Looking Back...

Class of '57 had its dreams...

By Jim Heffernan/DuluthNewsTribune/9-22-07

This weekend my high school graduating class is celebrating its 50th anniversary with a reunion in Duluth -- the Class of 1957. Oh yes, the school was Denfeld. Can't forget that.

I have been pondering what to write about it that might be of interest to anyone other than those attending our reunion and people who will read anything on a Sunday morning

This is a momentous occasion for us. Not everyone who was handed a diploma that June day in 1957 is still with us, alive-wise. Actuarially speaking, it's bound to happen. But the vast majority of us are still alive and kicking and, of course, reuniting, remembering and reflecting this weekend.

So much has changed in the intervening years. In 1957, Eisenhower was in the White House, Mars was in Venus' house, Billy Graham was in God's house, Superior's ladies of the night were in their John Avenue house, Perkins was not yet in the pancake house, I was in the dog house (for flunking chemistry in my white buck shoes) and Elvis was building his mad house. All was right with the world.

Sometime in the last half century, the Statler Brothers had a hit song named after the class of '57. The chorus went: "And the class of '57 had its dreams/We all hoped we'd change the world/With our great works and deeds/ Maybe we all thought the world would change to fit our needs/But the class of '57 had its dreams."

Well, yes, we had our dreams, and the world did change, but not necessarily to fit our needs. Does it ever?

Hold it. What am I doing, going glum here? This is a time for celebration and a few precious "Moments to Remember," another popular song of the day: "...The New Year's Eve we did the down/The day we tore the goalpost down/We will have these moments to remember."

Tore the goalpost down? If anyone in our school had toppled a goalpost in Public Schools Stadium, and got caught, they would have ended up booted out of school, hauled before Judge Runar Erickson in West Duluth Municipal Court, declared a juvenile delinquent and punished to the full extent of the law. It would have been a moment to remember, all right. Criminal record, unable to get a job, turned down by the military... might as well hang around Roscoe's Pool Hall all day, smoking cigarettes and watching Captain Kangaroo.

Those were harsh times. Cops used to arrest you for having loud mufflers on your car, and they'd poke around Skyline Parkway at night peeking into couples' parked cars with flashlights, enforcing moral codes apparently designed to keep the population from growing without benefit of clergy. When it happened anyway, the expectant parents were kicked out of school, the educational theory being if they're going to be teenage parents, let's make sure they're poor, too.

The singing Statlers had another song that comes to mind: "Whatever Happened to Randolph Scott?" Its last line is, "Whatever happened to Randolph Scott/Has happened to the best of me."

Randolph Scott is dead, and after this weekend's celebrating, I don't feel so good myself. Oh yeah, if you don't know who Randolph Scott was, you'll read anything on a Sunday morning, and I thank you for that.