Week #31: Lets all get together!!

We all saw some long lost friends this week. My wife, our friend Laurie, and myself thought of the idea of a 25th year grade school reunion a few years ago. Months ago, we started looking for e-mail addresses, postal addresses, or our classmates' parent's addresses to track them down.

We ended up with about one third of our class attending. This was a pretty good showing with lots of classmates moving out of the state and not being able to contact many other fellow graduates.

We started out the day at 3:00 with a self-guided tour of our school. It was a great time!! We were able to leisurely go from the 1st grade classrooms to 8th grade. The old stories were coming out left and right. We were a little disappointed that our school replaced the old time "foot pedal" bathroom community sinks. I think I speak for all of us when I say the highlight was walking through "THE TUNNEL"! We went to a catholic school that had a tunnel that went under our school to the adjoining church. It was always fun to walk through there and perform our tornado drills in the tunnel.

Our original plan was a tour of the school at 3:00, move to the bar across the street at 4:00, followed by mass at 5:00, School's 150th anniversary BBQ at 6:00, then back to the bar at 8:00. We had such a good time that the itinerary got completely changed! Tour at 3:00 ... followed by hanging out in the back room at the bar from 4:00 until midnight! I can't tell you how much fun we had! Alot of reminiscing about the old days.

One of the most fulfilling nights in a long time. I forgot how nice everyone was. When we started singing the old grade school play songs by Mr. Fronczek (How the West Was Really Won and Christmas on Angel Street), I felt like it was 1984 again. Great, great night!!

Pictures above include: School entrance, two pictures entering "the tunnel", our old 8th grade room with our original desks, Dave and Norm in the boiler room (in the middle of tunnel maze) with the same old tennis racket used to swat the bats flying in the tunnel, picture at the bar towards the end of the evening