The Golden Years, Part Two (The 50th Reunion of the AHS CLass of 1960)

(From loudspeaker)

And now, Ladies and Gentlemen….

Muskeg Manor Productions and Gullible’s Travels are proud to present….

..live and onstage at the Anchorage High School auditorium….

…for the first time in fifty years…..

the one, the only…Gu-u-u-u-u-l-l-l-l-l-lible!

(Gullible didn't take those pictures. A classmate who said he couldn't keep his hands from shaking did. They really aren't blurry. That's called soft focus. It's a technique used when photographing older persons.)

(Lengthy applause finally dies)

Gullible: Thank you, ladies and gent…

(Voice interrupts from stage right wings:)

Thang kyew, thang kyew verrr mush…

Gullible: Uh…. No… Uh, El… Ummm, excuse me just a moment, ladies and gentlemen.

(Walks offstage, not realizing lapel microphone is still live.)

El, El, not now. It’s my turn. This is my gig. Tonight is your turn. I promise, tonight you’ll be the center of attention.

(Gullible returns to center stage:)

Sorry, folks. That was my friend El. He misses the stage and the spotlight, you know. Hasn’t quite finished his transformation, as you probably guessed from all the sightings. You’ll see him tonight at the dinner dance.

Anyway, here we are in this beautifully restored auditorium, the largest one in Anchorage. It’s been fifty years since I crossed this stage. Fifty years. And that was one of the happiest moments of my life.

(That's Mr. Montgomery at the far left. He was the school principal then. He'll be at the dinner-dance tonight.)

Free at last, free at last, by the skin of my teeth, I was free at last.

Truth is, I hated my senior year in high school. Not my classmates—my friends—and certainly not the school itself. And not the teachers, either. I simply didn’t want to be there any more, and considering all the trouble I created for myself that year, I almost got my wish before I got my diploma. But those are stories for later—if we have time.

Right now, I want to take you on a tour of my school. This is what it looked like when I was attending.

And, this is what it looks like now:

Notice anything different? Besides the color, I mean.

If you saw that it’s no longer a two-story school, you’re right. That’s because in March of 1964, a 9.2 Mm earthquake hit Anchorage, and the second story was ruined, so they took it off. Later it was determined that the reason the second story failed is that it was built just as strong and just as heavy as the first floor. Couldn’t take all the movement.

(photo used courtesy of AFHAM Collection; Anchorage Museum, B69.11.25)

The only two-story part that survived is the end that houses this auditorium...

the gymnasium...

and the music rooms upstairs...

Choir room. Hmm. Workman's taking his noon lunch break just about where I used to stand during practice. Right beside my friend Renetta. You'll meet her later.

Band room.

And, this little practice room? Woo-wee. Did I ever catch heck from the choir teacher in there one day. To make matters worse, it involved none other than our guest of honor at our reunion--the Royal Coachman. One of my more embarrassing moments, I should say. As I said earlier, another story for another time. Assuming we have time, that is.

So. Let’s get this tour on the road…or maybe I should say, down the hallway.

Ah, but before we go, I want to draw your attention to this painting on your left. It was painted by Alaska’s most famous artist, Sydney Laurence, and was presented to the auditorium in 1955. The painting is titled “Arctic King.” It’s of Denali. That’s Mt. McKinley to those of you who don’t live in Alaska.

Oh, and one more thing. Just in case you’re wondering what a far off city like Anchorage needs with a 2000-seat auditorium (besides, of course, a place for me and all my choir buddies to perform, and all the band kids to knock your socks off), well, listen. Here are only a few of the performers that have trod the boards of this stage:

Mary Martin

James Whitmore

Johnny Cash

The Bee Gees

Steppenwolf

Ozzy Osbourne (though he may not recall it)

Itzhak Perlman

Ray Charles

The Grateful Dead

The Paul Taylor Dance Company

A Prarie Home Companion

Do I have your attention now? See why we love this auditorium?

Back to the tour, now that you’re suitably impressed. After all, Your very own Gullible performed on this stage many times. Yes, and those high school years were almost the last time, too. See, there was this one night after I ate a funny-tasting brownie and I found myself playing the guitar and singing in front of a room full of people and… Oh, it’s getting late. We have to hurry now.

May as well start where our reunion group started. A couple dozen of us gathered outside the doors of the auditorium/gym to tour the school.

Here we are:

Now, the first thing I noticed that was really different was this rooftop. What the heck are those things? Bird catchers?

Inside, the passage of five decades was evident. I don't mean this hallway (excuse the ladders, please. They’re up-dating the sprinkler system.) Sprinkler system? Must have been a retrograde.

No, what I mean is this sign:



And this one:

Here’s what used to be the round library. Now it’s a Native studies lab.

Now, be careful here. Don’t step on the eagle. It’s the original.

This is the original granite flooring from 1953. Incredible how it’s held up. I know of whole schools that were built in Anchorage after this that have since been demolished and rebuilt.

You’ll notice that they have real "temporary" buildings out back for extra classrooms, instead of Quonset huts. Kids just don’t know what they’re missing. I mean, Quonset huts have cachet.

During my senior year, when I was co-editor of the school newspaper, they let us have an actual classroom instead of a Quonset.

This one below might be it. Don’t know if it survived the earthquake, but this is the right location—top of the stairs, across from the entry to the music department, which did survive.

Boy, just standing here I can still hear the cheers coming from the gym downstairs.

Everyone’s at the basketball

game but me. I’m up here late on a Friday night, doing a paste-up of the paper.

Wow.

And somewhere along here is one of my old lockers…one of these….

Don’t remember which one, exactly. Which is quite appropriate, because every time we had more than two days off from school, I’d have to go to the office and ask Mrs. McGuin for the combination to my locker. I still have trouble that way with numbers.

This locker is right across from what used to be the cafeteria. I’m really glad the area now contains offices, because a photo of the old cafeteria would give me nightmares. THAT cafeteria almost got me expelled from school in my senior year, and expulsion meant I wouldn’t graduate, and not graduating was unthinkable.

Yes, that’s another one of those stories.

But, oh, dear, I see we’ve run out time. Too bad. So sorry. Maybe another time. Hope you enjoyed the tour.

(to be continued--it's El's turn next)

The Golden Years (The 50th Reunion of the AHS Class of 1960)

Ever wondered where frequently-published fiction writers get their ideas for all those stories?

Think of the many books written by Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Sue Grafton and others. You’d think they’d run out of ideas after a dozen or so, wouldn’t you?

Charlaine Harris, the author of the fabulously successful Sookie Stackhouse Southern Vampire series (the inspiration for the HBO series True Blood), answered that question at a writer’s conference I attended a couple years ago in Anchorage.

Harris said something like this:

I was at one of my kid’s school basketball games when a player broke for the basket, scored, then kept running—right out of the gym and down the hall. And I thought, ‘What if (he/she) doesn’t come back?’ That was the basis for one of my books.

Thus, the answer is “what if?” Applied frequently and liberally.

So today we’re going to play “What If?” right here at Gullible’s Travels, originating from Muskeg Manor.

***

First, let’s set the scene.

In 1960 there was one high school in Anchorage—Anchorage High School (AHS).

The new school had opened 1953 and already the student population had increased so much that quonset huts behind the school were used as classrooms.

Jackie and her school newspaper co-editor Gullible discussing the next issue of the Eagle's Cry.

A new school on the east side of town was not yet finished The students were divided into East and West student bodies and double-shifted at AHS. The Westies attended school in the morning and the Easties in the afternoon. There were almost five hundred students in the 1960 graduating class.

World War II hero Dwight Eisenhower was president. Richard Nixon was vice president, but running for the office of president. A young US Senator from Massachusetts, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, was making a name for himself during the campaign. Religion was a big issue in the campaign, because no Catholic had ever been elected president. Voters were concerned about how much influence the Vatican would have if Kennedy won.

For the first time, Alaskans would be able to vote in the presidential election, as statehood had been granted the previous year. Our parents could vote—we could not, even though many of us would turn eighteen that final year of school.

The voting age was twenty-one, the drinking age was twenty-one, but young men could die for their country at eighteen. Military service was mandatory for all young men eighteen and older under the Selective Service draft.

Cuba and Fidel Castro were an issue, as was the Cold War and a fearsome Soviet Union. The potential for nuclear war hung like a black cloud over the world.

In 1955, Bill Haley and the Comets recorded a song called “Rock around the Clock.” It didn’t do well until the next year when it was included in a movie called, “Blackboard Jungle” starring Glenn Ford. Teens danced in the aisles of movie theaters across the country. Parents were aghast. Then, all hell broke loose.

Youths all over the country ran head long at the walls of a rigid society with rigid mores and made them bend.

A sleepy-eyed youth from the deep south with the weird name of Elvis Presley completed the jail break, and millions of teens ran in pursuit. Parents were apoplectic. Kids cast aside their parents’s favorites--Perry Como, Frank Sinatra, and Doris Day, and so on.

They preferred (after Elvis, of course), Buddy Holly and the Crickets, the Big Bopper, and Ritchie Valens. And scores of others— rock and roll, R&B, blues—whatever, so long as it had a dancing beat to it, and their parents didn’t like it, didn’t consider it music.

And if the lyrics were "Wemoweh, wemoweh, wemoweh, wemoweh,” or "Oo ee oo ah ah ting tang walla walla bing bang?” Well, so much the better.

So, with all that in play, it's time for WHAT IF.

What if you were a radio disc jockey during the late 1950s?

What if you had the mega-economic power of Coco-Cola as your sponsor?

What if you and that mega-power won, if not the heart, then certainly the mind of Ernie Spink, the station manager of KFQD radio?

What if you, Ron Moore aka The Royal Coachman, brought rock and roll to teenagers seeking their own generation’s identity?

The Royal Coachman in shades, DJ SCoty Ferguson standing at right, classmate Dick (seated) at the controls.

What if you were remembered so fondly by those long ago teenagers that they invited you to attend their 50^th high school class reunion, even though you now lived and worked in Texas?

And….

What if your flight to Anchorage was rescheduled the very day….

Anchorage Hillside, nearing midnight in late June, 2010.

…and rescheduled again……

….and when you finally arrived in Anchorage and walked through the security gates…..

….you saw this...

and this...

or (OMG!) this???

Would you run?

No, you would not, because that’s you right there in the center right of these oddly-costumed senior citizens, the very group that had been amusing others-in-waiting at the gates, the ones who had joined in the welcoming applause.

And waiting outside the luggage area was this:

…waiting to transport you to the ultra-ritzy (for Alaska) Captain Cook Hotel.

“Fasten your seatbelt,” reminded Gullible as you sat in the back seat of the shiny Chevy Bel Air.

“There aren’t any,” you laughed.

Indeed, boys and girls, no one had ever heard of automobile seat belts back then. We are definitely talking the dark ages here.

(To be continued)