Not Much of a Reunion But I Did Buy a Book!

The National Guard camped across the street from my high school in 1969

My alma mater, Berkeley High School, had an all classes reunion on Saturday. I think it can best be summed up by the following two words: a bust. There were less than a dozen classes with booths and all of those were from 1970 though sometime in the late ‘80s, sorry/not sorry I’ve forgotten the last year. That’s scores of years that went unrepresented. Sitting at the booths were half a dozen or so people. For my class (’71) there was a photo from our men’s basketball tournament of champions victory. That was it. Other booths didn’t even have that. There was, on the other hand, plenty of food on sale, there was a lot of Berkeley High School merchandise, mostly tee shirts commemorating the day, such as it was. There were also tables such as one sees at craft fairs selling things like homemade jewelry. No, I don’t know why.

There were two huge speakers blaring music so loudly that normal conversation was nigh on impossible. I encountered one chap I new from my middle school teaching days. We’d not seen each other since a mutual friend’s memorial service thirteen years ago. We caught up on latest doings. Rather he caught me up on his latest doings. He seemed disinterested in what all I’ve been up to. People can be like that. They want to tell you everything about them but aren’t interested in anything about you. That’s odd considering they know what they’ve been doing and nothing of what you’ve been doing. Thus they learn nothing from seeing you. Invariably people who talk so much have little to say. This was the case on Saturday. 

I also saw  a former student who was passing through with small child in tow. He was too preoccupied with his young ‘un to stay and chat for more than a couple of minutes. I didn't recognize anyone else, not that I expected too.

I wandered around for a bit, dumbstruck by how lame the event was. On an unrelated note I couldn’t help but observe that over 75 per cent of the attendees were African Americans and over 90 per cent of the people sitting at the booths were Black. I believe for most of the past sixty maybe even seventy years Berkeley High has traditionally been about 30 pre cent black. It was my experience as a student that African American students were much more “into” things like spirit week, going to football games, school dances and the like. This was especially true in the late Sixties/early Seventies when many white students — such as yours truly — were participating in the protest movement and in drug experimentation. We found traditional school social events to be terribly bourgeois and beneath us truth seekers. I certainly did not have the typical high school experience especially during the protests on the Cal campus and most especially when the odious Governor Reagan  sent the national guard to our town during the People's Park demonstrations and police riots. The guard were camped across the street from the high school and stationed all about downtown which is a mere two blocks from the high school. Different times. Then again it seems like Trumpy may be trying to bring back the notion of occupied cities. 

In any event I’m glad the all classes reunion had only cost me a fifteen-minute walk from home and had taken me a hop, skip and jump from a bookstore. I eschewed hopping, skipping or jumping but made it to the store and lo and behold managed to purchase a book.

I am reminded of this quote: "Think not of the books you've bought as a 'to be read' pile. Instead, think of your bookcase as a wine cellar. You collect books to be read at the right time, the right place, and the right mood.” —  Luc van Donkersgoed.

Amen brother.

Too many is never enough.

So with a book purchased the reunion wasn’t a waste of time. Without the book…..