Before the birds gather.......

A wondrous time of year.  Families gleefully riding across America for one more family fling before it's back to school.  The pennant race in baseball is heating up, across the land hope is renewed, heightened for High School, College, and NFL teams as pigskins fly.

We wave goodbye to Summer, slap on a jacket, light a bonfire and welcome Fall.  We can't hurry Mother Nature, but we also can't wait for the beauty of the reds, orange, bright yellows that trees provide for our hungry eyes.

Then, there's Homecoming. While Janis belts out A Piece of My Heart, planes, trains and automobiles carry folks 'home',  where lives a piece of our heart, and we have another peek at where we grew up, who we grew up with, and my, how we did grow up, and many of us, (blessed to be) old.

I am biased.  If Norman Rockwell had traversed across the land, I feel quite strongly he would have setup an easel somewhere around the Square of our town, a hill, sandwiched between two hills, one, the majestic old buildings of William Jewell College, to the East,  and - the hill on the West side, the good ole High School where we once had spring in our step and hope in our future.

S'more bias, our town hosts "an all school reunion" in September every third year, and, my opine, it's special.. Due to Covid, it's been five years since our last reunion. We finally will gather again this September 10th. The old High School was built in 1920-something, and it was last used as a High School in the early 1970's.  Each graduating class has a designated area on The Square for their class to gather. The 'young sprites' of the class of '74 gather in the Southeast corner of the Square... The Bluejay is/was our mascot, and a lifesize Bluejay with the #74 stands in the stall of the folks there.

From there, ya walk North and find the Class of '73....  then '72, '71' and '70, each, with a life size Bluejay designating their spot. There are fairly good size crowds for those classes.  Then ya have to turn the corner back West on The Square for the continuation of the classes chronologically, '69, '68', '67, etc... For the people that graduated in the 60's and 70's, most are afoot and ones gather in a circles discussing their Senior Float, Senior prank, love interests, and "say did you hear so-and-so passed?"  "Damn, no, I didn't."

Next, you turn back South, to find folks that graduated in the 50's.  It's a calmer pace, most are sitting, and one might even bring the '54 Chevy they had driven to school in back in the day.  The groups are smaller, nonetheless just as happy to gather, relive.  

The 40's.  Not many in their spots.  What started on the East side of the Square with a lot of spacing between the '74 and '73 Bluejay mascots, the signs in the 40's' and 50's are closer together.  Attrition.  Nature. Growing old.  Dying out.  Life, sometimes, sucks.

Then, you turn the corner back to the East and there are Bluejay signs gathered labeled '39, '38, '37 and so forth.  There is virtually no space between the signs where the Bluejays are gathered, and at the last reunion we had, virtually no folks there to reminisce.

Time happens.  In fact as we round the Square of life, it's now been decided to invite the classes from 1975 to 1985 so we once again can have big crowds.

A lap around the Square is a happy, sad thing. It goes from bursting energy, to mostly standing, a few sitting.. to all sitting.. to literally walkers, canes, afflictions..  to the 30's, where the birds gather.  We move from bikes, to SUV's, to Station Wagons, to Hot Rods... Rap to rock to at the hop to big bands.

There we are in our 60's, 70's, 80's...  all, reliving, remembering when our heart was 17.

On a sunset hill of glory see our High School rise..  Ornate, beautiful and spacious pointing to the skies..  Liberty High School live for ever and true to the we'll be.. may the coming years but deepen, our great love for thee.... (Or something like that!).....

May we all, love, gather, reminisce, hug, see old flames, have hearts race.. allow eyes to meet to remind us of the acts, goofy stuff, wonderful stuff we did back in the day.

I pray for us all, health, happiness, do good and love - and with a heart that's like 17........

Before the birds gather.

Love,Victurd