***Of This And That In The Old North Adamsville Neighborhood-In Search Of…..Marital Advise    

 

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 in dealing with a posting by a well-meaning classmate on the Message Forum page. One of the sections on the class website is dedicated to those fifteen class sweetheart couples who have been together all this time, most of it in marriage (perhaps there are more couples but these are the ones who have come forward thus far, have logged into the site, and are not among the “missing,” the designation for classmates that have not logged in yet and which the reunion committee has been unable contact using various North Adamsville alumni-related sites, sending out a mailing or by using the very helpful White Pages telephoning).

One of our classmates, Clara, wrote a very moving tribute to them after the section was set up which I posted here a while back. Part of her idea in writing the piece was to elicit information from the couples about how they met, and how they have managed to stay together so long (a not unimportant point since Clara has been twice divorced and this writer three times). The couples have not seen fit to enlighten us so Clara posted this message to try to move things along. As for me I am very interested in how they stuck together like glue since my marriages except the dough part have been like Teflon. Here is Clara’s message:             

 

“Hello- Well I have done my part. I have written a tribute to the Class of 1964 sweethearts that are celebrating 50 years together on the Message Forum page. So the ball is in your court. Now you have tell us all about how you met (your version), or anything else you would like including those bumps in the road during your time together if you like. We have all been there so just write away. Later Clara Ash”

 Enough said.