Tonight I spent the evening with my folks, and after an awesome dinner my mom made- pulled pork sandwiches with some baked beans and potato salad on the side- we played a round of Ticket to Ride, a game they seem to like enough to play with me when I ask them from time to time. We enjoyed a nice back and forth race up the game’s victory point track until the end, when my mom, in her typical state of surprise, won. Again.

Still, it was fun.

Conversing after the game about some of their upcoming plans, we talked about a couple who were their friends who liked to play games, and we talked about another couple who were their friends who were coming to town to visit who did not like to play games really. Talking about that couple, they then talked about a few other old friends of theirs who were in some hard straits- friends they had known since high school.

That conversation led my dad to disappear down the hall and to return with a thin white volume in his hands which he opened when he sat back down at the dining room table. It was his yearbook from 1957, when he was a sophomore in high school.

He thumbed through it looking for something at first, and then the research devolved into pauses accompanied by memories. Here was a picture of the class officers- the president looking James Dean-ish with with a coy smile and his flat top hair cut. He became an airline pilot. Dad mused about his sports career- “Dad knew the coach of the football team- that may have had something to do with me being on it…” “If you played football, you had to play a spring sport, so I played tennis.” There he was, on the back row in the team picture, the face of a kid under his cropped hair cut. There’s the friend he “trained” before that guy went to West Point because Dad was on sports teams, and he was not. In his yearbook signature, Dad’s friend wrote a good short paragraph of enthusiastic appreciation for his help and friendship during school. There’s a gal who was so sweet and friendly, and she passed away a few years after they got out of high school.
Dad tells me about the girl who used to have a locker by him who was full-bodied (“She was ‘well-developed'” my mom clarifies from an adjacent room) and used to call him “Honey” all the time, just to make him blush.

He recalled he was looking for a certain teacher, and then he shared about a few other people, and then he pushed the book to me.

Yearbook mugshots from 1957. Their crime? Being young.

I grabbed it and thumbed through it myself, looking at the youthful faces from 60 years ago, the kids that shared the halls of the Ark City High with my folks.

I look at the clubs and sports team pictures, and then thumb through the student photos. I find my mom- awww, there’s mom.

I find my dad. So young looking. And there is a full head of hair!

And then I look next to my dad and there is a picture with a face I know.

“Wow. Check that guy out! He looks like Kevin!” I exclaim. Kevin is my young cousin, son of my mom’s brother, who still lives in Ark City along with his folks.

Dad on the right; Kev on the left?

“What?” My dad looks at where my finger points. My mom hears me and comes in- “Where? Let me see.”

She is surprised.

“Wow! You have a good eye! I don’t think I would have seen that!”

“That is his uncle- his mom’s brother.”

“Seriously?”

“Really!”