Homecoming
My bucket list includes attending a football game at Ft. Loramie High, since football wasn’t played when I attended and didn't start until well after we moved to Michigan. A few years back, our 50th high school reunion was actually scheduled on the weekend of a football game, but I couldn’t attend due to a destination wedding that same weekend. Bummer!
This coming weekend is Homecoming and the Redskins are playing football Friday night against the St. Henry Redskins. There’s a party after the game called Loramie Gate, plus for sure the Seniors will be enjoying the traditional homecoming dance on Saturday night. It would have been a perfect weekend to work on my bucket list, but unfortunately not this year.
Since we didn’t have football back in the ’60’s when I attended high school, Homecoming was held during the basketball season. That typically meant cold and snowy weather, which was definitely the case during my junior year. Our class was in charge of decorating the gym for the big dance, which we dutifully performed the morning before. However, there was a huge snowstorm underway that caused the dance to be cancelled. I had to call my date for the dance with the bad news. And to make matters worse, good money was spent for a nice corsage that went to waste. I recall my younger sisters taking turns wearing it around the house for a few days afterwards.
Valentine’s Day was the next weekend, so to make up for the Homecoming Dance cancellation, several of my friends and our dates got together the following Saturday night. That meant having to not only buy dinner, but also a Valentine’s gift (on top of the corsage my sisters enjoyed); so once the snow melted, I headed to a Sidney department store to buy my date a pink sweater and a Valentine’s Day card.
For the next Homecoming Dance during my senior year, we hit Louie’s (now Scudzy’s) in Newport for a beer before picking up our dates. Back then in Ohio it was legal at age 18 to purchase beer with 3.2% alcoholic content; however, because of basketball training rules, I unfortunately could not partake. However, fast forward to the Prom later in the Spring after basketball season was over, we again went to Louie’s between the Prom banquet and the dance. Louie, knowing that we were all seniors, brought out a bottle of “aged” cherry vodka for a toast to the occasion. Note that we were all wearing white prom jackets as shown in this photo of me and a classmate Frank during the banquet. Had the photo been taken later at Louie’s or the dance, you would have seen a streak of bright red cherry vodka that has spilled down the front of my jacket during one of the infamous Louie toasts! Fortunately, the dry cleaner was able to get out the stain as the jacket had been borrowed from a fellow classmate’s older brother.
During high school, I never “went steady” with anyone. In those days, when a guy gave a girl his class ring, which she would wear with yarn wrapped around the ring to make it fit, they were considered “going steady”.
However, one girl I dated had a curfew at 1:00 and mine was 12:30, which caused all kinds of problems! Dad claims he wanted to make sure I was up and at’ em for cow milking and pig feeding the next morning! BS! So there were many curfew violations, but once I had a legitimate excuse because the air had been let out of one of the tires on my car while parked in my date's parent's driveway. Found out later it was a jealous boyfriend from Houston!
No curfew needed these days, as 10:00 rolls around and off to bed I go! Enjoy Homecoming, Class of 2020. Forget your curfew!
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