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Bytes from the Bean by Joe Manning 8-30-9912:00AM / Monday, August 30, 1999
Everybody likes a reunion, but no one likes a goodbye. I have had my share of both the past few weeks. It culminated in the glorious Downtown Celebration on a beautiful summer evening in North Adams on Wednesday, the 25th of August. I drove in early and watched people set up music sound systems and food concessions. Many of them got tangled up in twisted power cords, or trapped up on ladders as they waited for assistants to hand up equipment. Large cardboard boxes of submarine rolls sat on curbsides and tempted the appetites of early birds.
Celebrants trickled in from the hills slowly, but by 8:00, you couldn't walk down the street without tripping over somebody. Old-timers tell me this is the way it was on Main Street on a Thursday night fifty years ago. Bands played a variety of musical styles on every corner, each drawing a crowd. Little girls and boys bounced around in front of the Mohawk to rocking Fifties music by Sheboygan. Most folks carried food in each hand. Hot dogs, sausage subs, and strawberry shortcake seemed to be the most popular items. It was fun, and it came just at the right time for me.
"Hello, hello
I don't know why you say goodbye
I say hello"
John Lennon/Paul McCartney
I had been away from North Adams about three weeks, and I missed my friends and the familiar places. One of the activities that delayed my return was my 40th high school reunion. I was born in Washington, DC, but I moved to Solomons Island, Maryland, when I was eight years old. At that time (1950), Solomons Island was a tiny village on the Patuxent River in the southern part of Calvert County, about sixty miles south of Washington. Most of the four hundred or so families made their living on the water, mostly crabbing, fishing, or dredging for oysters, and processing and packing the seafood for grocery stores and restaurants.
My father was a marine biologist for the University of Maryland Biological Laboratory there. He was out in a boat nearly every day. The rest of the county was mostly tobacco farms and a large, poor rural black population. Schools were segregated, and I traveled by bus twenty-five miles each way for six years to the only white Junior-Senior High School in the county. There were seventy-seven students in my graduating class. Ten years ago, a new highway turned Solomons Island into a honky-tonk tourist town with sushi bars, trendy gift shops, condos, and a perfect place for rich DC area weekend boaters to park their yachts.
After I graduated in 1959, I left the area for college and later the Air Force. I never returned, except to visit my parents. In 1965, they sold the house and moved to the Annapolis area. I have attended every reunion each ten years, and that is the only time I have seen or heard from any of my classmates. About half of them stayed in county.
My 30-year reunion in 1989 had been a blast. Fifty-five showed up, and it was the first opportunity to really see how everybody "turned out." You know the familiar stories: The worst kid in class makes good, and the prettiest girl loses her good looks and has been married four times. Well, the bully who made my life miserable became a minister, and the dumb, good-looking jock who made the girls swoon had been married three times, had ten grandchildren, and was a millionaire. Somehow, I was not prepared for the 40th, and the emotional impact it would have on me.
The years had dimmed most of the memories. All of us had to wear a tag with our yearbook picture on it, and I had trouble with some of the names. Still, on that Saturday night, it all came back. Had it really been forty years? As I talked with my old friends, I noticed that we were automatically falling into the same relationships, as if we had just been to class together the day before. One person remarked how it was strange that she was confiding in me and telling me personal stories she would never think of telling others. I offered that maybe those five or six years of adolescence were so important in our lives, that the friends with whom we endured those years are bonded to us for life…like war veterans in the same battalion.
I had one of the best times of my life at the reunion, but I was very sad when I drove away. I felt cheated. Six hours, and it was over. I told my friend Benny that it would have been great to spend a whole weekend at a resort, so that everyone could have a real chance to get to know each other again. He commented that after the reminiscing, we might find little to talk about. I said to Benny, "Not with you." I genuinely feel that if I met him for the first time at work or wherever, we would wind up being friends.
Class reunions are interesting events. More than a reunion with friends, teachers, and fellow students, they present an opportunity for us to have a reunion with ourselves. We get to know again who we were (and are), and how our lives were shaped by events and people. As I watched everyone enjoy each other's company, I got a little choked up a few times just thinking how lucky we were to have this chance to celebrate together. I can't count how many times I hugged someone (or was hugged), often people I never would have felt that close to forty years ago. Once during the evening, I was just glancing around the room and suddenly came to the realization that I genuinely love every classmate in some special way.
And so around midnight, I was already saying goodbye to people I had waited ten or even twenty years to see. As I drove back to the Super 8 just down the road from my old high school, now the middle school, I told my wife that, this time, I was going to keep in touch. So far, I have written and mailed letters to three classmates, and I am proud of myself for doing so. But I will not recover from this soon.
When we got home on Monday, I remembered the Downtown Celebration coming up on Wednesday, and my thoughts escaped from the past momentarily. On Tuesday evening, the Fire and Water Café here in Northampton featured a local band that plays "mountain music,"…you know, old-time fiddle tunes and Bluegrass. The sounds of the mandolin, guitar, fiddle, and banjo were upbeat and rhythmic, but the harmonies were sweet and melancholy, and they lured me into a state of nostalgia again.
The next day, I discovered that reunions don't always end in sadness. Back in North Adams, I ran into friends I hadn't seen for a while. Just before I drove home, I sat at The Bean with Audrey, and I talked about the places and people that keep me returning again and again. Then I said goodbye. The night air was cool. Autumn is coming. Soon the colors will change on the mountain. Life goes on.
Familiar Things
The morning D.J. is talking about an arctic air mass
as I drive down Main Street
and park in front of "The Bean"
On the mountain
a few trees are already red and yellow
the cold wind sweeps me inside
and I take my seat by the window
Boys in baggy pants
chew gum
and shout at the girls
on their way to school
The old man goes by
wheeling his dog in a shopping cart
A student driver
darts out of Holden Street
and nearly makes a left turn into traffic
Audrey bounces in
from across the street
and greets her customers
with a smile as fresh as a hot bagel
The sun breaks through the heavy sky
and I am grateful
for familiar things
c 1997 Flatiron Press
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Email Joe at: manningfamily@rcn.com. |
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