Been a lot of talk amongst my high school classmates; the 40th reunion of the East Brunswick High School Class of ’75 is next year. The event is already in the planning stages, and if you listen closely you can hear the buzz amongst our classmates slowing starting to build. Got me to thinking, forty years ago at this time was the eve of the beginning of senior year. Would be pretty cool to go back and visit that era one more time, wouldn’t it? You know, Labor Day was early in 1974, Monday the 2nd. Pretty damn similar to this year. Summer vacation 1974, most days I was with my buddies from the neighborhood, Danny Ancona, Jimmy Weis and his brother Mike Weis. I had my drivers license for the first time. Once in a while I’d borrow Pop’s car. Made me feel like a big shot. Most days, Danny, Jimmy, Mike, and I got along pretty well with our bicycles. We’d take a ride to some of the other neighborhoods in town, always looking for the next outrageous moment that would be a “classic” memory, 40-years later. There was something relatively new in town, people called it “The Mall”. And, later in the summer, “The County Fair”. I always looked at it as a kind of a dress rehearsal, socially, for the beginning of the new school year, just a few, short, weeks away. Danny, Jimmy, Mike, and I, we never tired of being together, but, it was always great to see the girls and our buddies from the other neighborhoods. You folks that know me, you know that music plays into every memory of every moment in my life, especially my youth. Dig it, 77-WABC, 1974. “Seasons In the Sun”, “The Night Chicago Died”, “Billy, Don’t Be A Hero”, RINGO with “You’re Sixteen”, McCartney with “Jet”, Lennon with “Whatever Gets You Through the Night”, “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road”, Grand Funk teaching us “The Locomotion”, new bands named Bad Company and Bachman Turner Overdrive. Carly Simon and James Taylor doing their best Beverly D’Angelo and Chevy Chase with “Mockingbird”, ERIC CLAPTON (I Shot the Sheriff), and, the one song that really takes me back, every time I hear it, “Jazzman” by Carole King. Remember the movies? Blazing Saddles, the first time we ever saw a horse get punched out. The Towering Inferno, Young Frankenstein and those “nice knockers”. “The Longest Yard”, AWESOME football and we didn’t even know yet that Burt Reynolds could be so funny. And the Oscars go to “The Godfather Part II, Art Carney, Ellen Burstyn, Robert DeNiro, and Ingrid Bergman. We said “good bye” to Bud Abbott, Endora, Sgt. Carter, Grand Pappy Amos, Jack Benny, and Ed Sullivan. And, we held on tightly to the final few days of our final summer vacation. One week later, at East Brunswick High School, we were “The Shit”!
Posted on: Fri, 29 Aug 2014 13:31:37 +0000
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