Family Fun Fact #622-Holiday Get Togethers

Throughout the years, Hula has always enjoyed spending time with family and friends during the holidays. Hula LOVES a good party. In fact, one time she considered changing her middle name to Festiva.

Occasionally, those get togethers include old classmates and childhood friends. Like this elementary school reunion in 1981, her senior year of high school. Or as Hula likes to call it, the Aqua Net Year. It was the best hair...I mean, year...ever.

Old School

The Hula-gen's are all over class reunions these days. Last weekend we attended my elementary school reunion. Yesterday, we took Papa T. and Mama J. to Papa T.'s 57th high school reunion. We drove an hour and a half to a city in Tennessee where the class gathered, passing through the tiny town where they attended school so many years ago. There were twenty one students in Papa T.'s graduating class, and his was a big class. There were six seniors in the group that graduated before them. Ten members of his class gathered yesterday, as they've done for the last several years. It was great fun to listen to them swap stories and tell lies on each other. Hubby and I were the youngest people in the room, and we didn't mind at all. We listened to a lot of wisdom and soaked up some character. The grilled shrimp wasn't bad either.


Papa T. grew up in a farm town. It's the kind of town that still has grain bins on the main drag, a little BBQ joint and a handful of homes on the "other side of the tracks". The old storefronts with big glass windows are still there and tell you exactly where the bank, the post office and the hardware store used to be. Not much has changed there in the seventy years since Papa T. trudged to school down dusty dirt roads in sturdy brown brogans. In his time, everybody farmed, nobody had any money and you ate what you raised. School was important, but it was a level playing field, since no one had fancy clothes or expensive backpacks. People made do with what they had.

The school he graduated from still stands. It's closed now and sits abandoned at the edge of town. It housed elementary grades AND high school students. It was actually built when Papa T. was in third grade. The original school burned one day while the students were in class. Papa T. remembers being ushered out of the building and a frantic search for a missing first grader who was later found at home two miles away. He remembers spending the next two years scattered around town where the grades were divided among the local Baptist, Methodist and Church of Christ churches. Classes were held in Sunday school rooms and sanctuaries with dividers placed in the main aisle, separating grades. By the fourth grade, he was in the brand new building where he would spend the next nine years with the same small group of kids. This is their senior picture.

Papa T. is the third from the left on the back row. Apparently, he and his classmates were close. A symptom of being a small group, I suppose. They still seem to enjoy each other's company.

This lady looks like a Hollywood glamour queen in her yearbook photo.

This fellow helped Papa T. to get into a fair amount of trouble way back when.And this guy used to keep a $2 bottle of Four Roses bootleg liquor bought out of the the back door of the local funeral home hidden in the corn crib. The boys slipped out there for a snort every now and then.

There were tales about old cars and watermelon stealin' and stolen kisses. And most interesting of all, they each stood up individually to give everyone an update on what had happened to them in the last year. Most of them told of their RV trips and their grandchildren's achievements. One lady remarried after being single for 26 years. Papa T. was last, and I held my breath a little when he stood to speak. I looked at Hubby and made eye contact with Mama J. They were nervous, too. It's been a terrible year for Papa T.. Losing your eyesight and a grown child to suicide are not things you want to share with the whole world, but everyone in the room was somewhat aware of his situation. His blindness had been an elephant in the room up to that point. He rose slowly, his bad knee causing him to grimace a little. He smiled and as he always does when he has to deal with something difficult, he met it head on. He talked about his eye problems as a young man and explained that his last surgery was the last operation possible for him and that it didn't really do anything to stop the blindness. I caught the tear that started to squeeze out of my right eye before it slid down my cheek. He explained how life sometimes hands us obstacles and we just "have to deal with them". And then he said something that took me by surprise. He told his fellow classmates how much he cared about them and that the one good thing about blindness was that in his eyes, they would never grow any older. That they were standing still in time to a certain degree and that he liked that. They liked it, too. They all smiled and then rolled with laughter when he broke into a story about him and James on the court square with a loud muffler and a police officer.

I breathed a sigh of relief and marveled over the way he had handled the situation. And I smiled at the warmth those folks still feel for each other after 57 years. How remarkable. I found it especially comforting on the heels of a national day of remembrance for the folks lost in the worst terrorist acts on American soil. While there is still turmoil and hate around the world, in its small corners there are folks who love each other and nurture each other through the years. They toil the soil, walk down Main street and keeps things rolling in small town America, generation after generation. Hubby and I enjoyed our visit with the Class of '52. Those Puryear Hornets gave us quite the education yesterday.

When Those Franklin Lancers Fall In Line

This past weekend we had a class reunion. Not the usual high school reunion, but an elementary school reunion. That’s right, the Franklin Elementary class of 1978 and its teachers gathered to reminisce and catch up with each other. The idea grew out of a thrown together dinner a few of us had last year at a local restaurant. It was more fun than a barrel of preschoolers on a Mountain Dew high, and you can read about it here. In fact, you should probably read it to understand why we have such a strong attachment to our grade school and each other. Essentially, we grew up in a Mayberry like atmosphere that’s pretty unheard of these days. Some of us don’t want to let go of that memory. And that’s okay.

Madd Maxx, M. and me started planning the event last fall, and it culminated with Saturday’s wing ding. For months, Maxx emailed and called from Louisiana with ideas. He would text over a worry about food or RSVPs, and I would text back “Chill” or “Dude, it will be fine.” He (thankfully) reminded me to check on various things, and I did. Well, except for that CD player I was supposed to bring to the reunion. He took it upon himself to locate each and every one of our classmates, spending who knows how much time on the phone and computer. He’s a whiz at tracking people down. He should work for the CIA. Or a repo company. M. works at a bank in our hometown, so she knows where people have been hiding out for the last three decades, too. She collected reservations and money. Together, we managed to gather together many of our classmates and teachers for a Labor Day weekend reunion.

There were people there whom I hadn’t seen in thirty-one years. We all looked a little older than we did in 1978.

For four and a half hours Saturday, we laughed and told stories of spankings and classroom antics. We laughed at ourselves and our childhood goofiness. And for a little while we got to relive our innocence and the simplicity of a time when our biggest dilemma was whether or not mama was going to let us buy a metal Tom and Jerry lunchbox. Or whether the boy or girl sitting next to us was going to circle “yes” or “no”.

As I was reviewing the pictures from the reunion, I realized a common theme: Madd Maxx. He’s in most of them. Now, when I’m taking pictures I just look for a good moment to capture. I don’t really think about how many I’m taking of one person or another. And there were plenty of photos of smiles.

And laughter.
And storytelling.

But over and over again, there was Maxx.
During the school trivia game.

And the picture discussions.
With teachers.
And fellow classmates.
He was all sit by me.
And do you remember.
And while I think most of us had a really good time during that walk down memory lane, for him it was even better. It was a chance to relieve a very special time that came to a traumatic end when he had to move out of state immediately after our 1978 graduation. While he’s always stayed in touch with me and a few other childhood buddies, he has missed the 35 other kids he made memories with so long ago. It gave him a chance to catch up and gave the rest of us an opportunity to stop and appreciate how good we had it back then or finally realize how difficult of a time some of our classmates had at home then even though they didn’t show it. I now know life wasn’t all Mayberry all the time for some kids.

So Maxx, thanks for the fun during the last few months. I love ya’ more than my luggage. And thanks to my fellow Franklin Lancers for giving me an evening of laughs and smiles. More importantly, thanks for the nine years of friendship and life lessons.

Together Again-Part 2

Our grade school reunion was a blast. We spent four hours swapping memories, slapping our knees and having a rip roaring good time. It was waaay better than our high school reunion last year. Nobody was trying to impress anybody. Nobody was sucking in his gut, and everyone ordered steak instead of pretending that he preferred salad. I haven't laughed that much in years. And look, here's the picture to prove it. Remind me to get my teeth cleaned soon. And to wax my upper lip. The evening was rich with shared memories of childhood antics and classroom hi jinks. Spending year after year in the classroom with the same forty people built strong bonds that have stood the test of time. For me, it was if we had magically stepped back in time. Everybody looked a little older but seemed to be the same as they were thirty years ago. I feel fortunate to have grown up in the country with those folks. Those truly were the Wonder Years for me. My husband and some of my friends find that unique because they didn't have that kind of experience. They grew up in larger school districts where they were shuffled around each year and didn't get a chance to make more than just a few close friends. Only recently did I realize how unique our situation really was.

After dinner Friday night, we began telling stories on each other. Like the time our fourth grade teacher tied Madd Maxx to his chair with a jump rope because Maxx wouldn't stay in his seat. Or the time several of the boys got a spanking all at the same time. Or how about when L. was bragging about her monkey bar skills and E. and I laughed our butts off when she fell face forward in the sand and was knocked out cold..and then we thought she was dead and we'd get in trouble for laughing. Story after story rolled around the crowd, causing us to laugh uncontrollably (okay, some of us were in control. Not me.), hold our aching sides and wipe tears from our eyes. Eventually, we got around to asking where is SHE now or whatever happened to HIM, the folks who were a little odd, the folks who were on the lowest rung of the grade school social ladder, which in backwoods middle America was pretty low AND pretty ridiculous. While our group was unique in that we were so close, we weren't without a class system, and we didn't escape the urge to pick on the weakest members. I've always considered it to be normal teasing and probably pretty harmless. I mean, we all got ribbed or picked on about something every now and then, right? It just made us tougher, helped to shape us into stronger people who know the world isn't always fair. Right? But in the middle of all the ha ha ho ho hee heeing and giggling about the time F. stabbed me in the chest with a pencil and how weird F. always was, M. looked at me and said, "Do you remember what we called her?"

"No."

"Flea bag."

"Oh."

And suddenly I didn't feel like laughing because I remembered. Yes, we called her "flea bag", and for the first time ever I let myself think about how awful that must have been for her. Awful, because that's such a horrible thing to call someone. Awful, because in the immediate years after grade school I learned about her mother's suicidal tendencies, her poverty and her father's sexually abusive treatment of her. It's what made her behave so oddly when we were kids. It's why her clothes were often the wrong size or downright ratty. It's why she told scary stories in the restroom about whippings with belts that left marks. It's why she tried too hard to fit in. Somehow I had forgotten the nickname the class pinned on her. Hmm. Forgotten or suppressed? Did wiping out the memory of calling her "flea bag" make it easier for me to live with the knowledge of the abuse in her family and how badly I and three dozen other children treated her all those years ago?

Another funny story jarred me out of my somber moment Friday night, and I went on laughing at the next tale. I left the restaurant reminded of many old memories, but one in particular that I can't quite shake, the memory of F. No one seemed to know where she is now or what happened to her. The last thing I heard many years ago was that she was living in a nearby college town, prostituting herself. I don't know if that was true. I hope not. I hope somewhere along the way she found hope and peace and friends who treat her well. And wherever you are F. I'm sorry, really sorry for the way we all behaved. I'm sorry I ever called you..gulp..."flea bag". Very. Very. Sorry. And F. I won't let myself forget that again.

Oh, and while I'm at it, I'm sorry L. for laughing when you fell off the monkey bars. And I'm especially sorry for laughing and pulling that bandanna off your head that morning on the school bus when you overslept and were trying to hide the fact that your hair was all matted up. Really, I am.

Hey, maybe we're not EXACTLY the same as we used to be.

Together...Again

Long, long ago, in a far away land, a very rural land, a group of villagers sent their children to this place for an education. For nine years those 40 children spent their days together, learning how to read, write and play dodge ball. Some of the children were short. Some were tall. Some were smart, and some rode the short bus. Most fell somewhere in between, but they were always together. Each year they moved to a new classroom, got a new teacher and learned new things, but they were always together. They played games like kickball and H-O-R-S-E.
They got spankings. They wrote sentences. They played on the basketball teams and made cheerleader….together. They kissed each other behind the bleachers, shared each other’s lunches and smoked two, count ‘em two Kool cigarettes on the playground…together. They did the President’s Physical Fitness Challenge, learned their multiplication tables and had an RC Cola and Moon Pie party…together. They rode school buses and took field trips to gather leaves and eat Dairy Queen treats together. From Kindergarten through eighth grade these 40 boys and girls were side by side not realizing how close they had grown.

In the year 1978 these boys and girls donned prairie dresses and blue tuxedos and graduated together from the little learning place in the country. They danced the night away to songs by the Jackson 5 and Leo Sayer and promised to always stay together. They scattered like the four winds to big dangerous places called high schools but came back together in 1981.
Alas, it would be the last time many of them would see each other for many years. Life in the village was hard. The children, now grown, had responsibilities. Time slipped away and before they knew it, thirty years had passed.

Then one day, one classmate who lived in the far away village called Louisiana, emailed another classmate and said, “I’m coming home during Labor Day weekend. Let’s get together.” And that classmate said, “Hey, I’ll call a few old classmates and see if they can meet us.” And she did. And they did…get together. Eleven of the classmates gathered again…after thirty years. These folks came.
And now they look like this.
They laughed. And laughed.
And laughed. And it was like time stood still. Like they had never parted. After four hours of stories and laughter and pictures they hugged and promised to get together again soon. Because they realized what a special bond they had, a bond that most people don’t have. They realized that they had grown up in a very special place during a very special time and had forged very special friendships that have a fairy tale like quality. They realized they will always..in some way….be together.