On oldie

 

This took some time and patience. The original is protrait size - as in portrait over the fireplace, so it's huge. I couldn't scan it so I took pictures of it. The finish on the original was kind of semi glossy, so no matter the lighting I got some kind of glare on it. I was eventually able to composite two of the shots together to get rid of the glare. Then I spent quite a bit of time retrouching the photo where it had been scratched, faded, and just generally gotten old. I'm glad I was able to preserve it digitally.

This photo was taken in 1981, that's your's truly in the middle, mom on the right, my brother on my left, and dad in the chair. It was during the Dorchester, Nebraska Centennial festival. Many people, most I would say, made costumes based on what would have been worn at the time the town was founded and wore them all through the festival. One of our Junior High teachers even wore a bonnet and dress that my mother had made for HIM.

We loaned the chair to the photographer and many people had similar pictures taken with it. I've still got the chair which is still in great shape and will probably have it for many years to come.

Mourning an old friend...

Yesterday they began demolishing my old school building.

Demolition of Old School Begins

I thought, when I heard they were going to do it, that I would feel something akin to "YES!" For a building that I spent the better part of 13 years of my life in, hating nearly every minute of it, I thought the 12 year old boy in me would be joyous.

But, looking at the pictures (Thanks to Dorchester Times), I feel a sense of sadness. Something about getting older... the bad memories seem faded, tarnished, while the good memories - while they may be fewer - seem to shine brighter, almost blinding in my mind. Like watching an old projector movie, some scenes are hard to see, while others are clear and vivid.

There's also a great sense of loss. There is always something about your hometown - especially a very small one where you know everyone, every house, every dusty corner - that seems "permanent". In your mind it seems frozen in time, like it will never change. But then you hear about someone you know passing away, or the house you used to live in being painted a hideous color, or....

or your school being torn down.

Having spent almost 7 hours a day there for 13 years, I still know every nook and cranny of the place. I have spent hours in every classroom, I carved my initials in the back wall of the stage, I once posted "secret admirer" notes in all the lockers, classrooms, and bulletin boards of the girls in my Eighth Grade class (13 of them, if I remember right). I kissed my first girlfriend (I wonder what happened to her) every morning on the back stairs that no one else seemed to use. I once broke in through a side door and wandered around on a Saturday morning when no one else was there.

But now it's being wrecked. And I am sad.

I don't know why I feel this way. I haven't been to Dorchester in more than 20 years. The day before I left for college, when I helped my mother move to Lincoln, I left and never looked back. I think I once took my wife there, driving around, but that was a brief visit. My mother recently went back and took a lot of pictures, of the school, the houses we lived in... I look forward to her sharing them. Why? I don't know. I live more than a thousand miles away now and probably never will visit the town again....

But it was home.

My life is a John Hughes Movie

Growing up as a child of the '80's

I was born in the late '60's. My grade school years were the '70's, but I define my "growing up" years as the '80's.  In the '80's I had my first girlfriend, found out Darth Vader was Luke's father, learned to drive, discovered that I had a favorite music, had my first job, got my first car, had a crush on Molly Ringwald, saw Haley's Comet (sort of), bleached a streak in my hair, watched the space shuttle explode during science class, received the right to vote, registered  for Selective Service, bought really stupid looking clothes, went to college, learned to "twist and shout" with Ferris Beuller, met my wife, got married, had my first child.

My generation is kind of the "undefined" generation. We're too young to be Baby Boomers and too old to be Generation X. We started the whole piercing thing, but only our ears (guys usually just one - left meant you were cool right meant you were "gay", girls had multiple piercings, but still just the ears.) We had our own music and started the "alternative" genre (usually defined as something totally bizzare that would have remained unknown if they didn't have a video on MTV.)

With the advent of cable, we were the first generation to be "media connected". While our parents had TV and radio, their main connection to the world was through the local stations. With cable we had access to movies, music, and who knows what else. Fashion trends and fads that used to take weeks and months to filter across the country were now piped into our living rooms. The influence of media allowed trends and tastes to change very rapidly, often resulting in weird and wild combinations that we still can't explain.

Movies and TV shows defined the life of the '80's teenager as metropolitan. Big city, big school, big parties. Growing up in a small town, the fashions and trends were really out of place, but we didn't care, it was cool. We saw "The Breakfast Club" and "Pretty in Pink" and dressed and talked like they did anyway. We longed to go to the mall because that was the cool place to hang out.

But small town life was different than what we saw in the John Hughes movies. We wanted to "party like it's 1999", but we were poor, isolated, and would get caught because everybody knew who we were. So we settled for our small town parties.

There is much about my "wonder years" that is unpleasant, but for the most part I have fond memories of my school, my friends, my life. I could spend pages and pages describing small town life, and probably will over the life of this blog, but I will spare you the romanticization in this posting. Being 40, I'm sure there is much that I am not remembering correctly and even more that I have assigned more significance to than it actually deserves. That being said, it's probably a good thing I remember things the way I do, dwelling on the bad would just be depressing.

I'm not sure how to wrap this up. While there is much more to my life, my experiences have made me who I am and the '80's are 25% of my life. I thank you for allowing me this road trip into nostalgia.

Speaking historically

So I was feeling nostalgic and looked up LeMars and Westmar. I remembered about 5 seconds before Ask.com gave me the the link that my long-lost Westmar roommate and friend Christoper had made his own trip, literally, down Nostalgia Road. I don't have much more to add to what he posted on his blog.
The Radloff's Random Midnight Thoughts: Westmar Woes
I was only there a year, not even a full calendar year, but 20 years later, Anna and I are still together (Ha! and they said it would never last!)