3042 Nonreunion

Monday, August 2, 2010

"It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues."
-- Abraham Lincoln --

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Yesterday I was supposed to go to an "Old Home Day" in the park in the mountain village where I went to high school. It's always the first Sunday in August, and every year I've wanted to go, hoping I'll see some old high school folks**, every year I've intended to go, but every year something happens to keep me from going. This year I was determined, because soon I'll be moving another two hours further away. I thought I was looking forward to it. Even if there was no one there I remembered, the area itself is special to me. It would be a nice drive, 3 hours there, 3 hours back.

I didn't go.

I'm not even sure why I didn't go. I checked the weather prediction, and it was 40% chance of thunder showers there. I hadn't heard that anyone I might know would be there. I was ok, not sick or tired or anything. I don't know why, after so much anticipation, I just couldn't get up the enthusiasm to go. I guess because if it was raining, the one backup joy, the beauty of the drive, wouldn't be.

So I didn't go.

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I don't understand why everyone says Hal is beautiful. Many people enthuse over him, over how beautiful he is. That's the word they use, "beautiful", with an occasional "classy" thrown in.

He isn't beautiful. He may be a lot of good things, but beautiful isn't one of them.

He's not sporty looking, not sexy, not sleek. Sexy sporty cars have low profiles, tilted forward for an illusion of speed even when they're still. His sides are high and straight. He looks thick. His corners are rounded. He's a bit stogy looking, like a British butler, or an old fashioned deep bathtub, with wheels instead of claw feet.

There are lots of truly beautiful cars on the road. Hal's not really one of them.

I think people are way too influenced by that round propeller emblem scattered all over the front, wheels, and rear. It's very hard to miss it.

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** Back in the mid-'70s I managed to locate most of the 27 still-living people in my high school graduating class (two had died), scattered all over the northeast. It was fairly easy because most of their parents were still living on the mountain. I wanted to drum up some enthusiasm for a 15-year reunion in 1977. Nobody was interested, because, it being a very small sparsely populated area, everybody was related by marriage to everybody else. I was the only "outsider". So they got to see each other in various combinations at weddings, family gatherings, and all together at "Old Home Day". A class reunion would be redundant.
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