For no shows Jeff Kewley and Russ, my best friend chose not to come.
Maybe they didn't feel like shelling out 30 bucks for another overpriced
dinner at the Country Club. Kinda disappointed but that their
decesion. But for the most part, I got plenty of hugs and plenty of
handshakes from my fellow classmates and got to see Mark Prouty for the
first time in 30 years.
I think with Facebook enabled us to reach
out to past classmates to once we weren't that close but became friends
due to finding each other via FB. I think I spent the most time with
Al Heeren, Steve Fry, Joe Greene and Kevin Herren. But then again
usually on reunions I spent the most time with them anyway.
I
think the second nite we were still trying to recover from closing down
Bill's last night. Traci Gusendorf was a bit more behaved unlike her
outrageous self to which Janeen Machen drove her home. Karl Hudson did
the acoustic show of the night. Janeen thinks a lot of him, the rest of
us pretty much spent most of the time out on the deck. I think Karl
could have used a full band.
I can't get over the fact that Al is now a grandpa.
Mark
Kloppenstein brought his 1952 Chevy Pickup for those to see around
midnight. He mentioned that they had a daughter that just got married
and two hours they're putting through ISU in Ames and had to get up
early to get them to the dorm. He and the former Cheryl Barker have
been married for 25 plus years. I think Steve Willard and Diane have
been married 30 years. Cheryl didn't say much to me but she was
friendly.
Donna Grant brought her boyfriend David Neu up there,
David is handicapped and I think he felt left out since he didn't know
anybody there but he did proved to be a good sport about things. Donna
and Sara Mellegren took many pictures up there and hopefully some will
turn out.
Janeen Machen still looks like she did when I first met
her in third grade at Emerson, except her hair more gray than it was
but she still remains a tiny girl. She worked her butt off on the
Reunion plans but we didn't have that great of a turnout at the Country
Club. We had more ppl at Bills than the previous get together.
I
think i pretty much talked to everybody that was there except for a few
of the stuck up women of HS who still are (they shall remain
nameless). But the biggest surprise was seeing Frank White who was one
of the most hairyest guys around showed up with a shaved head. I talked
to Sherri Clark who sat at the dinner table with me, Lori Miller, Al,
Kent Meyer and his wife and Sara. Don't recall much of seeing Sherri at
high school but most often caught up with her during the reunion
thingy. Cheryl Twachman and Mary Katzmark married much older guys and
they were there at the country club. Sherri says she wants to do the
next reunion and they would like to rent out a barn and do something
farm related instead of the country club thing which was why the turnout
was so low. We had 80 folks in our 1999 reunion, but i think it was
about 50 this time around.
I didn't take the tour of the jr and
sr high schools and perhaps i should have. Frank White said that he
didn't remember much of junior high but more of High school once he got
though the doors. They said outside of the remodeling of the gym, High
school pretty much looks the same. I don't remember much of Junior High
either, I remember vagne things of being at Home Room and Mr Harry
Schley the 7th grade math teacher who Frank called a asshole. I really
didn't think Harry was all that bad, he did impose tough love but was
willing to work with you on occasion. I do remember Mr Campbell with
Social Studies but I spent most of the time looking out the window and
watching the trains go through town. One thing about going to school
was trying to cross the tracks before the train came through.
Dave
Shindell, who married Lynn Roby remembers that he was in my American
Studies Class with Mr Messerli and I think he was. I also think Dave
was in my Psychology class with Mr Tesar, one of many classes I got a D
minus from. He and Lynn have been married for 20 plus years too. They
still look good together.
And like that it's all over. Mark
Prouty will return back to Utah, and the rest will jump on a airplane
and go home that way. And the rest of us will return back to the
mundane life of jobs, family and trying to keep our heads above water in
uncertain times. Myself I will return back to bargain hunting,
blogging about music and trying to do errands on the weekends. And I'm
missing my classmates already.
I can't believe while looking
through the old yearbook how much I changed. There's a picture of our
final day at school, and here i was, long hair and a big nose and thin
as a stick looking at it all. It's funny how going to school we
couldn't wait to get the hell out but when the reunion comes around
can't wait to see the familar faces, getting older and fatter and more
gray or bald.
And we had some interesting times in previous
reunions. in 1984, our five year reunion was marked by me having a
severe nosebleed. In 1989 we saw Cheryl Comried make a fool out of
herself and her husband as she plopped herself on the student athletes
at the time. I wore black lether pants that reunion. There wasn't a
15th reunion. 10 years ago we did the reunion at the Country Club, it
was the last time that my two best friends Steve Willard And Russ was
there. in 2004, it was held at Coe College and I got there at the last
minite after saying i wasn't going. Amazingly some ppl took pictures of
me there, don't recall how they were done it must have been when I was
leaving. And now this time around.
Good times and good people.
Now the next objective is to make it to the next one five years from
now and then the 40th which might be a bigger reach. But I'll do my
best to get to the next one.
And to Steve Fry, didn't you say you weren't coming to this one too? ;-)
Betcha will next time ago bro!
The 30th year HS reunion now in the books I was more surprised of the
way Facebook have gotten most of us reconnected. Eversomuch the fact
that a few of the FB friends were not people I associated myself with.
But it's never too late to gain a friend from the past.
Certainly
your going to get the snooty stuck up types with holier than thou
attitude (that can't be helped) and I know who they are and they know
who they are so you really can't change them but what surprised me is
that I did talk with the majority of the 1979 classmates. Still a few
ppl would still look the same (Steve O'Neill, and I'm sure Diane look
the same as when we gradurated) and some completely changed (Shawn
Bolden, Frank White) and some trying to be sexy as they were back then
in high school (but time and age kinda did a shock job on them) and not
exactly succeeding. Its funny when Steve Fry made this observation that
when he took two of the classmates home 20th years ago he would jump
into the sack with them but nowadays he'd rather give them a ride and a
quick hug and hit the road. Nevertheless it was fun getting hugs and
talking bout the old times (if we can remember them) and also seeing
Mrs. Moore the PE teacher from Jr High and her actually remembering me
(although I couldn't recall her-don't remember much from jr high). We
did have a big turnout Friday night but I think about a quarter of them
stayed home the next day. Could have been that nobody wanted to pay 30
bucks to get their picture taken and have country club food, which was
good actually but not worth that much.
I don't think anybody seen me
play live when my band played the OK Lounge. I think Ken Deburkehart or
Mark Floyd may been there but since that was 25 years ago I don't think
I know who was there either.
I have heard reports that Jim Dickenson, famed producer from Memphis has passed away but yet have to read the wires about it.
I do know that Rasheed Ali, the free jazz drummer who played on the last recordings of John Coltrane passed away at age 76.
No
shows at the Reunion: Joe Ickes, Russ, Jeff Kewley and Steve Carter
most noted. Steve Willard said he would try to get there on Saturday
never did, probably due to not get out of his job.
Once upon a
time Shawn Bolden and Joe Greene were a couple, although not married
they went steady awhile and I'm sure it's always awkward to see your ex
GF at a reunion which thank God I dated the ones a year later. I'm sure
it weighs a bit on Joe's mind of what if, but I don't think Joe really
has dated all that much since he and shawn went seperate ways. I had
grade school GFs that are in the class of 79 and I don't really talk to
neither one either. I think I said Hi to Janice Kinchloe and Cheryl
Kloppenstein or at least acknowledged their presence but in essence I
think I talked more to Mark.
I didn't know Janice Kinchloe
smoked. I remember her in school growing up faster bodywise and she was
a bit more chunky. In Junior High us boys would go around snapping the
girls bras (alongside getting into fights left and right, I think
that's how I met the other Janice, Berns that is; me and Chris Cox were
scrapping around and I ran into her) and I unhooked her bra with a good
snap. Us boys would go smacking other guys under the chin with
something called a Tweety and many a time home I come home with a sore
red chin. Miss Kinchloe has slimmed down quite a bit since then and is
probably considered one of those uppity folk. But I also admit that I
didn't know her when I saw her along with Sheri Morgan when we were
walking into the country club.
For some reason I kept getting Kim
Smith confused with Donna Anderson who was at the bar friday night.
Miss Anderson has aged quite a bit, whereas Kim hasn't changed all that
much but if Kim had her patented glasses from high school I would have
known her right off the start.
Tom Bowler made a comment that he
didn't like the way downtown Marion got bulldozed down in favor of that
strip mall that they put up. Those buildings that got torn down were
places we hung out, The Shoe Horn, Marion TV n Records, the original
Town Square Bookstore, Ole's Ham & Egger, the old Salvation Army and
some old head shop where hippies would hang out at the beginning of
1970. The things we miss later on in life. The Twixt Town Drive In,
Saint Joe's Fun Days, the summer days up downtown when the fair came
in. The trains that went through town.
The things I remember
about my life in Marion. Hearing the church bells ring at 8, noon and 5
PM. Going to Mays Drugs for the latest albums on sale, or going to
Marion TV n Records and checking out the latest singles there. The big
deal was going downtown to Woolworth's, that was my version of going to
Madison. Walking Cheryl Barker home from school. Hanging out with Russ
and Jeff till Jeff and I fought over Cheryl. Russ and me playing
basketball, Cheryl and me playing basketball. Collecting beer cans in
8th grade. Working at the old APCO, then Derby. In between working at
Applegate's Landing as a lowly dishwasher and having a ex gf being a
cook and seeing her taking great delight of giving you dirty dishes to
clean up. Learning to drive and then going to Record Realm for the
latest.
And in the time we graduated, we grew up and went
seperate ways. Going into the service for some, college for others,
while I took a couple years to figure out what to do and playing a band
and thinking I'm going to make it big. People get married, got divorced
and got married again, some stayed married, some never did. It's funny
to look at a town that I've lived in and seen the changes. And now
some of my classmates are now grandmas and grandpas.
In short
reunions are fun but when I think about it, it shows that we all
eventually changed into the persons that we were rebelled against.
Funny how in 4th grade Russ, Jeff and I would do this No Girls Allowed
club and always thought we would be the Big 3 that ran this town of
Marion. But then, we all grew up. Reunions are a way that remind us
how far we have become and although it was 30 years ago that we
gradurated, it only seems like last month we were kids become young men
and women.
It was a long time ago but it doesn't seem that long ago......
