Here we are minus a few

Here's the FHS Class of 68. Not everyone is here. David R and Duane U are deceased of course, but nearly everyone else made it back. If you weren't here, you were missed but we talked about you anyway.

People seem to want to meet again in  2013. Let Charlie, Lynn, or me know if that is a good thing to pursue. With five years warning, everyone ought to be there.

I will add a bigger version of this picture on the FlickR site where I put the pictures of teachers, administrators, and us in elementary school. (Click the "Class of 1968" link under Fairview Photos and Stories.)  That photo will have a few more pixels so that you can print it and get a better image than this one. 

Let me know if you have any other photos that are of better quality. Don't worry about file size. I will take whatever you send and squash it down.

Onward Fairview.

Thoughts on the FHS Class of 68 Reunion

Do you like the new picture? It was taken from the back door of the school cafeteria looking south east.

Roger C's photo captures the glorious Mondak rainbow that hung over the Valley during our Friday night reunion supper. The photo is so sweet because it symbolizes how blessed the reunion was. 

We had no politics or hidden agendas or multi-level marketing schemes. Just smiles and handshakes and hugs and a few tears. So very enjoyable and pleasant, it was hard to leave Saturday and not miss people immediately.

In general: 

• Not enough time to visit with everyone. 

• Just enough time to embrace old pals;  embarrass the unsuspecting;  ooh-and-awe at photos of grandkids.

• Too much time until we meet again.  Maybe five years instead of ten? See you in 2013?

As good as it was, some people were missed. Overlooked forty years ago in school,  the same likely would have happened again if they had come to the reunion. When one was asked why he didn't come, he responded, "They didn't like me then. Why would they like me now?" 

But he is wrong. It is not that we didn't like him. We just didn't know him. We were adolescents then; a treacherous band of teenagers completely wrapped up in ourselves. We are not like that anymore.

Quiet people get overlooked easily despite our best efforts to make everyone feel welcome. And they will stay hidden until someone goes and finds them. Therefore,  call or email the people you didn't see. Reestablish an old friendship. Reach out to a classmate you never really knew. Do it now. Our class has several lonely people who need to know that we missed them.

Please add your comments here. If you are not sure how to post to this site, scroll down to the "Welcome and Start Here" post and read the comment I made there to see how to insert your two-bits to the  conversation.

I will keep posting significant pictures from the old days on the FlickR site. To get to those pix, click on the Class of 1968 link.

I'd like to hear someone's memories of the life in the valley besides mine.

Onward Fairview. 

RCN

What were the Fairview Follies?

The mists of time have obscured the origin of the Fairview Follies. Photos in the 1957 yearbook, the Firefly, show young men dressed in wigs and dresses cavorting about on the stage in the Old Gym.  However, the Follies likely got started in the community before that. 

Just after WWII, Fairview had a number of rascals who loved to put on shows to raise money or to just blow off creative energy. These productions featured businessmen like Kay Anseth and Lloyd Larson in minstrel shows complete with black face. 

To my knowledge, the last one of these politically incorrect but hilarious shows was done in 1965. In that show, I remember Dorothy Arpin appearing every so often on stage out of the blue to interrupt whatever skit was going. Her role was to just giggle "Tee hee" several times as she sauntered across the stage dressed in a black leotard and grass skirt. She would then leave the stage and whatever was going on would proceed.

The third time she appears, John Cayko enters pushing an old reel lawnmower  as Dorothy is midstroll across the stage. When he sees Dorothy, he stops, aims the mower at her, and chases her off the stage. They exit and screams are heard coming from the wings.  The screams stop suddenly and then, after a pause,  a basket of grass clippings is thrown out from the wings. How can you beat that for wacky?

In a similar way, the Fairview Follies became the high school's variety show that featured various clubs and groups performing music, presenting skits, and telling jokes. Some of the skits were borderline blue and probably would have been censored if the teachers had not turned a blind eye. The Follies were not done every year which was too bad because they were hilarious.

 

My favorite Follies was the 1963 production where the highlight of the show was the Senior class skit entitled Smilin' Smitty's Novelty Night (SSNN). SSNN was a show within a show and it featured Tom Smith as a goofball emcee who told jokes between acts. SSNN's highlight came when the Senior girls did a Can-Can and threw their garters into the audience.

The best joke I recall was Smitty's story of two little boys sucking on Popsicles outside of the Valley Cash on a hot, summer afternoon. As they sit there, a good looking older girl walks past. This girl has obviously been out in the yard working because her face and clothes are dusty and dirty. One little boy looks at the other and says, "Her neck dirty." The other little boy looks up with nasty grin and blurts out, "Her does?"

The last photo record I have of the Follies was from the spring of 1966. The photo here is of two of our classmates in costume. Can you believe that both of these clowns became members of the Washington State Bar.

Characters. Bud Starr

Characters.

Every town has them: people who make your life better simply for knowing them.

They tell jokes. They play tricks. They work with kids that no one else wants. They bring order to chaos. They draw a line in the sand and dare you to step over it. They say just the right thing at just the right time. 

Are there people still like that anymore?

Bud Starr is one that made our town better.

Welcome and Start Here

Hello Graduates and Friends of the Class of 1968 of Fairview High School, Fairview Montana.

Welcome to a blog dedicated to our class and our home town.

This spring marks the 40th Anniversary of our high school graduation. A lot of water has flowed down the Canal as well as passed under the Hay Creek bridges since then: The Draft. Vietnam. RFK and MLK's Assassinations. Woodstock. Jobs. Men on the Moon. Watergate. Marriages. Divorces. Kids. Aging Parents. Gray hair. No hair. Busted dreams. Quiet triumphs. Peaceful days. Desperate nights.

Most of us have moved away from our little town in the Valley. We haven't talked in years. But I suspect that if we sit down at this summer's reunion to a plate of beef and beans and chat, our conversations will resume as if we were interrupted by commas rather than years. The friendships that we had with each other may have weakened with time, but their memories, however faded, are still sweet; at least to me. I say that knowing that I need to apologize to some of you for things I said or did.

Anyway, I thought it would be nice if our class had a website that was free of banners and monthly charges that would allow us to swap stories and photos from our days in the Lower Yellowstone Valley. Rather than build a complete website from scratch, I thought I would give this Blogger format a try. It may work. It may not. We'll see how it goes and modify it as necessary.

I must warn you that to add a comment, you will need to register a User Name and Password with Google. That process can be a confusing pain, but it is the price you will have to pay in order to post comments. I added my own comment on how to register and sign in for this post. If you can't add a comment after reading that, email me and I will send you another explanation of a confusing process.

Over the last few months, I added a number of photos from our First Grade to Eighth Grade years. Please note that I have pictures from West and East Fairview schools but I have nothing of the folks from Mona/Andes/Sioux Pass. If you have photos from those schools, use the email link and send them to me.

I have also posted pictures of several other people and places that were significant to our lives. Send any photos you think might be of interest to me and I will try to find a place for them. I will also manipulate them down to an acceptable file size. Feel free to send big, high resolution scans as TIFF files, and I will shrink them down as necessary.

In the mean time, I won't be able to respond to every posting. But I will certainly try to keep this site free of animosity, old grudges, and rants of aging Boomers.

Someone wrote, "Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen." I urge you to consider that before posting here.

Bye for now.

Randy Noyes