***Of This And That In The Old North Adamsville Neighborhood-In Search Of…..Raging Grannies 

 

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Recently I have avidly been perusing the personal profiles of various members of the North Adamsville Class of 1964 website as fellow classmates have come on to the site and lost their shyness about telling their life stories (or have increased their computer technology capacities, not an unimportant consideration for the generation of ’68, a generation on the cusp of the computer revolution and so not necessarily as savvy as the average eight-year old today). Of course not everybody who graduated with me in that baby-boomer times class of over five hundred students had a literary flare or could articulate their dreams in the most coherent way. But they had dreams, and they have today when we have all been through about seven thousand of life’s battles, good and bad, a vehicle to express whatever they want.

As with any human event celebrating the 50^th anniversary of almost anything, any human experience, the question of grandchildren, their doings and not doings, including a zillion photographs of necessity raises its head. The probabilities of this occurring with a class website of nearly two hundred people is almost one-hundred percent. I, personally, have made it a habit to keep references to grandchildren to a minimum in my own case but I did run across a personal profile page where the question of grandchildren, lots of grandchildren, are the order of the day.        

 

Of course as I have mentioned before in other sketches I have spent not a little time lately touting the virtues of the Internet in allowing me and the members of the North Adamsville Class of 1964, or what is left of it, the remnant that has survived and is findable with the new technologies to communicate with each other some fifty years and many miles later on a class website recently set up to gather in classmates for our 50^th anniversary reunion.  (Some will never be found by choice or by being excluded from the “information super-highway” that they have not been able to navigate.) Interestingly those who have joined the site have, more or less, felt free to send me private e-mails telling me stories about what happened back in the day in school or what has happened to them since their jailbreak from the confines of the old town.

Some stuff is interesting to a point, you know, including those endless tales about the doings and not doings of the grandchildren mentioned above, odd hobbies and other ventures taken up in retirement and so on although not worthy of me making a little off-hand commentary on. Some stuff is either too sensitive or too risqué to publish on a family-friendly site. Some stuff, some stuff about the old days and what did, or did not, happened to, or between, fellow classmates, you know the boy-girl thing (other now acceptable relationships were below the radar then) has naturally perked my interest. Rose’s’ grandmother saga fits right in with that interesting to a point idea and here is why. At least my private e-mail to her why:

 

[Rose on her profile page had gone through all the usual details about post-high school schooling, marriage, children and grandchildren. The children raised part struck me as a man of the 1960s as high, nine. Rose had listed all the names and ages and I had marveled that she could remember them all. That was nothing compared to the twenty-six grandchildren, unlisted by name or age, but you could sense that she was beaming when she put that number down. Also as a result of a family experience with one child, a child with disabilities, she in her 30s had gone back to school to become a special educator to work with youngsters who had her son’s disabilities. Kudos, Rose.]    

“Rose -You cannot just leave us hanging in the air like this. You have two important stories to tell us in more detail-First -Your decision to become a special educator after your son Michael’s birth at a time when you would have been in your late 30s, had your hands full and probably had not been in involved with the rigors of school for a while. Second-You must have at least a million funny stories to tell about your platoon of grandchildren (do you have them line up ranks when they come to visit?). Stuff like remember their names (at a time when frankly I have trouble remembering where I put the car keys half the time), birthdays, etc. That will be enough writing for you until the reunion. Oh yeah, thankfully, very thankfully in your case, we may have just enough cyberspace on our class site so that you can share photos of ALL your grandchildren.”          

Enough said.