Random Thoughts

Some things that don’t fit any particular topic:

One of the pictures in the year book that makes me smile is the one of Ann Jaynes on the pay phone. Remember that? We couldn’t make calls from the office unless it was an emergency, but the pay phone was in full view of the office too, so they knew who used it and how long they were there, so it’s not like we got away with much. Too bad we didn’t have cellphones.

The high school had a sitting and thinking place -- the auditorium. After a couple of us scurried around it like mice for the first few months as freshmen, I discovered it was a nice quiet place to spend lunch on some days. If I sat in the corner of the last row of the raised area in back and sort of hunched down, nobody else could see me right away, if they could see me all, so Mr Mount or one of the other teachers couldn’t run me out. There were others who came in from time to time. Freshmen each year tended to use it as a playground and on more than one occasion I saw a couple come looking for a secluded place to neck. Mostly though, it was a cool, dark place to sit and think about things, and sometimes people, that were bugging me.

My favorite school year was, obviously, senior year ('70) . BMOC, the championship, and some of the other things we’ve already mentioned make it special. It seemed to me they lightened up on us too. More than once I was in the halls during class and no one ever said anything. I remember one day I was in the English hall and Jimmy Littlefield was sitting in a chair outside one of the classrooms. He wasn’t being punished or anything… he was just sitting there propped back against the wall. Must have been Headlee’s class.

There was also a difference in seniors toward each other too, or at least it seemed that way to me. Other seniors I probably hadn’t exchanged a dozen words with the previous three years would sometimes talk like we were long lost friends. I don’t mean that in a bad way, we all had our habits and routines and we just didn’t cross paths that often, but senior year it was as if we realized that very soon a familiar face wouldn’t be there.

My favorite calendar year though was 1968. Music, sports, movies and some personal events make it head and shoulders above the rest.

Between the two, 1969 was just a year long joke about that particular number