Reunion, WHS Class of '59

I seem to have acquired another high school class with which to have a reunion. (I had already been to the 50th anniversary reunion of my 1941 class in 1991.) Saturday, about 5:45 p.m., we were getting ready to meet Dackie and Turner at the Jockey Club for dinner at 6:15 when friend Chan arrived. In his usually ebullient manner, he went to work on me immediately, insisting that I come to his house within a few minutes to have barbecue with his high school class of 1959 of which I am an honorary member, having been the Scoutmaster of so many of the boys in the class. He apologized that failure to invite me earlier had been purely through oversight. My mentioning that I had an invitation to join Dackie and Turner at the Jockey Club for dinner at 6:15 was to no avail. I had no choice but to call Dackie and Turner and invite them to Chan's also, which I did, and which invitation they were delighted to accept.

Chan added that his driveway on the Thomson Highway was marked by an A-model Ford in the ditch, and that Ralph would be the first person to meet me. These turned out to be almost true. The A-model had not been wrecked but had a sign on it, and Ralph turned up quickly. I had not had the chance to visit Chan's house lately, so I was greatly impressed with the improvements he has made - fine brick house, paved tennis courts, paved driveways, two-car garage and car port, grass and trees everywhere, a large pond, a collection of restored classic cars, and several fountains, for example.

All of the regular class members and their spouses were wearing name cards, so I knew who most of them were. A few weeks before, Chan had brought to my house a CD he had made containing about 500 pictures of the class from collected snapshots, and the class yearbook, and he had required that I look at all of them. These same pictures were running on several TV sets all during the gathering.

I was very pleased to see guys and gals I had not seen for 50 years, such as the two Genes, Coley, Mitchell, Baron, Stewart, Alex, Richard, and Ben, plus those several I've been in touch with over the years, like Jeanne, Jim, Bobby, Ralph, Pug, and Willis, and their spouses. I was also happy to see teachers nearer my age, like Charlie Davidson, his son Greg, my cousin Mary Duggan, and Joanna Rainey. It was a happy crowd and I was glad to be there. I had Patty take a few snapshots, some of which are shown in this post.

The wonderful meal was catered by my friend from the Guard, Frank Bentley. He served his exceptionally good pork barbecue, with Brunswick stew, Boston baked beans, cabbage slaw, iced tea, and several kinds of cake. We spent about an hour there, then paid our expected visit to younger friends Jacquelyn and Sarah. Again, Dackie and Turner were pleased to go along to Jacquelyn's house, where the conversation too often involved the embarrassing events of my life which I've written about in my blog-posts. I asked Jacquelyn to look up this blog on her lap-top computer and read a few of the posts I've written in the last three months; she did and we enjoyed discussing them.