Saturday, June 7, 1986

Today is the 28th anniversary of this date. That is not really that big of a deal, as the 28th anniversary isn't a major one, but this year (2014) has the same day/date correspondence as 1986 (that is, the dates fall on the same day of the week this year as they did in 1986). That is a very big deal for me, and the date of this thread was the day I graduated from high school, 28 years ago. I remember it very well, I graduated from York Comprehensive High School in York, SC, a small city in upstate SC just south of Charlotte, NC (where I live now). Then I lived in a small country town about 12 miles west of York. That morning I got up early and bathed and shaved, and that would be the last time I shaved until I went to a barber the following December, while on Christmas break from college. I had a heavy beard all through that summer and my first semester in college. But back to this day, I then rode into York to the high school with my mother and grandmother (my sister, two years younger, did not come and just stayed home and slept late). They dropped me off at the high school and then went to the local Hardees to eat some biscuits, and I went into the high school to the cafeteria where all the graduates were, and biscuits from Hardees were being served there as well. I ate a couple, as I was not a vegetarian then (see below). Then all of the graduates got into their caps and gowns and went out to the track in the school's football stadium. Ours was the first graduation to be held outside in the stadium, as we voted overwhelmingly for that earlier in the year (all previous ones had been held in the gymnasium). With my mother and grandmother in the stadium were two of our cousins who worked as high school guidance counselors, one at York. The graduation then began at 11:00 that morning, with all of us marching to seats set up on the field, adjacent to a stage on the field. On the stage were the valedictorian (Rhonda Denise Ham), co-salititorians (Cynthia Elizabeth Miller and Nancy Lynn Castle), senior class president (Mike Hill), Superintindent (Tom Pettit), school board chairman (W.G. Sandifer), school principal (Bob Harrison), and school guidance counselor (Elanor Hardin). Mike Hill spoke first, delivering the invocation and presenting the class gift to the school (patio furniture). Then Dr. Sandifer spoke, then Nancy Castle and Cindy Miller, giving the welcoming remarks, and finally Rhonda Ham, giving the farewell speech. Then Bob Harrison presented the class, and Elanor Hardin and Tom Pettit delivered the diplomas, she calling out the full names of the graduates in alphabetical order while he gave them to the graduates while shaking their hands. After the diplomas were given out we all marched back out and then afterwards at the other end of the field threw our caps up in the air (though we had been advised not to do this).

I then went up to the parking lot and got in our car with my mother and grandmother and we came back home, and I fell asleep on our love seat in our living room for a couple of hours, and when I woke up noticed my forearms were sunburned. My mother said that that was the hottest she had ever been, sitting in the stadium, though it did not seem that hot to me sitting on the field. But then that night she and I went over to Gaffney, SC to eat at the Quincy's we often went to. And that would be the last time I'd see or hear from anyone from high school for nearly two years. In the late 1980s and through the 1990s I'd occasionally read things about them in the papers or see some here and there, though graduation did really end my contact with them for the most part.

"I happen to be a vegetarian". Lex, from Jurrasic Park