The reunion of the Ruston (La.) High School Class of 1959 was, I imagine, very much like the 50th reunions of countless high school classes.
At the last reunion I attended, the 30th, the erosive qualities of time and gravity had begun to alter the landscape of the class of ’59, but now they had plowed deep furrows and dragged away our youth. I could have passed a lie detector test that I had never seen some of those people in my entire life.
(Memo to class reunion planners: Make the name tags really big, so people with fading eyesight aren’t so obvious in trying to read a name as they squeeze a hand and say something like, “Hey, Robby, of course I remember you.”)
I did not keep in touch with my classmates after I went away to college and essentially left my hometown for good. Many classmates remained in town or nearby, but over the years when I returned to visit, I spent most of the time with my brother and sister and with the diminishing number of other kinfolks.
The reunion events were limited: a tour of the old alma mater – it has been renovated and expanded, but it was more recognizable than some of the alumni – and a party at the home of a class member.
In the weeks leading up to the reunion, it was natural to try to recall what school felt like at the time.
Racial segregation was still the order of the day, so our high school was all white. It was the only white high school, though, and as small as it was (about 110 in our class), it comprised a wide variety of people.
There were the kids who rode in from the country on big yellow buses. Many of the boys took classes in agriculture and shop and were distinguished by their blue corduroy Future Farmers of America jackets. Many of the girls took home ec and wore dresses that had been sewn by their mothers or had come from the bargain rack or a catalog. (There were exceptions, of course; no group is totally homogenous.)
There were the town kids – the children of business people and professors at the college – who constituted the school’s social elite.
There were, of course, the athletes who were a group in themselves and who had, at least for a time, acceptance by the elites.
The largest group was no group at all, that faceless middle that fell into that category simply because it did not fall into any other. I was one of those.
So, in some sense, the gathering of the Class of ’59 was only partly a reunion, since for some the only unity had been in being a member of that particular year’s graduating class.
The high school years may be more difficult for girls than it is for boys. Our school, for example, had sororities, which by their very nature exclude people.
It started, I think, with one sorority – the upper tier as it were – followed by formation of another sorority, which I guess was composed of those who hadn’t quite made the first cut. They were pretty exclusive themselves, so during my high school years, a group of girls who had not been invited to join either of the other groups formed their own club..
But some girls – and boys – were rejected by everyone, even that faceless middle.
There was a girl I remembered who always seemed as frightened as a cornered animal. She was obviously poor. Her clothes had the appearance of hand-me-downs, and I am not sure they were always clean. She did not seem to have any friends; I don’t recall seeing her chatting with anyone in the halls or in the lunchroom. She never participated in class. I remember a time or two trying to start a conversation with her, but by then she must have been so wounded that she was suspicious of everyone.
I hadn’t thought of her for at least 50 years, but she came to mind as I tried to recall those years. I wondered what had happened to her.
The reunion committee had done a good job of tracking down the members of the Class of ’59, and they handed out a sheet with the names and addresses of the living and a list of the departed.
On the entire list there were only two names that had no information at all. Hers was one of them. No one knew her then; no one knew her now.
Contract the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com
