You can go home again

I had a memorable weekend over the Memorial Day weekend.

I attended my Monongah High School alumni reunion for a dinner/dance and meetings with former classmates for the first time, in some cases, in 55 years. To sweeten the situation, I visited Monongah, where I was born in my Olesky grandparents’ house. Hey, it was the Great Depression and people made do.

Actually, I was repaying a favor. My sister, Jackie, had attended my 50-year reunion in 2000. This time, Jackie’s class was the 50-year class (of 1955).

The reunion was at 6 p.m. Saturday, May 28, at Westchester Village in Fairmont, WV. So, that morning I drove to Monongah (childhood playground of Miami Dolphins coach Nick Saban) and had my photos taken in front of my birthplace, in front of the house we rented and then the house that my parents bought from Consolation Coal Company because it had indoor plumbing and ours didn’t. I was 12 the first time I used the bathroom without winter windburn on my bum.

Other photos were taken:

-- At the edge of the holler (yes, I know how the outside world spells it) where I had wrecked by going over the edge with about every vehicle that my parents bought me. Once, a neighbor knocked on my Mom’s door and, when she answered, handed my unconscious body to her with “Here’s your son.”

-- At my aunt’s grocery where I hung upside down while clinging to a second-floor metal railing 15 feet above the concrete till a customer grabbed me by the ankles.

-- The steep Jackson Street hill where we did our sledriding at tremendous speeds because we poured water on the road in winter so it would freeze, and the Jackson Street residents countered with coal ashes, which we counter-countered with more water.

-- The concrete steps above the street car station (electric trolley to young whippersnappers) where daredevil Bill rode me double (I was on the handlebars) on his bicycle as we bumpty-bumped down, by my count after looking at the photo, 49 steps.

As I said, I had been to my Class of 1950’s 50-year reunion in 2000 with my late wife, Monia, but there were several who didn’t make it then who showed up this time, including the classmate with the deerskin suit (he shot it; someone else stitched it together). And some who didn’t make it to the evening’s dinner/dance showed up at the 1 p.m. lunch I arranged at Say-Boy Restaurant on Country Club Road, just down the street from Country Club Bakery, birthplace of the pepperoni roll (Food TV cable network had a piece on the bakery).

I can’t wait for the Class of 1950’s 60-year reunion in 2010. By then, it may be a Wheelchairs R Us event, particularly if I decide to take on that holler again.