by Pa Rock
Poetry Appreciator
I've lost a couple of my old high school friends over the past two weeks, and ironically both were named Mike.
Our class was the last to graduate from the small high school in Noel, Missouri - and that was way back in 1966. The following year all of the local kids began being bused to a consolidated county high school where there were many more opportunities to become involved in extra-curricular activities - and educational outcomes began a decades-long slide. I may have not known that many people in high school, but the friends that I made there and the education that I received in that small school were both superior to anything that I would have received stumbling through the halls of a bigger and more impersonal setting.
In my mind our class graduated twenty-two that year, a small class even for Noel, but out official graduation panel features the faces of only twenty students. There were several who were with us for most of the school experience, yet had gone other directions by the time graduation finally rolled around.
Mike Poynor was one who didn't graduate with our group, though I don't remember why. Mike's step-dad owned a gas station and garage, and Mike always had an interest in cars. For a time while we were in high school we both owned 1957 Chevys. Mine was a four-door and Mike's was probably a classier two-door. One day while I was riding around town with a friend in the friend's car, and having left my Chevy on Main Street, we came upon Mike rifling through the trunk of my car. Looking a bit guilty but not overly contrite, he said that he just wanted to see if his key fit - and it did.
Noel was one of those small towns where everyone felt like family, and no one was going to get too bent out of shape over something as trivial as that.
At the time of his death two weeks ago, Mike Poynor was living in Oklahoma. I visited with his older brother (who is now also deceased) a couple of years ago, and he told me that Mike was doing well. I was glad to hear it.
The other Mike died last week. Mike Carr did graduate with our class and went on to have a distinguished career in the United States Air Force and retired as a Chief Master Sergeant (E-9), the highest enlisted rank in the USAF. Mike and his wife, the parents of two grown children, were living in San Antonio, Texas. He happened to be visiting Noel when he became ill, and passed away while in Missouri. This past Saturday he was buried at the Noel Cemetery.
Mike Carr and I did keep up with each other during our later years. He became the clearing house for news of our class and was the one to contact the rest of us when there was a story involving a classmate - and too often those were death notices. Mike was the eighth person (of which I am aware) on that panel of twenty to have passed on.
Mike Carr and I were in Boy Scouts together and had a lot of interactions while growing up. My dad had an appliance store on Main Street in Noel, and when color television was new, he would open the store on Sunday evenings so the people in town could come in and watch The Wonderful World of Disney and Bonanza!, two of the first programs to be shown in color. Mike Carr told me once years later that he had first watched color television in that little store.
After graduation we went our separate ways. While I was safely tucked away in college, Mike Carr was fighting in the jungles of Vietnam. A few years back Mike emailed me a photo from his days in Nam. It was of him and Marvin Gilming (another of our classmates who is also now deceased), two skinny kids who had managed to meet up half-a-world away from Noel, Missouri, and who were both experiencing a life that the rest of that graduating class could not begin to imagine.
The last time I saw Mike Carr was at an all-school reunion in Noel in 2016. We discussed out families, our lives, and even our health - congratulating ourselves on both still being in fairly good shape. Mike had a large incubator and had recently hatched out a big group of baby quail, and I had a tabletop incubator and had hatched a few baby chickens - so we had that in common after fifty years out from high school. We talked about Marvin, who Mike regarded as his best friend and who had recently passed away, and at some point Jim Durham, another classmate, stepped into the conversation. Jim died a couple of months later.
I guess what I am aiming toward is the notion that it all seems to be shutting down. Every day is a gift, but damn if they aren't coming and going quicker and quicker and quicker. Life does come and go - much like Simon and Garfunkel told us it would, all those many years ago:
Old Friends
by Paul Simon
Poetry Appreciator
I've lost a couple of my old high school friends over the past two weeks, and ironically both were named Mike.
Our class was the last to graduate from the small high school in Noel, Missouri - and that was way back in 1966. The following year all of the local kids began being bused to a consolidated county high school where there were many more opportunities to become involved in extra-curricular activities - and educational outcomes began a decades-long slide. I may have not known that many people in high school, but the friends that I made there and the education that I received in that small school were both superior to anything that I would have received stumbling through the halls of a bigger and more impersonal setting.
In my mind our class graduated twenty-two that year, a small class even for Noel, but out official graduation panel features the faces of only twenty students. There were several who were with us for most of the school experience, yet had gone other directions by the time graduation finally rolled around.
Mike Poynor was one who didn't graduate with our group, though I don't remember why. Mike's step-dad owned a gas station and garage, and Mike always had an interest in cars. For a time while we were in high school we both owned 1957 Chevys. Mine was a four-door and Mike's was probably a classier two-door. One day while I was riding around town with a friend in the friend's car, and having left my Chevy on Main Street, we came upon Mike rifling through the trunk of my car. Looking a bit guilty but not overly contrite, he said that he just wanted to see if his key fit - and it did.
Noel was one of those small towns where everyone felt like family, and no one was going to get too bent out of shape over something as trivial as that.
At the time of his death two weeks ago, Mike Poynor was living in Oklahoma. I visited with his older brother (who is now also deceased) a couple of years ago, and he told me that Mike was doing well. I was glad to hear it.
The other Mike died last week. Mike Carr did graduate with our class and went on to have a distinguished career in the United States Air Force and retired as a Chief Master Sergeant (E-9), the highest enlisted rank in the USAF. Mike and his wife, the parents of two grown children, were living in San Antonio, Texas. He happened to be visiting Noel when he became ill, and passed away while in Missouri. This past Saturday he was buried at the Noel Cemetery.
Mike Carr and I did keep up with each other during our later years. He became the clearing house for news of our class and was the one to contact the rest of us when there was a story involving a classmate - and too often those were death notices. Mike was the eighth person (of which I am aware) on that panel of twenty to have passed on.
Mike Carr and I were in Boy Scouts together and had a lot of interactions while growing up. My dad had an appliance store on Main Street in Noel, and when color television was new, he would open the store on Sunday evenings so the people in town could come in and watch The Wonderful World of Disney and Bonanza!, two of the first programs to be shown in color. Mike Carr told me once years later that he had first watched color television in that little store.
After graduation we went our separate ways. While I was safely tucked away in college, Mike Carr was fighting in the jungles of Vietnam. A few years back Mike emailed me a photo from his days in Nam. It was of him and Marvin Gilming (another of our classmates who is also now deceased), two skinny kids who had managed to meet up half-a-world away from Noel, Missouri, and who were both experiencing a life that the rest of that graduating class could not begin to imagine.
The last time I saw Mike Carr was at an all-school reunion in Noel in 2016. We discussed out families, our lives, and even our health - congratulating ourselves on both still being in fairly good shape. Mike had a large incubator and had recently hatched out a big group of baby quail, and I had a tabletop incubator and had hatched a few baby chickens - so we had that in common after fifty years out from high school. We talked about Marvin, who Mike regarded as his best friend and who had recently passed away, and at some point Jim Durham, another classmate, stepped into the conversation. Jim died a couple of months later.
I guess what I am aiming toward is the notion that it all seems to be shutting down. Every day is a gift, but damn if they aren't coming and going quicker and quicker and quicker. Life does come and go - much like Simon and Garfunkel told us it would, all those many years ago:
Old Friends
by Paul Simon
Old friends
Old friends
Sat on their park bench
Like bookends
A newspaper blown through the grass
Falls on the round toes
On the high shoes
Of the old friends
Old friends
Sat on their park bench
Like bookends
A newspaper blown through the grass
Falls on the round toes
On the high shoes
Of the old friends
Old friends
Winter companions
The old men
Lost in their overcoats
Waiting for the sunset
The sounds of the city
Sifting through trees
Settle like dust
On the shoulders
Of the old friends
Winter companions
The old men
Lost in their overcoats
Waiting for the sunset
The sounds of the city
Sifting through trees
Settle like dust
On the shoulders
Of the old friends
Can you imagine us
Years from today
Sharing a park bench quietly?
How terribly strange
To be seventy
Years from today
Sharing a park bench quietly?
How terribly strange
To be seventy
Old friends
Memory brushes the same years
Silently sharing the same fear
Memory brushes the same years
Silently sharing the same fear
Time it was,
And what a time it was
It was . . .
A time of innocence
A time of confidences
And what a time it was
It was . . .
A time of innocence
A time of confidences
Long ago . . . it must be . . .
I have a photograph
Preserve your memories
They’re all that’s left you
I have a photograph
Preserve your memories
They’re all that’s left you
2 comments:
Rocky, our SHS Class of 1965 set a record for our high school---194 graduates. The record, ironically was broken in the late 1990s and, I believe, topped off with more than 300 in my daughter's Class of 1997.
Numbers have gone down since then, just as have numbers of those still living in our class. As the one who keeps most of the class information and who posts happenings on our group Facebook page, I now know that we've lost at least 38 classmates. Could be more that I haven't heard about though.
It is stunning to reach a point in life when these numbers start telling us we're on the downward turn, and, like you, I cherish and try to make the most of every day, especially of good health and the ability to use that good health. As I said before, we have a lot in common.
And from another (but older) voice from the same town as Marianne: Our class of 1959 lost TWO classmates just last week. Some of our classmates say that when they see an email from me they hesitate to open it because more often than not now, it is to inform them of another death. I called one classmate last week who doesn't have email and as soon as I identified myself, she said, "Oh, oh. This must be bad news. Who has died?"
I think it hits home more and harder for those of us who have always lived in small towns where, once upon a time, almost everyone knew everyone else. That phenomenon is slipping away too.
Keep your observations coming!
Post a Comment