I was on Facebook last night checking out some of the posts and comments being made by my friends there when I noticed a comment made to my brother-in-law who, obviously, is also on Facebook. Jimmy (my BIL) had finally signed up and posted a profile picture, and a friend of his from high school commented on it, telling him it was good to see him again and mentioning that there was a class reunion in the works. Then he posted the link to the web site set up by the reunion committee for Jimmy to check out. Since Jimmy and I went to the same high school and graduated in the same class, it would also be my reunion, so I decided to check it out.
I should note at this point that not only did Jimmy and I go to the same high school, we both enlisted in the same branch of the service at the same time; he also got stationed at my base, got assigned to my flight, was assigned as my roommate, and then turned around and married my sister. I’m never gonna get rid of him! (Just kidding, Jimmy! You know I love ya!)
So I spent the better part of an hour checking out the web site for the reunion and the profiles of the class members who had signed up and put their information there. I did it, too, signing up and putting a little bit of information about me there purely for the hell of it. There was a list of alumni who had passed away since we graduated, and I was shocked and saddened to see a friend of mine listed. (You were a cute, sweet girl, Jeanne, and I liked you a lot more than you realized. RIP, my friend.)
Ever since then I’ve been thinking about my high school, my classmates, the things that happened to me in high school, and whether or not I have any interest in going to the reunion. To be honest, I’ve been trying for the better part of 24 hours to come up with a reason why I should go to the reunion, and I just can’t think of one. There were 300+ kids in my graduating class, and I can think of only three of them that I’d genuinely like to see again. One of them is dead, one of them is Jimmy who I see every time I visit my parents, and the third one is Nancy, a girl in my English class who was the only one who ever really understood the stories I wrote for our English projects.
At this point a little background history is in order.
I grew up in a small town outside of Richmond, Virginia called Highland Springs. We moved to Highland Springs in 1966 when I started 4th grade and lived there until 1972 when my family moved to Raleigh, North Carolina. As with most small towns, the town revolved around the high school – all you heard in elementary school and in junior high school (not middle school, but junior high school) was, “You’ll need to know this for when you get to THE HIGH SCHOOL!” or, “You’ll be glad you did this when you get to THE HIGH SCHOOL!” I was in Band starting in 5th grade, so I heard that a lot. And with good reason – the school was everything everyone said it was going to be. I got lucky and was able to go to the high school starting in 9th grade, because the 9th grade was moved back to the high school for the first time since the early sixties.
So what made this school, Highland Springs High School, so great? Two words: school spirit. The town may have revolved around the high school, but the high school revolved around its baseball, football, and track teams, and the student body was 100% behind them as well. Students went to the pep rallys on Fridays before the big game because they wanted to cheer the team on and encourage them to win, and the members of the football team all wore their jerseys to school on game days. And the rules of the school were different, too – girls wore skirts, period, and guys wore slacks, period. Not jeans, but slacks. And there was absolutely NO smoking on campus – get caught smoking in the boy’s or girl’s room and you were suspended for at least two days. Off campus lunches? Forget it – get caught sneaking back onto school grounds and you were facing suspension, expulsion if it was your third offense. And lastly, boys did not wear hats indoors. I learned this one the hard way my first week in the school, and I never forgot it.
The high school I transferred to when my family moved to North Carolina was the polar opposite. I went from a small-town high school with tons of good, old-fashioned school spirit and pride to an urban, almost big-city high school where the kids looked at you like you had two heads if you mentioned “school spirit” to them. The kids went to the pep rallies to get out of going to class, forget about encouraging the team to win. The only time you saw a football jersey was if you went to the game. And not only were the students allowed to smoke on campus, the school even had a smoking court set up to give the students a place to smoke! Off-campus lunches were approved for seniors at the time I got there; a few years later they were approved for everyone. And as for what the students wore – well, pretty much whatever they wanted. Girls and guys alike wore jeans; I think I was one of maybe a dozen boys who wore slacks to school, and I caught grief for it more than once. About the only thing that would get you sent home to change clothes at this high school – which shall remain nameless, thank you – was if you wore something with an obscene word printed on it. Other than that, pretty much everything else was okay. Bare midriffs on the girls? No problem. No bras? No sweat. Jeans all ripped to hell and full of holes? No big deal.
So take a sophomore transferring from a small town high school and put him in this kind of school, and just what do you think is gonna happen?
I never really felt like I was accepted by the students at this school, and I guess part of it is my fault. I’ve been a loner most of my life, and my really close friends have been few. I was never really good at sports (nor did I care to be) so I wasn’t a jock; I wasn’t any kind of mental giant so I wasn’t a geek, either. I didn’t fit into any kind of “clique” or group at the school, and I was kinda proud of that. My first year, 10th grade, at the new school was kinda tough, but the 11th grade was much better. I had gotten involved in the Drama Club and acted in a few plays, I was in the marching band which was doing okay for itself, and I was a Student Bus Driver and got the route that I wanted for my senior year. All in all my senior year was, I thought, gonna be a good one. I had the three things I cared about most in school all sewn up – band, drama, and my bus. Yep, my senior year was gonna be just great!
Boy, was I in for one great big mother-lovin’ surprise.
To start off with, our band director got a bug up his ass when the marching band of one of the local high schools got selected to march in the Rose Bowl Parade, and he figured if they could do it, so could he. So he came up with the idea of Band Camp, which was to be held in the summer of 1974. Only problem with that was that I was BIG into Civil Air Patrol, and had been selected to attend Cadet Officer’s School at Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama that same summer. I beat out 15 other cadets across the state for this school, and I was going to the school no matter what. When the band director told us about Band Camp near the end of the school year of 1974 I told him that I wasn’t going to be there and I told him why. He then told me that if I didn’t go to Band Camp I couldn’t march in the band during the football season. So I told him, “Okay, so I won’t march.” He then told me that maybe I could learn the routines during practice immediately after school; nope, sorry, Teach, I drive a bus for which I get paid, and I’d have to give that up in order to make practice. So I guess I won’t march. (Halfway through the season the director asked me to come march with the band, since having a Senior not marching made him look bad. I told him to go pound sand.)
So much for my senior year in Band.
At the end of the 1974 school year our Drama Teacher, Samuel Leland Garner, (whom everyone just adored including me) announced that he was leaving teaching and going back to school to get his Doctorate in Drama. The school was doing interviews for his replacement while the school year was winding down, and all of us in the Drama club, of which I was the elected Technical Director, were dismayed to hear that one of the applicants, a woman whom I will not name, had made a comment during her interview that in her opinion, “the musical comedy is the bastard form of American theater.” And by the way, the drama department of which she was competing to be the new leader had won awards and was renowned for – guess what! – its musical comedies. We did productions like, “A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum,” “Funny Girl,” and “Bells Are Ringing.” We were absolutely famous for our musical comedies! And, of course, she got the job. And immediately changed the playbill for my senior year, dropping the musical comedy we had planned and announcing that we were going to do “Dracula” instead. Which, by the way, had just been done by North Carolina State University and was a dismal failure. She also announced that we were switching from traditional, “fourth wall” theater to “theater in the round,” and would be adding “The Fantasticks” to the playbill as well. Which would, by the way, involve taking down the Grand Drape (the velour curtain), building bleacher seats on the stage, and painting the wooden stage floor black. Well, that was all just too much for me, so I quit the Drama Club and dropped out of her class.
So much for my senior year in Drama, and so much for my Senior Year as a whole.
I drove my bus, went to my CAP activities, dated my girlfriend, and planned out my upcoming enlistment in the Air Force as soon as I graduated. My senior year was a boring routine of going to class – of which I only had four, all I needed – and sitting in my bus during 6th period, watching the band practice. I couldn’t wait to graduate because I wanted to get the hell out of there that badly. Eleven days after I graduated, I went on active duty with the Air Force and left. I never looked back, until now.
In 2005 the Highland Springs High School Class of 1975 – my class – was planning a 30th Reunion, and I was contacted and asked if I was coming. I replied that reunions were for graduates, and since I never graduated from HSHS I would be doing a disservice to the other graduates if I showed up. I told the woman I was talking to how much I had enjoyed my one year at HSHS and how much I wished I had been able to stay and go the full four years at the school and graduate with my classmates. The Reunion Committee then invited me to the reunion, and during the reunion they presented me with a framed Honorary Diploma from Highland Springs High School and the Class of 1975. The school spirit which had so impressed me in 1972 was still alive and well, and living in the hearts of the Highland Springs High School Class of 1975.
And the high school that I actually graduated from? I’ve never once heard anything from them in 34 years about a reunion or anything else. The diploma that was handed to me on the stage of Memorial Auditorium on June 8, 1975 is sitting in a file cabinet drawer in my computer room, where it’s been since 1975 and will stay until the day I die.
The Honorary Diploma from Highland Springs High School is hanging on my wall to the right of my computer desk, where it’s been since the day I got back from the reunion and will stay until the day I die.
Next year there will be two 35th Reunions going on, one in Richmond and one in Raleigh. Wanna guess which one I’ll be going to?
“Springer born and Springer bred, and when I die I’ll be a Springer dead! Hey! Hoo-rah for Springers, Springers, hoo-rah for Springers, Springers, hoo-rah for Springers, HIGHLAND SPRINGS!”
IHC
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