Pictures of town

Someone passing through Loudon took pictures and posted them to the internet. This may be old hat to some of you, but I like finding things like this.



You know, it really isn't a bad looking old building.


My old record store! I understand they sell ice cream there now.


The old Five to Five, right? I believe this is a cafe or something now.


I'm told the post office is not here anymore either.



If I remember right, this one is up by the funeral home and used to be a cleaners at one time.


Without a doubt my favorite two of the set. If I'm not badly mistaken Kathey, the intersection next to the green awning is where you stood to take the pictures of the bridge. One of the things about Loudon that always amazed me, even when I was a kid, was on most late afternoons it would look like this and then on Saturday it would be bustling with people. I hope it's still that way. Don't tell me if it's not.

Graduation

I guess this would be one of the biggest memories for each of us, but to tell you the truth I barely remember it. I remember the day, but not the event. I was almost two people that day. Part of me was ecstatic and part of me was in a blue funk.

It was something I had dreamed of and hoped for several times during the 12 years that led up to it, but when it finally came, part of me wanted to push it back. While some of my friends were choosing a college to go to, or making plans to marry him or her, I had no idea what I was going to do. I guess in that regard the draft board did me a favor later that summer when my birthday was pulled in the lottery. At least I was forced to make some decisions about what I was going to do with my life.

The only things I remember of the event was all of us gathering in the main hallway beforehand, the playing of Pomp and Circumstance, and some stupid remark I made when they said one of the teachers was leaving. Like it really matter to me, right? But the remark was just an expression of my frustration as two very different feelings wrestled around inside me.

But I don't remember anything else about it. I assume they sat us alphabetically, which would mean Wayne Poole was on one side of me and Lynette was on the other side, but I'm not even sure about that. I don't recall any of the speakers or speeches, or my name being called, or walking across the stage, or who shook my hand. I assume there was lots of laughing and talking afterward, but I don't even remember that.

I do remember a lot of us going to a party afterward at Gordo's, and then going to another smaller one after that. Then later I remember standing on the front porch, at something like 2 or 3 in the morning, looking up at the stars and wondering, "What in the world am I going to do now?"

I wish I remembered more, and I wish I had taken pictures.

Do the class pictures have names?

The question has been asked if the pictures have names and the answer is yes they do. I did not add the names to the posts for a few reasons. First, I thought it might be more fun to try and guess who everybody is, and second, I thought most of us would know almost everybody anyway, so there was no need to name the pictures. But mostly I didn't add the names because it would have taken twice as long to post the pictures. So okay... call me lazy. :)

Anyway, as you hover your mouse over the picture, the file name is the last part of what pops up in the status bar at the lower left corner of the browser. For example, if you hover over my picture in the Junior year post, you'll see http:// photos1.blogger.com/3102/2210/1600/dougp3.jpg show up in the status bar. The last part is the name of the file. For the Junior, Sophomore, and Freshman pictures I used first name, first initial of the last name, and year as the naming convention (dougp3.jpg). In the Senior year section I used a combination of letters from the first and last name, so those will be a little harder to figure out. I would have used the same naming convention then, but I didn't know at the time I was going to do all four years. :)

I have looked at the pictures in Internet Explorer, Netscape, Firefox and Opera and they all showed the name in the status bar. I'm not sure if any Apple browsers do or not since I have no way to test for that.

One last note. Obviously there are sometimes I had to deviate a little on the name. For example, with Mike Stafford, Mike Schrimpsher and Mike Skinner, they can't all be named mikes, so there will be some variance for those with similar names. And lastly, there might be a typo in a name here or there, and if so I apologize. It wasn't intentional, and although Mrs. Miller tried, typing was never my strong suit.

Happy Anniverary!

Somewhere near the end of August it will be 40 years since we entered high school. Can you believe it? Forty years. I can remember being both excited and nervous about it. I liked the idea of going to a brand new school, but I had also heard all the horror stories from my older brothers and friends of the things that happened during freshman "initiation".

I can still see the throng of people standing outside the front doors when I walked up. They were stacked almost back to the sidewalks along Highway 11, and school buses were dropping off more. Most of the faces were unfamiliar and that only added to my anxiety. Everyone seemed to be clustered into little groups, no doubt as moral support for each other, so I tried to find a little group of my own. I ended up with Wayne McNabb, Pat Lowe, Jabbo Lynn and Steve Knox. I had known Wayne and Pat for years, and all of us were incoming freshmen, and that served as a bond of sorts.

After that, it's a blur of finding out where we were supposed to be, getting assigned lockers and learning the combination, and learning our schedule and where the classrooms were; along with who was teaching it, and were they easy or strict. I think for the first couple of weeks, if I wasn't in class (or outside smoking), I was hanging around the big foyer near the front doors. I knew where everything was from there and sort of used it as a home base. After that time though, I was only in the foyer when I was going someplace since that's where the office was.

Next came learning who everybody else was, or at least the ones you had classes with, and slowly but surely the anxiety started to ease up and things began to calm down a bit and you could relax. Good thing too, because by then the classes were all going full swing and you actually had to study something.

After a month or so, it was almost like I had always known everybody. It was fun finding out things about the kids from the other grade schools like Philadelphia, Steekee, Davis and Jackson, and discovering that in a lot of ways, we were all alike. You found out who was a clown and who was serious, and who were the "smart" kids and which ones were nearer my level. :) I discovered I had "talents" of sorts. My bird whistle echoed perfectly in the library and study hall, I could make a new friend or two drawing pictures in science (and later biology), and since my handwriting looked "like a girl's", I could write excuses for my friends a few times when they forgot to bring one from home for whatever reason.

All in all they're some of my favorite memories.

Juniors -- One Step Away

Once again, here they are almost like they appeared in my yearbook. I did do some touch up on some of them, but by and large if they had signatures on them in the book, they do here too. It's still a great looking bunch of people. I really do miss you guys.