Reminiscing and Reunions

With the All-School Reunion having occurred in Opheim this past weekend, it must be time for some reminiscing.

I confess I’m not a Montana native. I didn’t grow up in Opheim, nor in any one place. I was a military dependent. We moved every few years as my father was stationed at various Air Force bases. I had just completed my sophomore year in Wiesbaden, Germany, at the General H. H. Arnold High School, when dad was reassigned as commander of the 779th Radar Squadron just outside Opheim.

We were flown back to the states, to the D.C. area. Dad had a month’s leave coming, and we’d used part of it at Berchesgarden, learning to ski. The plan was to drive across the states, visiting friends and family along the way. Our neighbors and friends from Germany were now stationed at Richmond, Va., so that was our first stop.

Mrs. Proctor prevailed upon our parents to allow my sister, Cecelia, and me to stay with them a week so we could experience D.C. with their girls.

I don’t remember much of the Capitol city from that time, but I do remember going to a couple swimming parties with Jean, and having a young man so smitten with me that he actually hitch-hiked across several suburbs to see me again. I was young, extremely shy (shocking, I know), inexperienced, and didn’t know what to do with my conquest. I’m afraid I crushed his hopes.

After a week there, we caught a flight to Jackson, Mo., to catch up with mom and dad, and baby sister, Charlie, at our maternal grandparents’ home. It was a very small Ozark Airlines plane. I clearly remember the stewardess offering “cokes” (any carbonated beverage was a “coke,” so that you could have a Pepsi Coke, a Dr. Pepper Coke, a 7-up Coke, or an actual Coca-Cola) and chiclets from a wicker basket. (Chewing gum helped relieve tension in your ears upon take-off or landing.) There was a barefooted hippie couple, with flowers in their hair on that flight, who obtained permission from the rest of us passengers to allow their Siamese cats to roam freely during the flight. Air travel certainly has changed.

I had a newly minted driver’s license, and so helped drive one of our two vehicles across the states. We had a VW bug (that’s the one I drove) minted in Germany, and a Peugeot. Both vehicles were in kilometers per mile, so friends who rode with us after arrival here, really thought we were speeding right along at 120. My father hated the soulless interstates, and so we drove the “blue” roads, so called as they were shown in blue ink on the maps we used before GPS arrived.

We also stopped every hour or so to stretch, make sandwiches, or do a little exploring.

We arrived in Opheim in June of 1968, bemoaning the lack of trees. There were a total of two other teens at the base, Tina, who was in my grade, and Chico, who was in the grade between Cece and me. We didn’t count the number of grade-schoolers, they being beneath notice, but the school bus was full. (I did babysit several of them, and they used to chant “Mary, Mary, big fat fairy,” or worse, “Mary, Mary, big fat cherry” at me in public!) At that time there were roughly 120 students in the high school alone, all of us crammed into the upstairs of the old school. My class was the first to utilize the new addition to the school.

My classmates assumed my sister and I were much more sophisticated than we were. We wore miniskirts, had long hair, and listened to music they didn’t know (it was neither country nor polka). I was very shy, and that shyness was taken as being conceited. Boys were scared to talk to us. They assumed we’d had many dates (I’d had a total of three, one being a boy I asked to the Sadie Hawkins dance). There had been thousands of students at the high school in Germany, and I’d just been a gawky face in that crowd.

My Opheim School experience started by being late the first day due to the bus getting a flat tire. We walked into the middle of the All-School assembly. The principal immediately turned to the subject of the dress code, emphasizing that skirts were to be no more than 2” above the knee (girls did not wear trousers to school, no matter the weather or wind chill). We didn’t own anything that long. My sister and I were repeatedly sent home to change clothes. Mom refused to purchase new wardrobes for two teenaged girls. Her solution was to have us carry a scarf to drape over our laps when seated. That solution was rejected, and so more trips home were made. (We did always wear pettipants, a cross between a half slip and shorts.)

Dad’s tour at Opheim was cut short, the big brass having decided the radar site only warranted a Major for commander, not a Lt. Colonel. So, we moved to Saginaw, Minn., in November of my senior year. We couldn’t get into base housing at Duluth, where the air base was, on such short notice. I graduated at Albrook High School in a smaller class than the one in Opheim. Many of my Opheim classmates don’t remember that I didn’t graduate here. That’s both nice (I’m still a member of their class of ‘70) and sad (how bad was that graduation party that they don’t remember who was and wasn’t there?).