Homecoming Memories

This weekend is Homecoming Weekend for our little town. This event happens every 4 years without fail. Months before the actual date, meetings are held, committees set up, and gussying up the town are begun.

It’s an exciting time for small towns; the anticipation of seeing and visiting with old friends and school mates of years gone by.

The following is an article from a newspaper that one of my old school mates and friend sent to me yesterday. It pretty well tells the tale of any Homecoming, USA. The names are different. Many of the situations are different. But we all have our memories.

Thanks to Lester Lee Phillips, Class of 1956, a Munday High School Mogul.

HOMECOMING RE-IGNITES MEMORIES OF THE WAY WE WERE
By Joyce Whitis

“Memories…light the corners of my mind. Misty water color memories…of the way we were.”

Homecoming! Has it been that long since we saw each other? All those years gone by in a blur! We graduated high school. A few stayed around where they were; married a childhood sweetheart; went about their life’s work; raised their children; loved their grandchildren; would do it all over again.

Others couldn’t wait to see their hometown in a rear view mirror and caught the first bus leaving for a big city. A few tried out several partners, went through several jobs before settling down to living out their days. Two or three were just too big for any town, any state, any country even. Half a dozen traveled to the other side of the globe wearing a government issued uniform…all expenses paid. They saw sights and heard noises they never dreamed of. Sometimes they see and hear them still.

We were all so close once…best friends forever; secrets whispered behind your hand in study hall; note passing in English class; school skipping to go shopping; sharing a cigarette out behind the bus barn. We thought friends like us would stay that way forever but the years got in the way of “forever” and as they shuffled their way in between us, we mostly for got the way we were.

Will I recognize anyone? Will anyone recognize me? We’ve all changed. We’re fatter and thinner and grayer and balder and happier and sadder and older, well…mostly a whole lot older…but wiser! How about funnier? Is anybody funnier than we once were?

“Scattered pictures of the smiles we left behind…”

Remember that Halloween when Jacky piled empty oil cans between the screen and wooden door of Superintendent Moreland’s house? Boy, what a racket that was when Mrs. Moreland opened the door! We all hid in the bushes along side the porch and laughed so hard we were nearly sick, trying to hold it in. We’ll miss Jacky at this homecoming. He was stabbed 10 times while he lay sleeping in his own bed. They never did catch who did it. Jacky always had a great laugh. We will miss that.

“Smiles we gave to one another, for the way we were”…

Janelle will be there. She used to get her dad’s ’46 Ford anytime she wanted. That was the first new car we’d seen since ’41 when the war started. We used to pile in that Ford until the doors would hardly shut. Mostly we just drove around and told jokes then stopped at Stewart’s for a hamburger. You could still get a bun with ground meat, mustard and onion for a dime back then. We’d sit, six or eight in a booth, with a cherry coke and stretch the night out for an hour or so.

“Can it be that it was all so simple then, or has time rewritten every line?”

Was getting a date for the football banquet or buying that formal with the yards and yards of white net all we really had to worry about? Did we really go to school every day and ride around town every night? Were all the days as beautiful as springtime and the nights full of stars? And we all knew, each and every one of us just knew that someday- someday --- we’d all be rich and famous.

“If we had the chance to do it all again, tell me--would we, could we?”

Would we really skip school that October day when fall was so close you could smell it and hang out down by the creek all afternoon? We just knew that somebody would tell and we’d have to stay after school for a week!

Remember the time Dwight copied Janette’s book report and Mrs. Potts made him read “A Tale of Two Cities”? Remember how we used to ride down the railroad tracks in that Jeep that Leon got from army surplus? I can hear the Silver Streak blowing it’s whistle right behind us just before we got to that crossing over by Killer’s house and we got off the tracks. I know that I’d never to that again!

“Memories may be beautiful and yet, what’s too painful to remember, we simply choose to forget.”

There are so many others that won’t be there. Betty studied all the time and wore the same two blouses and skirts all our senior year. Every day they were clean and freshly ironed and she carried her lunch from home in a brown paper bag while everyone else ate in the new cafeteria. She died right after we graduated and she had wanted a college education more than anything. All those empty places! I can close my eyes and see Bobby, blonde, bouncy Bobby, poised on tiptoe at the end of the high diving board, her white two-piece swim suit, against her July tan---striking! She’s gone also. But I’ll remember all those long summer days at the swimming pool in the park.

Earl won’t be there. He had a heart attack, then died a couple of years after that. Billy Joe is gone too. He was the Senior Favorite, Football Captain, leading man in the senior play. He was my date for the banquet our senior year. I went off to college and he married Mary, my best friend. I was maid of honor. Mary and I will be there, so much to remember for those of us still here.

“So it’s the laughter, we will remember, whenever we remember the way we were.”