How Lucky I Am To Be A Baby Boomer - Senior Year

Class of 64 wondering what to do next

It is time to get back to the stories about the Muskogee High School Class of 64.  Considering that our class consisted of five hundred students that blended together in the tenth grade from two different junior high schools it was hard for me to know all the ornery things everyone did.  Remembering them is a another thing.

What has really been fun for me is that in the last few months fellow classmates have sent me comments on the stories I have written.  I fully realize that there are some for whom high school does not have a lot of happy memories.  Life gets very complicated, memories of good friends and good times fade but it is fun to look back and have a good laugh at the silly things we did.

Pat the Instigator

After a recent story I wrote I received a comment from a classmate about something that he was involved in the eight grade.  I was really surprised at the story coming from him.  He was a good student, all-conference football player, cute and very "popular". Here is Pat Ragsdale's story as he wrote it.  

"In May of 1959 Kurt Keidel and I were in the 4th hour shop class at West Jr. High.  Kurt said that at Central High and over at Abbott"s Reformatory (aka-AR, the other Jr. High) they were having "book drops".  Book drops were set at a certain time and everyone would drop a school book on the classroom floor.  It was not a protest or anything like that.  Sounded like a pretty good idea to us so we cut up some slips that simply said, "Book Drop at 2:15"  Surprisingly to us our high jenks took off like wildfire with other students enthusiastically passing the word. I knew this was a big mistake but we did not have any control of it. The next day over the intercom Principal Eliand Rainwater announced they knew who it was and they should immediately report to the Principal's office.  Both Kurt and I gritted our teeth but did not confess fearing that we would be thrown out of school or worse have a painful session with the "Board of Education".  It was a lark, we weren't protesting anything.

School was let out for summer vacation and we were not caught.  Some four years later Jim Little, our high school student body President, disclosed the conspiracy committed by Kurt and I at our Senior Class Diner. I suppose he figured that statue of limitations had finally run.  I guess I should have known better but am glad we did not get caught."

There were a lot of stories that came to light at the Senior dinner.  This one I did not remember especially since it came from Mr. Nice Guy, Pat Ragsdale.  However, seeing him at class reunions there is still that little twinkle in his eye showing he is still up for anything.

The other story came from a girl who was in speech class so anything from those students does not surprise me. I remember all the silly stuff that went on in those classes, but I had forgotten how much fun Virginia Shaver was.  She was always smiling and one of those people you just felt good being around.  She wrote:

"I think I needed some credit, probably to graduate, so a couple of us speech students had to do a little radio speech bit to advertise some businesses in town.  Good grief, what a silly disaster!  I could say anything right and then just giggle about it.  Stupid, stupid...not a good student in anything except art and maybe English.  Now at age 70, we are so much wiser.  I'm still kinda silly but by choice".

Silly Virginia

I can imagine the Radio Speech teacher, none other than Jack Gregory,
trying not to laugh and look stern but busting a gut to keep from laughing himself. Personally I would like someone to tell me the story of the "Secret Clubs" that occurred during our senior year.  All I can remember about them was that there were two separate ones consisting of boys.  There was something about rental houses, expose articles on the front page of the local paper and lots of senior boys coming to school for weeks in shirts and ties.  I think the shirts and ties kept them out of real trouble as they looked so respectable. Besides in the 1960's it was all just innocent fun.  Right guys? Then there were the gatherings at Honor Heights Park.  This is the site of the now famous Azalea Festival - no wonder they close the park at night!

I never drank beer or liquor in high school.  It just wasn't something I ever thought about doing.  Not many of my girl friends drank (that I knew of) and I think I knew my Mother would kill me if I ever did and got caught.  No doubt I would have been dead if I had ever been caught backing up to Ray and Nora's Bar on Friday afternoon to buy beer for some of the boys.  Seems like girls could buy beer at the age of eighteen. Hmm - I was only seventeen but Nora bought medicine from my Dad and thought he was a nice man.  If she ever told my Dad she sold beer to me he never mentioned it and probably got a good laugh about it.

One of these days I will run out of high school stories to tell and move on to college and the the silly life adventures that followed.  It is very interesting to me that the people I grew up with and some from college make it seem like the years have never passed.  My class had a reunion at the ten and twenty year mark, then we started having one every five years and at age fifty, sixty-five and in a few months, seventy, we have class birthday parties.  I have only missed a couple events since the twentieth.  At every reunion it is rather like a big family reunion.   You can hear a voice and instantly know who it is even if they look a little different after fifty years. It takes at least three days for every reunion and then there is still so much more to say and do.

We may all be a little wiser like Virginia said but we are all still just as silly.  Most important of all, friends, and maybe better friends than we were in high school.