***Of This And That In The Old North Adamsville Neighborhood-In Search Of…..Lost Time   

This one is for Connie S. (see below) who loved the song ...to the bitter end.   

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

For those who have been following this series about the old days in my old home town of North Adamsville, particularly the high school day as the 50^th anniversary of my graduation creeps up, will notice that recently I have been doing sketches based on my reaction to various e-mails sent to me by fellow classmates via the class website. Also classmates have placed messages on the Message Forum page when they have something they want to share generally like health issues, new family arrivals or trips down memory lane on any number of subjects from old time athletic prowess to reflections on growing up in the old home town. Thus I have been forced to take on the tough tasks of sending kisses to raging grandmothers, talking up old flames with guys I used to hang around the corners with, remembering those long ago searches for the heart of Saturday night, getting wistful about elementary school daydreams, taking up the cudgels for be-bop lost boys and the like. These responses are no accident as I have of late been avidly perusing the personal profiles of various members of the North Adamsville Class of 1964 website as fellow classmates have come on to the site and lost their shyness about telling their life stories (or have increased their computer technology capacities, not an unimportant consideration for the generation of ’68, a generation on the cusp of the computer revolution and so not necessarily as computer savvy as the average eight-year old today).

Some stuff is interesting to a point, you know, including those endless tales about the doings and not doings of the grandchildren, odd hobbies and other ventures taken up in retirement and so on although not worthy of me making a little off-hand commentary on. Some other stuff is either too sensitive or too risqué to publish on a family-friendly site. Some stuff, some stuff about the old days and what did, or did not, happened to, or between, fellow classmates, you know the boy-girl thing (other now acceptable relationships were below the radar then) has naturally perked my interest.

Other stuff defies simple classification as is the case here of a short message sent to me via private e-mail speaking from Connie S. thanking me for relating some of my own high school traumas, alienations, sorrows, angsts, pains, aches, sorrows (I already said that, I think), shyness, awkwardness, dramas, cold sweats, desires, slyness, rowdiness and [CL1] fear. I think that about covers it. Here is my reply to her:    

Connie- A lot of us seemed to be shy, alienated, loaded to the gills with teenage angst but nobody, or almost nobody, was talking about all of that then. I know my old ragamuffin Irish Catholic-etched family rule was “don’t air your dirty linen in public”-meaning anything from not discussing teen problems to, well, being shy. I am not altogether sure age brings wisdom but at least now we can reflex on those times without having to feel bad about it. Also sorry for your lost [she had recently lost her husband]. Thanks for sharing your life story-the good with the bad-which will help others come forth-Kudos

By the way I would be interested in hearing some stuff about the "North Star" [school newspaper] and “Magnet” [class yearbook] that you contributed to. Any articles you wrote that you might still have or copies of “NS” you could put on the site.  Also maybe refresh us (me) on what “Magnet” means, where they picked that name from.  Is that kind of beige/tan building that you live in which was the old bowling alley near Kent Park? [She now after moving to several other cities is now back in North Adamsville.] Finally how about a remembrance of “Duckie” Drake (or have your son give some memories since Duckie was his coach-mentor) in the In Memory section.

Later Frank Jackman