This summer’s class reunions accentuated the 40-year difference between my husband and daughter. Both reunions began around picnic tables.
Members of the Parkers Chapel Class of 1999 showed up at the Union County Recreational Complex to catch up and compare notes on their post-high school education, careers and families as they ate a picnic lunch of hot dogs and hamburgers prepared by a classmate. Within a couple hours, young parents gathered up heat wilted children and left for naps. After cooling off, my daughter slipped on heels and a dress for an adults-only evening at the Racket Club. The evening included a video made throughout their senior year and a Power Point of each student’s past and present history.
For his reunion, my husband tied on his sneakers and slipped on his “don’t-tuck-it-in” Hawaiian shirt. The Jefferson High School class of 1959 in Goshen, Indiana enjoyed moderate weather for their conversations under the trees. “Do you remember…? Well they are now …” Each member of the class of 1959 received a collated book of pictures and information on fellow class members, a miniature bag of the candies and gums the class had sold to raise funds for their class trip and two pennies: 1959 and 2009.
As with previous reunions, the class of 1959 invited their beloved coach and class sponsor. However, this time, only his widow and daughter came. Which may explain my husband’s astonishment when he learned that his first-grade teacher – Mrs. Regina Gaffer, now 102 – lived in a nearby retirement community.
By the time the 18 graduates of the original 28 gathered for a class picture under the trees, everyone knew that one classmate, who had planned to join them, went instead to the operating room for cancer related surgery. Silent tears memorialized four others who would never come to a class reunion again – the most recent having passed this summer.
Although they brought no children, the supper party for the graduates of 1959 ended long before sunset because the Amish family catering the supper did not have lights for their wagon and they needed at least 45 minutes of daylight to drive the nine miles home.
Three generations of white capped women and girls in plain cotton dresses, men with beards and no mustaches and boys in zipper-free, plain britches brought us bowl after bowl of food. As advertised, it was enough food for thrashers – farmers who work from early morning to late at night separating the wheat from the chaff and relish a hearty noon meal.
Only the servers, worked hard that day. The white and gray-haired class members seated at circular tables accepted bowl after bowl of plain fare: Applesauce flavored with Red Hots, a token salad of lettuce and tomatoes smothered in bacon and cheese, huge slabs of white bread slathered with butter and apple butter, meatloaf, fried chicken, fresh vegetables, stuffing and a local favorite: Mashed potatoes topped with chicken gravy and thick noodles.
“I have not been offered anything like this since we left Indiana,” I said as I passed along the noodles.
“Oh, that’s too bad,” the petite woman next to me said piling noodles on top of her potatoes and gravy.
“This is real cooking,” the coordinator gushed as she began accepting the dessert: Raspberry pie, peanut butter cream pie and/or pecan pie. As descendants of – or still members of the local Anabaptists groups – the class of 1959 sighed happily at the familiar meal. The Amish served lemonade, water and iced tea. No one brought anything else other than extra cookies.
In Arkansas, a few the alumni from 1999 brought their own alcohol to the picnic. In the evening they ate a catered, southern meal of fried fish, fried and boiled shrimp, slaw, hush puppies and cinnamon rolls. The fee for the evening meal included access to a keg of beer. No one had to get home before sunset, but with a new baby at my house, my daughter planned to leave early that evening and miss the DJ, dancing and drinking. Before she left, the PC alumni elected a class president – hoping for a future reunion.
In Indiana, the JHS Class organizers closed with the announcement, “We are not going to do this again.” After energetically pulling off several class reunions with banners, tokens, stamped mugs and bound books, the coordinator leaned on her walker and emphasized, “We are not getting any younger. The can on the table is the class kitty. We are down to $7 for flowers. If we don’t have money in the kitty, we will be sending tin cans with a handful of flowers from our gardens to the funeral homes.” We all looked around at the centerpieces: Colorfully painted coffee cans holding sprays of black-eyed Susans and zinnias.
Daughter and father enjoyed meeting and greeting former classmates, but the class of 1999 looked ahead 15 years to their 25th class reunion while the alumni of 1959 wondered how many would be around to reunite in 15 years. That’s the difference 40 years of life makes.
(Joan Hershberger is a reporter at the News-Times. E-mail her at jhershberger@eldoradonews.com.)