August 4, 2009
Elko, Nevada
“That was a quick fifty years, wasn’t it?” Who said that? We were standing in the parking lot across the street from the Crystal Theater, right where we were supposed to be, waiting to load up for the parade. I think it was Fran Miller.
“You were my first girlfriend,” said Frank Scott. We weren’t wearing name tags, so we had to peer at one another and wait for the 68 or 69 year old person to announce him or herself. Frank is about my height, thickened in the middle, just like me.
“You were sure a skinny runt,’ someone said to him, taking the attention from me. Frank was not to be deterred.
“Didn’t you come to one of the reunions in a black leather jacket?” Frank said.
“I don’t remember that,” I said.
“Did you ever have a black leather jacket?” Frank Scott was and is what you would call a pest.
“Well, I had a black leather coat once.” I wasn’t going to give him an inch, although it is quite likely that during my beatnik period I could have come to a reunion with long, straight brown hair, eyes heavily lined with kohl, and a black leather something.
At lunch at Machi’s, when I invited myself to sit with Arlene, her husband, R.J. Demale; Fran, and Lyndia Dodd, I told them about the cotillions in seventh and eighth grade, upstairs in the Elks Hall, where we were supposed to learn to dance. “I remember them,” Fran said. “I was such a country bumpkin.”
If you were at the next table and heard Fran say that, you might think She still is. You would see a stout woman with a bad haircut, not a stitch of make-up, still wearing the XL maroon t-shirt over her blouse, the ones that Ann Moren handed out before we got on the float so we would be in Elko High School colors. You would have no idea of what a beautiful girl she was.
On Saturday night at the banquet at the Red Lion, Bernice McClendon brought a poster board collage of black and white photos from high school. There is one of Fran in a short sleeved plaid shirt and jeans rolled up the way we did in the Fifties. She smiles into the camera and she is magnificent. I kid you not. “Franny,” I said. I was standing next to her. “See what a beautiful girl you were.” She squinted at the photo, gave a nod of recognition to her strong, healthy young self, smiled at me, and then turned to talk to someone else.
I continued at lunch with my recollection of the junior high dances. “Well, at one of those dances, they paired us up and each boy was to bring a box lunch. Frank Scott picked me and he brought tuna fish sandwiches. Everybody could smell them. I was so embarrassed.”
“Now when I see him, I’ll think of tuna fish,” said Lyndia, whose eyesight is so compromised that she probably does have a strong sense of smell.
“It was fun, being in the parade,” Fran said. Lyndia and I agreed. About twenty of us sat close together on hay bales, chatting and throwing candy to the kids lining the streets, most of them bringing plastic bags as if it were Halloween. We felt like kids, too, as the truck and trailer slowly made its way down the length of Idaho Street.
I saw Ted Blohm smiling in front of his jewelry store and then recognized his wife, Lena, wearing a mocha-colored gauzy dress, still glamorous. If you didn’t go to Elko High in the Fifties, you wouldn’t remember the year they married and how everyone talked about Lena marrying a man twenty years older than she—even though everyone liked Ted Blohm.
When we passed the court house, Lorrie Gilbert was on the reviewing stand, announcing for KELK. “…and here comes the class of ’59. It’s their Fiftieth reunion weekend. Let’s give them a big hand.” She spotted me waving at her. “Hi, Nancy!” she said into the mike. That was fun.
Lunch at Machi’s was perfect. “Divine order,” said Lyndia, who had worked for several years as a telephone psychic in Hawaii, when she was in the first stages of macular degeneration. “That’s the way this day is. Everything is just as it’s supposed to be.” We were walking to my car. I was taking them up to the Elko County Fair, apologizing for barging in on their lunch.
Divine order. I know there’s no way I will capture all the stories and anecdotes that will comprise our conversations over the next couple of days, let along begin to get more than bits and pieces of my schoolmates lives, fifty years after the fact.
During the parade, John Sala, on the hay bale next to me, casually mentioned that his son is brain damaged from a motorcycle accident. I don’t know what John does for a living. Maybe he is a mechanic. He lives in the Bay Area. I do know he has a rock and roll band. His black hair (“Hell, it’s a dye job,” he said when someone complimented him) is combed exactly the same way as in his yearbook picture.
“Sold my last Harley in 2001,” he said.
“Why?” I asked.
“At sixty five I figured I was too old.” He paused, “But I’m going to buy another one.”
“Good for you,” I said, not really meaning it.
I don’t think I had occasion to visit again with John during the weekend. It was like that. One or two serious conversations. Mostly brief encounters. We weren’t Holocaust survivors or Viet Nam vets getting together. Just the class of '59, marking the occasion, quietly honoring ourselves, each other, and the cowtown we came from and still love.
No comments:
Post a Comment