The Class of '71...40 Years & Counting

The High School Reunion of 1971

FORTY YEARS!!!  Are you kidding me?  Wasn't it just the other day I was sitting in my Commerical Arts class with Raymond Atwood who was slightly aloof?  He would talk about his cottage in England.  Later that day I went to Kendall Natvig's Psychology class and he was talking about the Id, Ego and Super Ego or something like that.  Most of us actually did learn something.  Then there was Coach Bob Buckley out with the track team working his mind games with us.  How many track coaches do so smoking a pipe and looking all Ward Cleaver?
The Class of 1971 in Webster City, Iowa.  At the time we were the largest school in the conference...and yes our claim to fame was football.  Imagine that.  Coach Dick Tighe and his Lynx...that's all you had to say.  A god in his own time to many.  Big farm boys who basically beat up little farm boys.  Really...beating up the likes of the Eagle Grove Eagles.  They couldn't even come up with a different mascot name than that of the town.  And Clear Lake...ugh...they never won anything but always wanted everyone to know they lived by a lake.
Christmas formal I believe had as its theme "Crystal Blue Persuasion."  I tracked down Tommy James and the Shondels on You Tube the other day still singing that song in a New York club and believe it or not sounding really good.  Let's see what Justin Bieber sounds like in forty years!
Webster City was a vibrant town back then.  Main street was the main street in town.  There were clothing stores to drug stores, hardware stores. pet stores, real full-service gas stations, and even a few fast food places. ("Fast" is a relative term in a Midwest farm town).  The washing machine/dryer factory in town employed hundreds if not thousands of people.  Shoot I even put in my stint there one summer.  That's another story.
Then comes the 40th reunion of the Webster City Lynx.  Funny thing...in some ways 40 years changes everything and in some ways nothing.  First, the reunion was held at the Country Club.  I was never in the country club until my 35th reunion and now my fortieth.  I learned early on that I lived literally on the other side of the railroad tracks.  People from that part of town weren't country club people.  My side of town was referred to as "Shoe Town."  I never knew that years and years ago there actually was a shoe factory.  History says it burned to the ground under suspicious circumstances...but its ghost lived on in the people of the east side.  Kids who went to my elementary school, Hilltop, were looked upon as a lower class.  Imagine that in a town of 8,000 people. 
Time has changed Webster City.  The executives of Electrolux who ran the local factory made a less then brilliant decision to move t Juarez, Mexico known as the Murder Capital of the world.  Along with that brain-dead decision went the lives of thousands of American workers and their families.  As you drive around town now you can hear, "Dead city walking'.
I imagine it won't be long that our beloved high school will suffer the same fate and will in the near future  consolidate with one or more schools just to survive.  No more Purple and Gold.
I went to visit my elementary school Hilltop.  Its been empty for years now and one local resident told me it will be tore down in the near future.  I had the opportunity to walk through it.  I'm not even sure rodents wanted to be in it.
And then there was the actual reunion itself.  Reunions are strange.  What doesn't change is that the people who hung out together in high school still gravitate to each other.  Most live in other cities if not other states.  But throw everyone into a reunion setting and like magic everyone moves into their old cliques.  Humans are fascinating creatures.  I admit there were some people I wanted to see and others...well...let's just say I couldn't get to everyone.  That hadn't changed in forty years.  Does the name Al Bundy from "Married with Children" ring a bell?  
You get old in forty years.  I quick glance and I thought I was in the local nursing home.  People who were bald, slightly overweight, and talking about their grandchildren and retiring...nursing home fodder right? 
Sadly in 40 years over 20 classmates have passed on and will be missed.  For a class of 220 that's quite a few so soon. 
So what's changed in forty years...not much...a lot...both.  The only constant is change.  As I left the reunion many were already talking about the 45th reunion.  Time will tell.  But for now Happy 40th to the Purple and Gold of Webster City, Iowa.