Pioneer Class: Good Morning, Yesterday

Do you believe in ghosts?
You soon will.
In rummaging through his memorabilia, Jim MacPherson found some old 8mm footage of our junior and senior years of high school. He recently had the film digitized into a form he could share with the rest of us.

As I once wrote about other material in this site, you are about to rewind the tape of your life, to experience the pounds melting away, the gray disappearing, the hairline returning, the eyesight sharpening. You are about to see those ghosts I promised, like the ghost of Mary Jean Manion , who will haunt you in all of her beauty and sweetness.

Just below lies your youth. So brush your teeth with Ipana, put on your Bishop Kearney Hush Puppies, and climb into the time machine.

Backstage (i.e. the gym) before a performance of Oklahoma.

Again paraphrasing myself ...

Within a few moments of seeing this I was back at Bishop Kearney. I have now been divorced for close to a half of a century from the woman who played Ado Annie, yet when I saw the nun finishing her make-up, I didn't even know that I would some day fall in love with her. I was in the time machine, completely transported back to adolescence, to a time when all achievements seemed possible, and the highway of life seemed to stretch out infinitely before me, like Interstate 15 plunging out of Barstow to penetrate the endless desert under eternally cloudless skies. Oh, if only life's real paths were more like that, and less like the twisted cobblestone streets and rain-drenched back alleys of European art films.

I think Jim must have told us to ham it up for the camera because nearly everyone did, and I certainly did more than my share of shameless mugging. I felt ambivalent about this footage. On the bright side, it was fun to see the old gang clowning around; to be reminded about the always hilarious Larry "Bullfrog" Miller, whom I haven't thought about since graduation; and especially to see "Eres" doing a good-natured send-up of his own image (see below). On the dark side, the ubiquitous sight of Kathy "Ado Annie" Smith reminded me of what a mess I made of my marriage to her, and ... well ... I guess I had forgotten what a total douche I was, so it was a shocking reminder to see it portrayed so vividly in previously unseen footage.