Becky Boren O’Connell is excited and proud to announce the successful completion of Project Grandchild with the arrival of  the very beautiful Haley Kate on August 18th.

Mother and baby are doing very well.  Grandmother is out of control.

Congrats Becky on joining the few, the proud, the elderly!

Potosi Pride

Eventually, inevitably, more to come.  When this many old geezers get together it can take a toll and I’m going to be a bit too winded for typing for a few days.

We got the turnout Laurie and Becky were hoping for:

The Crowd

We also got the turnout that Rich and I were hoping for:

I’ve got a lot more pictures.  I’ll get your hopes up too.

Dave/IL

Are you getting ready for the big weekend??  Hope most of you can make all or part of it.  We have had a tremendous response from most of our classmates.  This email is going to every email on our class list, whether you have signed up to come or not.  Maybe those of you not signed up can still slip in at some point.

Here is the schedule of events:

Friday, August 14, 8:00 PM:   Gather at Beaver’s Lounge in downtown Manchester.  For those of you who have asked for the exact location, downtown Manchester is not that big.  Look for the sign that says Beaver’s Lounge.  We will be in the back room behind the pool tables.  Don’t worry, there will be nametags –  with pictures.  We are expecting a rather large crowd there, so if it gets too big we are invited to Harper’s field, AKA Harper Valley, just behind 717 E. Main Street.  Bonfire, beer, under the stars, etc. etc.  And no closing time.

Saturday, August 15, 11:00 AM: Several of us will be meeting to set up at the fairgrounds, but we need more help.  Tables, chairs, decor, etc.  Many hands make light work.  Shouldn’t take more than an hour.

Saturday, August 15, Noon: Golf Outing at the Manchester Golf Club.  Rich McDowell has groups teeing off between noon and 1:00.  Those of us not golfing will be hanging out there.  There is a restaurant for lunch, bar of course, etc.

Saturday, August 15, 5:30 PM: Tour the High School.  Our very own Mike Ryan (Tank) is currently on the School Board (!) and has arranged to have the school open for us.  Enter through what used to be the main entrance on New Street.  Lots of changes and massive remodeling.

Saturday, August 15, 6:30 PM – 12:00 AM: Dinner and music at the fairgrounds pavilion.  Please note the pavilion is NOT the first building as you drive in, it is the LAST.  Several of our classmates had a few bad moments at our 25th when they arrived at the first building where the Class of ‘79 was reuniting the same night, and didn’t recognize anyone.  So, remember to drive all the way to the back.
Also Note: If you have not signed up for the dinner but just plan to stop out later, there will probably be a small charge to cover the free beer, pop, DJ, hall rental, printing, postage and the class books.  Possibly about $10 per person, or $15 per couple, on the honor system, there will be a basket at the front with a sign.
For those wanting to continue the party after midnight, we are again invited to Harper Valley until whenever the last person leaves.

See you soon!

Your Reunion Committee

We’re reduced to this:  counting the final week until the collecting of names becomes a collection of former classmates in a small shed in Manchester.  This could sound almost dreary but I’m a New Orleans boy and I can tell you we’ve blown the doors off shacks smaller than that on a weeknight with just a couple of rounds of Sazeracs and a half-assed trumpet player.  (The last part isn’t true:  there are no half-assed trumpet players in New Orleans.)

Laurie has worked her ass off gathering a weekend crowd from all over North America and Becky promises great food, great music and a keg of beer.  Rich McDowell is teeing people off on Saturday afternoon from a grassy knoll surrounded by ripe Iowa corn.  I’ll be filling my sport coat pockets with hand-rolled Cigar Factory cigars and topping off the flask in my back pocket with 30 year old Scotch.  Friends, it’s on!

Laurie is urging everyone to gather Friday night at Beaver’s Lounge after 8 PM for drinks, to gather at the Golf Club on Saturday afternoon for drinks, to gather at the Fairgrounds Pavilion on Saturday night for drinks.  Am I the only one who sees the irony in her constant lectures to me about my drinking? Becky urges us all to drive safely and wear our name badges.

Drive safely into town you foreign travelers; drive long and straight on the weekend fairways.  I’m driving toward the Gulf this week but plan to program my GPS by Thursday night to drive my wayward ass back north and drive Mr. O’Leary’s pretty wife to aggravated distraction.

Dave/IL

Gaze

We’ve got enough sun at 6 a.m. for miles of corn.  Enough sun for half a hundred deer come to that.  They move through the fields like ghosts, silent and easy.  Dog and I have a heavier tread and we do our best to stick to the fenceline.  Jays and Cardinals in the trees, little spots of punctuation in this morning’s leafy story.  Slant of light.  Long shadows.  No wonder we call it Sunday.

About four weeks now until your class reunion.  All of those scattered stories converging in a small Iowa town.  For those of us who have been away for at best a decade there will be miles of landmarks to reassess.  Court house clock.  Band shell in Tyrell Park.  Dams and bridges and cemetery markers.  Quick peeks at whatever personal confluence of longitude and latitude we think of when we really think of home.

The last time I was back was to harass your reunion committee at the Manchester Golf Club.  A pretty girl poured me way too much Scotch and I passed through that visit in a blur.  If I can make it back this year I’d like a full day to leisurely reconnoiter.  Not just the river as regular readers might expect, but the shady side streets I remember from my brief youth.  I’d like to reconfirm the placement of substantial water towers, do a census of porch swings and vintage pick-up trucks, photograph the no doubt ruins of all my former houses.

Today Dog and I are content to reconnoiter just this fenceline.  Owls booming in the deep end of the woods, one red fox disappearing behind a ridge.  We’ll pause for breakfast soon above the lake and make plans to extend our day.  Pushing ever forward.  Miles from all the houses we call home.

Dave/IL

Drinking with cops in New Orleans requires discipline.  I can’t go shot for shot, and I’ve got the body weight.  Better to concentrate on the games I can win.  Flirting with the pretty bartenders.  Naming that tune. Pickled eggs.

We’re rounding out the Tomato Festival at the French Market.  It doesn’t get any more Midwest than that, absent the Zydeco.  We’re rounding out sunny skies and I have delicate skin so a dark side street tavern is my answer to SPF5o.  A bar dog sleeping at my feet.  Ronnie Earl on the Juke.

I had planned a week of fishing in Montana, late spring trout and rapidly moving water.  Casting long and a good brace of sky.   Coming home instead to these rough streets and pulling in a line of favors to ride with the city’s knights.  Riding the night shift so you can bet I’ve been buckled up and vested, using my combat lenses to maintain a sensible perspective.  Low profile in that low light.

Received, after a bit of forwarding, my official invitation to our 35th Class reunion.  Your committee has been busy lining up entertainment, food and shelter.  It would be a shame to let them down with anything less than record attendance this August.  Rich McDowell has even organized a golf outing for the more sporting among you.   Someone among the inner circle has arranged a tour of the High School for Saturday afternoon.  (I spent most of my Junior and Senior year offering explanations in the superintendent’s office so I would be interested to see where the rest of you attended classes.)

The questionnaire includes the query:  What is your best/worst memory?  After thirty-five years of pills and alcohol that shows an amazing predilection for optimism.  And yet already there is Randy Bishop’s jokes, Audrey Bishop’s smile.   Barry Zebuhr’s amazing talent.  Easier than I thought to mine for happiness there.

Here I’m sitting on the sidelines of a heavily armed fraternity.  Abita beer.  Checking equipment and killing time toward another tour.  Thinking about trout leaping toward deep Montana skies and pretty Iowa girls in that dim past.  Low light.

Dave/La.

New Shoes

Now the brides are assembling. Call the month June already and call collect because the economy is tight and we’re all pinching pennies. Or pinching the bottoms of bridesmaids if we’re already into the wine. We are, of course, and practically uninvited everywhere. Tucking extra battery packs and CF cards into tuxedo pockets, bouncing flashes off cathedral ceilings. Culling the herd in VFW halls and state park picnic shelters. Earning a living old school while we wait for travel visas and renewed vaccinations.

Call the horizon simply by that closer stand of trees.  Or call it over water by watching the curve of lake shore disappear.  I spent the morning calling the dog back from her pursuit of deer.  May mud underfoot and May flowers everywhere.  Almost the end of the run for crayfish in Louisiana.  Almost the end of planting season in Illinois.  Almost the official start of summer highways.

I’ve hung a baby swing in the backyard oak, the second time in almost twenty-five years.  I wiped the rain away this afternoon and plopped a diapered bottom in for a maiden voyage.  Tiny feet soaring toward the clouds.  Now I’m on deck for a Memorial Day cookout, grill smoking in the rain, guitar trying to keep pace with Juliana Finch on the stereo.  Having a bit of holiday and wishing you the same.

Give a listen to a piece of Juliana yourself:

Burning Down

Dave/IL

Running the highway north, home to home.  Weather gray behind me and nothing but storms ahead.  You can practically count the sky as one black cloud this afternoon with lightning breaking against the trees.  Dog curled up in the front seat like another small black cloud.

I’ve left the land of  café au lait 300 miles behind me, drinking a rougher brew from a gas station paper cup.  Blowing through Mississippi like an eager, evil wind.  Georgia on my mind, or at least Flannery O’Connor.  Every hitchhiker in this downpour is The Misfit.  Every service stop clerk a grotesque.

Kris Delmhorst on the iPod.  There’s the comfort.  Her voice sweet and steady as the red car leans into the curves at Jackson.  I’m swerving around commuters and she’s singing “Mean Old Wind” as the banjo clips the tempo.  I ease off the accelerator as the radar detector pipes a warning and Delmhorst downshifts to “Lullaby 101.”

Now both of us are talking about the broken white lines.  Kris to a lost love, me to comfort the miserable lab pup.  How many thousand more until we cross to Illinois?  Dashing around Memphis, racing away from Blytheville, setting our far scope on Sikeston.  GPS ticking away the miles to the next rest area, next snap of leash in wind.

We’re cresting hills now in rain so heavy we seem to be cresting waves.  Wipers frantic.  Brakes a little mushy on the slopes.  That need for speed as we cross arbitrary borders between cities, counties, states.  Stiching those broken bars together.  Blowing home.

Dave/LA-IL

Listen To A Little Of Broken White Line