A 50^th Class Reunion Of The Mind-With Sam Lowell’s Trials And Tribulations In Mind-Take Two

A Sketch From Frank Jackman

Of course Jack Dawson attended the 50^th anniversary class reunion of his Class of 1964 at North Adamsville High, a school located some miles south of Boston for those who like to know geographic locations (although on this subject, this reunion thing, the location could have been anywhere since every high school has a graduated class each year and hence fodder for reunion memories because inevitably some energetic classmates will gather their forces and put one together). Now Jack was not much for such events, he had gone to his tenth reunion only because his first wife, Kathleen Clemens, had been a fellow classmate and insisted they go to show off the fact that class sweethearts could stay the course (they had been the subject of a photograph in the Magnet, the class yearbook, proclaiming them by vote of their fellows-class sweethearts). That did not stop her, them, before twenty rolled around from going her way, and he went his. He had failed to attend his fifth reunion which is the one that he really was interested in since he was pretty far away, out in an outpost near Pleiku up in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. Somehow Sam Lowell, his old corner boy hang-out friend from the corner at Jimmy Jack’s Diner, had convinced him that since this particular anniversary would be the last effective time that the old gang would be reasonably likely to get together short of assistance, short of having the thing in a nursing home or some such place that he needed to go. So Jack and his second wife, Natalie, not a fellow classmate but met at work in Hingham when he was working for General Dynamics went to the affair and according to Jack had a pretty good time. Had a good despite the fact that Sam Lowell did not attend, had as Jack did not find out until later not even been on the same coast having been lost in the rain in Big Sur at the time. But I am getting ahead of the story, Jack’s story of the reunion and a bit part for Sam and his trials and tribulations.           

Maybe the Sam part is not necessary to tell the reunion story but Jack, well, really Natalie, thought that the reunion part would not make sense without telling why Sam was not at the Marriot Courtyard Hotel in Rockland (the one fast by the Plymouth River not the one just off Route 3 which is just for tired travelers) on the night of September 27, 2014. See Sam back in the fall of 2013 got very North Adamsville High patriotic (that was the way that he put the matter) since he had been brought face to face with the old town after many years of statutory neglect (his term) due to a series of family-related deaths combined with a certain nostalgia for the old gang as he had never attended a reunion ever, said he left the dust of the old town high school behind after graduation. More than attending though is that Sam decided that he would help organize the event since that was the trajectory his life had taken, he liked to organize events, usually political not social as in the reunion but he had talked himself into believing that the organizing principles for both were the same (and as it turned out they were although principles of organizing were not the source of why Sam was spellbound on September 27, 2014 in front of some Jack Kerouac-etched snarling ocean at Big Sur singing sutras to ancient memories and not in Rockland). So through the magic of modern communications technology, mainly the Internet and e-mail he had been able to contact Delores Knight (nee Reilly), whom he did not know and who had stayed in the old town along with several other women, some of whom he knew, who either lived in the old town or nearby and who had put on most of the previous reunions. Sam had used a search on Facebook where he found both Delores’s name and a notice that a Class of 1964 reunion committee was being formed by some classmates. He told Delores he was in.                 

Delores and her women friends had also put together a class website as part of their organizing efforts, something that would not have been a practical possibility even as recently as the previous 40^th anniversary reunion and that site is where things started to (and finished up) getting dicey (although Sam later was a pains to explain it was not technology that did him in, no, just old-fashioned human understandings, rather misunderstandings. Of course the easier way to communicate with a large body, maybe the only way, with about four hundred remaining classmates (something like seventy had passed on) who over fifty years have been strewn all over the planet (although a remarkably large number for an increasingly mobile society still lived within fifty miles of the old town) was to establish the website as people heard about what was up through other sources, including “snail mail.” The reunion website once people logged in provided each classmate with his or her own profile page and had other common sections which allowed people to talk to the class individually or collectively. Sam not totally savvy about all aspects of the new technology, although enough as he said to stay half-way computer literate, very definitely had an idea to write some screeds (Sam’s word) to the collective body and see what floated. You know stuff like who you hung out with back in the day (his piece on that subject was titled The Intellectuals or the Jocks? and you can get a flavor for what he was thinking about writing from that example alone). That was part of what Sam considered his role as a member of the committee (the only male for a while by the way until Jimmy Jenkins joined).

One of the first classmates to response to the setting up of the website and logging on was Melinda Loring who back in the day had been nothing but a “fox” as the expression went then who also was very smart, a social butterfly too. Every guy with any pretensions to style and grace was half in love with her, including Sam (Jack as well but don’t mention it to Natalie). Melinda however was back in the day also known as stuck-up, unapproachable, so Sam (and most guys) never did anything about his half-love (except pine). But apparently Melinda a hot-shot professor at State U. had learned a few things in the world (and had been twice-divorced, a big learning curve experience) and so she responded to one of Sam’s pieces with a comment, a positive comment which started a blizzard of e-mails between the pair. And that simple exchange had started it, started Sam and Melinda at 68 to what they could not do at 16.

There is no need to go into all the gory details of their short stormy relationship except to state that hard fact since this is about Jack’s take one the reunion but the relationship was short, a few months during the late winter and early spring before the reunion. What Sam figured out after some reflection later was that at 16 or 68 holding a fire-burning relationship together was nothing but tough work, and speaking for himself he was just not mentally up to the task, up to her everlasting planning their very moment from then on. (He would admit that Melinda was right about his attempting always to stay in the present and not even talk about the future.) Now the way things worked out at the end, the way Sam and Melinda bitterly broke up with plenty of mutual recriminations, too many for what turned out to be a fling, and far too many for the shortness of the affair, precluded one or the other of them from going to the reunion. See the number of people who were planning to attend had by the time the ticket sales closed was somewhat less than one hundred (that did not include spouses, companions, etc.) and the room that was reserved for use was rather too small unlike some cavernous Boston hotel ballroom so there was no way that Sam and Melinda could avoid each other, something Sam was desperate to do. So he unilaterally decided (he and Melinda were not on speaking terms, civilized speaking terms any way) since she was a veteran of these reunions and he had never attended he would defer to her on the issue.

Jack was not happy about the situation when Sam explained his decision to him one night over drinks at the Café Blanc in Cambridge where Jack had just finished up an all-day conference sponsored by his high-tech company.  Jack was left that evening feeling that Sam was leaving him high and dry on something that Sam had made a big deal out of doing. He certainly was not happy at the idea that he as a known Sam friend would have to explain why Sam was not in attendance after Sam had made a big splash on the website with his little sketches. (Sam had also written, in response to one female classmate’s plaintive plea that she was fearful about going to the reunion alone, a comment on the website that he too was afraid since this was to be his first reunion but that he was determined to go and many people had responded favorable to the comment, and a few had decided to go on that basis.) He told Sam that he was going to tell them he did not know what had happened and Sam pretty much agreed that was the best tack, especially if as expected Melinda decided to go to the reunion.              

So with Sam’s “girl” woes as a drag on the evening let’s get to Jack’s observations on the event. Naturally the Marriott Riverside in September was a lovely location, the ballroom used actually cozy for the size crowd that was gathering and the buffet and liquor okay (other than a wine toast buying liquor was on one’s own hook, the inevitable cash bar which Jack played out buying half the guys in the place a drink that night before he and Natalie left). The committee had decided to have a DJ playing old stuff from their school days, not too fast since everybody had lost a step or two, hell, maybe seven step so no twist or wiggle-warble stuff to have everybody crying for their acupuncturist or chiropractor but nice Teen Angel, Earth Angel, Johnny Angel stuff to get weepy over. Other dance stuff from their parents’ generation, you know Frank Sinatra Shadows In The Night stuff which was old hat and the cause of many family radio and record player disputes back in their youth but sounded better these day and mercifully danceable. One of the classmates, a profession singer, Jim James, sang some songs when the DJ took a break. Jack thought Jim whom he had known slightly in high school in a study hall did a good job and while he could see where Jim would never have made it big, his voice was too reedy for those times, he would have made a decent living working the lounge act scene (hell, he had listened to some guys even when he was late night half-drunk drawing big money who did not sound nearly as good as old Jim).

But enough of the descriptions of the place, the quality of the food, or the entertainment since Jack had been to a million weddings, retirement parties, workplace parties, and other highlight moment events to know that whatever the occasion they all are basically the same. What intrigued Jack (Natalie too) was that other than Melinda Loring whom he had met when the thing with Sam had been in full bloom in the spring, and who obviously had been drinking well before the seven o’clock start time in anticipation that she would have to face Sam he did not recognize very many of the classmates despite the fact that Sam had told him that several of the women on the committee, including Delores, except for some weight gain (which he smart boy kept to himself even from Natalie) looked pretty much like back in the day. Sam had been too kind. By the way on that Melinda thing Jack had not realized that Sam was actually keeping his decision on not going to the reunion to himself and when Melinda asked him about half-way through the night where Sam was, asked with an evil look, he said he did not know. And Jack actually did not know “officially” until Sam came about a week later and emailed him that he had gone to Big Sur on the Friday before the reunion. Had as well to symbolically add insult to injury, although Melinda would never know this to be injured by the knowledge, had taken his second ex-wife, Laura, out with him and they were having something of a rekindled romance.            

Jack thought more than once that night “thank God for name tags” since he would have been hard-pressed to name names without that aid. Jack although nothing but a Jimmy Jack’s Diner corner boy along with Sam, Frankie Riley, the leader, Jimmy Jenkins, the late Peter Markin (he had been found face down in dusty Sonora down Mexico way with two slugs in the back of his head after a drug deal had gone awry back in the 1970s needless to say the murder was never solved), and a cast of rolling in and out boys, also had been connected with many of those in attendance that night through sports, the school newspaper or the senior dance committee and still came up short on recognition. Funny, Jack thought to himself, that at the tenth reunion he was able to remember almost everybody without benefit of name tags but the forty years since then had done their damage, had made him who had taken some effort to keep himself in shape, although with less hair, a full-grown beard and a slight paunch wince at all the talk of surgeries and other medical conditions.    

His dismay started right from the first moment practically when he was greeted at the door by Delores who had been made the designated greeter, a role she had played before in previous reunions, whom kind Sam had obviously given a pass to on the weight issue no question. (Jack when he mentioned Delores and her appearance to him later only found out then that Sam had never actually physically been present in the same room with a number of the committee members, including Delores, who lived with her husband in Florida most of the year, since a lot of the work was done through e-mails and such, a nice bow to modern technology.) A big fat guy then came up to him to greet him and it turned out to be Timmy Lally the famed quarterback of the Warrior football team who back then had been pretty thin. Another, Muffy (real name) Sullivan, Timmy’s girlfriend and head cheer-leader in the old days and the queen of the social butterflies had taken a turn for the worse with almost white blonde dyed hair and a cane. Jack though he was going to be able to go chapter and verse on old-time memories with all those that he knew from the old days at the reunion but he found himself just getting depressed as they inevitably told their seemingly endless mandatory medical histories when he asked about their health. And he wound up grinding his teeth at the incessant talk of grandchildren and strangely not of their children which is what he liked to talk about since he kept his own grandchildren, all four of them, at arm’s length). He mentioned to Natalie that he could have gone to an AARP meeting and found the same amount of conviviality. As it turned out Jack and Natalie left an hour before the event was to close up, at around ten, and he was glad of it although they had been enjoying themselves and later would reaffirm that that had a certain amount of fun despite the silly banter. Here is why they left though. Before glad-handing his way through to the coat checkroom once Jack had decided they had had enough he had suddenly turned red, very red not from embarrassment but anger, an anger that had been building all night, anger at Sam for leaving him in the lurch like that, leaving him to sift through some pretty broken dreams. Damn Sam.