Fifty years is a long time for anything. Fifty years since graduation from high school is scary. The fact is no one really cares about my 50th high school class reunion with classmates from Randleman High, except for the 60-plus folks who were at the New Salem United Methodist Church for the reunion.
There we were together again after all those years. At graduation, we were 77 strong walking across the stage. About 20 classmates have passed away in that 50 years, so we only had 30 some classmates plus their spouses at the reunion.
There we were, all excited to be 17 or 18 years old again in our minds. It didn’t seem to matter that most of us were grossly overweight, baring white hair, limping when walking and talking mostly about grandchildren.
We were all born around 1945 or 1946 at the end of World War II. We were the start of the so-called Baby Boom.
We had mothers who smoked cigarettes while pregnant with us, because they didn’t know any difference. As babies, we slept on our tummies in baby cribs painted with lead paint. We didn’t know we needed baby carriers and safety child seats as children in the cars. We didn’t use seat belts.
We didn’t know not to share our sugary sweet soft drinks with our friends drinking from the same glass bottle. As football players, if we got water at all, it was from a galvanized bucket with a single dipper for the entire sweaty team.
We had no videos, cellphones or texting messages, no DVDs and very little TV until well into the 1950s. We got BB guns for our birthdays and at Christmas. There were no credit cards from the banks. Ballpoint pens were waiting to be invented. And no air conditioners or dishwashers or clothes dryers to make living easier.
We got the first polio shots in the first grade. We got to enjoy the benefits of the new miracle drug penicillin. Doctors gave you a shot of penicillin for anything that was wrong with you.
Women listen. Pantyhose were not invented until the 1960s. Girls wore dresses or skirts and blouses to school. No pants!
Our school lunches were 25 cents in elementary school and 35 cents in high school. Extra milk was three cents. We even had milk and dry cleaning actually delivered to our door step at home.
There were 5 & 10 Cents stores that actually sold toys and items for a nickel or a dime. In high school, gasoline for family cars was 25 cents per gallon. Our home telephones were on “party lines” that were certainly “no party” to use with 8-9 customers on the same phone line. There were no secrets ever mentioned on those party lines that the entire community didn’t hear.
Coming from such a “medieval age” while growing up, how could the Randleman High Class of 1964 ever consider getting together to celebrate the 50th reunion? Well, we did.
We talked about the night I scored the final two points in the very last basketball game in Randleman’s decades old “Tin Can Gym” in a 93-50 rout of Ramseur High. As you know, I became a photographer at the Salisbury Post.
Donald recalled scoring two touchdowns and kicking the extra points in leading the Tigers to a victory in a football game. Donald served as a middle school principal in Raleigh.
A story was recalled that Coach Gregory once told Junior at half time that he was considering playing the final half of the basketball game with only four boys on the court rather than play Junior. He told Junior, “If I put you in, you are not to shoot under any situation. Pass the ball to someone else.” After college, Junior was a furniture company representative salesman.
Ken talked about the time the school bus he was driving lost its gas tank while going down a bumpy country dirt road. He drove the bus on to the nearest school with the tank dragging on the road. Ken has spent his entire adult life working as a Wycliffe Bible translator in Cameroon, Africa.
Linda told of the time she received a paddling in the first grade for sweeping in the hallway. I revealed that I had also committed such a crime. Then Nan, the very proper Nan, said her first grade paddling was for dunking someone in the water fountain. Linda was a high school cheerleader who became a high school teacher. Nan was a basketball player who became an elementary school teacher.
Ray and Betsy talked about dissecting frogs in Fletcher Causey’s 10th grade biology class. Ray was the class valedictorian who became a scientist in the SBI lab in Raleigh, working with crime scene evidence. Betsy was a nurse in Wilmington.
I think members of the Class of 1964 did pretty well in making the most of their lives to have had such a deprived start in this world.