Entering dangerous territory for a writer

Allan Winger, 1966
Originally uploaded by Brite Lights photos.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - It's one thing to put up photos of schools being taken down, but posting yearbook photos of individuals - and writing about them - is entering the neutral zone with lots of Klingon ships nearby.

But if this website is to rake up the memories and get people talking, well... so be it.

So hello Allan Winger.

Allan's picture should be on Classmates.com in the advertisements. Could he possibly look more like a 1966 high school graduate? The glasses, the hair, the skinny tie and that great Colgate smile. Jaysus. A poster boy for that time in the 20th century.

Allan has been emailing me with lots of information about our class, the school and most recently he sent me the obituraries for two teachers most of us shared classrooms with: Mr. Butler and Mr. Stark.

Mr. Butler died Friday! Mr. Stark about five years ago. I remember both very well and in fact think about how angry Mr. Stark got with me when I had failed Math 11 and re-took the class in summer school at Chautaqua with him up front glaring at me most of the summer. I whizzed through the Regents exam at the end of the summer and when I stepped out into the hall (the first one to finish) he stopped me and said, "If you didn't pass because to went too fast..." He didn't finish the sentence, and I'm glad I didn't have to find out what he was thinking.

I passed by one point.

Allan also found the obits for Mrs. Evelyn Sternburg (who was a fifth grade teacher in Lakewood) and Doris Barrows Schobeck who was the school nurse for Lakewood from 1949 until her retirement in 1972. She passed on in July of 2001 at the age of 97. I didn't spend much time in the nurse's office in elementary school. I didn't discover that scam until junior high and Mrs. McKay. She should get an entire blog entry all to herself.

Allan and I have been emailing about Vietnam, too. Allan's a Vietnam Vet and we are trying to figure if we lost any classmates in Vietnam.

That whole time was blur for me and probably many others. I was only sure about one thing: I had no interest in the military, I never have been very good at taking orders or structured sitations. (Ask any coach I played for in high school, if any of them are still with us.)

Allan is on the email list, but if your list is not handy, it's:

Allan L. Winger - awinger@pbu.edu

First, the Hideaway, then the Triangle bar...

Lakewood Elementary, May 2005
Originally uploaded by Brite Lights photos.

LAKEWOOD, N.Y. - One more year! Couldn't they have waited one more year to tear down Lakewood Elementary?

But down it is coming, and as the photo with the blog attests, it's almost down.

Sue Guertin Chandler, who taught in the school for years, had her room still standing at the time these were shot May 24. But the wreckers are pretty efficient in the 21st century and it's doubtful there is much more than bricks and steel on the ground as you read this.

Lee Anderson said his sister Carin went by and picked up a brick as a memento, I might want one of those myself.

It's kind of hard to imagine that spot without the school. So many of the Class of '66 came through there on their way to the big junior school on the hill. After surviving Mr. Gugino's 5th grade, I landed in Robert Lamp's 6th grade classroom. Mr. Lamp was an ok guy, I remember, though when we misbehaved, he sported a pretty nasty temper for an elementary school teacher. We once toured the Lakewood Sewer Plant (not exactly Disneyland, eh?) and a group of the boys got a little bored, listening to the sewer plant operator droning about primary versus tertiary treatment and starting pushing each other. Mr. Lamp made us stand at attention, four feet apart while the rest of the class walked around. And he made us stand downwind of the sewage tanks.

He sometimes had a good sense of humor.

I remember Hawkeye taught 6th grade, too. (Oops, Mr. Hawkins.) But I don't remember any other 6th grade teachers, though I'm pretty sure there was at least one more.

But the school is gone!

Years ago - could it have been the 20th reunion? - I came home to Lakewood to find the Triangle Bar gone, torn down, vanished into the mist. Bud Hooper and I and Jim Carr and Bob Fulcher and John Rupp and God-knows-who-else dropped a lot of cash there, watching a lot of the Vukote locals fighting with their spouses as they got increasingly drunk, every night of the week.

In one memorable evening, one 'old woman' (she had to be 40 if she was a day, waaaaay old), was arguing with her husband about his dog. Actually, they weren't arguing. She was giving him a beer-laced, mostly incoherent lecture about how the dog smelled, the dog hair was everywhere, she hated the damned dog - and she ended her soliloquy with the kind of ultimatum you should never give.

Either the dog goes or I go!

I can still see the grin on the old guy's face as his wife stormed out of the bar. And I don't think she was going home to feed the dog.

I will always miss the Triangle, but I think I'm going to miss old Lakewood Elementary a lot more.

Bye Hawkeye!

Le Grand Fromage - our principal

We called him 'Cheese' because?
Originally uploaded by Brite Lights photos.

SOUTHWESTERN CENTRAL, Main Office - Only once did I find myself sitting in front of Cloise Swearingen, Mr. Swearingen, Van Swearingen's dad and, to many of us, 'Cheese.'

I suppose we called him Cheese as a short form of Big Cheese, and I do remember the one bit of French I learned from Mme. Vandeberg - Le Grand Fromage. So for awhile, we called him Fromage for short. (I also learned 'merde' from Phil Parks in that same French class, and Bill Taylor and I came up with 'mangez le oiseaux.' I don't think the oiseaux reference cut across cultural lines, but we were easily amused.)

But there I go with another digression.

The power Cheese had was awesome looking back at it. While we certainly did some arguably outside-the-rules stuff, the last place we wanted to end up was in his office. I stood there once for a transgression that I can't recall (Honest!) and he did such a great managerial thing. He let me stand there for a good minute (scribbling on a notepad like Jon Stewart at the start of The Daily Show) before he looked up at me. Then, he didn't speak for what seemed like forever.

By the time he did start lecturing me, I would have confessed to stealing the Lindbergh baby, detonating the Hindenburg, and maybe starting the Korean War.

But those were simpler times. When people did bad things in school, they frequently ended up like political enemies of the regimes in some Central American countries - they just disappeared. Can you imagine for even a nanosecond what the penalty would have been at SWCS had someone carried a gun into the high school?

I got detention for turning in term papers late, for Godsakes.

Recently I went to a high school here in Sacramento and had to walk through two sets of metal detectors and then get patted down by a young female security guard before I was allowed into the educational maelstrom that passes for high school in California. (Ok, she wasn't that young but still...)

And when I needed to head to the bathroom (aka Boy's Room), I found out they are locked about 95 percent of the time, guaranteeing that when the bathrooms are opened, they are jammed with exhuberant, overflowing teenagers who understandably are less-than patient about who gets to the can first.

The school principal (definitely a non-fromage, who hides in his office, rarely seen) told me that the students are out of control and the bathrooms are a constant problem: fights, drug deals, kids smoking pot.

I suggested that he try holding his bladder for three or four hours and then tell me if he wouldn't want a toke or two.

Say what you want about Cheese, but he kept the bathrooms open.

Ted Capella went to Erie - not California

ERIE, Penn. - The romantic in me really wanted Ted Capella to have ridden off in a convertible on his way to California when he left 5th grade.

But Mick Olson says he's sure that Ted headed to Erie, Pennsylvania and in fact visited him during our senior year. I hope I was right about the convertible anyway. If not, that would shatter my illusions completely.

Remembering what went on in high school (and before) is more than tricky, it's like trying to recover data from your Commodore 64 computer (referred to as either a Commode Door or a $100 doorstop). I had one of those beauties in the 1980s when I started my consulting business and it paid for itself. Well, for $100 bucks it didn't take long.

(Well, see, there goes my mind drifting instead of staying on task. I was talking about memory, wasn't I?)

I came to Lakewood in March of 1958, I believe, just in time to catch the last couple of months of Edna Anderson's 4th grade class where I met my first Lakewood buddy (Randy Carlson) who sat behind me and taught me how to draw an airplane. (I draw them the same way for my granddaughter, who thinks I'm an artist, but she's seven...)

The very first day of school we went out for recess - something I had never heard of. Catholic elementary schools in Brooklyn didn't let kids loose for a minute during the school day. And when the whistle blew to go back in, well, I just kept swinging away, amazed that school could be fun.

But a tall teacher, angry looking like Sterling Hayden-with-a-hangover, one Mr. Hawkins, came over and took me by the arm up to my classroom (his squeeze really hurt) and I was in the doghouse with Edna for the rest of the day, my first day. Randy Carlson, the artist, had his own little run-in with Hawkins another day, sticking a hand puppet out the window of one of the buses as we were leaving to go home. He used the puppet to chime, 'Hello Hawkeye,' a nickname that Hawkeye (oops, Mr. Hawkins) didn't find amusing.

But we'll let Randy tell that tale of terror another time - or at the reunion.

**********************

The following song came via one of our classmates who said she was a little leary of actually sending it to everyone. But I think most of us can relate.

They both need IPods

Why did we write on our yearbook pictures?

Barbara Bunce - 1966
Originally uploaded by Brite Lights photos.

JAMESTOWN, N.Y. - I'm not sure what possessed us to write all over our own photos in the yearbook, I had to crop the heck out of Barbara Bunce's photo to post it here but she did leave most of her face in good stead.

Randy Carlson, on the other hand scribbled so much you can't see him at all. Randy's photo we will save for a later post.

I've been getting some great emails from people, with lots of memories. Barb Bunce's was great, and I was going to pull sections of it for the web page, but I note that she sent it out to the entire list, so I won't take up any bytes here again.

Barbara and I were in 5th grade together at Lakewood Elementary School, our teacher one Mr. Augustine Gugino, who had a bad ulcer and had to eat brown-bag lunches that were even more disgusting than what was served in the cafeteria. Sally Smith and Carol Wright were in that class, too. I remember clearly, because that was the year that the boys all started looking slightly different at the girls - and vice-versa.

There was also a fellow in that class named Douglas Brandow, who disappeared from our ranks about sophomore year. I heard that he ended up doing a stretch in prison, but I'm not sure.

I do remember - more vividly than I would like to - the day he showed up for P.E. without his gym clothes (about 9th grade) and was forced (as in wrestled to the floor) to wear a girl's gymsuit for gym class. He was also pushed through the door separating the gyms and made to have P.E. with the girls that morning.

Can you imagine that today? He would've ended up owning the school district from a lawsuit. And I would've testified in his behalf. Well, ok, maybe not then. But suppose that happened to one of your kids? Or grandkids?

Jaysus!

A much nicer story coming out of that same 5th grade era is about a fellow named Ted Capella, who left our 5th grade class and moved away. As a newly arrived-from-Brooklyn kid, I had a lot of sympathy for his emotional parting.

I believe he moved to California, leaving school one sunny day in the back of his parents' convertible, the top down, of course.

That was a class act, Ted, wherever you ended up.

TODAY'S CLASS OF '66 SONG: Tossin' and Turnin' by Bobby Lewis

I couldn't sleep at all last night,
just a thinkin' of you,
cause I was tossin' and turnin,'
turnin' and tossin' all night...

Young guys, drinking beer (?) at our 20th

Bob Fulcher & Jim Carr
Originally uploaded by Brite Lights photos.

NOTE TO CLASS:

(I just heard from Shirley Adams who says this is from the 20th reunion... Everybody looks so young... And obviously, my comments need some adjusting.)

JAMESTOWN, NY - I really wish I had made it to the 10th reunion, although at 10 years, it didn't seem all that long since I had been out of SWCS.

A couple of years at Villanova (undistinguished, except for the beer drinking and general carousing), two years back in Lakewood (more drinking, more carousing), marriage in December 1969 and then on to Califoria, a bachelor's degree, two kids and a newspaper writing job.

OK, I guess a lot did happen. But it would have been nice to see what happened to other folks.

In this photo - which is a tad fuzzy - Bob Fulcher is with Jim Carr and from the look on Bob's face, not exactly excited that someone took the shot. Jim wasn't too many years out of the U.S. Navy, and Bob? Well, Bob might still have been in the U.S. Air Force at that time. He retired before he was 40 and took up some other profession. Anyone know what it was?

I got into an awful lot of trouble with those two guys during our high school years, never quite getting arrested, largely due to the Barney Fife police forces we had to contend with, not our skill at evading capture.

There was one episode where we ended up at a SWCS football game, quite intoxicated on Colt .45 malt liquor and Southern Comfort. We climbed up into the bleachers and, well, I think I'll save those details for our 40th reunion and the tome I'm trying to write.

We have 31 people on the email list and I seem to be picking up one or two more every day. Keep them coming - and please, please, send some photos, too, either of the reunion, some party you went to in high school (The Gorge? The Prom?), and/or something current.

Hell, if I can post my yearbook photo on this website (Isn't that a piece of photography?), then a current shot of you won't break any computer screens.

TODAY'S CLASS OF '66 SONG: Dead Man's Curve by Jan & Dean

"I was cruisin' in my Stingray late one night,
when an XKE pulled up on my right..."

Issue of photographic quality is a good one

Barbara Pilkey, courtesy of Shirley Adams
Originally uploaded by Brite Lights photos.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - I've received several requests to make the photos here bigger, sharper, more focused, etc... It's not just your old eyes that can't handle it.

Most of the photos I have received are relatively low resolution (or slightly out of focus)the combination of which makes for some pretty fuzzy looking shots. The yearbook copies I was making (and will make when I get my new camera) were higher resolution.

As we get older as the vision goes, everything seems to have that soft focus.

The photo today comes from Shirley Adams' collection from the 10th reunion. And it should have a caption under it explaining that it is Barbara Pilkey in the center with JoAnn Harp off to the left. And the guy hanging onto Barbara? Got me? I'll guess her husband or boyfriend. Any clues out there?

If the caption is not there, I'm going to have to have words with my photo hosting service which is getting as erratic as I am.

Grrrrr.

And now presenting, The Class of 1966

Grad picture
Originally uploaded by Brite Lights photos.

JAMESTOWN, N.Y. - Bob Swanson sent along this photo Saturday, part of a proposed cover for any program that might be produced for the reunion.

I faintly remember the photo being taken. And were our robes red?

Good God but that was a long time ago.

I do remember walking across a stage and some business about the tassel having to be shifted, even for a high school graduation. I still have that tassel, along with the ribbons I won in a handful of track meets. The tassel and the ribbons are all pretty tired-looking.

Since then, two college degrees later and 23 years of teaching at a university, I've seen graduations so many times it's all a blur.

One year I had to attend seven graduations in two days and speak at all seven as chair of the faculty at my university. I didn't go for the next seven years, figuring I had banked some time.

I ducked graduation today, even though it was only a mile from my back door. It was 90-plus degrees outside and with an outdoor graduation, the most interesting thing that was likely to happen was heatstroke.

In the last 24 hours or so, I added Randy Carlson, Jim Lindell and Allen Winger to the email list. Thanks to everyone who is keeping the email pipeline flowing.

And can anyone tell me how many people graduated in the Class of '66? I thought it was 180, but I count 169 faces in the yearbook.

All quite young faces, at least the ones where people didn't scribble right over their likenesses.

Reunion photo from the 20th Class of '66 soiree

From the 10th Class of '66 reunion
Originally uploaded by Brite Lights photos.

The photo with this brief blog comes from Shirley Adams who is busy scanning and digitizing to some of her photos for the site.

Shirley, Thanks!

This morning I also received emails from Allan Winger (who I added to the email list) and Cathy Prince, who was Czarina Extraordinaire for the reunions we have had in the past.

She said that Randy Carlson and Jim Lindell are working on this one, too, and might have found a spot at least for a dinner.

More on that as developments, well, develop.

And in the meantime, doesn't have email addresses for Randy and Jim?

The story of Tom Priester, by Tom Priester

JAMESTOWN, N.Y. - I remember Tom Priester pretty well from high school, the T-shirts and the perpetual grin on his face. He did, after all, teach women's P.E. and had a lot to smile about. When I saw the film, Evolution, with David Duchovny and Orlando Jones, there is a coach character in that movie that might remind you of Tom. And even if not, it's a funny film.

But Tom's name popped up - and his email address is on our Class of '66 list - because somehow he found me and we've had a little email dialog. It turns out Tom was right here in Sacramento a year ago, at some hotshot track and field trials at my university, only a mile from my condo on the American River!

I should have recognized the tone of his whistle when I rode by the trials on my bicycle last June.

What follows is a brief email from Tom, updating what's he's been up to. And count on seeing him at our reunion next year. Sorry I don't have a recent photo of him, but more photos will be forthcoming pretty soon.

FROM TOM PRIESTER:

Sue Turner Priester (my wife) and I have lived on Orchard Rd. by WJTN (between Baker and Hunt) for 33 years and I've been retired for 7 years next month after 36 years teaching.

I'm still coaching (44 years in the fall) cross country. Have 2 children (grown up) and 6 grandchildren; 3 local and 3 in Greensboro, NC.

I help with the grand kids, and am on the Exec. Bd. of Joint Neighborhood Project, a non- profit help agency connected to our church on East 2nd St. in J'town, and this new SW Education Foundation. That is taking a lot of my time.

I'm in charge of contacting alumni. I have about 46 years of class reunion lists. Loving life. Still officiating track for high schools and USA like the trials.

God has blessed me with a lot friends and GREAT FORMER STUDENTS! Hope we can meet again.

===============

Three Class of '66 amigas & a roomie

Three Class of '66 amigas & a roomie
Originally uploaded by Brite Lights photos.

NEW SMYNRA BEACH - The Class of '66 occasionally has it mini-reunions, like this one from February with Sue Guertin Chandler, Shirley Adams and Sharon Johnson Bondiello.

Shirley's college roommate, Joyce, is tucked in the photo, second from the left, in case you are actually counting and note that there are four folks in the photo.

From the right, Sue Guertin Chandler, Shirley Adams, Shirley's roommate from college (Joyce) and Sharon Johnson Bondiello. Shirley sent this photo yesterday and it worked very slick to put it up on the site.

Soooooooo..... Anyone else brave enough to put up current photo of themselves? If you are, send it along.

In the meantime, I'll try to find a really flattering - I mean a gritty, realistic, up-to-date - shot of me to post.

Great ideas while running in the rain

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - This morning as I ended my ordeal of running, 'Be True to Your School,' was ringing in my ears on my IPod, reminding me of zooming around Chautauqua Lake (Can you believe I can still spell it?) in my ski boat, a radio on the dashboard.

And then I thought: Karaoke! (Did I spell that right?)

My singing abilities are right there with Rod Stewart - when he has severe laryngitis - but I remember a lot of our classmates singing in the choir, and in the early years, Dalton Berringer accompanying on the piano.

One evening I went to downtown Jamestown wandering into the Jamestown Hotel and there was Mr. B. himself, at the piano, doing a little lounge act. That same year, he pulled me over on the lake - he was a Sheriff's Deputy during the summer to make some extra cash. Other teachers painted houses (Harry Robie for one.). We can all ask Tom Priester what other teachers did to make ends meet.

But a karaoke machine! And, maybe we can find Dana Bolles to put together a band again, like the one that he played in at Moon Brook Country Club (was that the prom or graduation?).

Think about and practice your scales.

La-la-la-la-la-la-la....

The Class of '66, out in the field for a photo

The SWCS Class of '66 20th reunion, courtesy of Lee Anderson
Originally uploaded by Brite Lights photos.

JAMESTOWN, N.Y. 1986 - The 20th reunion was notable for several things, not the least of which was the flood that almost wiped out the place where we were swilling drinks that first night.

Sue Guertin-Chandler and her husband Bill helped me get my rental car to dry ground as it almost floated away. Quite a night. Even Bob Fulcher made that party. And hell, we were all about 38 and not even 40 for chrissakes.

The next night's party - where the photo with this blog was taken - was a riot, too, though because I had been reading too much Norman Mailer, well, I believed that alcohol was the best spark for creative juices. It was a spark that night all right, but the spark started a fire in my brain that resulted in an epic headache the next morning.

I've since gotten over the Mailer thing. I'm moving into a Hunter S. Thompson phase.

(Just a joke! Just a joke!)

This photo comes courtesy of Lee Anderson, though I do have a copy of this shot sitting on the bulletin board right in front of me. But because my camera won't talk to this new computer, I'm kind of stalled the tracks for photos. But thanks to Lee, here it is.

I think we should start making lists of things we want for the 40th reunion: what music, what food, what national celebrity to do a stand-up comic routine the first night. (I want Jon Stewart or Donald Rumsfeld, they're both funny in their own way...)

And our theme song for the 40th reunion of the Southwestern Central High School Class of '66?

What else? 'Be True to Your School,' by the Beach Boys:

"When some loud braggart tries to put you down
and says his school his great,
I tell him right away
'Now what's the matter buddy
ain't you heard of my school,
...it's number one in the state'...

...So be true to your school...
Rah, rah sis boom-bah..."

The 10th reunion - we were sooooo young!

Class of '66 SWCS 10th Reunion, courtesy of Lee Anderson
Originally uploaded by Brite Lights photos.

JAMESTOWN, NEW YORK, 1976 - The reunion party in 1976 seemed like it was a long time from the day that we walked across the stage.

I missed it anyway, though I was in town. I didn't know about it! Merde!

Ten years out of high school seemed like an eternity, but looking at the photo with today's blog (provided by Lee Anderson), the faces don't look that much different from the yearbook.

Some of the guys are definitely sporting a lot more hair than at graduation (and beards, lots of beards) but we were young and the thought that we might ever be going to a, gasp, 40th high school reunion impossible.

Just before I sat down to write this, I had an newspaper buddy show up, a guy I worked with in Petaluma in the mid-1970s at the Petaluma Argus-Courier, a daily there that has since faded down to weekly and barely surviving. Our kids were about the same age and we both had a fondness for cheap red wine, the movie Casablanca, a young (and completely unavailable) female secretary at the local university - and writing stories that uncovered wrongdoing, especially on the part of sleaze-bag politicians. (Remember those guys Nixon and Agnew?)

The photo we took today of the two of us gives me glimpse of what the group shot will look like at our 40th high school reunion.

Mature is the description I prefer to put on the caption. My 7-year-old granddaughter says I'll never be mature but is kind enough not to add any of her own adjectives for what her granddad looks like with another almost-white-haired guy in the picture.

Mature, indeed. Mature.

She's right about one thing, I probably never will grow up anyway.

The loneliness of the long-distance writer

JAMESTOWN, NEW YORK - Who knows what kind of life I might have had, had the laptop computer been around in high school? Writing, I remember, was a painful thing, literally. My left hand would cramp up after a page or two, and can you imagine what it must have been like for our teachers to read 100 or so essays?

In my university classes, I won't even accept a handwritten note saying someone will not be in class. Email me! Type it and print it! Just no freakin' handwriting.

When I was a senior, I broke my left hand (longer story) and for about six weeks, had it wrapped with a splint - making writing essays painful and damn near impossible. One day, in that weird double period class (part English, part history, part who-the-hell knows) I handed in a brief piece to Harry Robie and got my hair parted because the writing was sooooo bad. He was about halfway into giving me a lecture in front of the entire class when he realized that my hand was in a splint and while he didn't apologize, he did stumble and retract.

But those forced-essays were on the right track, because writing and thinking are linked as tight as Britney Spears' jeans are to her ... posterior (had another word there and I lost it...). If you think about that writing and thinking are almost the same thing, it just makes what you are reading all the more frightening.

REUNION SPONSORS - In order to make this 40th reunion a real wild deal, perhaps we should get some sponsors. Grey Goose Vodka, Charles Shaw wines, the makers of Mallo Cups (Boyer, Inc.?) all come to mind. We can rule out General Motors and United Airlines probably, but perhaps we can get the Jamestown Post-Journal to kick in with something. We must have an alum or two working there.

Parlez-vous a foreign language? Or English?

Foreign languages
Originally uploaded by Brite Lights photos.

SOUTHWESTERN CENTRAL HIGH SCHOOL - How much French did anyone really learn from Jon Giacco (sp?), the little guy on the right?

I remember his English, was, well, not as bad as my French, but pretty bad. It turns out, of course, that he really spoke Italian best, but what the hell.

Somehow, I survived three years of French, maybe even four, I've blocked most of it out. My first experience in 9th grade I've written up for the book. (The sweaters that our very female teacher wore in that class were, magnifique!)

Ironically, I took more French in college (another D on the transcript) but when I went to France, damn if a lot of it didn't come back - after 30 years!

Avez-vous vin rouge?

I avoided Mrs. Cook (seated) who taught Latin, and Mr. Pfaff taught German. Spanish suffered from some kind of inferiority complex - part social because Spanish speakers were (are?) far down the social scale for most Americans around Jamestown. If you spoke Spanish, you were either a Spanish student, or Puerto Rican. And being Puerto Rican was pretty low on the Swedish totem pole. (How's that for mixing races and metaphors?)

What do I remember most about those foreign language classes?

Going to the blackboard to write sentences. Teachers who require that should be shot, or made to sing on American Idol, or both.

Soon I'll write here about math teachers, another group of people who believe that a little public humiliation at the blackboard is good for the soul - and encourages learning.

Not.

What a group! Are they all 'history' now?

Historian types
Originally uploaded by Brite Lights photos.

SWCS, HUNT ROAD - Does anyone remember Alberta Ulmer getting out of that little Nash-Rambler two seater that she drove to work - often dropped off by her husband?

Wow.

If you didn't have her in class, she's in the back row about third from the left, right next to Mr. Dominie (sp?) on her left...

History teachers were quite a bunch, but the one who stands out the most for me was Harold Burgard, a madman who had all those mimeographed pages we had to memorize and take notes on.

"Sir Philip Sydney?" he would shout and some fool had to remember about the death of chivalry. If no one knew, Burgard would start to bellow, so loud it would scare teachers two classrooms away.

But damn if I didn't do great on the Regents test, probably my best score.

It was a Regents exam, wasn't it?

I remember sitting in Burgard's class during the Cuban Missile Crisis. He didn't mince words that it was likely we would all find out what the net effect of Strontium 90 might be on our reproductive systems.

Years later, after graduating from SWCS, I got to know him better over waaaaay too many beers at my cousin Gordy Puls' house. (Gordy was a math teacher and eventually moved to Ohio.)

He confessed that he was terrified during the crisis.

And the story about him coming to SWCS after breaking some kids jaw at Panama High School? I don't know if it was true or not, but when I asked him if it was, he got a beautiful smile on his face, as if he was remembering a night of sex with Raquel Welch. (Hey! She was young then, come on!)

The rest of the historical crowd, we can talk about at the reunion.

Did anyone really read 'Silas Marner?'

English Department
Originally uploaded by Brite Lights photos.

SOPHOMORE ENGLISH - Mrs. Stupka, wife of Ed Stupka and a woman with a stare that could crack glass at 40 feet, took a decided dislike to me in English, possibly because I didn't read the books she assigned.

And maybe because when I did read them, I challenged her analysis.

Oh well.

She's not in this yearbook photo for some reason. She might have left by the time it was taken. She and Coach Ed split up. Coach Ed ended up here in California - at the community college where two of my sons went to school!

And he wasn't eight feet tall either, he was actually about 5 feet 9 inches, and the voice I remembered from the football practice field had been replaced by a soft tenor by the time I met him again in the mid 1990s.

The other characters in the photo: Harry Robie, Hubie Davis and Mr. Hanson (Calvin?), they had their moments, too.

Maybe we can all read Silas Marner for the reunion and have a book group discussion, just like in Mrs. Stupka's class.

Or maybe not.

A new computer just for this blog

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Ok, I didn't buy a new Apple computer just for this blog, but the upgrade has given me some interesting new features and a lot of whiz-bang stuff.

It also has a gazillion gig hard drive for making movies, so it seems like more videos are in the future.

If you are one of the faithful readers here (ok, you don't have to be faithful...) and you haven't sent me an email in the last two days, PLEASE do so. It might be awhile before I can migrate the data from my old computer (which wheezed and died in Mexico...) to this new shiney one.

But I did get an Ipod when I bought it and have downloaded a load of 60s tunes.

How about 'Tossin' and Turnin?' What a song.

Damned computers! Didn't have them in 1966

SACRAMENTO, La Riviera Dr. - My Apple laptop computer has taken what I hope is a temporary dump, and with it all of the photos I had moved onto it for the Class of 66 blog.

Merde! Mierda! (A little French and Spanish, respectively for those wanting to learn new terms in those languages....)

Today I'm going to try to retrieve the data and perhaps do a little shopping for a new computer.

Can you image Mrs. King, the SWCS typing teacher, teaching us how to use computers?

Let's not go there....

But in the meantime if anyone has any photos from ANY of our reunions, please!!! Send them along...