David Fewster

TFW YOUR HIGH SCHOOL 50TH REUNION

FALLS ON OUR NATION'S SEMIQUINCENTENNIAL

AND YOU'RE TOO OLD & DECREPIT

TO BE FIGHTING IN SOME DAMN REVOLUTION

Old photo from spring of 1976--

myself and three classmates in costume

for some lame Monty Python rip-off sketch

that I wrote most of.

One of us in the picture is dressed to appear

as if he is a double-amputee

so that when George Washington says

"Hoskins, hand me my musket" he can reply

"I've got no arms!"

It was that kind of skit.

I think a faculty member

actually commissioned this monstrosity as part

of a revue to celebrate the Bicentennial.

Anyhow, we were met with bemused disdain,

but no one threw things and 

no one was fired

The Class of '76

dodged its share of bullets

I remember being

a pimply 15 year-old sophomore

mingling with my peers

by our lockers between class

and there were no more college deferments

and I would not be overstating it

to say that no one was enthused

by the prospect of being drafted

and the Canadian border was only

70 miles away from Penfield High School

and we hoped our parents

would continue to send our allowances

to Toronto via Western Union

And then by our senior year

that shadow had been lifted

--hell, we didn't even have to register--

and we would sit around the table

in the school library reading

Hunter Thompson in the latest issue of

the Rolling Stone (for the curse words & the drugs)

and we were all pretty cynical

re: the Bicentennial, echoing

Frank Zappa's sentiment that it was

a commercial racket with people

trying to sell you stuff

"you hadn'ta ought'n to buy"

And it was a Golden Age in Culture

(who knew?)

what with the Ramone's first album

and the movies we all saw

and talked about most that year

were "Taxi Driver" and

"One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"

which in retrospect seems

like a heavy load to lay on

a bunch of middle class suburban kids

and what were we thinking?

And we were the last class who could say

they came of age at the tail-end

of the proverbial American Century

and it's true we missed most of the good stuff

like hanging out on the Sunset Strip

and singing Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth"

to the fuzz,

but we got to be on the same street

10 years later and watch

X & the Germs start dumpster fires

and that was better than nothing

And you could live in LA

for next to nothing then--

even if you only worked 2 weeks

a month for minimum wage

you could find a place to sleep indoors

if you weren't too picky

And none of those folks have

a pot to piss in now

even though in the 90s we had

the Triumph of Punk which

collapsed in a sordid orgy of

late stage capitalism

and maybe that was the end of

The American Century

And if you even use a phrase

like "American Century"

to a kid nowadays

they'll look at you with the blank eyes 

that say "OK Boomer"

like when I try to tell my 30 year-old daughter

that there was once a time in America

when there were only 3 networks 

(I'm sorry, PBS doesn't count)

and sometimes there was a program on

that everyone wanted to see

so they had to stay home and watch it

because there were no VHS recorders

and so all of America would be sitting around

watching the first TV broadcast of "Cleopatra"

and we would, for that moment,

be all joined as one

And she just looks at me

like I'm crazy