It would be a three-hour drive each way for me to get to the northwestern Illinois town of Sterling.  I got a motel room because if it was a really fun reunion I didn’t want to be getting back to Urbana at 3 a.m. 

I rolled into Sterling a good half hour before the reunion was to begin, not enough time to drive out where I had lived, ten miles north into the country.  I was, however, able to go by the mall, circle around the high school, and cruise through the downtown area where I had my first “town” jobs.  It was not what I remembered:  the mall virtually shuttered, the high school shabby-looking, and the downtown streets ghost-like.  

An historian would note that I went to high school during Sterling’s apex.  Its economy was fueled by some of the world’s most fertile family farms.  Its steel mills (including Northwestern Steel and Wire) possessed the world’s largest furnaces at the time.  The town was proud of its schools and parks.  Conservation, investment in future generations, and civic duty were highly promoted.  When there was an opening at the high school, the school board would search a three-hundred-mile radius for the best teachers they could find.  Small businesses, churches, and civic organizations flourished.  The Sterling Gazette provided a daily glue that both created and maintained community.  

Of course, not everyone enjoyed the good times.  Some of our neighbors lived in poverty.  The 25% of the population that was Hispanic was largely segregated.  The 2% who were Black were invisible.  Women’s liberation hadn’t found its way to Sterling.  Local “society” was run by a handful of families, even at the high school level.  The town’s dozen Democrats laid low. I believed then that the majority of us felt marginalized, in one way or another.  As editor of the school paper, I constantly wrote editorials poking at the establishment.  But it was like tossing popcorn at a giant:  people were merely amused at my youthful earnestness.  I left town for college two weeks after my graduation, never to live there again.  

A generation later Sterling would hit the skids.  Northwestern Steel and Wire went bankrupt and 2000 workers lost their jobs.  Distant corporations bought out family farms.  The tax base that supported some of the best schools in the state collapsed.  The daily newspaper went defunct. Small businesses boarded up and Walmart established a monopoly at the edge of town.  Sewage from the national political climate seeped into local politics.  The invisible alienation that always exists between alumni who stay and those who leave gets exacerbated in such circumstances: our life-stories diverge all the more. I was about to participate in a reunion rooted in a bygone era.    

Champs Bar and grill looked grungy and depressing, the kind of place that attracts guys who want to avoid going home.  Surely this wasn’t the venue. There was no signage about a high school reunion.  I walked up and down the street three times before finally deciding to enter.  It was a small, dark room with a bar and a handful of people who were ignoring the ballgames on the two TVs.  At the back of the room were the bathrooms.  A door beyond the bathrooms was labeled “private,” the only place the reunion might be.  I cautiously pushed it open.  

It revealed an L-shaped beer hall where a dozen or so people were lingering about.  An untended table in the corner featured a sign that read, “Welcome SHS 50^th Reunion.”  Festivities were due to start in 15 minutes.

Lou Ann Schultz saw me at the registration table and came over to welcome me, asking who I was.  I remembered Lou Ann, a cheerleader, a girl way out of my league. Back in the day I’d always been too intimidated to ever speak to her. But I had to say something now or I’d never get my nametag.  Although no longer the cartwheel-type, she seemed fairly healthy.  Still nervous to say too much to her, I wandered off to mingle until everyone else got there.  

I couldn’t place any of the other people then in the room.  There were four forlorn guys… scattered… each sitting alone.  I surmised that they were alumni spouses, both by their demeaner and their nametags (which didn’t feature a yearbook picture.)  I headed toward one of the clusters of women.  But as I approached, none of them even looked up, so I thoughtfully peeled away without intruding, heading instead to the “Memorial Tree.” It was a board was covered with the photos of 58 classmates who were “known dead.” I mentally marked 4 people off my “must see” list.  

Within 10 minutes another 30 people had arrived.  I was drawing a blank on all of them.  I knew that the only way I was going to find my old friends was to get close enough to read the nametags.   And so, I began walking around the room, gawkishly poking my head towards the breasts of complete strangers, straining to see a name I might remember.  

(Note to planners of future 50^th year reunions:  please use 4-inch-high letters for the nametags… and maybe have people wear them on their backs.)  

The first familiar names I found were some guys I rode the bus with.  The chit-chat was superficial but friendly.  We caught up on where we all lived.  All of them were still living around Sterling.  All had continued to work local farms and supplement their income with town jobs.  It was nice to see them, but our conversations remained thin as none of us felt comfortable drilling down too deep with questions. We talked about things like how eager we all were to get our own cars so we wouldn’t have to ride the bus anymore.  Grateful for this initial conversational success with people I sat around with, I moseyed off in search of people I ran around with.

Still not finding anyone, I headed to the door to talk with Max Gaumer, who had just arrived to point people to the registration table.  We squinted to read one other’s names, looking like two old men sniffing each other’s chests. We instantly remembered each other, even though we didn’t run around together.  He remembered us having fun in geometry class together.  I was interested to hear that after college he had come back to Sterling High to be a coach… and eventually dean of students… and was now retired.  We traded anecdotes about the horrendous dean we had endured. 

Moving on, I finally walked up to a couple of women, whose names were familiar, barely.  They said they could sort of remember me too. We chatted about where we now lived.  They still lived in Sterling.  And then it was time for dinner.  Groups had begun to click around various tables and I needed to find an empty chair.  Tom Delgado was sitting all alone and said the seat next to him wasn’t taken.  Tom and I probably never spoke 5 words with each other all the way through high school, but we feigned happiness to be reunited, both of genuinely happy to have a conversation partner during the meal.  

It turns out that Tom’s a great conversationalist.  He shared that within ten years of graduating, he’d gone broke and gotten divorced.  Deciding to pull his life together, he went to Minnesota, got a degree in social work and pastoral care, and spent several years working there with a non-profit social agency.  He then became a Chicago police officer for 25 years… before retiring a year ago to Texas.  We talked all the way through the buffet line and most of the dinner. 

Two couples were also at our table.  The one guy had a rather unpleasant personality, which jogged a faint memory of him.  His wife was more amiable, and since she worked in the same bakery I did, we enjoyed swapping stories about our old boss.  The whole table got to talking about the downtown hotel that burnt down our senior year.  It turns out that three of us watched that fire.  We told stories about driver’s ed, revealed who we ran with, and where we lived now.  After finishing our food, the company broke up to seek out other friends. 

I wandered around for ten minutes, trying inauspiciously to read nametags, but had trouble finding anyone I wanted to see.  Plus, people were cocooning into small conversation groups, and there wasn’t a courteous way to break into one of them.  

The mingling was finally interrupted for a speech by our senior class president.  He was quite emotional about all the classmates who had died.  He was also quite emotional about those who had organized this reunion.  Then he sadly announced that this would probably be our last reunion since we were all so…  well… mortal.  Then he announced that a band would be playing for the next two hours.  I was frustrated: even if I could find someone I remembered well, how would we be able to hear each other with the music blaring? 

I decided to cut my losses and head back to the motel.

Getting back to my room, I spent two hours poring over our senior yearbook, especially pausing to ponder those pictures of the deceased.  I read the notes my classmates and teachers wrote in my yearbook. When I came across pictures of my friends, those I had hoped to see, I paused again… my mind feeling empty.  I kept closing my eyes and re-pictured all the senior citizens I’d just encountered, all strangers to me, even after more than two hours with them.  In my disappointment, I tried to formulate precisely what it was I’d wanted from the evening.

Looking through the yearbook, I noticed how good looking we all were back then.  It’s funny:  when you are in high school, you’re curious about what many of your classmates look like naked. But that curiosity is totally AWOL when you see each other at your 50^th reunion. In fact, you decidedly do NOT want to see more of your classmates’ anatomy, knowing (from your own mirror) that what remains hidden is much worse than what’s peeking out. 

My adolescent curiosity, however, is replaced by my old man’s curiosity, a different kind of wondering.  All but a handful of my classmates now have a worthwhile life-story to tell. They have been up metaphorical mountains and down dark valleys.  They have been in and out of relationships.  They have worn multiple masks in life, from the saint to the ass.  Each life is a story to be mined, and most will yield surprising treasures.  The curiosities about the flesh have fully given way to curiosities about the story. 

My classmates and I spent four years of our lifes’ stories together.  We shared a specific… and now extinct social context during an intensely formative period of our lives.  It makes sense that I would be curious about those particular people.  No wonder I want to move beyond the frozen images I have carried in my mind for 50 years, to gain something more personal and worthy.

A noisy beer hall, however, is no place to find what I seek.  I want stories. I’d like a quiet place and a cup of coffee with one or two at a time.  Talking with Tom Delgado taught me that maybe I don’t so much care if I knew them well at the time.  To learn about my classmates, I need to be authentically myself:  an intrepid interviewer, writer, and lover of stories.  There’s something valuable out there:  good stories, life-stories, heart-wrenching stories; stories worth the telling and remembering. Maybe I’ll connive to make that happen. 

But for now:  Goodbye 50^th reunion.  You were sort of a bust.  But like so many other busts we suffer, some intriguing new adventure may yet emerge.