My Sunburned, Stock Car Summer Part 2

                                        Muskogee's First 15 cent Hamburger Stand

Back to the story of the summer after high school graduation.  When I visited Muskogee last week for the Class 70th Birthday Party I got a chance to visit with my nephew, Don, and his son Brett.  By a stroke of luck Brett is quite the champion stock car driver and Joan, Don's mom, used to write all the stories about the races for the local paper back in the late sixties.  Don had a book of all her newspaper stories with pictures that brought back lots of memories.  So on with my story where I left off.

A powder Puff Derby at the stock car races was one where females drove the cars.  Since a couple of my classmates had built a car they thought it would be great if I drove it for them in the Powder Puff race. I thought that was pretty brave of them - what if I wrecked it?  They did not seem to be worried about that and I proceeded to see what I needed to do to drive it.  Hmm....all I needed as far as the race track was concerned was permission and a release form signed by my parents since I was underage.  No big deal.  

Wrong.  When I approached the subject my Dad kept his hand over his mouth so Mother did not see him laughing as she started gasping for breath.  I wasn't sure whether she was having a heart attack or she was so upset she could not breathe. When she was able to breath again it was the upset part that I was so stupid to think there was anything cool about driving a stock car. If you ever had a parent who started sentences with the phrase "I did not raise you to....etc.etc." you can imagine the discussion.  Later when I said something to Dad about it I got the usual phrase "You know how your Mother is."  I think he would have liked to have seen me drive the stock car.

But somehow in all the stock car driving talk in our hot rod hangout garage a boy a few years older than I, Danny Borovitz, asked me if I would like to go to the stock races on a Friday night.  He crewed on a car and said the wives and girlfriends of the driver and the other crew members would pick me up at 6:30 that Friday night. 

Good Old Rollers

Now that did present a few problems.  On the rare occasion I had a date and did not get done at the swimming pool until 6:00 there was a problem with my hair.  If you look back at pictures of the mid-sixties you will notice the very bouffant hairstyles.  My lifelong horrible hair required washing, rolling on big rollers, sitting under a hairdryer for thirty minutes and then backcombing and lots of spray.  This did not happen getting off work at 6:00 and going out at 6:30.  The only answer was to fix my hair as usual in the morning, pray the wind did not blow at thirty miles an hour, chase all the children out of the pool by 5:30 and hope no one decided to try to drown in water deeper than four feet. If all went well I was good to go out on a date.

Danny crewed on Tom Laster's stock car and Tom's wife, Judy picked me up each Friday night.  The grandstand was filled with thousands of people every Friday night.  We sat in a boxed area of the grandstands right in the center of the track cheering Tom on.  Back in the day Tom Laster was one of the best driver's with one of the fastest cars.  After the races we would meet the guys at the beer distributorship where they kept the car.  The guys would have a beer or two (I did not drink - then), rehash the races and then Danny would take me home. Of course Mother was not happy with me hanging out at Thunderbird Speedway and gave me a lecture every Friday night when I got home. Oh well, nothing new.  Thinking back now I don't remember ever going out with Danny except to the races but became great friends.

Thunderbird Speedway as it is today

Last weekend when we were home Marshell and I went out to the Fairgrounds where Thunderbird Speedway is/was.  Muskogee no longer has a fair and all the old buildings sit vacant except for a couple the city is using. The Speedway closed in 2003 when it was condemned and although a couple of people have purchased it and tried to revive it they have not been successful.  I could almost hear the roar of the engines and the crowd as I walked around and took pictures of it as it stands today.  Being a preservation person I wanted to cry as it meant so much to the town back in it's day.

We also drove out to what was Meadowbrook Country Club, now Eagle Crest Golf Course.  Fifty years have wiped out all of what was once there.  The pool is gone and the clubhouse both of which held a lot of memories of my first real job.  Muskogee was a great town to grow up in. Every town has it's good and bad, ups and downs but Muskogee had a lot of things to do, very,very good schools, great people and I am glad that I got to spend my first nineteen years there. Through my life I have lived a lot of different places but Muskogee, no matter how much it changes will always be home.

                            Meadowbrook Pool Used To Be Here 

Mother spent most of the summer pouring over the Stephens College Handbook with all the rules and regulations. She and I drove up to Columbia, Missouri one Monday on my day off and took a tour of the college.  The campus was beautiful with old buildings covered in ivy but the rule book made it sound like I was going off to a nunnery. She was glowing with the prospect of very strict hours and all the do's and don'ts.  I tried very hard not to think about the end of the summer and leaving home.

The Birthday Bash

Class of 64



The very last thing I need to be doing today or even this week is to be taking the time to write a story.  If I did have the time to write it should be the second part to my story about the summer after graduation but we came home last night from a weekend that can best be described as spending three days in a big warm hug. Maybe if I put the weekend down on paper I can move on to doing what I should be doing this week.

This weekend my Senior Class had a birthday party since this is the year we all turned seventy.  Sounds rather silly but we started the birthday party thing when we all turned fifty.  One of our class mates had been having his annual fortieth birthday party for ten years and on what he called his tenth annual fortieth birthday party, we all decided to join in with him. Even with class reunions every five years it seemed like sixty-five was a milestone and another party ensued.  Turning seventy sounded like another great excuse for party time. If there is one thing the Muskogee High School Class of 1964 knows how to do it is how to have a great time.

Arriving at the La Quinta Inn and Suites, headquarters for everything, we were greeted by the night manager who told us no we could not plug in our electric car which we had done on previous visits. There were a few moments of silence, Marshell was looking grim and then the manager laughed and told us he was only kidding.  So the laughter began instantly.  The party planners had a conference room filled with the green and white high school colors and enough snacks to feed an army.
Naturally there were drinks to go along with that.

Classmates arrived, even some that had moved away during the school years and graduated in other locations.  They decided not to make name tags since no one is ever sure who will actually show up and many tags were left from the last reunion.  It is really fun to have people walk into the room that you have not seen for years and try to guess who they are.  Regular reunion attendees are easy but those who come for the first time in years or the first time ever make for a real challenge.  After all these years there are a times a voice you hear or the way someone moves that instantly tells you who they are. If all else fails, just go introduce yourself and find out.

A funny part of Friday evening when it was rather late and a lot of people had slipped off to bed.  Ten of us were sitting around and a wife of a classmate picked up a yearbook and started reading what everyone wrote under their Senior picture.  She did not attend school with us and inquired about some of the activities that people had listed under their Senior picture.  Lots of laughter about many of the things that people had posted in the yearbook that they did not even know what it was or that they even participated in them. Did some people just put down anything on those ten lines to fill in?  Did those with nothing under their picture just not care or were absent that day? Funny how things that seemed so important then, like having lots of activities under your picture in the yearbook, don't matter now.

Saturday morning after free breakfast in the hotel that lasted a couple of hours it was off to beautiful Honor Heights Park for a picnic. The park, all 132 acres of it, is more beautiful now than it ever has been since it was established in 1909.  It was the sight of school and company picnics, family reunions, the place to drive through night or day on it's hilly winding road.  It was famous for it's rose gardens and now azaleas and spectacular Christmas lights. It was the place to go swim or to see if a Volkswagon could really float in one of the five ponds. The park is as much a part of our growing up as school was.

Saturday night we were picked up by a trolley and whisked off to a sport's bar/restaurant in town.  More classmates we had not seen showed up to make the weekend more special.  There was a band in one room playing music that we did not relate to and recorded music for the dance floor which tended to be for country two-steppers.  Didn't take long to flood the floor with good old swing dancers and the music changed to the Twist. Too bad the trolley came to pick up the old folks when we were just getting started.

Back at the motel we were informed by the organizing committee that we had to play some games because they had door prizes to give away. No details will be given on the Plunger Game. All I will say is that most seventy year old people would not have participated but we are no normal seventy year old people.  Chair volleyball was exciting with the ball bouncing off the walls and lights.  Good thing the night manager was off duty to help oversee the game.  Actually I think he was one of the ball servers.  Like he said, his job was to make sure we had a good time.

Chair Volleyball

The very best part of the weekend was the group of classmates. At breakfast Saturday morning one of the girls said to me that she enjoyed reading my stories but that they made her sad. That was a surprise as I work very hard to make them entertaining - where did she get sad?  She said she was jealous because I had so much fun in high school and she did not.  I was really just a little surprised as she was one of those girls that I wished I was like.  She was popular and had lots of friends. I told her she was one of those people that I looked up to and wished I could be like her.  That my stories may seem funny and lots of fun but that they are just my way of masking all the insecurities and shyness that I lived with. Might be better to say, the insecurities and shyness we all had. 

Another girl said no one even knew or remembered her from high school.  Wrong - I remember her as being very cute and shy.  A boy told a story about his childhood that was pretty unbelievable that none of us ever knew.  There was a discussion about just who had the most dysfunctional family and mine did not seem nearly as bad as I thought. Another boy said how much in love he was with me and another girl but always thought he was too poor to ask either of us out. Thank heavens we have reached a stage in life where we can actually admit to our feelings to each other about the hardest years of growing up.  

One of the most important things I have learned in the fifty-two years since we graduated is that the classmates that I spent twelve years of my life with and many reunions have become family.  I did not ever meet many of my relatives for whatever reason and family dinners at holidays after growing up usually did not go well.  Moving around in my adult life I made a lot of friends but soon lost track of them without bring there to share current happenings with them.  How can they not be family when you grew up with them, spent eight hours a day for nine months of every year with them and shared all the memories of activities and events.

One of the funny moments of the weekend I shared with Robert who has always been the glue that holds the class together.  He and some other people were watching football at the hotel on Saturday afternoon.  One of the couples proudly announced that their fiftieth wedding anniversary was coming up.  I looked at Robert and asked him if he and I added up all our own marriages could we come up with fifty years. It no longer matters whether you are rich or poor, many times married, if you were a cheerleader or played football (well, maybe that still matters), fat or thin or whether your life is going well or badly.  We can get together and make everyone feel better because we are family.