This past weekend, I ventured back to my hometown of York, PA for my 50th high school reunion. I went to York Catholic and graduated, yes, I can’t believe it, 50 years ago.
When I taught Intro to Theatre, I always invited my students, in their first class introductions, to tell me what their hometown was if they were willing to admit it. I always said that I wasn’t willing to to do, unless someone else had been from there. I couldn’t wait to leave.
Imagine my surprise to see how gentrified the downtown area was. I’ll talk more about this in another blog post, but let me just say I was somewhat pleasantly surprised, so much so that I ate at an Egyptian restaurant, which would’ve been unthinkable when I lived there. There was only Italian cuisine (aka pizza shops), followed by McDonald’s and Pennsylvania Dutch home cooking (everything boiled and devoid of flavor).
The night before the reunion, I visited with a friend of mine from grade school who had not continued on to high school with me. He was my best friend in grade school, mostly because we were both bullied unmercifully. The best story about him occurred when our class was being prepped for the Christmas pageant. The nun discovered someone singing off-key, and thought it was deliberate sabotage. It turned out to be tone-deaf Martin. She gave him the role of conductor, standing in front of us and waving his arms about as if leading us. That got him out of singing.
I had not seen him for 54 years (since 1971). On the phone (landline, by the way), he described himself as an old hippie. After the visit, I have to concur.
And I still have no idea why he greeted us in pajamas…
MUSOFYR 