1981

The week before reunion, Sally Johnson told me that she looked forward to seeing folks...whom I did not know well at school but who, when I run into them, demonstrate intelligence, wit and kindness. Our classmates, she continued, "are a great bunch."

Gail Chen had pre-reunion jitters—"My one fear is not remembering anyone's name," she told me—while Bob Dale wrote, "I want to see if anyone's lost more hair than me, Jerry Jeff included. I'm also hoping to do an Outing Club activity or two, which is ironic since I spent four years avoiding any such thing after my freshman trip."

And from Geoff Hatheway: "Since I often go back to Hanover so our kids can see their grandparents, there's no mysteiy or anticipation for me in how the place has both changed and stayed the same. It's seeing people I haven't seen in years that will provide that mystery."

It is a mystery, isn't it? The ease with which I fell into a conversation with Doug Schwarz and Marty Cetron at the tent on Friday, with Steve Herzog and his wife Jackie. Wendy Brooks Harris told me she just finished big animal veterinary school, and I told her that my wife's uncle is a horse dentist: the correct term is that he floats teeth. Maureen and Lawrence Serrano wanted my opinion on letting Lauren, their junior in high school, spend a year at a boarding school in Spain, and Dave Focardi and his wife, Jennifer, invited all for a raft trip down the Colorado.

Sally was right. Our classmates are a great bunch, and perhaps that solves some of the mystery of these reunions, that with a great bunch it's easy to pull up a chair and talk as if it's June of 1981 and the whole world is spun out before us, waiting.

What did I like most about the Jerry Jeff concert? The kids sitting on the wall in back of the band, their faces palimpsests of all you mothers and fathers. I did not get to the picnic at Storrs but had one of the intense conversations that can happen in the Hop snack bar with Ben Van Voorhees and Stew Henderson. What did I like most about our dinner that Saturday night? John Goss told me about his new teaching career, Dave Kunin scolded me for thinking too ill of the past, and both Annette Gordon Reed and Chip Bettencourt made me laugh.

And so here it is, the Friday after reunion. Bob Dale's written back to say that both "Jerry Jeff and Randy Bodner have lost more hair than me, if only slightly, and Mt. Moosilauke's grown significantly since Freshman Week."

And from Sally: "I did enjoy meeting classmates whom I'd not known and spending time with old friends with whom I had lost touch. Kate Read and I hiked Mt. Cardigan on Saturday. Wed not spoken in 15 years, and we talked in a way that's just not possible with friends that we have met since the long nights, long talks and dreams of youth. And Diane Bennett and I were walking back to South Fayer on Sunday morning, and for a few steps we headed toward Topliff where we lived freshman year."

I took a detour, too, Sally. On the way out of Hanover Sunday afternoon, I took a right, not the left toward Lebanon, and went back up Main Street, back past the Green and Baker Tower and the Hop, looked at the windows of my first-floor room in New Hamp. That was enough, I guess, for this.time I took the left when I got to it; I knew that I had a drive ahead of me and needed to get going.

Writing this column for you, classmates, has been a wonderful drive, with so many new places seen off to my left and right, so many of your voices that crackled from the radio. I will not forget the folks I met on the way, the many stops made on my own Route 66—or, I should say, 81. Cheers, friends. Hope that we drive by and wave at each other some time before June 16,2006.

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