Commencement

Yeah well.  I missed our 45th HS reunion last year although I wrote a remembrance on June 10, 2010.  This night, right about now, we got handed a fake diploma and our names were called over the loud speaker in Central Stadium. So now another year later.

A couple more people I knew and regarded highly have surfaced in the interval.  Some haven't been heard of in a year but they are still there in the blue robes when last seen.  For the life of me I'm trying to think what we did after.  I remember turning in our robes and getting our real diplomas in the girls gym with a few faculty there to wish us well but I don't think much went on as most of us - the males certainly - were looking at college or the draft and in particular, the selective service system.  Women were not likely to join the armed services - not because of any less or different love of country - but because it just was far more infrequent than it is now. They were not drafted in any event and President Johnson had upped the stakes in Viet Nam just a month before so it was nose to the grindstone.

I was a lifeguard that summer and when not in the guard chair, I was on the golf course and every evening I was playing trumpet someplace or another.  But that was the next 12 weeks and for whatever reason I don't remember that evening at all. There had to be a party or maybe all of us, feeling fully grown up, went to Debbie Peebles' house and made a french toast dinner and enjoyed each other one last time before we scattered to the four corners of the earth.