Sherry Davis signed in to the SHS alumni website (www.sandpointhigh.com) the day before yesterday. After having no success in tracking her down for our Class of 1965 Fortieth-Year Reunion, I was pretty excited to see her name----42 years of no contact. Sherry ran around with my circle of close friends.
I loved everyone in our class, but we all had our individual groups for socializing, and Sherry was among the our slumber-party crowd who gathered at each other's houses and did silly things all night long.
I remember hosting a couple of those slumber parties. I also remember loving the expression on Werner Paulet's face when he drove by with his milk truck during the wee hours one morning and spotted us bedded down in our sleeping bags and "some" of our bras dangling from the guy-wire attached to the power pole next to our mailbox. Werner almost drove off the road.
I can assure readers that my bra was not up there because I was among the more active participants in devilry during slumber parties. I never slumbered but waited for friends to drift off into Never Never Land so we could get started with the pranks.
I also remember another slumber party held in our hay mow, which was nearly empty of hay after a winter of feeding horses. This party took place after our last day of school as seniors at Sandpoint High.
My Aunt Mary Jane from Pasco had given my folks a big gallon of homemade grape wine a year or so before. All but about two inches of the bottom brew had been consumed during family holiday dinners. So, my mother allowed us to have that jug out there in the barn, figuring 14 of us couldn't do too much harm to ourselves sharing two inches of hooch.
Well, as I recall, not all 14 thought the wine was a good idea, leaving that much more for the few of us that did. Mix that grape wine with a nightful of munchies, hotdogs, candy, marshmallows and anything else disgusting, and you've got a powerful formula for upcoming stomach explosions. Oh yes, add no sleep, and a decision around 4 a.m. to walk our tired bodies around the 4-mile square, south on Boyer, west on Baldy Road, north on Great Northern Road, east on what's now Woodland Drive and a shortcut through the woods back to the barn.
Then, add the morning hour before the bus arrives where 14 high school seniors have to use one bathroom to get ready for their last day of school, which consisted of graduation practice. As I recall, my manners took over, and I waited until everyone else had used the bathroom. By then, all that stuff consumed overnight with no sleep started rumbling really bad in my stomach. Soon the North Boyer bus arrived at our house.
We all climbed aboard, and I'll never forget how much I wished that Susan Bergstrom, who was sitting next to me, would not talk quite so much. My focus was on my stomach, which had gone into overdrive. Things were starting to explode internally. On what was the longest bus drive of my life, I must report that my manners as the slumber party hostess with the mostest flew out the door with me at the old junior high (soon to be reopened as Sandpoint's Event Center).
I left my herd of friends on the bus, told 'em I'd see them at school and raced to the third floor bathroom---just in time. A long, hard day followed! Don't ask me if I remember anything about our practice except that I was marching with Kip Phelps. Kip had not attended a slumber party, so I deferred to his more alert guidance during that interminable practice. I remember arriving home shortly after noon, collapsing on my bed and waking up sometime that evening.
Well, that was the Mother of all slumber parties at my North Boyer house, but Sherry hosted one also. I'm pretty sure hers was the summer after our junior year. Sherry lived in a house north of Serva-Burger. At the time, there was a trestle over the highway just north of her home. Once we'd run out of the short list of civilized activities, we moved on to the real reason anyone remembers slumber parties---the petty crime.
Our first brush with destiny was to walk north, with our supplies, get on that overpass, make sure a train wasn't coming to run us over and then fulfill our mission. Our mission involved those supplies, i.e., that bucket of water and those balloons. It was great fun dropping water balloons and watching them go "splat" on all those cars passing beneath the overpass----until that one guy slid to a stop, turned his car around, gunned his motor and began a hot pursuit.
We left our supplies and took off. We also left my talkative friend, Susan Bergstom, when she got stuck in the barbwire fence. I've never yet figured out how Susan beat us back to Sherry's house, but she did, and she certainly was not happy with her "friends." For years afterward in my classroom, I used that incident as a perfect example of Aesop's claim that "Misfortune tests the sincerity of friends." Fortunately, the water balloon victim never found us, so we avoided headlines in the News Bulletin.
We spent the rest of the night riding our bicycles around town and even trying on the panties and other items left in the dryers down at the IGA laundromat. The police cruised through the parking lot but apparently figured such nonsense didn't merit an arrest.
I also remember a poignant part of the night when decency returned. We rode down to Lakeview Cemetery and visited the grave of our classmate and friend, Karen Fredstrom, who had died in a tragic automobile accident the summer before.
Our group had a lot of fun back in our slumber party days and did avoid adding to rap sheets to any prison records some of us may have had. So, when I saw Sherry's name the other day, I smiled and immediately shot off a note to her, reminding her of the overpass incident. She didn't remember that, but she remembered the fun.
She has worked for years as a critical care nurse, now specializing in dialysis for long-term patients at a small hospital in Wenatchee. I'm looking forward to learning more about where life has taken her, and I'm sure Sherry will enjoy reading our class blog after being an SHS 1965 MIA for so long. From the sounds of things, she's led a fulfilling and satisfying life after high school. And, that is good.
Happy Saturday, and stay away from those jugs of homemade grape wine.
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