Doing time in Spokane
October 30, 2009
About six months ago I received a phone call from a woman who said she had been in the Class of ’59 at Lewis and Clark High School in Spokane. And “We’re going to have a 50th reunion!!!!” And “Do you plan to attend??!!”
I laughed.
Then told her: ”No, I do not plan to attend. I spent 3 years living there a long, long time ago. My life has been in another world.”
Undeterred, she chatted away about this person and that person who were coming to the reunion. None of the names did more than faintly resonate in my memory. It was as if I were listening to a total stranger rambling on about her high school years in a place I had never been. I ended the conversation–and she was very persistent in trying to get me to say “Yes”–with the suggestion that she send me whatever information she had.
When the package showed up in my mailbox it was even funnier. One of the events scheduled was a luncheon based on what Spokane Grade School a person had attended. Grade school?!? That left no doubt that the people organizing the reunion were born and raised in Spokane and never left. Spokane Lifers.
My family moved to the South Side of Spokane–which in those days was the best part of the city–the summer before I entered 10th grade. I hated the place–primarily because it was new to me. Suddenly, I went from being a very popular girl in a tiny high school (fewer than 300 students) in Dayton, Oregon to being a new girl in a large (over 2,000 students) urban high school where I knew absolutely no one.
The teenagers at Lewis and Clark high school were like those in the movie, American Graffiti. There were the cool kids. There were the outsiders. There were social clubs–I was invited to join one my senior year, but by then I knew I was on my way out of Spokane, so I turned them down.
There were dances in ballrooms and country barns.
There were summer days spent hanging out at the city pool and taking tennis lessons and getting a sun tan.
There were sewed-down pleated skirts, white suede shoes, and a red-and-white striped blouson style blouse I really loved.
There was Sputnik and the Cold War. The launch of the Russian Sputnik was announced in the middle of a high school basketball game. Lewis and Clark was playing North Central.
There was rock ‘n roll–although Elvis Presley had come along while I was still living in Dayton. When Elvis played Sp0kane, I sat in the second row and screamed my lungs out.
There were hamburgers, fries and milkshakes at the Triple X drive-in followed by the thrill of cruising around the dark streets of Spokane late at night in a friend’s car.
Then there were the classes at Lewis and Clark High School. At the high school in Dayton I had been voted “Most Likely to Succeed.” In Spokane I rose to be in the top 10% of the class, academically. Lewis and Clark High School was among the top schools in the U.S. at that point. Most graduates went on to college, even the girls at least for a year or two. In contrast, my two best friends from Dayton moved to Salem, Oregon after high school where they got secretarial jobs.
As much as I disliked Spokane, had it not been for my parents’ move there my life would have been drastically different. My parents’ best friends in Spokane had attended Smith College and Amherst and the next thing I knew I was being recruited by Smith and a couple of other women’s colleges on the East Coast. I applied to Smith, Wellesley, and Mt. Holyoke. Smith and Holyoke accepted me; I was wait-listed at Wellesley.
I was not going to be a Spokane Lifer. I was going to Smith.
(This post is part of an experimental memoir. I teach memoir writing and will edit your memoir to make it better. Learn more at www.onedaymemoir.com)
