Joseph S obran’s
Washington Watch

Auld Acquaintance

(Reprinted from the issue of August 26, 2004)

At midsummer, the big news in Washington is the weather in Florida. We don’t even have bad weather of our own to complain about. On some days the August temperature hasn’t even reached 80 degrees.

By happy coincidence, this coming weekend — last weekend by the time you read this — I’ll be taking a mini-vacation, my first in many years. Last year I’d hoped to visit England for a fortnight, but as usual my plans (read: finances) fell through. This year my aim is more modest: a five-day trip back to my native Michigan.

The occasion is a class reunion. Forty years ago I graduated from Ypsilanti High School. (Ypsi High, for short; “Ypsi” is pronounced “ipsy.” Out-of-towners tend to mispronounce the first syllable as “Yip.”) I’ve never made it to previous reunions, but I’ve been determined to attend the 40th and indulge some long-overdue nostalgia.

As the date approaches, however, nostalgia is giving way to surprising anxiety. I very much want to see my old friends from Ypsi High. But here’s the rub: Do I really want them to see me?

In 1964 I weighed 140 pounds wringing wet, I had no wrinkles (or even any whiskers to speak of), my hair was jet-black. I dread long stares and the unspoken question: “Didn’t you use to be Joe Sobran?” (With the unspoken follow-up: “What on earth happened to you?”)

And of course when you run into old friends there can be embarrassing memory problems. Oh, you remember each other, all right, but they often don’t remember the same things you remember, and vice-versa. I remember my first kiss, but I won’t be seeing the girl who gave it to me (I was much too shy to take the initiative), because she graduated a year behind me. Not that she would necessarily remember me by now. It was my first kiss, but maybe not hers.

So this weekend I’m apt to revert to the same tongue-tied kid I was in 1964 when trying to summon the nerve to ask for a date. Maybe the words will come freely once we actually recognize each other, and I’ll finally confess to several of the grannies in attendance that I once had secret crushes on them. Or maybe my classmates are having the same apprehensions, and nobody will say a word for the first hour. I hope there will be nametags with very large letters.

But some may remember me. I was a bit of a class clown, elected to the student council on the strength of my mimicry of President Kennedy, which once convulsed a school assembly. This brief claim to very local fame was tragically burst in our senior year when our principal came on the intercom to announce that the president had been shot in Dallas.
 
When Troy Lost Hector

Little did we dream how completely the country was about to change, as if that event had somehow released demons of abnormality. The following May, the whole class was bussed over to neighboring Ann Arbor, where President Lyndon Johnson, speaking at the crammed football stadium of the University of Michigan, called for the creation of a “Great Society.” I listened without skepticism. It seemed a golden age. A Great Society? Sure, why not? (But wasn’t our society already pretty great?)

About two years later, Ypsi was stunned when its most promising son ever, Bob Arvin, was killed in Vietnam. He’d graduated in 1962, class president, valedictorian, state champion wrestler, altar boy, with movie-star looks and yet utter modesty. Everyone loved him. He married the prettiest cheerleader; it was perfect. He went to West Point, where he also led his class. Then came Vietnam. His death was front-page news.

I still ache to think of it. Bob’s younger brother Dave was my classmate and a close pal. Bob left a record of achievement that is still unmatched — unapproached — in our hometown. And schoolwork wasn’t enough to satisfy his mind; when he wasn’t winning awards, he was reading Dante on his own. If he’d lived, he’d have made himself, and Ypsilanti, famous. As the years pass, his early death reminds me less of Kennedy’s death than Mozart’s. On that day, as far as I’m concerned, it became impossible to hope for victory in Vietnam. Troy had lost Hector.

Among lesser mortals in our class, I was also known for my devotion to Shakespeare (I also mimicked Laurence Olivier and Richard Burton, then at their peak), and I don’t suppose that those who recall me will be amazed to learn I’ve written a book about the Bard’s true identity. I was perhaps an amusing young eccentric, but by no means an outcast. The class of ’64 was a highly civilized and good-natured lot, with hardly a wild kid among us, unless you count a handful who drove down to Toledo (50 miles away) on Friday nights to drink 3.2 beer — a thrill I passed up.

We were lucky kids, luckier than we knew. Our parents and teachers loved us; we hardly noticed the incipient war in Southeast Asia, and we never really felt the hand of government. The Beatles were just arriving in America, where Elvis, the Beach Boys, and the Everly Brothers were still going strong, along with Frank Sinatra and Johnny Mathis. Public morality still seemed stable. Subjects like abortion were almost unmentionable; when a girl in our class suddenly disappeared for a few months, the whisper was that she’d gone to a home for unwed mothers.
 
A Sad Side

And there’s a sad side to this reunion. Some of the classmates I’d most like to have seen again are dead. Of the more than 300 in the class of ’64, several dozen are already gone, and none of us, as far as I know, are even 60 yet.

My best friend since junior high school is still my closest friend today, still living in the same house in Ypsi. Whatever else may go wrong this weekend, I know Bob will be there to laugh about it with me, as always.

Actually, I expect to have a good time, a vacation from thinking about all the things I usually have to fret about. My classmates and I will surely pardon each other for putting on a few pounds and acquiring a few grandchildren over the past four decades.

Anyway, how can we have changed any more than the whole world has?


I once spent a day with Tom Wolfe and got valuable lessons in writing from this modern genius. His masterpiece, Radical Chic, is revisited, with my own personal memories, in SOBRAN’S. If you have not seen my monthly newsletter, yet, give my office a call at 800-513-5053 and request a free sample, or better yet, subscribe for two years for just $85. New subscribers get two gifts with their subscription. More details can be found at the Subscription page of my website.

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Joseph Sobran