Weekend in Mansfield

Buster and the lovely Mrs. Gammons just returned from a weekend in Mansfield, Ohio, where we attended my 40th high school reunion festivities. It was two and a half solid days of revelry and we had a great time. I saw all the people I wanted to see, and definitely drank all I wanted to drink. The Class of '72 can still bring the party (although in rather grayer and flabbier form).


The reunion dinner on Saturday night included an energetic young DJ. He could not have been 25 and wore an incongruous white belt. (My comment to a classmate: "I think his belt is from 1972.") Bouncing around and shouting into a cordless microphone, he tried hard to engage his old-fart audience:

"Anyone here remember the Beatles? How about the Rolling Stones?" (We are not dementia patients, at least not yet. Of course we remember them.)

"Let's see if you recognize some of your generation's slang." (More memory tests?) "You there, sir. Yes, you in the blue shirt. Can you tell me what was meant by the phrase, 'Catch you on the flip side'?" (What are we, the Class of 1942? It means, "See you later." But more commonly-used farewell phrases of the '70s were, "Gotta split", "Gotta book", "Gotta haul ass", "Let's beat feet", "Let's boogie", "Let's cut out", and the all-purpose "Later.")

There is a difference, it seems, between living in the 70's and reading about it on Wikipedia. But despite our DJ's ill-advised generational references, it was a lovely evening.



During our time in "The Fun Center", it was hard to miss Mansfield's many "dentally-challenged" residents. It seemed like toothless hillbillies were everywhere. Perhaps they were, in their way, mirroring the condition of the city, which has a glut of vacant lots and boarded-up, abandoned properties.


There are still some nice neighborhoods and pockets of affluence, but so many of the once thriving industries are long gone, the downtown businesses followed suit, and the core of the old city is in rough shape. It's a shame.





I'll finish my thoughts on my Mansfield weekend with this:

My good old friend Lee came back for the reunion with his wife Jane. Lee's mother died and was buried over a year ago. Prior to that, his oldest brother Dennis had moved back to town and into the old family home to care for her in her final days. Dennis is a Viet Nam vet and an amusingly weirded-out crispy critter. (How's that for some '70s slang?) He has stayed on in the house, cleaning it out and fixing it up. In doing so, he recently came across a little glass vial which held some small . . . thing. An accompanying note written by their mother explained that it was her appendix! Although removed many decades before, she'd saved it along with instructions that it be buried with her. But it was tucked away somewhere and she was buried without it. (And really, who would have looked for an appendix in the first place?)

The brothers thought the whole thing was hilarious, but they also loved their mother and agreed to follow her wishes to the best of their ability. And so, on the Saturday afternoon before the reunion, Lee, Jane and Dennis went to the cemetery with the little vial and a garden trowel, found the grave and buried the vial. Then they toasted their mom's dried-up vestigial structure with a few swigs of MD 20/20. (Brought along by Dennis, I'm sure.)

Somehow, that's just so Mansfield! We love our friends, we love our family, and we love burying old body parts while drinking cheap wine. Hey, they don't call us "The Fun Center" for nuthin'!