We talked and had a few more beers, and then I started to feel the combination of long drive and drinking more beers than I was used to. About 10:00 I had to excuse myself as needing to get some sleep. I chatted with a few more people on the way out and walked back across the street to my hotel and bed.
Saturday I hung around Middletown while waiting for the second evening’s reunion activities to start. It was a rainy, dreary day and I didn’t feel like going very far from the hotel. Middletown has changed a lot since I lived there; in my opinion not for the better.
The clubhouse for the second evening’s reunion activities was located a couple of miles from the hotels. The reunion organizers had arranged bus transportation from the hotels to the club but neglected to publish when and where the pickups would be. Several people posted questions on our Facebook page during the day, and by late afternoon we had it figured it out. At the appointed time I was dressed and ready.
The bus transportation was, appropriately enough, a yellow school bus. It had actually been about forty years since I last rode in a school bus and discovered the seats were as uncomfortable as I remembered them. Fortunately it was a short ride.
The clubhouse was a nice venue for our party. The evening’s activities included a live band and open beer/wine bar along with a really nice buffet dinner. Most of the people I had met the previous evening were again in attendance along with a few new faces.
Regrettably, I had much the same experience as I had the previous evening of not knowing most of the people present. I did sit with my friend from our long-ago social club and his “significant other,” so I had some nice conversation during dinner. I met up again with the former teammate I’d been talking to the previous evening, and met a few other former teammates as well. I also had some nice conversations with a former classmate who had recently taken up photography. Once she found out I was a serious amateur photographer we spent some time talking about cameras and comparing the images we carried on our Smartphones.
After dinner, the band played some excellent dance music but I had no one to dance with. So I mostly hung out on the club patio with a few other former classmates who were also there by themselves and took liberal advantage of the open bar.
Finally, the evening was over. I exchanged e-mail contact info with the few people I had talked with, and piled on the school bus back to the hotel. The bar in my hotel was still open so I bought beers for my former teammate and I, and we reminisced a while longer about our cross-country days and post high school lives. We finished our beers and I excused myself on grounds that I would be driving back early in the morning. We exchanged contact information and I promised to look him up on his band’s Facebook page.
Sunday morning I checked out of the hotel and made the seven hour drive home. As I drove I was thinking that my former classmates in Farmingdale High School would also be celebrating their forty-year reunion.
