Sixty Candles

Maybe you get a little sentimental as you age. Or maybe what I am about to discuss is a small town phenomenon. I don’t know - I am a small town gal and have no way to compare growing up in a small town to growing up in a big city. I had the same friends all of my growing up years. It was pretty rare for families to move away, and fairly rare for families to move to town. I’d like to think we were a bit of a Mayberry type of town. And the only time I’ve lived away from here was to attend college. Now don’t you Yankees get mad, but my father used to say that Yankee people could come to town, complain about the heat, complain about the food, make fun of the way we talk, and in 6 months time you couldn’t run ‘em off with a posse. Since I’ve been grown, there have been some factory people move here, and I’ve met more than one person who was appalled that most of us have never traveled very far from home, much less lived anywhere else. I suppose the only explanation is that we are happy here and have never felt the urge to leave. In fact, you can’t even run us off with a posse!

Two wonderful friends from my high school graduating class succumbed to cancer within weeks of each other since the first of the year and it has really hit the rest of us hard. Most of us have lost at least one parent, with many (me, for one) having lost both. We’ve lost a few classmates through the years and it has been heartbreaking every time, but we’ve arrived at the cold, hard fact that we are getting older so we feel the need to reconnect as often as possible. Most of us have stayed here or are no farther away than just scattered around the south, so it isn’t terribly difficult to make a gathering happen with a little bit of advance notice.

I’m not sure who had the idea to have a collective 60th birthday party. We were every one born in 1950 (it was a very good year - at least to us). Our birthday party was at Lupo’s, our local Italian restaurant; and it was a lot of fun. We had 60‘s music playing all evening, but the surprise was the parody on the song Sixteen Candles. One of the waiters sang Sixty Candles just beautifully. I wish I had a copy of the words. There are a few parodies of the song on the internet but I don’t think any of them was what I heard last night. It was real cute.

I am posting a few photos of the 40th class reunion we had 2 years ago. Our class President, Sam Hummer, promised he’d e-mail me a group shot of last night.



This is Sam. We called him Sammy growing up. He was a good choice for class President. He's one of the key people who has always helped pull these events together.












I guess this lady was everyone's favorite teacher. Mrs. Bell was a young woman with a small child when she taught us. Anyone who can teach you Chemistry and lead you to love it is a gifted teacher. She later taught Chemistry at the local college and 2 of my children had her. They loved her just as much as I did.





Well, that monkey-in-the-middle is me - Mimi Pearl or Mary Carol, or whatever you want to call me! Those other 2 blushing blondes are Nancy and Sharron. There is nothing quite like wearing glasses and having your picture taken.



This is the 6th grade class at Alice Thurmond Primary School. I am the 2nd child from the left on the back row. I am standing next to my tall friend, Mary Jane. This picture was taken after my first real haircut. Oh, I'd had hair "trims" before, but I had finally managed to get my mother to let me ditch the long blonde ponytail for something a little more grown looking. I had spent the first 6 years of school going off in the morning with the ponytail pulled so tightly into a rubberband that my eyes looked like I had borrowed them from a blue-eyed Asian child.

Keep up with your friends. And to borrow a line from Miz Booshay, "Encourage one another".