ELK GROVE Class of 1973
Elk Grove High - Class of 1973 - 25 year reunion
Even before any of it officially began, mini-reunions were already percolating on the old loading dock a half-hour before the line began forming for boarding the Spirit Of Sacramento paddle-wheeler. Percolating is probably just the right term, too, because the temperature was exactly as most of us remembered Sacramento being in the midst of a heat wave.
I remember now why I moved away.
For those of you who haven't been to Old Sacramento
before, Old Sacramento is actually NEWER than that part of town we knew as youngsters. Oh,
it's "old" all right, with its old-west theme and old-style horse-drawn cabs and
other olden-type stuff. It's actually a quite fun place, with a museum, dinner theater,
its dozen or so restaurants and handful of shops selling everything from taffy to kites -
and of course, there are the pubs. But, I'm here to tell you (a phrase my old grandfather
used a lot – it just seemed appropriate to use it here), the only thing old about Old
Sacramento is that the world's 3rd "oldest profession" seemed to be practitioned
with a great deal of alacrity - worthless stuff filling store shelves enthusiastically
being sold for small
ransoms.
In fact, in an earlier incarnation, Old Sacramento had a slightly more noble purpose. When we were all grade-schoolers, Old Sac was the loading dock where S & P trucks would congregate to load or unload their trailers with goods shipping through our port by both rail and boat. Back then, the Sacramento Valley was quite literally the bread-basket of the world, and Old Sac was the portal through which that harvest flowed deepest. Old Sac was also unfortunately where many of the bums and winos lived on the street (but now they're called "homeless" and they have a much better lot now that they live on the street up by city hall). Today, old Old Sac has gone the way of your redevelopment district - and the new Old Sac is nothing like the old. In with the new-Old and out with the old-Old.
All of this has nothing to do with our designs for the evening though, except the fact that we were all planning to board a replica of an old-style paddle-wheeler for our evening of reunionizing. (A new-old boat. Do we see a pattern forming?)
It wasn't long before everyone figured out that it might actually be cooler to congregate down by the waterside in the shade of the boat upon which we were about to embark. The line quickly formed and the reunion was underway.
The first order of business? The passing of the name tags – both the curse and blessing of every organized gathering.
This year at our reunion, LaVonne and Lucy (bless
their generous hearts)
thankfully declined to put our class photo on our name badges. It was already going to be
embarrassing enough having to look at the badges to remind me with whom I was talking and
struggling to remember why I should be remembering them. (By the way, only twice did
I strike up a conversation with someone whom I thought I recognized from our class but who
was actually a complete stranger. How did you do?)
Had there been pictures on the badges, I don't know what would have been worse - looking at the picture to realize the person I was talking to bore no resemblance (at least in my mind) to their high school photo OR squinting at a photo the size of a postage stamp trying to focus in on it from several feet away before deciding to engage that person in conversation. Go ahead, try looking at a badge with someone's high school miniature photo on it, but make sure the light in the room simulates dusk, and make sure you've had at least 2 glasses of wine!
Now really! If we WERE to have photos on our name-tags that were of any meaningful use, they would have to be large enough for us to see from several feet away! Can you imagine every person at our reunion wearing a clipboard around their neck? Okay then!
Thank the weatherman, the Spirit Of Sacramento had air conditioning! Come to think of it, this floating restaurant and dance hall was quite a delight. I mean, if you were going to be held hostage for three hours on a boat full of semi-strangers, this was about as good as it gets. Air conditioning, fully stocked bars, great scenery… The food we had for dinner met with some mixed reviews, but thanks to the air conditioning and the bars, most people didn't really notice. Oh and did I mention the air conditioning?
As the evening wore on, it started to take the form of any of your standard run-of-the-mill reunions. The most asked question… "What have you been doing with yourself?" (usually followed by the most uttered phase… "I always did have a crush on you!" and usually spoken after several servings of flavored grain alcohol.) Many people even brought lots of pictures of kids and (gad!) grand-kids. I found myself proudly passing around my boy's latest photo. Thank-goodness he has his mother's looks!
What I found most interesting was that our wonderful classmates were mingling and easily breaking through segregation we were exposed to during high school. I'm not talking about racial segregation. No, no, no! Elk Grove High had gone far beyond THAT social scourge. We were plunged into a darker and deeper kind of dividing influence. Many of you remember it, too, I'll bet!
As a matter of record, I don't have any real evidence to support this next part, just my warped sense of cynicism that accidents like this just don't "happen." Call me crazy or conspiratorial, but I'm convinced there was some well-meaning forward-looking social reformer with a desk job in the district office who decided one day to ask the question that no other visionary ever dared to ask.
That question?
"I wonder what would happen if we built a high school where half the students were farmers and the other half were hippies?"
For a scant few years WE were very embodiment of that curious notion.
And what happened when you mix farmers and hippies? Tolerance! Not the political tolerance you might expect, but tolerance for the HAIR or that country ODOR, the BOOTS or SANDALS worn by fellow classmates. And we grew to become, not just more tolerant, but even embracing each other's culture in ways not anticipated by that supposed desk jockey. Never-mind that today, farming is all but big business and hippies are nothing more that a caricature on Letterman. Our high school was the testing ground for social revolution. And nowhere more than at our 25-year reunion was there evidence that this experiment succeeded with flying colors!
Former "hippies" and former "FFA-ers" intermingled effortlessly, reminiscing the night away. There was not one strained tone and not one tense jaw. Nor mocking or a single guffaw exhibited. It's almost as though, in our crowd, there never was a difference between tillers and hippie-dom (Although there was a tense moment when the electric slide was performed on the dance floor.)
Nevertheless, to that un-named (and possibly imaginary) bureaucrat, I raise my glass in tribute!
Before long, it was obvious, many of us had already
raised our collective
glasses in tribute. Some of us were clearly sloshed (a nautical term, I believe). But by
then, the music started and night's most embarrassing chapter was about to begin.
The dancing!
The air was finally cooling and the dusk allowed the
river to sparkle with
lights reflected from the shore. From the loudspeakers poured tunes from an age I'm glad
is in the past, but sorely miss. The evening was finally perfect.
But then I had to ruin all this serenity by doing the unthinkable – I starting to dance.
And suddenly, the feeling of awkwardness I experienced as an adolescent was coming back to me in more vivid detail than ever. But I didn't care! For this time I was under the influence of the most divine of all anesthesia, Tequila!
Sure, I felt awkward dancing with a 43 year-old's body and a 17 year-old's heart, but after looking at the rest of you who were also dancing - I was not alone in feeling awkward!
At the conclusion of the evening and when the Sprit Of Sacramento finally docked, those who had the most sense, left to retire for the night at a relative's house or a local hotel, while those of use with less sense scouted out the closest pub and continued festivities there.
But in the sum of all things that made up that night's encounter, all of us took away something more valuable that the cover charge we paid to participate in the revelry of that evening; we took yet another piece of each other away with us. And the twenty-five year-old memories that I carry with me of our teen-age together seemed just a little fresher and just a bit more innocent. What was old seemed new again, if not but for just a moment.
Now, if I can just get that Tequila stain out of my tie...
Respectfully submitted by Ken Allen.