Reunification

I had grand plans of doing a constant stream of updates from New York while I was at my 25th reunion. Needless to say, they failed. I'm on my way home already.

Well, I'm almost on the way home. I've done most of the remaining rituals -- getting hot dogs, Troyer Farms chips, and having lunch at Pontillo's, as well as visiting Mom.

It was strange this year... I'm very used to being the only one in the cemetery, having quiet time to just wander among the stones and see what new names are there. This year, they were doing tours of the mausolea of the local notables, mostly the Woodwards, and there was practically a traffic jam (well, eight cars is considered a traffic jam around here) up near the entrance. The humidity helped me shorten my trip... there was only one new grave that I hadn't seen before, the wife of one of my parents' former neighbors, who died of cancer two years ago. There was a little bird poop on my mother's stone, though I didn't have anything with which to clean it off. I figured the rain tonight would take care of it.

I stopped by the old Jell-O plant next door, where they had demolished a small adjoining building. I grabbed a couple of ancient 1902 bricks from the pile and put them in the back of the car. I'll use them for something, and it'll be interesting to know they came from the old Jell-O plant.

My first task in town, even before I drove over to my parents' house, was pizza. After 30 years of thinking fondly of Jim & Don's Pizza -- now Pizza Land -- as the ultimate in pizza from Western New York, I've finally had both wings and pizza from Pizza Land again, and I can firmly say, Pontillo's is better. Flat-ass better, no question. They've assumed the crown, and I no longer have any reason to drive out on West Main to get Pizza Land.

There was something different about this weekend... something a little slower, a little more tired, a little more predictable. I couldn't place it until the actual reunion dinner and party. It's as if people are set on ritual that they don't know how to break out of it. They won't dance to anything but the exact music they want to hear, they talk about the same things they talked about five years ago. They're older, their kids are older, and everyone seems a little more wary of getting too tired. The reunion ended around 11, and a bunch of people went up to a bar near the railroad tracks to listen to a band and drink. Listening to the band was the excuse, but really, we stood around trying to recognize people and remember names. Venues like that are strange, because so many people from so many different years show up this weekend that you can never be sure if you're looking at someone you should have remembered, or maybe, now, their 20-something kids. I got the sense, particularly from the women, that this was their one weekend a year to leave the kids with their mother or their husband and stay out all night if they want to. So, they do. It's almost like getting a chance to go back to high school, without the bother of fake IDs or having to sneak past their parents.

They are the parents now.

Anyway, we moved the reunion party to the place over by the railroad tracks. They were having a band, whereas all we had was me, an iBook, and 5000 tracks nobody felt like listening to.

The bar up by the tracks was known for years as Barber's Hotel, and it and its counterpart across the tracks, Dargan's Hotel, were once old railroad hotels but in the 1950s and 1960s transitioned to be places where old guys lived. The bar was dim, old, and displayed a jar of pickled eggs that are probably in the Smithsonian now. Dargan's closed a number of years ago, and Barber's went through life as Frank's Place, and now is a sports bar called Spirits. They hold beach volleyball games on sand in the back. No pickled eggs to be seen, and drinks were, for this area, pretty damn expensive. Barber's was the last place I knew that still had fifty-cent draft beer, though that was around 1980.

I again got a chance to talk to Pam, a woman I graduated with. She and I first got a chance to get reacquainted after the 20th reunion, when I was at the same table with her and her then-husband. We found that our lives had odd parallels, and we talked a lot in email after that 20th, and since. She and her husband split up about the same time that Nancy and I were ending things, and she had a lot of trouble finding a job to pay the bills and find a house in town she liked. She eventually did those things, though she's still looking for something more.

Friday night I got talking to Pam again as the band at the Legion ended their last set, and we stood around talking about things for well over an hour, and then walked over and sat on her porch just around the corner and talked for at least a couple more hours. I have to say, I admire Pam... probably more than anybody else I graduated with, I think she understands what life is like when you reject people's expectation when they're not your own, and cut your own path through the woods. It's been hard for her, but somehow she hasn't chosen to act the victim. If she weren't here in New York, and didn't have her kids, she's someone I could get along with pretty well... smart but not overbearing, good sense but also a sense of when not to be too serious. I remember thinking her attractive 25 years ago, and while she's still a lot the same in that respect, there's a deeper chord in there somewhere... to call it "maturity" is sort of cliche, but that will have to do until I remember a better word for it. Still, it's appealing to me even just as friends. She's amazingly easy to talk to bbut never shallow, and I've known for years what a powerful attraction that holds for me.

Saturday night after the reunion, we talked a little more and promised to stay better in touch these days. It used to be hard to email Pam because her email seemed to change a lot, along with probably a lot of other things in her life. I told her I'd keep an eye out for federal jobs up here... it'd be the same work she's doing now, but for a decent salary instead of damn near nothing.

Speaking of women, there were a couple of them at the reunion who are still the killers. You know the ones... they were attractive in high school, but when they show up for reunions these days, every male eyeball is glued to them. Well, these two were definitely in attendance, one of them in a short black dress with a sheer back and cleavage and black ankle-strap stiletto heels. The dress fit her like it had been shrink-wrapped to her hips. I imagine some of the wives, particularly those not of the graduating class, were a little annoyed, but hey, I appreciated it just fine.

Something I have to say is that without exception, the guys I went to high school with have nice wives. Attractive, fun to be around, patient, not shrewish, not clingy. Maybe it's just that the ones who have such spouses don't show up (or don't bring the spouse) but I noticed that pattern ten years ago and thought it was a good thing. Our class looks pretty good and married pretty well. Having been one of the few single guys there, I was feeling a little melancholy about that, but I had a job to do and that job was not to feel sorry for myself.

When I was here with Nancy, in 1995 and 2000, I was dying to tell her all the stories of these people and this place. In 1995 she seemed interested, but in 2000, it was as if she had no interest in hearing about any of it. In 2000, while I was up doing some other things, Nancy apparently was asking my table-mates about me. I know she asked one guy, and he said, "I don't know.... he was pretty weird." She told me about it later at the hotel, and she was really put off. She said she'd expected maybe some humorous story about something from years past, and the guy didn't have any such stories to give her. Well, hell, I was pretty weird, and these people won't lie to you. I think even if we were still married, the odds would have been very good that Nancy would have stayed home this weekend. Maybe that's better, but I tell you, it was always very special to be able to tell the stories to someone. I never realize just how many stories I do know about this place and these people until I have someone to tell. Then, I feel like I am babbling, but it's a good babble. The stories are all that's left after the buildings fall down and the people die or move away.

I finally got the Mystery Of The Walking Guy solved. More than 30 years ago, when I was a Cub Scout, I'd have to walk from my grade school up to the den meetings up in a new development on the south side of town. On my way there, which took me up Summit Street, I'd always notice this tall, thin, hawklike guy in black cheater shades and a LeRoy jacket, as well as white socks and penny loafers, walking really fast along the other side of the street. I walked fast even in those days, but this guy would just blow by me. Well, I saw him again the other day as I was on Main Street. Because of the heat, he wasn't wearing the red varsity jacket, and because he was 35 years older, his hair was white instead of jet black, but there were the shades, the white socks, the penny loafers, and that distinctive speed walk, looking around at everything. I noticed him because he was taking a long look at the Maryland personalized plate on the Saab, and he looked at me, but of course he wouldn't have made the connection between an eight-year-old Cub Scout and a somewhat larger 42-year-old guy in a Segway hat.

Saturday night, I finally got a chance to ask some people about him. Everyone in town recognizes him, and he has a path he always walks around the village, always the same times and places. They could tell me his name, but no one knew for sure what his story was. I've got to figure he's almost 60 now, and he's still walking wherever it is he goes.

It's almost time for me to get on the road and go home. I have a pizza to drop off for Penny and Matt, and all the chips are stored away. Time to plug in the iPod and get on the road.

I have a life somewhere else now, but I have a chunk of me that's still here, if only in the memories of the people I was here with. There's a huge storm coming in from the west, and I need to get ahead of it somehow.