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What I Learned At My 50th High School Reunion

12/7/2018

...Continued From yesterday:
Here we are on our graduation day, the Melrose Academy class of 1969. That's me in the bottom row, sitting second from the right.

Melrose Academy was a small private girls' school located in the Philadelphia suburb of Elkins Park,

...and run by the Grey Nuns of the Sacred Heart, an order of progressive, socially-conscious nuns out of Buffalo, New York, who taught at Melrose and lived in the Motherhouse, the big convent in the background of the above photo.

In my class there were thirty-eight girls who traveled to school each day from all parts of the city and suburbs.
Me, I took a daily commuter train from the Somerton station,

...to the Elkins Park station,

...from which I walked the approximate mile from the station to the school with the other Melrose girls who also took the train to school.

I met up with 18 of my former classmates (see me in the last row, 4th from the right? I distinctly recall that I was having a bad hair day that day, thus the hair band),

...plus several Melrose girls from different graduating classes who came along for fun and a couple of intrepid husbands who also came along, at my 50th high school reunion held at the Jarrettown Hotel in the Philadelphia suburb of Dresher.

Our class valedictorian and our salutatorian, then,

...and now.

The intrepid hubbies who came to the reunion,

...good sports all.

The Jarrettown Hotel was charming and cozy,

...and well-chosen by our classmate who stepped up to organize the reunion (left), and her two helpers (right and below).

And yet my initial impression of the venue wasn't of the venue itself, but of the happy energy that filled the room,

...probably because of how genuinely happy everyone seemed to see each other,

...and how instantly everyone fell into animated conversation - even before we'd had time to take off our coats and put down our purses - though some of us hadn't seen each other in decades,

...or had just met, even.

At dinner Tom and I ended up sitting with my old high school lunch table mates,

...though I think this arrangement just sort of happened by chance, as we were all looking for a place to sit at the same time.
In any case, dinner was wonderful, and I'm referring not just to the food, which was indeed very good,

...well, that is to say, Tom enjoyed his salmon,

...and I my pasta with vegetables,

...and though I didn't ask anyone how the chicken dish was, it, too, looked quite delicious.

And then there were the desserts.

     But more wonderful even than the food was the conversation at our table.
We talked about high school, who we were then and who we are now, and the role we thought the former played in the latter. We talked about the Melrose teachers and students, especially the girls in the grades above us, who influenced us and who we admired.
      One of the girls chuckled over the girl crush* she had as a freshman on an upperclassman. Her admission was rather a shock to me, as I, too, once had a girl crush on an older girl, but I had no idea other girls in the school were girlcrushing. It turned out a number of them were, as I learned before the night was over, when the subject was brought up again while were all standing around in a group after dinner talking and reminiscing about things. We just didn't have a word for it then, and so it wasn't a concept we could verbalize even to ourselves at the time.
       My own girl crush was on an upperclassman, a popular, personable, smart, athletic girl who was also a gifted singer, actress and class leader. My crush was born one day when this older girl, who I assumed was in general unaware of my existence, said something kind and encouraging to me. I don't even remember what it was she said, only that it made me feel worthwhile and good about myself. Here was a girl who, in my eyes at least, already possessed the star dust of social popularity to spare, and yet in sprinkling some on me increased her own wealth of it.
     I'm sure the girl had no idea of the effect of her words on me and probably soon forgot all about the encounter.
        But here the encounter is, fifty years later, still sitting in my memory bank, where it has gathered the interest of time, experience and, hopefully, wisdom.
   And if the lesson of that older girl's random words of kindness was lost on me at the time, if I was too focused on floundering my way through the volcanic soup of my own teen-age emotions to realize that I, too, possessed the power of a kind word, well, revisiting that memory was a reminder that it's a lesson never to late for the learning.
       It was a gift spending the day with these girls, who still looked young to me.

*Girl Crush: "A straight girl's crush on another girl, often a celebrity. Is platonic in nature. A girl who is girlcrushing must by definition be straight, otherwise it's just a regular crush. Usually based on veneration at some level." The Urban Dictionary

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Back To The Playground

12/5/2018

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...Continued from yesterday:

The next morning, Sunday, November 18, the day of my 50th high school reunion, Tom and I began the day by seeking out breakfast at a homey-looking diner we'd passed about a block down the Boulevard from our hotel,

...that had the neatest parking lot art,

...the most gorgeous pastries in the display case that greeted one at the entry,

...and a cute interior.

Along with the menu selections Andy's also offered a vast buffet,

...which included the creamiest-looking bread pudding, my personal weakness,

...and an omelet bar manned by a friendly chef.

We opted for the buffet and split an enormous omelet.

The food was fresh and fantastic, including the creamy bread pudding.

As we left we vowed that before the day's end we'd return to Andy's to snag ourselves some slices of those to-die-for-looking pastries.

As my reunion didn't start until 1 pm, giving us several hours to kill, we opted to return to my old Somerton neighborhood to have a look at my elementary school, St. Christopher's,

...as well as old St. Christopher's Church, where Tom and I were married, which was no longer the church but now utilized as the parish hall.

On a whim, I wanted to see if the playground where I spent at least part of every summer day after we moved to the New House in Somerton (See previous post) was still where it always was, on Kelvin Street behind St. Christopher's school and also behind Comely School, the public school at the corner of Byberry Road and Kelvin Street. The two schools and the playground formed three points of a geographic triangle, thus the playground was within walking distance for almost every school kid in Somerton. And walk there we all did.
The playground was still there and in good repair,

...as were the old basketball and tennis courts,

...and the baseball diamond,

...as well as the modern art mosaic on the office building, which I always loved and thought made our playground fancier than other playgrounds.

But, alas, the playground was no longer meant for the big kids, such as I was back when the playground was my turf,

...the swings and climbing structures appearing to have been designed for young children.

And the field and woods behind St. Christopher's through which we used to walk to the playground was gone, having been replaced by streets and houses.

Things change.

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The New House, Part 3

12/3/2018

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...Continued from 11/27/2018, 11/28/2018 and 11/29/2018:

After spending the morning in Mayfair in Lower Northeast Philly,

...visiting the environs of my family's old house on Barnett Street,

...Tom and I then drove north on the Roosevelt Boulevard toward the Far Northeast neighborhood of Somerton to have a look at the New House on Byberry Road between Roosevelt Boulevard and Bustleton Avenue that we moved into when I was nine years old.
I hadn't seen the house in almost 25 years, but I know that it looked like this when we lived in it:

...and like this decades later after it had been trashed and abandoned by subsequent owners and homeless
squatters.

About half-way to Somerton we approached the Rhawn Street intersection,

...at which point I asked Tom, who was doing the driving while I did the reminiscing, to turn left off the Boulevard onto Rhawn Street.
I had him do this because much of the action in my novel,

...Equal and Opposite Reactions,

...takes place in a run-down condo complex that I set at the intersection of the Roosevelt Boulevard and Rhawn Street, and so I wanted to see if perchance there actually was a condo complex set at the corner of Rhawn and the Boulevard.
Turned out there wasn't a condo complex where I imagined the one in my book to be. Just a whole lot of row houses. Still, this would have been a good location for a condo complex. If not for all the row houses.
We then continued on to Somerton via the Bustleton Avenue route, passing along the way the McDonald's at Red Lion Road where I worked one summer while in college,

...and the Leo Mall a couple of blocks from my street where there used to be a movie theater at which I spent most Friday nights of my teen-aged years.

My girl friends and I could go to the movies together only on Friday nights, as, according to the social norms of the times, Saturday nights at the movies were reserved for couples. Thus us single girls used to spend Saturday nights at each other's houses, playing board games, listening to records, or watching TV.

We reached the corner of Byberry and Bustleton, where Pavio's restaurant used to be,

...in the banquet room of which Tom and I had our wedding reception almost 42 years ago,

...But which is now Pavio's Galleria of Shops.

We turned onto Byberry Road,

...then parked on Lewis Street,

...the small street that bordered the building and parking lot next to our backyard.

The building, which has been in this location since we moved next to it in 1961, and likely years before, has had a number of purposes over the years.

     I believe it originally belonged to the local Catholic parish, St. Christopher's, and for a while was used as over-flow class rooms for the parish school located around the corner. The building was used for the sixth grade classes when I was in sixth grade at St. Christopher's. That was the best year of my elementary career, as all I had to do was cut across the back yard to get to and from school.
       Years later it was the United Hebrew Happy Daze daycare center.
       Here's the sign currently in front of the building:

After we parked the car we walked around the corner, and what to our wondering eyes should appear:

... but the House,

...looking absolutely,

...fabulous!

All right, so mayhaps the landscaping and setting left a weence to be desired, but the house itself looked great.

We were particularly impressed by the front steps.

These were the best steps the house had had since the wooden steps that my hubby Tom built for the house back in 1994,

…and which had survived the years of abuse and neglect that the house withstood after my parents moved out.

We walked all around the house,

...trying to get a peek through the windows, which were papered over.

     Tom was able to see over the top of the paper in one of the front windows. He said he could see that the wall between the kitchen and dining room had been knocked out and that the plaster had been stripped to the studs and was being replaced by new plasterboard.
      We also saw two heat pump and air-conditioning units, which meant that vents would have to be installed throughout the house to accommodate the new heating and air-conditioning systems.
      I, in the meantime, was busy snapping shots of the houses across the street that used to be the houses of of our old neighbors and playmates,

...and the house of our friends next door, who lived in an even bigger domicile than ours,

...though the first floor had been a doctor's office while the doctor's family resided on the second and third floors.

However we now saw that the backyard of the doctor's house been filled with a massive cinder block structure attached to the back of the house.

"Hi," called a voice from across the street.
I turned around and immediately recognized one of my childhood playmates, the youngest daughter of the seven children of the big, friendly Italian family who lived in the house directly across the street from ours.

     "I knew it was you," she said as we hugged. "I called my brother to tell him somebody was looking all around the house across the street and taking pictures, but when I saw you taking pictures of my house, too, I knew it was you."
      She invited us into her house. In truth when I was young and used to be in and out of that house, just as all the neighborhood kids were in and out of each other's houses, I never appreciated what a neat house it was: Lots of dark wood, wood floors, big wood banister, marble in the bathroom.
        She updated us on our old house, told us about the non-grata hippy family who moved in after my parents moved out (see previous post), how one of the children set a fire in the attic (I'd heard about the fire before, but had forgotten about it), how the parents moved out and left the teenagers to live there alone.
        "Who leaves a bunch of teen-agers alone living in a house?" she asked.
        She told us about how the house was eventually abandoned and for a while was lived in by homeless people.
        "I didn't say nothing about it," she said. "They didn't cause any trouble, and a person needs a roof over their head, I'm not gonna begrudge them."
           The house was bought, she told me, by a man who was in the process of fixing up the house to sell it. "A Hispanic guy, nice guy, lives down the street." She told us that the man had recently invited her into the house to show her how the work was progressing. She said he was completely gutting the inside, renovating it top to bottom.
           Just as my mother dreamed of doing.

I asked her about the cinder block structure built onto our old next-door neighbors' house.

     She told me that the house had been bought by a Hasidic organization, and that soon after the group moved in she and several other neighbors went over to welcome them to the neighborhood.
      "The guy who answered the door said he wasn't interested," she said. "I told him, 'Look, we're all neighbors and in this neighborhood everybody knows each other and looks out for each other and keeps an eye out for each other.'"
        The man repeated that he wasn't interested and shut the door.
       I thought it was too bad that those new neighbors had so carelessly brushed off the good fortune of landing in this neighborhood.

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What I Learned At My 50th High School Reunion

Back To The Playground

The New House, Part 3

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