School Story:
I throughly enjoyed our high school years. Memories of football, basketball, gymnastics and track events. Families together cheering for team, school and community.
We pushed the boundaries in many ways. Establishing our uniqueness among classmates, school administration and teachers. There were several houses where parties were available any time along with the ever present grocery shopping bag collecting beer bottle caps, the occasional pop bottle cap and for those that smoked, we collected 4 shopping bags of empty cigarette packages by the time the 'big day' came. Bob Curtis and I have discussed the quantities of shopping bags of bottle caps and our memories are different. He remembers 4 bags of bottlecaps, I remember 12 or 13. We all know that Bob has a reputation for his 'unique' memory, so in respect I defer. My job that day was to collect the signals given from 'monitors' stationed at the ends of the halls, both top and bottom so that no teachers or administrators were watching and give the all clear signal. When the 4 to 13 bags of caps hit the floor, the noise was so loud that teachers and students erupted from classrooms with puzzled looks, wondering what had happened. I blended into my classroom, came down the stairs toward the office to witness something I thought I'd never see, Wes Edigar pushing a custodial dust broom trying to clean-up a mountain of bottle caps. His look was one of dismay. As he pushed the broom just a few inches the bottle caps flowed over the top. The caps covered 80% of the down stairs lobby and they appeared to be 3 to 4 inches thick. Careful planning and collecting for much of our high school life culminated in disrupting the last day of school! We were out and free at last!
I remember wrecking Tami's Thunderbird, being forever tagged "Uh-Uhh", dances and parties and trips to the beach, the Northfork, Bend, HooDoo and journeys on every road and highway around Salem. We were with Weibe one night over on Lancaster, Curtis was there and a second car, maybe Ralph, but I'm not sure. We engaged a car full of guys that looked maybe like new guys from boot camp, they chased us for 45 minutes on the highways, Weibe keeping enough distance and as we approached a dip in the road, knowing that this dip would damage a car if they didnt know about it especially at the speeds we were traveling, we slowed to bait them into increasing their speed, succeeding we gained enough room between us to duck into a neighborhood that Weibi's parents owned a house, rollup the garage door, drive in, shut it and watch until we were sure we could leave with out being detected.
I remember armory dances where we saw many of the bands made famous during the sixties of our time and warm up beer at the The Pit. Don't forget about The Shack....no not todays popular book. John Martin, maybe you'll fill in the blanks on this one?
Oh, and one more flash from the past...on the blues station here in Las Vegas, as i think about the upcoming reunion, John Lee Hooker playing Boom Boom Boom, a favorite of the BallyHoo and many other school inspired bands.
What day was complete without a stop at the Arctic and Bob's? We didnt need cell phones then, word traveled like wild fire from car to car to the Arctic to Bob's and a party, a race a challenge to something wild was on and off we went for another adventure.
I remember HiLo Road. Many trips back and forth, wanting to go fast enough to scare really scare me and being more afraid of loosing control. What would my parents think? One night as we came to the west end of HiLo, Gerry Houck and Sally were out of the car, Sally was a little bloody, Gerry said he thought there was one more hill to go over before the end of the line.
Crusin' the gut, great parties, the music that never ended, we rocked and rolled, mostly drank a few beers, ate an endless number of cheese burgers, fries, cokes and milkshakes. Always on the 'look' for our latest 'crush', flirting cause it was so much fun and playing spades and poker for days and hours on end and then did it again night after night, day after day.