{"id":7280,"date":"2017-08-22T16:37:54","date_gmt":"2017-08-22T16:37:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/?p=7280"},"modified":"2017-08-22T16:37:54","modified_gmt":"2017-08-22T16:37:54","slug":"wandering-down-memory-lane","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/?p=7280","title":{"rendered":"Wandering Down Memory Lane"},"content":{"rendered":"

I had my 50th high school reunion this past Saturday night.\u00a0 Fifty years!\u00a0 Really it seems like only yesterday, but all my friends with brown, red, blonde and red hair have become grey headed or white headed or bald!\u00a0 How did that happen?\u00a0\u00a0 We were the cool class, The ones who were going to conquer the world.\u00a0 The ones who would remain forever young.\u00a0 Well, we were fooled because life caught up with us. We grew old while raising families, working at jobs we may or may not have loved, saw friends and family pass away and learned life can be hard at times, but at others simply wonderful.\u00a0\u00a0 So many memories all mixed up in that room that evening.\u00a0 So many life experiences. I hadn’t seen the majority of those people for at least forty years.\u00a0 Some I have kept in contact with.\u00a0 Some I wanted to see didn’t show up.\u00a0 Some of my friends, who shared a lot of life experiences with me, were there.\u00a0 I was glad I went although it did bring back the old teen-age feelings of inadequacy and shyness that I often had back in those days.<\/p>\n

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This isn’t the best picture of us all because it has the woman in it trying to get us all to stand where we could be seen in the picture, but this is my class.\u00a0 Or at least a few of them.\u00a0 Many have passed away or lived too far away to get here.\u00a0 Or some just didn’t have the best high school experience and didn’t come. Some just wanted to remember the class the way it was,\u00a0but we don’t remain the same, do we?<\/p>\n

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Some of my best friends from school\u00a0are in this picture.\u00a0 They know who they are.<\/p>\n

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This lady was one of my good friends. We went through twelve years of school together.\u00a0 She probably won’t remember it, but in the second or third grade I drew some paper dolls with clothes and everything and gave them to her.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I stayed all night at her house.\u00a0 Her mother loved the musical “South Pacific” and we played the music.\u00a0 Her dad was a dairy farmer and had lots of cows.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 She had to work hard.\u00a0 She’s spent the last few years care giving parents.\u00a0 Hers and her husband’s.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We were pen pals for years when she lived out west.\u00a0 Then we lost touch like you do when you live far apart.\u00a0 This is the first time I had seen her in decades.<\/p>\n

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This lady has the prettiest smile. She was always one of the nicest people and though I didn’t get to know her real well in high school, I always liked her.<\/p>\n

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This is David’s cousin’s husband.\u00a0\u00a0 His cousin went with David and\u00a0me on our first date.\u00a0 We went to see the movie, ‘Joy in the Morning,” with Richard Chamberlain and Yvette Mimieu. I think I misspelled her name.\u00a0\u00a0 Evidently something funny was said here.\u00a0 That’s David on the right.<\/p>\n

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A good friend with her partner.\u00a0 Reading an old diary recently, evidently she and I had planned on forming a secret club that just she and I would be members.\u00a0\u00a0 Evidently it was so secret, neither one of us could remember it!<\/p>\n

\"DSCN5910\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Two of my best friends. We went to school twelve years together.\u00a0\u00a0 We still laugh when we are together which isn’t often enough.\u00a0\u00a0 The lady in the middle and I went to see the Beatles at the Indiana state fair when they were on their first tour of the United States. What fun it was.<\/p>\n

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Carol made the cakes for the evening.<\/p>\n

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They were very good.<\/p>\n

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Someone did a great job on the table decorations.<\/p>\n

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The fellow in the middle is a good friend. We went through twelve years of school together too. He went on and got his PHD\u00a0 and has traveled all over the world.\u00a0\u00a0 I use to help him pass papers in our little town back in the sixties.\u00a0\u00a0 We were in youth fellowship at the same church and had a lot of fun times together.\u00a0\u00a0 He’s still as nice as he ever was and we had a good visit.<\/p>\n

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We all received a folder with papers people had\u00a0 written and sent in about what had been going on with them since high school.\u00a0 We also got a little booklet that told what was happening in the world the year we graduated.\u00a0 We have lived through some pretty interesting history.<\/p>\n

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We all got a book bag, pens, coasters, and taffy from one of the popular candy stores in town.<\/p>\n

All in all it was a fun evening.\u00a0 A good time was had by all.<\/p>\n

The next morning we drove around our old hometown where we started our early married life.\u00a0\u00a0 The day before, we drove around the town where I grew up and David’s grandparents lived and where he lived when his parents moved to the Virgin Islands.<\/p>\n

Past the little church where we were married 49 years ago.<\/p>\n

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It really hasn’t changed all that much<\/p>\n

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Before we went to the reunion, I wanted to drive by the library where I spent many happy hours and where I learned to love reading.\u00a0 I loved going here where the smell of books was so strong I can still imagine it to this day.\u00a0 The librarians were on a first name basis with my mother and\u00a0me as we went there every two weeks without fail.\u00a0\u00a0 I would get a pile of books and felt rich for having them.<\/p>\n

We drove through Glen Miller park in Richmond where we use to go to watch the fireworks, where there use to be a tiny zoo and the best playground when I was a kid.\u00a0\u00a0 There were even buffalo and a lion kept there for a time.\u00a0\u00a0 I always felt sorry for that lion because it really was not kept in a large enough cage. I have come to the conclusion some animals should never be caged.<\/p>\n

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This house is in the park where people can have meetings or parties.\u00a0 When I had our daughter, two good friends gave me a baby shower here. \u00a0It was so nice.\u00a0\u00a0 One of those friends I graduated with, but she wasn’t at the reunion.\u00a0 I would have like to have seen her.<\/p>\n

Also inside the park is a rose garden. It wasn’t there while I was growing up.<\/p>\n

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\"DSCN5936\"<\/a><\/p>\n

When I first walked into the garden, the smell of roses was so strong, I had to stop for a minute and just inhale.\u00a0 I wish I could send that smell to you. It was glorious.\u00a0\u00a0 Although the roses were not at their peak, they were still beautiful and smelled so good.<\/p>\n

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So glad this woman championed this rose garden.<\/p>\n

\"DSCN5937\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A gazebo sat right in the middle of it all.\u00a0 A place that would be perfect for weddings.<\/p>\n

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With benches placed all around it\u00a0 Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be married here?\u00a0 Especially when the roses are all blooming.<\/p>\n

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There were still several beautiful roses blooming.<\/p>\n

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There was a fountain there, but the water had been drained from it.<\/p>\n

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Some very talented person carved this out of an old stump.<\/p>\n

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Even the butterfly is carved from the stump.<\/p>\n

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It was just amazing.\u00a0 I hope the people in Richmond know what a little gem they have right in the\u00a0 middle of their town.<\/p>\n

We had to be on our way, so on toward home we drove.<\/p>\n

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We were traveling state road 40 which goes through many little towns.\u00a0 We saw this carving in someone’s yard.<\/p>\n

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This one was also there.\u00a0\u00a0 You don’t see things like this on the interstate.<\/p>\n

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Or things like this in someone’s back yard.\u00a0\u00a0 A place to sit outside. An upper and a lower space.\u00a0 How neat is that?<\/p>\n

One place I wanted to see was James Whitcomb Riley’s home in Greenfield.\u00a0 I have always wanted to go through it, but it was closed on Sunday.<\/p>\n

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Here are the hours if you ever wish to go.<\/p>\n

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He lived in a pretty grand house for his day.<\/p>\n

\"DSCN5957\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A statue of him stands in front of the court house. When my mother was a child back in the 1920’s school children were asked to send in pennies to help\u00a0raise this statue.\u00a0 Children paid for this statue.\u00a0 Riley was a poet who lived in Indiana.\u00a0 I have read many of his poems, my favorite being Little Orphant Annie which I have memorized.\u00a0 Ask me, and I can recite it to you.<\/p>\n

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Yes, we Hoosiers do have a dialect.\u00a0 And proud of it.<\/p>\n

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I sat by a bronze statue of Mr. Riley.<\/p>\n

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He was reading Little Orphant Annie.\u00a0 Yes, he spelled it with a t.<\/p>\n

We finished our weekend with an ice cream at the Cow Palace.\u00a0 It was a nice weekend.<\/p>\n

Here’s to school friends, roses and James Whitcomb Riley.\u00a0 Bye.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had my 50th high school reunion this past Saturday night.\u00a0 Fifty years!\u00a0 Really it seems like only yesterday, but all my friends with brown, red, blonde and red hair have become grey headed or white headed or bald!\u00a0 How did that happen?\u00a0\u00a0 We were the cool class, The ones who were going to conquer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fun-times"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7280"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7280\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7282,"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7280\/revisions\/7282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/snicklefritz.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}