I really need to tell you a little about the Class Reunion. It was the 50th Reunion for the Class of 1960 of Johnson High School in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
I didn’t go to any of the other reunions because I thought that it would just be another time when a bunch of people who didn’t really know each other sat around trying to impress each other with lies and BS. After talking to some good friends who attended all of them, I found that I was exactly right.
There were 506 who graduated in the Johnson Class of 1960, and probably about 300 attended. For my reader’s information I graduated 55th, and that was with a schedule that included: three years of Latin, two years of French, Geometry and higher algebra, biology, chemistry and physics, three years of history/social sciences and three years of English. My senior year, I was the only boy in a class with 22 girls who took advanced English. This class concentrated on teaching you to write themes and reports at a college level. It was one of the best classes that I ever took. Well, that is enough about that.
I was really happy that I didn’t encounter any of the nonsense that occurred at the earlier reunions. It was like retirement had become a “leveler” and everyone was back to being classmates.
Johnson was a blue-collar high school on the Eastside of Saint Paul in 1960. In some ways the movie “Blackboard Jungle” could have been filmed there. It had the usual amount of cliques and groups that were exclusive, but there was more ability to bridge from one group to another, and to have friends that were in many different groups. I was fortunate to have friends in several groups.
There were some really “badass” guys wearing the black t-shirts with their cigarettes rolled up in the sleeves. There was an area in the parking lot where smoking was condoned (it was of course illegal unless you were 18), but there was a lot of times that people were caught smoking in the bathrooms. Sometimes when you went into the boy’s bathroom, the air was actually blue because of all the cigarette smoke. The “Charlie Brown” of the late fifties song was alive and well at Johnson.
The strange and wonderful thing is that this class produced at least a dozen PhDs, (including one who worked for NASA) a couple of MDs, a couple of DDS’s, and ten or more CEOs of major corporations. But we won’t go into how many were incarcerated or ended up being shot during the commission of a crime. That would be just a “guesstimate” at any rate.
Most of those that attended shared some fondness for each other, and I would have loved to have been able to spend more time with them.
…and that’s the absolute truth…give or take a lie or two!
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Catching up - Part Two
It has rained for a couple of days now and that means that my rheumatoid arthritis “flares”. It is cold and damp and wet.
When we got back from Kentucky my defibrillator went off because I was going into ventricular tachycardia. My heart rate went to 230 before I got shocked, it went off a second time in the same week, and I began to have some heart issues that were somewhat relieved by nitro. I went to the ER at our hospital in TRF and they sent me by ambulance to Fargo. I was in the ICU for four days and my dear wife stayed with me the whole time sleeping in a chair and waiting on me. They put me on an IV nitro drip and almost immediately I was feeling pretty good again. When I left the hospital Dr. Ontaro, the cardiologist that handles pacemaker/defibrillator patients put me on a ne anti-arrhythmic drug called Pacerone. Well, it has about three pages of side effects and I developed most of them.
Sarah was leaving for Tennessee because she did not get to see her mother when we took our RV trip and my granddaughters Bryanna and McKenzie were celebrating their birthdays together. Well, I was not able to stay for the party but I did get to see them and give them their gifts. I went back on my oxygen generator and was pretty miserable for all of Labor Day weekend.
Sarah did have a wonderful visit with her mother, and her brother and sister-in-law came up with their two sons. She hadn’t seen her mother or her nephews in about ten years, so I was very happy that she didn’t cancel her trip. She also got to meet her grand-nephew Jay Carter DuRoy (who will always be Leroy DuRoy to me). He was born between the RV visit and her return to Tennessee. So she got to hold him while he was still very much a baby.
I gradually got better and now I just have extreme fatigue. Dr. Ashok Patel my regular doctor cut my dose in half and he said that in three or four weeks he might be able to halve it again.
We went to my 50th High School Class Reunion in the Cities and that was really fun, but I had to cut my visits short with some of the people that I had not seen since graduation because of my breathing. I had to go back on the generator.
However,we did get to spend some quality time with my granddaughters: Bryanna, Danielle, and McKenzie. That was fun because it had been a long time since we had a chance to have time enough to visit.
That’s all for now…and I promise that the next posting will be whine free!
When we got back from Kentucky my defibrillator went off because I was going into ventricular tachycardia. My heart rate went to 230 before I got shocked, it went off a second time in the same week, and I began to have some heart issues that were somewhat relieved by nitro. I went to the ER at our hospital in TRF and they sent me by ambulance to Fargo. I was in the ICU for four days and my dear wife stayed with me the whole time sleeping in a chair and waiting on me. They put me on an IV nitro drip and almost immediately I was feeling pretty good again. When I left the hospital Dr. Ontaro, the cardiologist that handles pacemaker/defibrillator patients put me on a ne anti-arrhythmic drug called Pacerone. Well, it has about three pages of side effects and I developed most of them.
Sarah was leaving for Tennessee because she did not get to see her mother when we took our RV trip and my granddaughters Bryanna and McKenzie were celebrating their birthdays together. Well, I was not able to stay for the party but I did get to see them and give them their gifts. I went back on my oxygen generator and was pretty miserable for all of Labor Day weekend.
Sarah did have a wonderful visit with her mother, and her brother and sister-in-law came up with their two sons. She hadn’t seen her mother or her nephews in about ten years, so I was very happy that she didn’t cancel her trip. She also got to meet her grand-nephew Jay Carter DuRoy (who will always be Leroy DuRoy to me). He was born between the RV visit and her return to Tennessee. So she got to hold him while he was still very much a baby.
I gradually got better and now I just have extreme fatigue. Dr. Ashok Patel my regular doctor cut my dose in half and he said that in three or four weeks he might be able to halve it again.
We went to my 50th High School Class Reunion in the Cities and that was really fun, but I had to cut my visits short with some of the people that I had not seen since graduation because of my breathing. I had to go back on the generator.
However,we did get to spend some quality time with my granddaughters: Bryanna, Danielle, and McKenzie. That was fun because it had been a long time since we had a chance to have time enough to visit.
That’s all for now…and I promise that the next posting will be whine free!
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Catching Up - Part One
Well, it is time for me to get you caught up on what has been going on in the Frozen Tundra lately. I mean that literally, we woke up to 39 degrees this morning.
First, our trip to Kentucky was wonderful, my son Ben and his lovely wife Jena did all the driving and we had wonderful weather. We had a large seven passenger RV and it was good because there were four adults and three dogs.
We got to Bronston, Kentucky on the Fourth of July, and because my dad is not always “with it”, I got into trouble with my mom and Ben for foolin’ with him. He could not remember who I was…sometimes he thought that I was his dad, sometimes his older brother, and every once in awhile he remembered that I was his oldest son. But he would say that I was twenty years older than him, and the devil made me agree with him. Mom chided me because she had worked so hard trying to keep him in touch with reality.
Next, we went to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee and then to Gatlinburg. Ben and Jena rented a Jeep and went up into Smokey Mountain National Park and Sarah and I chilled with the dogs in the RV. We had a wonderful southern dinner at the Old Mill in Gatlinburg, and headed back to Bronston.
We celebrated my dad’s 86th birthday with him, and this time I made an effort to get him to remember things both from the past and present and to try to connect the two. I was great to see dad and mom, and we got the added benefit of seeing my nephew Tim and meeting his wife Sharon. They are really very helpful to my parents and I am very thankful that they are there.
We had a very short visit, but it was good and my folks can’t handle too much company.
Then we went on to Signal Mountain, Tennessee to visit Sarah’s niece, Beth DuRoy. Her husband Jason was in Washington D C, so we didn’t get to meet him. Beth is an opera singer and has a beautiful soprano voice. She has two wonderful children, Kathleen and Jack , and another one on the way. It was a wonderful visit because she treated us all as though we were family. Sarah’s brother, Mike and his wife, Shahnaz came up from Huntsville, Alabama and spent Friday with us. Ben helped Beth create a blog to promote her singing career and I got to enjoy Jack and Kathleen. Southern kids are a lot different because they were always calling us Mr. Ed, Mr. Ben, Auntie Sarah, and Miss Jena. But by the end of our visit I had become Uncle Ed. This was another high spot of the vacation.
We went back through Saint Louis and had a meal at the Mark Twain Dinette in Hannibal, Missouri.
We got back to Thief River Falls with the better part of a day left before Sarah had to go back to work.
That’s all for now…see you next time!
First, our trip to Kentucky was wonderful, my son Ben and his lovely wife Jena did all the driving and we had wonderful weather. We had a large seven passenger RV and it was good because there were four adults and three dogs.
We got to Bronston, Kentucky on the Fourth of July, and because my dad is not always “with it”, I got into trouble with my mom and Ben for foolin’ with him. He could not remember who I was…sometimes he thought that I was his dad, sometimes his older brother, and every once in awhile he remembered that I was his oldest son. But he would say that I was twenty years older than him, and the devil made me agree with him. Mom chided me because she had worked so hard trying to keep him in touch with reality.
Next, we went to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee and then to Gatlinburg. Ben and Jena rented a Jeep and went up into Smokey Mountain National Park and Sarah and I chilled with the dogs in the RV. We had a wonderful southern dinner at the Old Mill in Gatlinburg, and headed back to Bronston.
We celebrated my dad’s 86th birthday with him, and this time I made an effort to get him to remember things both from the past and present and to try to connect the two. I was great to see dad and mom, and we got the added benefit of seeing my nephew Tim and meeting his wife Sharon. They are really very helpful to my parents and I am very thankful that they are there.
We had a very short visit, but it was good and my folks can’t handle too much company.
Then we went on to Signal Mountain, Tennessee to visit Sarah’s niece, Beth DuRoy. Her husband Jason was in Washington D C, so we didn’t get to meet him. Beth is an opera singer and has a beautiful soprano voice. She has two wonderful children, Kathleen and Jack , and another one on the way. It was a wonderful visit because she treated us all as though we were family. Sarah’s brother, Mike and his wife, Shahnaz came up from Huntsville, Alabama and spent Friday with us. Ben helped Beth create a blog to promote her singing career and I got to enjoy Jack and Kathleen. Southern kids are a lot different because they were always calling us Mr. Ed, Mr. Ben, Auntie Sarah, and Miss Jena. But by the end of our visit I had become Uncle Ed. This was another high spot of the vacation.
We went back through Saint Louis and had a meal at the Mark Twain Dinette in Hannibal, Missouri.
We got back to Thief River Falls with the better part of a day left before Sarah had to go back to work.
That’s all for now…see you next time!
Saturday, September 11, 2010
September Eleventh
I seem to be always apologizing for the time interval between postings.
I will catch you up on what has been happening in my life in the next one.
This posting concerns recent events and September 11th. As we commemorate that devastating event, we need to also evaluate our current environment.
First, we have the example of the Reverend Terry Jones, pastor of Dove World Outreach Center, a fifty member non-denominational charismatic Christian church in Gainesville, Florida. He is not a licensed minister. He called for Quran burning and promised to burn them on September 11th. It didn’t happen, but it did anger the Muslim world.
Next, we have the Reverend Billy Graham’s son Franklin. He is an ordained minister and the current head of the Billy Graham Foundation. He is much more dangerous than the “fruit loop” from Gainesville. Franklin Graham wields real power and has a world-wide congregation. He did something that his father never did. He distorted truth and implied that Barak Obama was a Muslim, by virtue that his father was a Muslim. This repudiates his whole theology of free will. It was done not out of ignorance, but with the sole purpose of political gain for his conservative friends. Graham has at various times said that Islam is “a very evil and wicked religion”, that it is a religion of hatred. It’s a religion of war”, and saying that building the cultural center near Ground Zero means the Muslims “will now claim that the World Trade Center Property…is Islamic land.” Shame on you Reverend Graham.
Now, on this day of such national sorrow we need thoughtful solutions that will allow Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, and all others to live in peace and harmony. If we can’t find a solution our planet will not survive. Peace and Love!
That’s all for now…see you next time!
I will catch you up on what has been happening in my life in the next one.
This posting concerns recent events and September 11th. As we commemorate that devastating event, we need to also evaluate our current environment.
First, we have the example of the Reverend Terry Jones, pastor of Dove World Outreach Center, a fifty member non-denominational charismatic Christian church in Gainesville, Florida. He is not a licensed minister. He called for Quran burning and promised to burn them on September 11th. It didn’t happen, but it did anger the Muslim world.
Next, we have the Reverend Billy Graham’s son Franklin. He is an ordained minister and the current head of the Billy Graham Foundation. He is much more dangerous than the “fruit loop” from Gainesville. Franklin Graham wields real power and has a world-wide congregation. He did something that his father never did. He distorted truth and implied that Barak Obama was a Muslim, by virtue that his father was a Muslim. This repudiates his whole theology of free will. It was done not out of ignorance, but with the sole purpose of political gain for his conservative friends. Graham has at various times said that Islam is “a very evil and wicked religion”, that it is a religion of hatred. It’s a religion of war”, and saying that building the cultural center near Ground Zero means the Muslims “will now claim that the World Trade Center Property…is Islamic land.” Shame on you Reverend Graham.
Now, on this day of such national sorrow we need thoughtful solutions that will allow Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, and all others to live in peace and harmony. If we can’t find a solution our planet will not survive. Peace and Love!
That’s all for now…see you next time!
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