 years later. Alas, my high school sweetheart “called off” our engagement, as I euphemistically referred to the break-up then, while I was a junior in college. Frankly, she flat-out dumped me.
I don’t know whether this had any bearing on the decision to come up with the misogamist award, but all of the reunion committee members were females. Other prizes also were awarded, including the classmate who had been married the longest (a female, of course) and the classmate who had the most children (still another female).
No prizes were awarded to females who had never married. Fancy that!
Everyone seemed to have a good time. Everyone was in good health. Out of a class of about 250, we had lost only two classmates that we knew about, one to a car accident and the other to suicide. And most of us were still striving with great expectations to find our stations in life. Our “happy days” had extended 10 years past graduation.
My class started holding reunions every five years after that, but my advice is to skip the 15th. It’s the “status” reunion, the one the ends up rankling just about everyone. It did me. Not because I was eligible for the bachelor prize again (I finally married at age 30), but because that’s the one when so many - particularly we males - start comparing job successes. I plead guilty, too.
At the 15th, I happened to be seated next to the sexiest gal there. After we exchanged pleasantries, she said: “I had a really big crush on you in high school.”
I gulped. I had no idea who she was. Was she in my class or was she a sophomore or junior when I was a senior? I dared a quick glance at her husband. He had a scowl on his face. But I didn’t know him either. I wasn’t brave enough to look at my wife seated on the other side of me.
Where, oh where, was this stunning, sensual beauty the night of our 10th Reunion when I needed her, I wondered. I never did learn her name. I didn’t have the nerve to ask her to dance, so I never got physically close enough to read her nametag. I was smart enough, too, to avoid going to the bar when her husband was there.
By the 20th, when everyone had turned 37 and 38, our destinies were pretty much determined, I guess, for everyone had mellowed. No one-upmanship erupted. That’s what I was told anyway. I missed it because I was vacationing elsewhere with my wife and two kids. The 25th was even mellower, I heard later. We were living in Europe and missed that one, too.
The 30th through 45th were rather nondescript, as I recall. They’re mainly useful to allow our minds to start adjusting gradually to the aging process afflicting all those people we had known from our youth and to prepare us for their appearance at the Grand Ol’ 50th.
One thing does stand out about the 30th. I had to learn a bunch of new surnames for close to half of the women. As best as I can determine, only two advantages exist to being born male: 1] We don’t have to bear children, and 2] We get to keep our names for life, even after divorce.
At the 35th, a snowy-haired, rather short and stout fellow sidled up to me at the bar (my bar time had decreased proportionately as my age increased) and started up a conversation as if we had been old pals. I mean, as if we had been really, really close old pals. Out of desperation, I asked his name. I should have just played along and maybe he wouldn’t have recognized that I didn’t recognize him. Yikes! I had been a member of his wedding party 34 years earlier.
After
50 years, the Class of 1954 finally got to stand on the steps
of the old
Santa Cruz High School building that had been condemned in their
school days.
Refurbished in 1958, it's still standing--and so were most of
the graduates from
the Class of 1954.
At the 40th, my wife and I sat at a table that included a fellow who had never before attended a reunion. Although he and I weren’t close in high school, we had attended grammar school together and lived on the same street. On the night we graduated, I think he walked across the auditorium stage, received his diploma and walked straight out the door and into the local Naval recruiting office. A quiet, shy fellow in school, he told me he didn’t think anyone would remember him.
Surprise! Surprise! He was the star that night. He danced the night away with an assortment of female classmates. I can’t remember him ever attending a school dance.
The 45th is memorable only because one of my buddies tapped a spoon against a glass, shushing everybody gathered in the bar after dinner as he advised: “It’s 9 p.m. Time for us to take our pills.” I don’t think anyone lasted until midnight.
Our 50th in 2004 drew slightly more than 200 people over a three-day reunion. We started with a breakfast on Friday morning, followed by a memorial service for our departed classmates. (About 20 percent had passed on.) That evening we held an informal get-acquainted party so we could figure out who all those strange new faces belonged to.
On Saturday morning we toured our high school campus. That was a major event for us because the main building, constructed in the 1920s, had been condemned in our junior year. We were the first class since it went up that didn’t get to set foot inside the venerable, two-story structure during our senior year. (The building eventually was rehabilitated, but the next class to get to use it a full year was the Class of ’58.)
So we took a group picture on the building’s front steps, once referred to as the “Senior Steps.” It was an unwritten campus rule back then that only seniors were allowed to walk up or down those stairs, and Heaven help any undergraduate who dared venture upon that sacred territory.
Although we missed out on walking those stairs as high school seniors, we did get to walk them as senior citizens.
That night we celebrated with our traditional dinner-dance--the ninth in the series. Few classmates danced, even though most of the music was Fifties’ vintage. Most of us just table-hopped, reviving for one short moment anyway what were supposed to have been life-long friendships.
It was almost like being 17 again, except most of us pulled up stakes around 10 p.m. We had to get our rest before Sunday’s farewell picnic. We also had to take our pills.
The bar didn’t take in a lot of money that night.
©2006 by Len Klempnauer. The logo cartoon ©2006 by Tasha Johnson. This column first posted Sept. 25, 2006.
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