Thursday:
Dale Sr. built me this shelf which I asked for, so I could display the coffee cups I've brought back from foreign travel. Now, if I could only find where I stashed said coffee cups!
Here are some more photos of the pizza oven progress, also taken Thursday:
Rebar in place to hold up the floor of the pizza oven:
I stopped by to visit Tish on my way to my Arabic lesson, after making the copies I would need for drama club. She and her husband Dixon showed me the horrible photos of the staph infection on his knee, blisters and discoloration. I had heard about how horrible those infections can be, but those photos drove it home.
Few kids came to drama club, because parents had not yet received the letter telling them what days the meetings are scheduled. I had written the letter and given it to them, but the director wanted to re-type it because I'd written "Boys' and Girls' Club" and they always spell it "Boys & Girls Club". However, I was able to make contact with two or three parents and give them some understanding about what the club was about.
The next morning I got this photo of Ziggy relaxing on the couch:
More pizza-oven/smoker photos:
This will be the storage area under the pizza oven:
The temporary plywood rood of the same storage area:
The firepit area between the smoker and the pizza oven:
Another storage area, behind the fire-pit:
The chimney flue (not placed here it will eventually be placed):
John Ducette cutting a cement block with his water-lubricated saw:
Cam getting ready to hand John D. a cement block:
Packing during the afternoon, I had to face the fact that I was experiencing an attack of "nerves" about the coming high school reunion. Would Alice K. be as glad to see us as we would be to see her? What would it be like to see all those people from so long ago? I have many wonderful memories from those high school years, but some very uncomfortable ones as well.
In the evening, we went up to hear the wonderful Hans Olson at the Handlebar Pub and Grill: He played a great couple of sets, it was like he was on fire. He didn't ask for requests like he sometimes does, it was as if he had so many songs in his head he couldn't play them fast enough.
Here is a photo of Dale Sr. with beer signs, and me with my Guinness:
The music really helped clear my head.
Flying out on Friday morning, I saw, for the first time ever I think, the reflection of the moon on the wing of the airplane.
(That tiny little dot.)
I had a nice flight, and then waited at the Starbuck's on Shattuck and Kittredge until it was time for Kathy to pick me up. We were to wait for our old friends Heidi and Alice K. in the Doubletree Inn hotel. I was a little disappointed that they wanted to eat there, but then I remembered that I myself hate to drive in Berkeley!
First we took a walk with Heidi, who got there earlier. Kathy and Alice were both closer to Heidi than I. I had forgotten, or had never known, how hilarious she is! And she is the one who kept in touch with Alice, who added so much to our high school lives.
I couldn't believe how both of them looked so much the same. Heidi's husband Eric took this photo of the four of us, before we went into the hotel restaurant...me, Alice, Kathy, and Heidi.
What a wonderful lunch the four of us had! Alice has been an anthropology professor at a city college in Sacramento. Her husband, whom she started going with when we were in high school, teaches criminology (if I remember correctly). We all talked a mile a minute, and all agreed we should meet again every year.
The view of the marina from the restaurant:
The next morning I took my weekly hike, walking down to the African market at the Ashby BART station and back up the hill.
Sad to see this beautiful mural on the side of Shakespeare's Books, now that that bookstore is all emptied out and ready to be sold. It seemed symbolic to pass by it on the day of our high school reunion, as Kathy and Alice and I would always go in there (and into Moe's books) when we walked up to "the Ave" for a cappuchino at "the Med" (the Café Mediterraneum).
The walk up the hill was pretty tough, all the more reason that I need it.
I always like looking at these pines, because they look like the Aleppo pines, sometimes called "umbrella pines", that I've seen so many of in Italy.
In the afternoon I dressed up for the reunion. I asked Sandy to take the photo. Good thing, because once there I didn't remember to take any photos of anyone I cared about, much less myself!
My high school reunion was really interesting, and I am so very very grateful that Kathy asked me if I wanted to go with her and Heidi. It will take a while for me to digest everything, though. I found the barrage of memories left my admittedly over-sensitive psyche feeling temporarily traumatized. The valuable insights which the experience has added to my understanding of life, life in general and my own life: absolutely priceless.
However, for now I'm still internally slammed from the shock... re-surfaced memories. Those teen years were a mix of delight and pain...
Very different experience from the wonderful lunch the day before!.
Only took a few photos, bad ones!
(On the far left is Eric, our friend Heidi's husband, whom Kathy and I like a lot.)
I was very sad to find out that Steve Kent, who went to Hillside, one of the classmates whom I had been looking forward to seeing again, has died of AIDS. He was gay, which I had not known. I wasn't in his group of friends in high school, but he was one of those popular kids who always treated everyone decently, and was so refreshingly intelligent as well.
A girl named Nancy Pettit (who, it turned out, spent many years as a drummer with rock bands) had kept all her photos. She was the one who brought the above photo, and the candles, and set them on the table where the reunion organizers had displayed the list of all of the departed classmates.
There were around forty who are no longer living (out of a class of around a thousand), only a couple of whom I knew well enough to remember, and mourn. All of the males in our class who did not go to college, get a medical discharge, or declare themselves as conscientious would have been candidates for the Vietnam War draft, but none of them died that young.
Signing off,
Lennie
No comments:
Post a Comment