Our 50+1 Drake high school reunion is coming up (we caught the Covid bus for our 50th, and here I thought it was a prime number, but I suck at math. Should we join forces with class of 1971?) As I gaze at the photos of my fellow classmates from so long ago, odd feelings arise. I guess that’s probably true for many of us. Seeing all these stilted senior yearbook pages, I realized how I didn’t relate to most of my classmates. Perhaps it was a fear of being bullied. It seems nobody ever talks about that stuff. The overt and covert cruelty of peer pressure. The jockeying for position on the crumbling social ladder.
I was so glad that the Summer of Love steamrollered in and the resulting societal breakdown had begun. I really hated high school. I was also painfully shy, which didn’t help. It was time, and it freed us from the fierce conformity of the 1950s, and early 1960s, which was so constraining. I came from an immigrant family, we didn’t fit into the American suburban culture. And of course, we were poor, so we didn’t, or couldn’t buy into it. A blessing in disguise. I would not trade my untamed childhood years growing up in Forest Knolls for the suburban experience that defines American culture.
So many faces I haven’t seen in 51 years. Daunting. I can’t get over Gail Foster and Andy Giddings with their gleaming helmet hair. You can track societal transition eras via women’s hairdos. It was an enormous cultural leap from 1964 to 1970. Our class photos document ratted 50s style hair encased in Aquanet, permed poodle hair, ironed hair, unfettered hair au naturel. Hair that defied gravity. Hair that wants to run away and join a musical or a rock and roll band. Bangs were a cultural wilderness.
I adored Cheryl Arata who danced with the SF ballet. I couldn’t have survived school without my art class buddies, Mark Adler, cartoonist extraordinaire, and Claudia Seifer, who owned the snarl of distain—who knew she had some pipes? Warren Fairbanks dragged me to the pottery lab to show Eric Ahola a portrait I had painted of him. I about died. Avid rock climber, Eric, who grabbed my new Vasque boot to examine it—with my foot still in it. Awkward flamingo poses ensued.
In 2nd grade, Adair Daley was smitten by Rodney Dugan, stuck in a body cast—who knew he was a brainiac? Must’ve been the wooden ruler he used to scratch himself. Or that Adair who changed her name to Lara, had such a way with words? Doug Emery, a near neighbor flew a hang glider from the crest of Mount Barnabe. I ran screaming down the road to meet the crazy dude. Then, Joe Doyle, and other classmates who made our lives miserable, live on in mythic infamy—for shooting us with rubber bands and lobbing spit wads during Archie Williams’ math classes.
Looking back, it struck me how we were all so marginally regimented and self-isolated in our behavior. We even hung out in different parts of the school. Second corridor gang—Mr. Lucey’s intellectual room—and also where my locker was located. Third corridor, the art rooms! Warren Fairbanks, Jim Brown. Fourth corridor gang—Mrs. McKay’s Beatlemania, poetry, and that peculiar blue Haight Street fog. The Field, the musicians jamming—Trygve on the guitar. The bleachers—smokers and smokers, Kelly and the Narc. The canteen—the straightlaced ones—my idea of heaven was a glimpse of Billy Joe Bianchi and butter rolls.
The little bridge. Dave Guastavno and Ken Bullock, leaning on its rails, like an old B&W photo.. The Little Theater gang. Devonshire Hall—Mr. James was the only teacher who encouraged me to write. The parking lot was practically a scene out of West Side Story—the smokers, the hard guys, hard drugs, souped-up cars, the jocks and the cheerleaders. I floated between hangouts, a voyeur of sorts, but I alway boomeranged back to the art rooms. Home base.
We’re up to page 14 in our yearbook, and I still only recognize a handful of people. I liked Peggy Madigan who could’ve been Zana Darrow’s twin. She was refreshing goofy, like Debbie Dathe—and Sue Barry—once my best friend, but we lost touch. We could uproariously laugh at the dumbest things. Those Irish boys, Tim McDermott and Randy McAtee, whose antics got me busted more than once in study hall. Detention. I will not giggle in class 100 times. Jeff Mays looking like the law in a spaghetti western. The rest of them, I really didn’t know at all. Relative strangers.
I recognized Missy, probably because she was a cheerleader—they were voted in. Popular girls. And then, there’s M, with whom I went to grade school. I was bullied in school—especially during 8th grade. Something I never quite got over. Some of that behavior followed me to high school—I sat at the front of the bus to avoid them. We were pecking order prisoners. I overheard them making fun of my hair, my clothes, how I sat. It was a long journey home to the San Geronimo Valley. I took up hitchhiking to escape their unwanted attention.
So great to see teen photos of smiling Joel Blum—all that light shining behind his eyes, old friend, Taye (Helen) Bostwick, and Ken Bullock with his Tiny Tim hair and wild west bowtie. Taye, or Taydie, who ran off and joined a cowgirl band, died of a drug overdose in Las Vegas. So many Valley folk gone, Scott Huntsman, Scott Weaver, Steve Tristano, Mike Frank. So many of our classmates paid a high price for those drugs. I ran into Carolyn Johnson while teaching a poetry residency at Ukiah high school. I read a poem about Mary Bianchi in Forest Knolls—her son told her about it. She came to school to meet me. We meant to keep in touch, but never did.
What happened to Kathy Briones? We once broke a school track record but it was unofficial, so it didn’t count. I made the mistake of pacing myself with her, we did the four-minute 440 yard dash in one minute, 57 seconds. I was hamstrung for a week. She talked me into singing Greensleeves at a school assembly. I was a wallflower and had severe stage fright, yet we did it. We practiced at her house in Fairfax, and I had to hitch home in the dark. No wheels to Forest Knolls.
But it wasn’t all frivolity and misplaced teenaged angst. I haven’t yet talked about our coming of age and political awareness. We shut down the Marin County draft board. We made the 6’O clock news, and the cover of Time Magazine. But our class president was Michael’s little brother, Jared Rossman. We had deep connections to Berkeley. Sue Barry stole the family Bug and drive us to a rally at Sproul Plaza to hear Abby Hoffman. It was the era of the Free Speech Movement, Vietnam, also part of our legacy. Who holds the stories of those missing in action—there was a darker side of that era: addiction, drugs, suicides, murder. And the miracle stories of those who survived addiction.
If it hadn’t been for Ken Bullock’s insistence, I never would’ve attended any high school reunions. He dragged me kicking and screaming to the tenth reunion, and there I reconnected with my Valley peeps—Dennis, Jeff, Adair. I had a blast at my 20th—despite the fact that I did full body slide down on the floor splits, skidding on a slick heel, while dancing with hoofer, Joel Blum. I was grateful to be limber. Then, by my 30th reunion, I realized most of my angst was in the distant past, that none of it mattered any more. We were all such different people. We had arrived into ourselves. Ready or not.
And the irony is, of course, that my school is no longer my school. We’re longer Drake pirates. Sir Francis Drake High School is now Archie Williams High School. The name change process tore communities apart twice over. Archie’s name didn’t even make it to the first go-round, but thankfully anarchy prevailed and the new name change took. Now we need to heal the community. Archie was my algebra teacher. I learned little of algebra or math, but I learned a whole lot more about the world from Archie. It is a good compromise.
Mose of the people I gravitated towards in high school, turned out to be lifelong friends. Zana, Claudia, Ken, Janice, Dennis, Mark, Katelyn, Randy, Tim, Joel, Toni, D’arcy, Dana, Trygve. True litmus. (I also had friends in the upper and lower grades.) I am truly grateful for Steve Burdett, and the reunion krewe, and all the effort and care they have put into these reunions, making it so inclusive for all of us. Keeping the matrix going. Yet, I resist. Ambivalence is my middle name.
As it turns out, our 50th high school reunion was canceled completely. We’re going for the 55th. Take the fifth. Take a fifth. Enjoy.
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