Time Marches On

Got a note from a guy who graduated high school same year I did (1965), who puts together lunch meetings for those of us who are still hanging on, and around the Central area in Louisiana. 


Bit of a drive for me, so I haven't been. 


Back then, the high school was at a sleepy crossroads in the country, gas station, burger joint, a mechanic's shop, like that; now, the area is an incorporated city, the high school long gone, relocated a couple miles away.


Google "Central High School Class of 1965," and my blog post from 2009 is at the top of the list, with the class picture. 


Our twenty-fifth reunion was at a Holiday Inn, and was essentially a four-hour episode of The Twilight Zone ...


The guy who sent me the note also sent his picture, and I wouldn't have recognized him on the street. A lot of the people I saw at the 25th, I wouldn't have known without the yearbook picture IDs, either. Men who went bald, women who doubled in size, time's disguise is sometimes amazing. More so now, given the gray and wrinkles and all.


At the 25th, I recall five of the class had passed on, of a hundred and thirty or so, and three of those in Vietnam.


Currently, we've lost fifteen of the graduating class, which, given that it has been forty-seven years and we are baby-boomers all in our early sixties, is better than I expected, given the dietary habits of a lot of folks back home–if it's fried, it's edible, no matter what it is–and the obvious lack of exercise I notice at the reunion twenty-two years back.


Still, it's a strange feeling to see that a kid you started school with and climbed the monkey bars with at recess in first grade has passed away.