Back to School

I went to a very small private school for the grades of fifth through twelfth. This was the same Seventh-day Adventist school that my mother had graduated from, along with her brothers, and that she eventually sent me and my sister to as well. Nestled in the heart of quiet, scenic Carmichael, California, the institution first known as Sacramento Junior Academy went on to change its name to Sacramento Union Academy. That name remained until the year after I graduated, when it became Sacramento Adventist Academy. Call it by that name now if you please, but it will still always be SUA to me.

When I say small school, I don't josh. When I was attending the high school there, there was a total of two hundred and fifty (roughly) students in all four classes, and only twenty-seven in my graduating senior class. Very few buildings, obviously no need for a LOT of classrooms. The high school section is on one portion of the campus grounds. The junior high has its own building (that it shares with the elementary administration office). And then grades one through six have their own buildings elsewhere. There's a gym that all classes share, along with football and baseball fields. The high school has its own library. The elementary has theirs. It's not a big campus, and certainly nothing ritzy. While it's a private school, and it costs a lot to send your kids there, it's no Welton Academy. Nor Baird School. Not even Hogwarts.

This past weekend, an annual event there took place known as Alumni Weekend. Each year, come April, a special church service is held in the school gymnasium (on a Saturday, as those wacky Adventists go to church on Saturday, in case you didn't know), and all former students of SUA (or SAA, or SJA) are invited to attend. Certain classes are honored if it's one of their reunion years - say, their 10-year, 20-year, 25-year reunion, etc. Members of those classes tend to show up at this service first, and then meet together later that night somewhere, like a restaurant, for their actual reunion.

This event is always a good time. First off, it's a lot of fun to be back on the old campus, to see the place again where you spent so much of your young life. It's also great to see the people. Going to such a small school, there's really not much of a "clique" thing happening. You tend to know everyone, freshmen to senior, from your time there. Never having attended a large metropolitan high school, I can only imagine going back to a place where there were hundreds in your class, some of whom you may never have even spoken to. In my school, you know everyone, by name and by face - it was just unavoidable. If you didn't know some freshman personally, you at least know OF him/her. So you know, going to this, that you're going to see people that you remember, and that you probably haven't seen in many years.

I'm currently living around the corner from the old campus, so I really have no excuse not to attend. This is, unless I forget the event is coming and hear about it after the fact. Since moving back to Sac, I've gone three times, one of which was my 20-year reunion gathering three years ago. This year I wanted to go because in the past few months, a ridiculous amount of former students from the Academy discovered Facebook, and then ended up finding each other. My Facebook friend list has over 80 people on it, and the majority of those are former classmates that I've now reconnected with. So I figured this would be a big year for people making the event, and I didn't want to miss out on seeing everyone.

So, forcing myself to wake up around the time that I'm normally going to sleep these days, I got up Saturday morning, put on a shirt and tie, and drove around the block to the old campus, the one I drove by every day on my way to work--back when I still HAD work. I'd gotten something in the mail with the schedule for the event, but managed to lose it, so I wasn't sure what time it started. For some reason 9:30 stuck in my head, and I got there around 9:40, thinking I was running late. The relative emptiness of the parking lot confused me, and made me realize I'd shown up quite early. Oops. Well, at least I got a handicapped spot before they all filled up.

I headed to the gym, where the few people that had arrived were hanging out. No one I knew. The folks there were mostly from the "older classes" (any class older than yours). No one from my decade in sight. That was kind of fun, though. I ended up meeting some people from the classes of '79...'64...even '59. I ran into the sister of an old family friend, someone who'd known my mother in her youth. And, best yet, I bumped into Mr. Hickerson, my eighth grade teacher, a man who'd long since retired. Good to see that he was doing well.

I got my nametag at the sign-up table and put it on. The school's current band and choir were roaming around in their uniforms, getting ready for the event. Band and choir are a huge part of things at that school. Just about everyone is in one or the other. This is not only because it's the easiest part of your school day (a good chance to goof around for an hour), but you also get to do off-site performances at community events or at other churches, and even take really cool trips, like the one I was on during my senior year when we bussed our way up to Canada to perform at the '86 World Fair. I was in the choir, myself. Could I sing? Uh, no. But you didn't have to try out for this choir, and I got by by mostly lip-syncing my way through. Saved me the trouble of having to learn an instrument.

They were serving some muffiny breakfast stuff at a table as more people started showing, and I pulled out my iPhone and started snapping some shots and uploading them to my Facebook page for the people who wouldn't be able to attend. Finally, some familiar faces showed! As this was the class of '84 25-year reunion, a good number of them made it, as I'd figured. I knew a lot of those people, who were the seniors when I was a sophomore. Every school has the one class in it that's just legendary. The one whose members are the coolest people, the funniest, the most talented, the ones who have all the best stories that are re-told and embellished by the younger classes. For my generation, it was the class of '84. All great people. And a lot them were already on my Facebook list. It was great to see them all back on campus. Other classes, here and there, were represented. From my class, my buddies Chris and Jon showed up, so we were the only three of the twenty-seven who made it. In the class of '87 (the juniors when I was a senior, and a class I hung out with more than my own that year), only our pal Dennis showed. My sister's class ('85) only had Robert there, with his son, to stand up for his peeps. There were a few from '89 (the ones I still think of as the freshmen), as it was their 20-year. That is officially the last class where I know anyone. '90 on? Don't know a soul.

I noticed a couple of more recent graduates show up, and these two guys made me laugh. They were clearly maybe just a year or two out of high school, and they walked into the crowd, looking around at the campus with laughing "Oh my God" looks, like they couldn't believe they were back on campus after ALL that time since they'd graduated. That made me smile, being a guy whose memories were a couple of decades older than theirs.

The service was a little longer than normal, due to some additional speakers. This year represented fifty years since the school first started, and the class of '59 was celebrating the Academy's first ever 50-year reunion. So they had some of them come up and speak and talk about what school life was like back then. Very entertaining. One nice thing about that - many of the classes I went to school with have had a member or two die in the years since high school (my class has someone shot several times (on the same day...I don't mean that he just has lousy luck and gets shot on a regular basis), but no deaths yet), but the class of '59, fifty years later, has yet to lose a single member. That was very cool to hear.

We heard performances from the band and choir, of course, which brought back many memories for all of us, who all had to do the same at Alumni Weekend every year. Just watching the choir up on the risers singing took me back to all those endless hours in the band and choir room, repeating those songs over and over, with Mr. Thornton trying to get us all to quit goofing around (there was a lot of goofing with us back in the bass section) and focus. There was another amusing singing moment, too, when the current ASB (Associated Student Body) President got up at the podium and requested all former presidents and vice-presidents come up front and join him in the singing of the school song ("In the Sacramento vall-ey, where the lofty oak trees grow..."). The prez repping my generation was '84's Randy Mathews, who, very famously his senior year, did a blues guitar version of the song that brought the house down at a school assembly. Randy's a guy I'm very grateful to, as, after I hadn't spoken to him in over twenty years, he suddenly appeared and made a very generous donation to my new van fund back in '06. Like I said...small school. You remember the names, remember the people. And I'll always remember how he remembered mine in my time of need.

The sermon itself was a very good one. The speaker was someone I'd never known, myself, a pastor that came on the scene just after my time. His daughter, Joanne, was in the class of '89, and she ended up marrying one of my gang, Robert (class of '88). Robert ended up with the preacher's daughter?! Time's a funny thing... The speech was really good, and very entertaining (and with a George Carlin reference in it! Times HAVE changed since my day...). This was a nice change from the Alumni Weekend of my 20-year reunion, where my old youth pastor got up and gave a talk on how Satan was trying to overthrow America (?), one that made Tim and I look at each other and wonder if we'd gotten those kind of talks back in the day and had just blocked them out, or if Adventism had grown weirder in our absence.

After it ended, there was a (vegetarian, of course) lunch served, and people hung around at a bunch of set-up picnic benches and chatted while chowing down. I got to catch up with a lot of people, and take a good look around the area - a reminder that every bench, every hall, every doorway held some kind of memory for me. The spot in front of the gym where, at lunch, us dorky freshmen played D&D. The low brick wall outside the library's restrooms where we'd sit and plan out our weekend partying to come (obviously this was AFTER the D&D phase...). The spot just outside the multi-purpose room where Chris and I stood in the receiving line after our graduation. Little bits of my history, everywhere. I noticed a couple of interesting additions to the place, too. There's this grass hill that runs next to the stairs that lead up to the junior high building. Well, there USED to be. Now it's all but gone, replaced by a ridiculously overdone wheelchair ramp that twists and turns its way up like Lombard Street. Ah, the A.D.A. in action. At the top of that ramp is the door to what used to be (if memory serves) the art room. However, it now has a sign on it identifying it as "Day Care". EXCUSE me? I HOPE that's there for the teachers...

We all spent a couple hours hanging out out there, and it didn't occur to me that we were doing so on a nice sunny day until I started feeling the effects. Sunburn!! When I verbalized that, Randy and his wife tried to hook me up with some sunblock, but the damage was already done, and we were about to head to the shade. I ended up red-faced with sunglasses-induced raccoon eyes, and the top of my head (lacking much of its old folicalular protection) really took the worst of it. I looked like Hellboy later that night, and couldn't lean my head back on my pillow without stabbing pain. Next time I'm coming to church in a trucker's cap.

Chris and Dennis and I decided to head down the hill to the old classroom/locker area and check it out. We had been talking earlier about wishing one of us had brought a yearbook. Before we headed down, Chris and Dennis snuck into the library, tracked down the one from '86, and swiped it and took it down with us. Bad seeds, those two! Don't worry...they put it back before we left. We hung out down there by the senior wall. If you're a long-time reader of this blog, you may remember the story I told about my involvement in the vandalizing of that wall my senior year. So I had to get a picture of myself in front of it (shown above...with the borrowed yearbook). Sadly, seniors don't get to paint it anymore, like they used to every year. It just has a permanent school logo painted on it now. Dennis and I had joked about sneaking on campus the night before this event and defacing the wall for old times' sake, but when we got there, we discovered the campus has now not only added lots of locked gates, but security cameras as well! Guess it's a good thing we didn't. We consider that a challenge for next year...

After some more hanging out, we finally all said our good-byes, and I headed home to upload all my photos to Facebook. As usual, the trip back to the old campus was a great one, brought back tons of old memories, and was a great chance to find out what old classmates had been up to all these years. I feel bad for people who hated their high school years and have no desire to go back. Those were some of the best years of my life, spent with some of the best people I've ever known. I'd go back and do it all again in a heartbeat. Of course, I'd study a lot more this time. But I'd still goad the bass section into doing an obscene gesture "wave" and getting us into trouble. I'd still write my English paper on the CIA referencing pages from Robert Ludlum novels with graphic sex scenes in them in my bibliography (answer to whether your references got checked? Nay!). And I'd still go see "Nightmare On Elm Street" and "Reanimator" at the midnight movies as many times as possible. Those were, after all, important parts of my high school years, too.

And that wall?

Stay tuned...