The Class of 1974

I haven't posted in quite a while, and with good reason. The past few weeks have been exceedingly busy. But that's good news, because I have a lot of new blog fodder. I'll be posting about a trip to Indiana, a recent comedy show (political satire), a pond and wild animals. But first things first...

Thursday two weeks ago, three friends of mine flew into Columbus for our high school class reunion. The plan was to stay at my house Thursday night, play golf Friday morning, then head north to Bellevue for 4 days and 3 nights of frivolity and golf. We got the frivolity part right, but our golf plans were rendered moot by long hours of adult beverages. Try getting these guys up for a 9 o'clock tee-time after they were out until 3 o'clock that morning. It just doesn't work.

So midday Thursday I headed to the airport, where I found Chuck having a beer at Max & Erma's. He had just flown in from Las Vegas, where's he's lived for many years. I ordered a beer and that is how things start.


Mike arrived from Baton Rouge about an hour and a half later, and shortly after came Dennis from Houston. They had arranged for a rental car because my car is not big enough for all four of us, plus luggage, plus golf clubs, plus a cooler for the beer. So Chuck rode with me for the rest of the trip, while Mike and Dennis traveled in the rental.



We sat on my porch and had some beers and talked, followed by a few hours at my local watering hole. Then we got back to my house, where we sat on the porch for hours talking. (I wish I had taken a picture of my porch on Friday morning -- it looked like a crime scene. There were countless empty beer cans, the ash tray was overflowing, and about a thousand ants had converged on the piece of sausage someone dropped on the porch.) We finally called it a night so we could be well rested for our round of golf at New Albany Links.

After golf, we drove north. Mike had reserved a room at Bellevue's only (I think) hotel: The Bellevue Hotel and Suites. We had heard some horror stories about the place, but the price was right. We would have a suite with 4 beds and 4 baths for $20 per night per man. The picture below does not do this room justice. The room was 70 feet long, and the TV was so far away from me, I couldn't even tell if it was turned on. We had to text each other to communicate.



The plan for Friday was to go on the Booze Cruise, which leaves the Sandusky dock at 7 o'clock. There were 7 or 8 of us on the cruise, and we had a great time catching up with each other. We also had a great meal of perch at the Village Pump. When we got back to the mainland, we headed straight for the Bellevue Beer Dock, arriving there around 12:30. You can now begin to understand why we didn't play golf Saturday morning as planned. That Friday night was the first time I've been in a bar at closing time in many years. (For those who live outside Ohio, the bars close at 2:30 in the morning.)

On Saturday, we had a late breakfast and went to the Elks club to watch the Ohio State football game with my mother. Most of my classmates know mom, in part because she taught second grade at Immaculate Conception School, and many of them had her for a teacher. After the game, we went back to the hotel to clean up for the pre-reunion party that was being held at my brother's house. I've posted about Thom's place before -- suffice it to say, he has a great place for an outdoor party. So we ate and drank and had a great time sitting by the fire, then we headed to the Bellevue Beer Dock. We didn't play golf Sunday morning, either.

We did manage to play golf Sunday afternoon, at the new and improved Twin Lakes Golf Course, which just happened to be where the reunion was being held. The reunion was a blast. There were a few people there whom I hadn't seen since 1974, and the turnout was much better than we had for our 30th. And there was something different about this one: people really were themselves. Any pretense that some may have had in their younger years was gone, and the conversations were more likely to be about grandchildren and arthritis than about the new Lexus someone just bought.

The reunion wound down around 10 o'clock, so we headed to the Bellevue Beer Dock.


This picture was taken at the Bellevue Beer Dock!

After a quick trip to Sandusky on Monday morning (Chuck bought 20 pounds of yellow perch, which you surely can't get in Las Vegas), we came back to my place, and made one more trip to my watering hole. By Tuesday morning, I knew I had made a good decision to take a vacation day, because my body needed a day off before returning to work. By mid-afternoon, everyone was either at the airport or in the air, and I went home and took a long nap.