A Beer-y Nice Day

Was it the good dark beer I drank at lunch that caused the glow I felt during and after our Alumni lunch in Mt. Vernon yesterday, or did the glow come from something else? Since I've felt this before after one of our lunches, even without beer, I think it must have been something else. I was pooped when I got home. It had been a day that began at 7:45 a.m. when I left for Jack's house and didn't end until I got home at 5:30, kind of like work hours, but so much more pleasurable. As I collapsed on the couch, watching tapes of the Olympics and eating toast with peanut butter and jam for dinner, I thought back over the day, trying to collect the memories in a place that I could get at them later. That's not always such an easy thing these days.

Lavonna Rubens Allen, Karen Archer and Jack Archer

We started out at Jack's, seven of us, drinking coffee and muffins, before splitting up into two cars to begin our journey. I got to ride in Jack's Humvee, a smooth-riding behemoth, with Lavonna and Joyia, while Ralph rode in Gary's car with Jim. We met inside the Kingston ferry and began a conversation that would last the rest of the day, the characters participating and the topics of the conversation changing as the day went by. I haven't talked and listened so much in a long time. I talked with Jim Peterson about cruising the Panama Canal, with Gary about beer and mentally disturbed siblings, with both about health and attitude. I rode with Gary and Jim to the Farm House Restaurant while Ralph switched seats with me in the Hummer, so he could direct Jack to our destination.

Lavonna, Joyia Mentor, Jack and Our Mail Guy on the Kingston ferry

At the restaurant the first person I saw was Jeanette Youngs Longstreth and then Bruce Johnson. I'd been thinking about Bruce lately because I always do when the Winter Olympics are on. I remember a party of teens at Bruce's house gathered to watch the 1960 Olympic Games on television. Bruce tells me it is still a tradition to have people over to watch the events. Then I saw Marilyn Richardson Lovlien and Greg--was it Greg that got his growth after we graduated or am I confusing him with someone else? I didn't get a chance to ask. At the table I talked to Mike Cooper who insisted on telling me what a rascal he was when we were kids in Tracyton. There was the Alumni Game we always play: Do you remember? We talked about Danny Coulter and the Sackmans and Toni Agnesani and Dick Witte and the Lent's pasture. Who lived where? Does anybody know where they are now? Mike also told me about his time in the service, his 3 months in Thailand where he was involved in building what he called The Freedom Road. He said he barely made it out of the service before Viet Nam became a place some of our classmates had to serve their time. Earlier Jim Peterson told me he'd barely escaped Viet Nam himself.

Greg Lovlein, Ralph and Mike Cooper

One of the frustrations of these lunches for me is that, if I want to have a nice long conversation with someone, it means there will be people I don’t get to talk to at all. At this lunch I missed talking to Greg and Marilyn and Bob Forbes and Florence Voltin. I did finally get to talk to Linc David, after several lunches where I saw him but missed a conversation. There is much more to know about Linc and his life, but this time he told me about two trips he’s taken to the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota. He said his wife road on the back of his Harley both times, but after the last one she said she wasn’t going to do it again. They’ll go again, but next time it will be in a motor home with the bike towed behind it. We all have to make some adjustments as we grow older, don’t we?

Jim Peterson, Linc David, Jeanette Youngs Longstreth, Randy Flowers, Marilyn and Greg Lovlein

Bruce Johnson’s wife, Ellen, had left him off at the lunch to go swimming. While she was gone he told me she is a talented singer and wants to travel in the Smokey Mountains and the Crooked Road in Virginia and study their heritage music. Bruce was retiring the next day and wasn’t quite sure what he planned to do, but didn’t seem concerned about it. I had a short conversation with Randy Flowers about his retirement and his ambivalence about it. He has been retired for two years but hasn’t quite figured it out. Retirement when you are working looks like a golden time, the light at the end of the tunnel, nirvana. But it is a complex transition, more complicated for some than for others. It took me a full two years to realize that I couldn’t do every single thing on the list I’d been keeping for several years—things I didn’t have time to do when I was working. I found I had to cut some things out, or at least postpone them, in order to give my energy to some priorities. It’s an exciting time, but for some it can be a source of angst. I was used to having lots of people around to visit with or bounce ideas off of, and after retirement I missed that. I’ve had to create some regular social time with old friends in order to fill that void. And now we have these alumni lunches which are a wonderful form of connection. I guess it all depends on what we are searching for and if we are still searching. Another alumni friend asked me what I wanted to find, meaning or happiness? For me it is happiness. Writing, reading, gardening, taking photographs, meeting with friends, visiting my grandchildren, makes me happy.

Bruce and Ellen Johnson (Jeanette's Picture)

Randy Flowers (Jeanette's Picture)

At some of our lunches we have had “attendees by phone” and at this lunch we had three. Gary Rivers talked to us several times from Portland. He had hoped to come to the lunch but had to be a chauffeur for his daughter that day, so he called us while he was watching Olympic curling. I commented that it sounded a little boring and he assured me that since it was Women’s Curling it was not boring at all. We heard from Sally Burt Forcier, who was calling from her patio in Yuma, Arizona, sipping ice water in the 82 degree weather. Mike Traverso called, too. Hopefully, all of our callers will make it to our 50th reunion, only 2 years away.

Gary Parker and Jeanette Youngs Longstreth (Jeanette's Picture)

I titled this post A Beer-y Nice Day because the day started out with Gary Parker giving the seven of us beer from his Iron Horse Brewery. He had some new recipes he wanted us to try. At lunch the beer drinkers in the crowd tried the dark beer that the Farm House had on tap and as the party was breaking up Gary had his trunk open again and bestowed armloads of beer to eager takers. Later, when we were back at Jack’s house, I was lucky enough to be the beneficiary of some more of Jack’s own personally formulated and bottled Captain Jack’s Dark Ale. But the one glass of beer I had at the restaurant couldn’t explain the afterglow that I felt even days after our lunch. I’ll drink a toast in beer to many more days like this one.

Beer, Orphanage and Eeyore

Gary Parker with a bottle of Brass Ass Brown Ale

We had another successful lunch on Thursday at All Star Lanes in Silverdale. At least 20 alumni of the CK Class of '62 showed up this time and as always, there were a couple of new faces sprinkled in with the regulars, as we have come to think of ourselves. Gerry Simonson and her husband came and so did Roger Cole, who recently lost his wife. It was great to see that he wanted to be with us. If we keep adding classmates at 2 or 3 a month, by the time we hit that Golden Anniversary of our high school graduation we will have gathered so many that we will have to rent a big hall to squeeze us all in. Hopefully, coming to these lunches will take away any apprehension people might feel about attending the full blown reunion. We've seen each other in our skivvies, with our gray hair and wrinkles and weight gain. There shouldn't be any fear left. That's what I'm hoping anyway.

I talked to Gary Parker a good bit this time. He had very kindly brought along some of his beer from the Iron Horse Brewery, that he and his son own in Ellensberg. I was the lucky recipient of two bottles and muy husband and I tried the Loco Imperial Red ale last night and it was a very interesting beer. I don't usually pick up on the subleties of beer, but this one had a citrus and sweet flowery taste to it. Gary had explained a little about beer recipes and hops and barleys to me but now I want to know where this flavor came from. Next time. If you want to try Gary's beers you have two choices. You can go up to Central Market in Poulsbo and find his Irish Death beer or you can visit the brewery at 1000 Prospect St. in Ellensberg or you can read about them at his website at www.ironhorsebrewery.com. Reading about them is not nearly as good as drinking them. I really want to try the Cozy Sweater one of these days. Gary calls himself the "not so silent partner" and it's really fun to talk to him about beer. You can tell he loves it.

The "orphanage" part of the title to this blog refers to the orphanage in Romania that Rupert Walworth and his Romanian wife are building. Rupert explained that his wife was already putting money away for this orphanage when he met her--he'd hired her to clean his house and later found out she was sending a lot of her money back to her native country for the orphanage. He said they were both "faith-based" people and started dating. One thing led to another and now they go to Romania at least once a year, continuing to work on the orphanage.

And then there's the Eeyore reference. We all know Eeyore don't we? The slow-talking, somewhat depressed donkey friend of Winnie the Pooh? When I spotted Roger Cole, the first thing I noticed about him, after his sweet smile that is unchanged from high school days, was the Eeyores embroidered on his coat and baseball cap. I asked him why he was sprinkled with Eeyores and he replied that his kids have always thought he sounded like Eeyore--he said he's always been a slow talker--and so they've loaded him up with Eeyores. Eeyore has always been my favorite of the Pooh characters--"Oh, bother".

I didn't get a chance to speak with Gerry Simonson--that will have to wait for next time, too. Those lunches, though they often last for 3 hours, are never long enough to talk to everyone, or even to hug everyone. So keep coming back guys, so I can find out about you. And be sure to ask Barbara Jarolim about her trips to China. We'll try to get Gary to bring some more of his great beer, too.

Panties Up the Flagpole

John Sleasman and Wayne Swenson

Chris Eddy Dosa and Blue Frosting Affect

Fred Just, Sandy Harkins, Terrie Baughman , Janet Dore' in the kitchen

Wayne with Captain Jack's Dark Ale

Randy Flowers

Jack Archer, our host

Sandy Harkins and Randy

Is there a better way to spend a couple of hours on a blustery, wet Fall day than with old classmates? I don't think so. Jack Archer and is wife were willing to host us this time, even though they thought they'd be grilling outside on their deck. The weather surprised all of us and we ended up inside, but they had lit candles and the lamps were glowing and I think they might even have had a fire going and the mood was cozy. We were all introduced to Mia, The Begging Dog, who we were not to feed. We are getting spoiled with these convivial home lunches--will we ever be satisfied with a restaurant again?

The topic of conversation that got most people's attention this time was "Who put the panties on the flagpole?" This came up after we'd been discussing some pranks that had been pulled in our senior year--the stink bomb in the hallway outside Mr. King's German classroom, among others. Jack piped up with, "There's just one mystery I want solved--who put those panties on the flag pole?" We thought John Sleasman would probably know--he was known to be a part of some shenanigans when we were in school, but he was clueless. Randy, who was a student leader back then, didn't know either. And even Dean, who said Mr. Huey would single him out to talk to when anything against school rules took place, because even if he didn't have anything to do with it himself, he would know who did--even Dean didn't know who'd done the flagpole trick. Legend has it that whoever did, greased the pole on the way down so nobody could get up there and take the panties down. I'm hoping somebody will read this who talked to somebody else, who knew somebody that was involved in this, because 47 years later it's time for these kinds of mysteries to be solved. Or is it more fun to guess?

Speaking of Randy, it was the first time in a long time many of us had seen him. He came down from the Bellingham area to be with us and I hope he'll consider coming again. He told us he is retired from teaching but volunteers at a grade school several times a week and is putting a daughter through college. Ralph, the Mail Guy, was with us via the phone, but he was resting in his Port Townsend house, getting ready for a trip to Israel and Jordan--incidentally, he had a pacemaker inserted on Monday of this week. Yes, folks, we all have our occasional age-related surprises.

The above pictures mention Jack's beer. We were talking about beer and wine and I mentioned that I love beer. Jack literally leaped up and asked if I wanted to taste his freshly brewed Dark Ale. He brought me a glass of a yummy, smooth beer with a taste that reminded me of apples. Soon I found out that this was Jack's private label, Captain Jack's Dark Ale, which he'd brewed over at Gallagher's in Edmonds. He had his own classy label and he gave us bottles to take home. I have heard that Gary Parker owns a brewery in Eastern Washington and that his beer can be bought at Central Market in Poulsbo. I will try to get more solid facts and share it here another time. It never fails to amaze me what we find out about each other when we attend these lunches.

Don't know when the next one will be, but I hope I see you there. Maybe you'll know who put those panties on the flag pole.

Lunch on Joyia's Farm

In Joyia's back yard

Left to Right kneeling: Carol Enloe Weber, Joyia Mentor, Marty McLaren

Standing left to right: Terrie Baughman Tenney, Dan McDonald, Nancy (Roi) Goit Wamboldt, Esther Shafer, Bob Wheeler, Karen Jean Robertson, Jack Archer, Chris Eddy Dosa, Ralph Erickson, Wayne Svenson, Linda Greaves Phillpott, Dean Johnson, Joanne Armstrong, Fred Just and Corky Sunkel and Mike Traverso on the phone is Chris's hand

Another fabulous lunch on Wednesday with the oldest friends of all, the people we went to school with. This time we saw some people we hadn’t seen in a long, long time: Dan McDonald, Joanne Armstrong, Karen Jean Robertson and Esther Shafer. I believe Dan lives locally, but Joanne was here from Edmonton, Alberta and Jean came all the way from Boston. When I asked Jean how she ended up in Boston, she went all the way back in her memory to the day she decided that since she wanted to see some places she’d never seen before, she was just going to go—no matter that she was only two years out of high school and that the mores of the time said that girls were either supposed to go to a junior college or get married and have babies. She didn’t let that stop her and she never let it stop her from that time forword.

Those mores didn’t stop Esther Shafer either, who showed us a picture of a bumpy time she spent on the back of a dancing camel and told us stories about the years she spent as a missionary in Africa, snakes and all. And even though Terrie Baughman was married for 41 years and had babies, that didn’t stop her from digging up stumps and putting up sheetrock, among other macho endeavors.

Those of us who did what society dictated at the time also had adventures and did hard work, tested our fortitude, but it is always fascinating to hear of someone who took a different road, which always takes guts. And to go on the road or to end up in Africa when you aren't on vacation? Wow!

Thanks to Nancy for this group picture which I snatched off of her Facebook page and was taken by one of the spouses who came to the potluck. Thanks to Ralph for cooking up some delicious ribs, for Dean who helped me flip burgers and for Joyia who shared her beautiful house and grounds in which we basked in memories and ate food lovingly provided by our friends.

School Lunch

From left, Nancy K., Jeanette Y., Yours Truly, Anne H., Vicki C., Anges, Helen C.

One of our number, the number being CK Alum of '62, recently challenged me to write about "school lunches" and being the writer type that I am, I am taking her up on that dare.

What I remember about the lunchroom and what went on there is only what I remember, meaning it is not the whole story.  My memory is spotty about those high school days and I am always finding myself responding to some fascinating, what should be memorable, high school story, with "Wow!  I don't remember that at all!"  So, being in my own little world during high school means I only remember my portion of what was actually going on.  I hope some of you will share your memories of "school lunches" so we can get a clearer picture.

I remember that lunches were divided into First Lunch and Second Lunch.  I don't know what that meant exactly, as to WHEN those two lunches were, but I do know it all depended on your schedule of classes, or maybe it all depended on which one you chose when you were choosing the classes you were going to take (a frequent dream of mine, by the way, the choosing of the classes).  I know that my group of friends all wanted to have the same lunch period and we managed to get it, judging by the picture above, so maybe it was chosen BY us, not for us.

I was one of those people who brought their lunch to school every day.  I certainly had many lunch boxes over the years, because I never was able to buy hot lunches, even though I would have died to get them.  I am pretty sure the lunch box I had was red plaid--that's the one that I picture.  And what was in that red plaid lunch box?  Sandwiches, tuna, peanut butter and raspberry jam, or bologna with mayonnaise.  No lettuce, not because I wouldn't have liked it, but because it would have been horribly wilted by lunch time--there were no thermal lunch boxes then, only tin, with a space for a thermos (pint-sized) of milk.  But I got to buy milk and sip it with a straw, which had a certain cache for me, since I couldn't buy the hot lunch.  Better than nothing.  

So I had my lunch, which sat in my lunch box in my locker until lunch time, getting warm and soggy.  I suppose there was fruit in there sometimes--or a cookie--something to break up the monotony of the sandwich.  I didn't pack my lunch--my Mom did--and she wasn't very creative about it, I'm afraid.  But I didn't care, because my main goal at lunch was to get something off of somebody else's hot lunch tray!  Not a single one of the girls I had lunch with seemed to understand how cool it was to be able to have a hot lunch.  They took them for granted, I guess.  They hated the food that was dished onto them, particularly Shepherd's Pie.  Well, lucky for me and for them, Shepherd's Pie was one of my favorites of the coveted hot lunches.  When Shepherd's Pie was on the lunch menu for the day, I was in heaven.  I knew that at least one of the girls at our table would let me have the whole thing.  They would eat whatever else was on the tray, but I would get the Shepherd's Pie.  Oh, glorioski!  Did I ever love those mashed potatoes and carrots and string beans and meat and gravy all mixed together. I can still taste that Shepherd's Pie as if it was yesterday.   I liked the Swiss Steak, too, which most of my friends did not like and there were probably other meals they gave to me.  It's a wonder I didn't have to diet in those days, isn't it?

The other thing about school lunchtime that I loved was the laughing and the talking we did.  Was the lunch an hour or 30 minutes?  I don't know.  But I do know that we filled it with gossip about boys, joking, teasing each other, griping about our brothers/sisters, complaining about teachers, homework, organizing slumber parties, wondering who was going to be asked to dances, making elaborate plans for how to get a boy's attention.  I don't recall talking about clothes much, we didn't wear makeup except lipstick for some of us, we didn't talk about our weight or our hair, that I recall. 

I suppose we talked about what we were going to wear to dances.  That was always a problem in my house--how we were going to afford the dress for the dance.  I remember getting a used white dress for one of the dances and buying green velvet ribbon, which I made into little bows and sewed onto the dress.  It reminded me of a dress I'd seen in Gone With the Wind, so I was happy with it.  And with every dress there had to be shoes and gloves, because (remember?)  we used to wear gloves then.  I had a pair of little white gloves (and one pair of white heels) and probably one of the lunch discussions was how to wash the white gloves and keep them clean.  We might have talked about the white buck shoes we all wore then--and the little powder packet we used to slap on the shoes to keep them white.  We might have talked about starching and ironing our petticoats, the more petticoats you had under your full skirt the more status you had.  I only had 3.  Poor me!  We might have talked about getting permanents to keep our hair curly--for those of us who had straight hair.  Many of my friends had curly hair and I don't believe there were hair straightening techniques then, or they would have used them.  No teenaged girl is ever satisfied with her hair.  My mother started me out at 4 years old with my first perm and bankrolled them, at the Cinderella Beauty School in downtown Bremerton, for the rest of my school career.  After high school there were no more perms for me.  The smell of the "neutralizing solution" was enough to put me off them forevermore.

I bet we talked about football and basketball games and cheer leading.  Some of our circle aspired to be cheerleaders and one of us, Helen Callison, actually achieved that goal.  Bonnie and I tried out once, but alas, we did not succeed.  But we all went to the games and cheered for our Cougars and sang the school song and the fight song and in my case, didn't really watch the games.  I knew all the rules, because I watched sports on television with my Dad, but high school sports, for most of us girls, was more a social occasion than a sport to follow, unless one of the boyfriends was on the team.  Then it was a different ball game, so to speak.

Which brings us full circle back to school lunches, which were not about eating, except when there was Shepherd's Pie.  School lunches were about being social, about eating with friends, about laughing, as that picture, which was in the Senior section of the 1962 Echo,  shows.  They were about belonging and that high school family that you form, that is more important, sometimes, than your real family and often more supportive.  There is a movie that I would recommend, called Mean Girls, that is all about high school, about lunch rooms, about the angst of the teen years.  I don't recall being one of the Mean Girls.  I hope I wasn't, though, as I say, others might have different recollections.  I hope we didn't cause angst, because we had enough of our own--in our families, in our "romances", in our insecurities, which are at their height in high school.  Any and all of our anxieties could have been aired at that lunchroom table, during that one blessed hour (or half hour) of the day when we were allowed to forget about classes and what might be going on at home.  Mostly, though, we just laughed.

PS:  I nagged Silver City Brewing (www.silvercitybrewery.com), in Silverdale, to please add Shepherd's Pie to their regular menu and they finally did.  Try it some time--it's absolutely delicious and the taste of it takes me back to that lunch room 40-plus years ago.  But now I have to pay for it with money rather than with my dignity!  I think it tasted a little better when I had to grovel for it.

Archeology

Lavonna Rubens, Vickie A. Holt, Marty Mclaren and Stevie Kemp

Sunday, 1:15 a.m.

When you wake up at midnight and thoughts are crowding your brain and making reservations for insertion somewhere in a blog post that you MUST write, you know you have to get up and get them down on paper before they are lost.

****
“We were foolish. We were young, more than we knew.
Yellow gingham on the bed—remember?
And the canopy in red…or was it blue?
The funny little games we played—remember?
Ah, how we laughed,
Ah, how we cried
I think you were there—remember?”

From A Little Night Music—Stephen Sondheim

****

The other day, Thursday, at our co-ed lunch, the phrase of the day was “who are you?” At Saturday’s six hour alumni event at Joyia’s beautiful lavender-ringed house on the hill, it was “Do you remember when (fill in the blank)?” We filled in that blank all day long. I wish I could have heard every conversation, but had I tried to eavesdrop on all the exchanges taking place, I wouldn’t have been able to instigate my own memory conversations—Do you remember Jen Southworth and how aggressively she came after couples holding hands in the hall? Do you remember Mr. Myrvang’s algebra class? Do you remember our slumber parties, Johnny Mathis, the picture of Elvis inside my locker door? Do you remember Darwin Moen, the boy with the ever-changing hair colors? Carole Mann’s beautiful skin? Bud Hawk? Mr. Baldwin? Mr. Quirk?

Every single beautiful 64-year-old woman who came to the first ever Central Kitsap class of ’62 Women’s Get-Together was bursting with questions. Rosanne Carlson wanted to know if anyone who went to Tracyton Elementary remembered when the original log part of the building was torn down, the new section built and the roof tarred. Did we remember how awful it smelled? She recalled that she and Toni Agnesani soaked handkerchiefs in perfume and put them to their faces to keep out the stench. I didn’t remember that particular thing, but I remembered Congressional Medal of Honor Winner and teacher, Bud Hawk, telling us about the steel plate in his head. I will never forget Mr. Peterson asking us all to push our cuticles back to promote healthy nails. I remember the day Pete Bachelor brought a black ceramic panther to class for a sixth grade show-and-tell. How exotic and artsy it seemed to me. I remember doing my required long research paper on Grace Kelly’s transformation to Princess Grace of Monaco, complete with pictures cut out of my mother’s movie magazines. Bless Mr. Peterson for letting me do it! I remember singing, “I’m Wishing”, from Snow White, in a fourth grade talent show in Mrs. Theis’s room. And this was only grade school! There are so many memories still waiting to be shared with only those of you to whom it matters.

“Did he die? I can’t believe it! How?” I heard this question, with shocked exclamations, plenty of times during the day. How can it still shock so much to hear of one of our school friends dying? Is it because they are still 18 years old to us? So many are gone—and more to come as we begin to push 70. Only a couple of weeks ago, Doug Garland, a man who had an amazing life, unknown to most of us until we read his obituary.

This time we women got down and dirty: “Okay”, I dared, “who’s had a face lift? Tell!” To my surprise four women in a small group of ten in an outdoor tent with a view of Mt. Rainier, admitted to having eye lifts.
“I couldn’t see without opening my eyes like this!” one of them said as she demonstrated a bug-eyed stare. When a camera trained its lens on us, I taught everyone how to do THE INSTANT FACE-LIFT:
1. Lean elbows on table
2. Hold hands at sides of face
3. Subtly pull the sagging jowls and neck skin back before the camera shutter clicks.
4. Result—taut skins, while appearing to be in a nonchalant, relaxed pose.

My friend, Kay Greaves Morgan and I used to do it whenever anyone had the temerity to approach us with a camera. Remember when?

Being a group of women-only we had brought pictures of husbands, children and adored grandchildren—so many beautiful, young people with brilliant futures ahead. Judy Benjamin showed pictures of her four sons and youngest daughter. She and Lavonna Rubens told me their grandsons (or sons?) were in Iraq. They couldn’t hide their fear. Billie Ann proudly brought out pictures of two model-perfect granddaughters who are entering serious careers. We recalled our limited expectations as young women with resignation. The Eisenhower years were not a good time for women to be ambitious and by the time Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan came along, most of us had children and homes to keep. Nancy Goit wondered if we had accomplished anything we were proud of aside from our children. Our families, though, were what we women expected of ourselves in the sixties and if we felt we’d done a good job of raising our children to be blossoming adults, and hadn’t let the crud build up in the corners of the kitchen and had made the bed most days and learned to cook and had sex with our husbands, too, then we were proud. Those of us with at least one failed marriage, or who had children with serious problems, might not have felt as proud. But we all tried.

Some of us found careers, or more often long-term jobs, after we had happily accomplished domesticity OR failed to appreciate a clean floor and a well-made Jell-O salad, suspecting and hoping that we could realize something larger. Now that I am retired I am rediscovering just how pleasant it is to have a tidy house and clean laundry, and time to go to Alumni Lunches.

Nobody at Joyia’s dared to venture into the tricky area of politics, but I wore my Obama for President button and was heartened by a nearly 90% approval rating. Can’t do much better than that. We barely scratched the surface of who we are now. We are decidedly not just who we were in high school, though what we were then is still in us somewhere. We’ve loved, hated, grieved, worked, raised kids, built houses, constructed our lives around what we thought was important, in some cases watched that life crumble, picked ourselves back up and we went on. We’ve lived through the Doris Day/Chevy BelAir 50s, the marijuana/free love/Jimi Hendrix 60s, the Mod-Squad/Black Power/Laugh-In 70s,the big hair/huge shoulder pad/Madonna 80s, the Bill Gates/Steve Jobs/Computer Age 90s, The Millenium and here we are in 2008, “still crazy after all these years”.

Wouldn’t it be fun to have a huge slumber party at Joyia’s house? What a great place to put down a sleeping bag on the floor, listen to Johnny Mathis, eat popcorn, drink Coke (or something stronger, after all we’re older now), watch a chick-flick and talk into the night? In the morning Betty Nelson could make us her Tea Room scones, women who love to cook could help her make breakfast, Nancy Goit could wash the dishes because that’s what she likes to do, I would take pictures and mental notes, we’d drink strong coffee or lovely tea, pad around in our slippers and watch the morning sun light up Mt. Rainier. Trouble is, if I slept on the floor in a sleeping bag, I wouldn’t be able to walk for days!!!!

“Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I’m sixty-four?”
Sixty-five? Sixty-six?

Ladies I offer a toast in champagne or gin tonics or wine or beer or iced tea to you. I love you all. The toast: Here’s to survival, to laughter, to remembering, to more of the same.


P.S. We found out that Sandy Harkin’s hair is still its natural color and thickness, naturally. She told us she doesn’t color it. She counts on the kindness of the sun to lighten it in the summertime. We knew you’d want to know.