FCHS '83 Plus Thirty (Part IV)

The schedule for the second and final night of the reunion called for a get-together at a place called The Hideout, which folks described as a "biker bar" in the industrial flats east of town along Mulberry. It was to be part of something called 80's-palooza, an annual multi-day music event that some local folks, included some of my classmates, had organized each August for a couple years running.

Yours truly with Elaine M., Grey H., Erin O, Paul H. and Penny M.
Grey is proudly wearing his old pre-Clyde "Prancing Lambkin" t-shirt.

By the time Anita dropped me off at my hotel in the late afternoon, I was exhausted and mostly felt like holing up in my room for the rest of the evening. I briefly considered just bagging the whole thing, but I was looking forward to seeing people again, and I knew I would regret it if I didn't go.

So I cleaned up, changed clothes, and headed out of my hotel a little after six. My New York cabbie had given me his card and cell phone that afternoon, and I figured I'd give him a call. But when I got outside, I decided just to walk as far as I felt like going, and then calling the cab the rest of the way.

As it happened, I had plenty of energy to walk the nearly three miles through Old Town and across the Poudre River to the bar. I stopped along the way to dine on a burrito from a convenience store, sitting on the curb by the gas pumps, so that I wouldn't have to eat anything at the bar.

As I got near the address, I could hear the loud music playing from a block away. Over a hundred cars were parked in the gravel lot along the curbless road, and a huge crowd was packed into a courtyard by the outdoor stage.

The Hideout, on a less packed afternoon

Just about then, I got a text from Randy, asking me how things were at the The Hideout. I was just about to answer him, when I heard a chorus of female voices calling my name loudly.

It was Erin, Elaine, Kathy, and Jo. They had just arrived. They asked me if I had gone inside yet. I said I hadn't.

Erin scolded me for having walked the entire three miles to the bar. "You should have called me," she said.  The other women did the same, as if in competition to serve as my chauffeur. By this time I was feeling quite good from all the loving attention.

I told them that Randy had just texted me.

"Tell him to grow a pair and get down here," Erin said, "and that Erin wants to say hi to him."

I happily complied with Erin's request. Randy immediately texted me back.

"Yes, but how *is* it there?"

"Raucous," I replied, using a word that we had learned in Advanced Vocabulary for the College Bound, taught by Mrs. Davies, during our junior year.

Right inside the entrance there was a small table set up with a bunch of FCHS and Lambkin-related mementos, including a portrait of the boy's basketball team. Why not the girls? I thought. They were the ones who won the state championship that year!

But that table pretty much summed up the organization of the event. Dee had done a fantastic job getting the events organized, but she had been almost entirely on her own. Unlike many reunions, there was pretty much nothing special planned related to the class or the school. On the first night, we had simply been a bunch of people with generic name tags----no presentations, no fun awards, no poster boards of photographs, no little films, no purple and gold decorations.  The last time there had been anything like that was at the ten-year reunion in 1993, which was well organized at the Country Club. Nobody had stepped forward since then, except for Dee.

I had expected as much before arriving. During the run-up to the event on Facebook, less than a dozen people had even responded to Dee's urgent pleas to sign up in advance for the events using the web portal. To my discredit, I had been stand-offish, too cool for school, until I realized that everyone else was doing the same. At that point I enthusiastically jumped in and pledged myself to everything available. That's how I wound up being the only person to sign up and pay for the class golf tournament.

The Hideout was packed, since the 80's-palooza was a popular public event. The crowd was mixed with people not only from our class, but also folks from our old cross-town rivals Poudre and Rocky, who were also having reunions that weekend (although I didn't see many of them there---the Lambkins were definitely the largest group).

Through the thick crowd I could see Grey H. wearing his old purple letter jacket with the gold block 'C' on it that he had earned from varsity swimming. That was pretty much the extent of the overt school spirit for the entire weekend.

The four women and I threaded our way through the outdoor courtyard to the open-air bar. They found a table with some of our classmates. I went off to stand in the very long snaking line to buy drinks. The line moved painfully slow. One of my classmates was standing behind me. I commented how this situation would be unacceptable on the show Bar Rescue, which I've previously written about. I mimicked the choleric host of that show berating the manager for having only a single serving line for such a large crowd.

About twenty minutes later I returned to the table where the women had stationed themselves, setting down ten bottles of beer on the table and offering them to anyone who walked up. I had told Anita F. (who was wearing her vintage English Beat t-shirt in honor of the 80's music event) that I planned on dancing, but it turned out that I barely moved from my bar stool the entire rest of the evening, just letting folks come by while I chatted with them.

Most of the folks I talked to were people I'd seen the night before---Paul H., Scott M., Trent S., Trey S., Doug S., Dean V., Diane M., Penny M., Steve L,, Jeannie K., Kim B., etc.---but there were a few people who hadn't made the first evening, including Tim H., the tallest guy in the class and the star of the boy's basketball team. He had been on the infamous tower climb expedition, and like Steve V. he marveled with joy that Matt Trump had been along too. He gave me a fist bump of victory across the table.

Later Sherri S. and I chatted at length about language learning. It turns out her husband is an applied linguist. She made me give her my email address so that her husband and I could talk about a verb conjugation computer program I had developed.

Me squeezed between the marvelous B. sisters, Shawna and Susan.

I also got to talk to Shawna B., who had been in the drama club, and who was one of the few people still in contact with C., my Alamosa Girl, who now resided on the East Coast, as I learned. I told Shawna to pass on my regards.

Despite my text and Erin's pleas, Randy and my other old friends didn't show up. Charles and Karin had already gone back to Denver, it turns out.

More than a few people mentioned Eric S., asking where he was. I told them that I had recently seen him in Albuquerque, and that my impression was that there was no way that he was coming. He had left Fort Collins long ago and had made a new life for himself in New Mexico.

Some of us wound up chatting with folks from Rocky for a while. We had thought one of them was Tim S., one of our long-lost classmates. It turns out the guy from Rocky had actually worked at Woodward Governor with Tim, so we got an update on him anyway.

As the evening wore on, people drifted away in the night, mostly without overt good-byes to everyone. It was better that way, without forced sentiment. Among those remaining, word circulated that there was to be a bonfire out at Carol W.'s house. She was certainly one of Diane M.'s rivals for the prettiest girl in class, and was also in A Cap choir with me. After high school she married someone from the class before us, and had a couple kids, along with a musical singing career. She had recently gotten remarried to a local real estate developer who owned a large ranch outside of town near the little town of Timnath. Howard asked by email about her, since he had a crush on her back in the day.

After midnight, when I announced out loud to the table that I needed a ride to the bonfire, I immediately got multiple offers from the various women folk. I chose Erin and Elaine's bid, and rode with them in Erin's mini-van. They both said they were starving, so I told them that there was a Carl's Jr. open on Mulberry. We went through the late night drive through and got burgers and fries, cracking jokes about it like the old days. Later on Facebook Erin said that was one of her favorite parts of the entire reunion.

We got lost several times in the dark of rural Larimer County trying to follow the directions to Carol's ranch. At the ornate gate, we had to punch in an access code and then follow a long dirt road over a bridge and past a pen of longhorn cattle. The house was brightly lit in the blackness of the night. A few cars were already parked around in the driveway and along the road. The Milky Way was brilliant above the dark outline of the Rockies to the west.

The house was large and beautiful, furnished in classic western decor. About a dozen people showed up, including Kathy, Jo, Diane, Grey, and Dean V., as well as some of the women who had been on the Lambkin cheerleading squad. Neil H. started to build the bonfire outdoors, but we decided just to have indoors in the fireplace. Carol was a great hostess, serving us drinks.

Trey S. texted me, asking me if I'd gone to Carol's place. I told him to come by, but it turned out that he had to go to a (real) golf tournament early the next morning in Fort Morgan.

I wanted to talk to people, but it was well past my normal bedtime and I'd had three beers, which is enough to put me down most of the time. So mostly I just played introvert, sitting and listening to people talk with each other.

The only new person I spoke to was Brenda H., who had been a cheerleader and was our class Prom Queen. I reminisced with her about the time during the spring of our senior year when the two of us were chosen as students of the month by the local Lions Club. We both rode together downtown to the Lincoln Center in the back of a limo as honorary guests for the luncheon. We gave short speeches about our plans after graduation---mine about going to Georgetown, and hers about becoming a flight attendant.

"I think they were much more interested in your speech than mine," I told her. That seemed to blow her mind. She insisted the reverse was true. I forgot to ask her if she ever followed through on the flight attendant plans.

By that time I was starting to flag. Thankfully folks started trickling home not long after that. I said good-bye to everyone one-by-one, giving them hugs and shaking hands, and thanked Carol for being such a great hostess. I also said good-bye to Erin and Elaine too, my old/new good friends. Erin made me promise to visit her and her family some time soon up where they live near Vail. "You can crash on our couch," she told me.

Then I got a ride back to my hotel with Kathy and Jo. Under the portico of the Hilton, they climbed out of the car to give me warm good-bye hugs.

It was almost three o'clock in the morning when I rode the glass elevator up to my floor and then collapsed face-first onto my bed.

The next day there was a family picnic scheduled at the new high school. I had thought about going, but I decided that it was time to drift away into the ether again until the next reunion. Besides, the new high school is an abomination barely fit to be called a school.

The staff of Spilled Ink, 1982-83, in front of the old building. Photo by Howard C.
Unidentified: Erin O., Grey H., Dee M., Beth B., Randy S., and Eric S., among other fantastic people that yours truly (trying to look like a serious newspaper editor) has had the privilege of knowing.

As I came down into the lobby for breakfast, I saw that the doors of the hotel conference rooms were wide open and that a large crowd of older folks were gathered indoors socializing. Curious about the event I approached the reception table by the doors, mingling through white-haired people, some of them hobbling with walkers.  All of them were wearing nice laminated name tags with purple and gold lettering.

At the table there was a large poster board announcing the event. It was the 50th reunion for the FCHS class of 1963.

My curiosity instantly morphed into a mixture of poignancy and horror.

We gotta run like the fucking wind, as I later told Howard in Silver Spring by email---as hard as we can, for as long as we can.