Bellevue High School Class of 79 Reunion

I was recently informed that my High School Graduation Class was having their 30 yr High School reunion just outside of Nashville TN. I had mixed feelings about attending. I don’t know most of these people. I don’t even remember most of these people. I was drunk or high for the majority of High School. (It was a family tradition.) Every other time that there had been a High School Reunion, I had been out of the country or just out of touch. I had never had any great desire to attend anyway. It’s not like I was one of the “cool kids.” When the 30yr reunion came about, my schedule was free for the first time. I was unemployed. I had nowhere that I had to be. I had enough cash at hand that I could afford it. I had no excuse for why it was that I couldn’t attend.


I made my final decision to go to the reunion the day before the event, actually the morning I left to go. The decision was easier to make due in part to the actions of a few other people. Since being unemployed, my wife and I have been spending a LOT of time together, to the point where we occasionally get on each others nerves. She was ready for my ass to be gone for the weekend. A few of my former classmates had found me on Facebook, and they had turned out to be really warm and nice people. I finally decided what the hell, what did I have to lose? I’d drive over the mountains in my truck, take my time, and enjoy some scenery and solitude, enjoy a few cigars and just get away for a day or two. I'd take no musical instruments, no laptop computer, nopthing to hide behind. A friend of mine suggested that I take the new Interstate 29 bypass from Asheville to Johnson City due to the incredible scenery.

I did, and he was right.

Driving alone through the mountains, smoking a cigar is almost a meditative exercise. It clears the mind and allows for self-introspection. I highly recommend such activities for everyone. I believe it was Socrates who originally said that the non-examined life wasn’t worth living. I don’t know about all of that, but I find it necessary to clear my head and look at where I am in my life occasionally, to look at where I have come from and where it is that I wish to go. I’m not into a lot of navel gazing, well at least not my navel anyway, but a regular mental inventory can be a beneficial thing.


I got to thinking about this reunion and asking myself why in the hell I was going. I have always had difficulties establishing and maintaining close relationships. I want these relationships; I’m just not very good at maintaining them. Some of this might be due to my mental makeup Some might be due to environmental factors. My parents got divorced when I was young, and my mother remarried. My family then moved around a lot. I went to two different elementary schools, three different Junior High Schools, and two different High Schools. I didn’t really have a problem with it. Roots were always difficult for me. It never really mattered where I was or who I was with, for some reason I have always felt that I was some sort of an outsider, that I didn’t really belong, regardless of evidence to the contrary.

I transferred to the school I graduated from about halfway through my Junior year. I wasn’t on any of the sports teams and I didn’t participate in any extracurricular activities... including chicks. I didn’t have any high school girlfriends. I liked girls, but I was incredibly shy, too shy to ever ask one out. I didn’t go to my Junior prom and only got a date for the Senior prom a week prior to the event. I was never a good student. It wasn’t because I was stupid, that was just a disguise. I was smart and I loved to read, but I never bothered doing any homework. The only thing that saved me was the fact that I always aced my tests…when I bothered to show up to take them. Skipping school, or part of school, had become a regular occurrence. I was basically your average under achieving invisible drunk/stoned loser kid wasting whatever potential he had just as quickly as he possibly could. Back then there was no such thing as ADD or Advanced Placement for the academically gifted kids. (not that I was gifted or anything) I barely graduated High School and once I did, I was done and I never looked back. I didn’t really stay in touch with anyone. About the time that I graduated, my family moved to another town, and less than a year later, I had left to begin a 20yr Navy career. Once I left, I was gone for good.


Once I retired from the Navy, I settled in North Carolina to take a job. I still live there. I have lived in this same house for 9 years now. That’s far too long. It is the longest that I have ever lived in one place my entire life. It fills me with panic. I’m ready to go, but my wife and kids seem to like having roots…and friends, so we are still here.

We don’t have any relatives close by. My family of origin has dispersed around the country. I have a sister who lives in Knoxville that I am semi-close to (we both work at it.) I have a brother in Florida that I talk to maybe once or twice a year, and a brother who last I heard was living somewhere near Memphis. I’ll probably see him the next time somebody dies. My stepfather passed away a few years ago. My mother lives somewhere in West Tennessee as well and we aren’t very close. We are not a close family. We were never really a close family, but since my stepfather’s passing we have drifted even further apart. My biological father lives 30 miles east of Nashville. I have been trying to build a relationship with him, along with a brother and sister from that side of my family as well. We try to be close, to be honest, they have been putting forth most of the effort, but it’s been difficult, more my fault than theirs. I’m just a hard guy to get close to.


When I left North Carolina, I had no idea where it was I was going to spend the night, or any plans at all other than just heading west for Bellevue, TN and figuring it out as I went along. I’ve got a habit of doing stuff like that. Making it up as I go along. I figured worse case scenario, I could sleep in the truck. Yes I took the truck. My wife offered to let me drive her Honda Element with it’s nice air conditioning. I could have driven the minivan with it’s crappy air conditioning if I had wanted to, but when one is driving and contemplating, there is no better contemplating vehicle than an old un-air-conditioned pickup truck with all the windows down.


I was headed west on I-40. I had called the Old Man a couple of times so far and gotten no answer. I was okay with that as I usually find visiting to be a lot of work, but he’s the Old Man. I got to Lebanon TN at about 10pm and decided to give him one more shot. This time he answered and told me to come on by, he was excited to see me. We sat up and talked for awhile while we watched the last part of some movie about Angels and Demons and Keanu Reeves. He told me to stay there with him and offered me a bedroom if I wanted it. I prefer the couch. I’m more of a couch guy anyway If I’m sleeping in a bed, I want somebody in there with me, preferably my dog Bob because he doesn’t bitch about my snoring and he’s a good kisser.
My father is a good man. I wish we were closer, I just don’t know how to get closer. He loves me and he tries hard. I respect that and I try to do my part as best I can.


The next morning we got up and we went to breakfast together at his regular breakfast place. In Tennessee there is a law that at a certain age you have to have a regular breakfast place. At that breakfast place everybody knows you and you set at a big table with a bunch of other really old guys and you all tell each other lies about how badly life is treating you and try to figure out new ways to beat your buddy out of a little folding money. Most of the small diners in Tennessee should come with a cholesterol warning in bright neon. Breakfast was country ham and biscuits, home fries, and a sliced tomato. Not some nasty tomato slices, but an entire tomato sliced up thick. Where the waitress calls you honey and asks about your Mama and them. After breakfast I said my goodbyes and headed for Nashville to go meet an old friend at the NAMM show.


I had always wanted to attend NAMM. NAMM stands for the National Association of Music Marketing. Basically it’s a trade organization for Music Store owners and their suppliers. To a musician, it’s like being allowed to sneak into Santa’s workshop when Santa has his back turned. I had been calling everyone I knew to try and scam a pass to get in, but no one could help me. At the last minute, due to a fluke, a friend was given an extra pass and offered it up. As I am getting ready to walk into the Convention Center, I ran into the owners of my local music store. They told me that if they had known I was looking for one, they would have gladly gotten me an access pass, which should once again stress the importance of local brick and mortar - ma & pa guitar stores over that of huge national corporations and on-line super merchants. Sure, the big guys might be able to give you a better price, but they won’t loan you an amp when you really need one, front you a set of strings when you are broke, or score you an access badge for the big trade show. Talking to the store owners I asked them how much an impact the NAMM show had upon the store. They said that it had a huge impact. They found out what was new, they could talk to other retailers and learn new revenue generation ideas, they could meet new suppliers, and it made a huge impact one what they decided to carry.


Inside the NAMM show I ran into a small distributor who had a tiny booth set up on the outside ring of venders in the very back corner of the exhibition hall. You couldn’t have scored a worse location if you had tried. This distributor told me that he operated his business out of the basement of his home. His booth space had set him back about $600, On top of that he had to pay his travel expenses, lodging and meals. I asked him if coming to NAMM was costeffective. He told me that he already had enough orders to cover his expenses and it was only lunchtime Saturday. Walking around the exhibition hall and speaking with various venders, several things became apparent. Small ticket items were selling like gangbusters: picks, straps, gadgets, tuners, pedals, cables, strings, etc. High end guitar sales were down.

While looking around, I had an epiphany, something that I had never really given much though to. The vast majority of people who play musical instruments, play for their own enjoyment. These people will never play in a band. They will never play in front of an audience. They will never step foot on a stage, and have never been bitten by the performance bug. They don’t have that desire or need to perform. They don’t crave that a crowd response. These people are the primary market base for music retailers. I also quickly realized was that this was not my crowd or my kind of an event. The exhibitors were set up to SELL instruments, not have people like me come around and play them. These people weren’t musicians, at least not primarily. They were more concerned with sales figures. It didn’t take me long to realize that this place was no different than being the fat diabetic kid turned loose in the Willie Wonka Chocolate Factory. There was lots of cool stuff to look at, but nothing I could have. I decided to quit torturing myself and head out to see some country.


I graduated from Bellevue High School in 1979. Bellevue is a small western suburb of Nashville way out on the outskirts of town. When I was growing up, we had a grocery store, a hardware store, a couple of gas stations, a family pool hall, and a McDonalds. If you needed more than that, you had to go somewhere else to find it. When I lived here, I went to school, then as soon as I got out of school I would go to get drunk then head over to work. Sometimes I would get drunk before school. Sometimes I would get drunk at school. I worked at the Shoney’s Big Boy Restaurant and would often get drunk while cooking or busing tables and washing dishes. Then after work I would go out with my co-workers and get drunk. Eventually it just became easier to stay drunk rather than having to get drunk. I figured out that it was just more time efficient that way. When I wasn’t at school or at work, I was usually hanging out with a bunch of drunks and potheads at the park. Occasionally I could be found out in the country hanging out with my horses who were neither drunks nor potheads (that I knew of.) For some reason, I just don’t remember a lot about those years.


I decided to drive out through Belle Meade to the Hwy 70S/Hwy 100 split and check out the area I used to run around in. Bellevue is unrecognizable from 30 years ago. Since I left a mall sprang up and then shut down. What used to be a subdivision is now a Home Depot, My old High School is now a Jr High School and the Jr High School is now a park. I drove out to survey Edwin Warner Park and found there to be a big ass private High School next door, a High School so fancy that is bigger and more elaborate than any university or college I ever attended, a High School with a tuition higher than that of any college or university I ever attended as well. To be fair, I primarily only attended Tech Schools and Community Colleges, but it is one big ass fancy private High School. I guess that now when kids get thrown out of the Metro Nashville Public School system, they have another option other than just Father Ryan Catholic High School, which should be welcome news to the Baptists.

Hwy 100 has become commercialized, subdivided, developed and residentialized. When I was young, it was just country. There was nothing on that road except farmers, dead possums, and drunken high school kids (like me). It was the way to get to Fairview and why on earth would anybody want to go to Fairview that didn’t have to? It was also a back way to Franklin and then on over to Murfreesboro up Hwy 96. It was a pretty drive that cut cross country away from the Interstate (and the Highway Patrol.) I used to run that area a lot. I knew every rock there, every side road, every tree stump, and every country store that sold beer and wasn’t too particular about checking ID’s. Just like everything else, progress has done come in and messed it all up. The Natchez Trace cuts through there now, just past the Loveless Café.

For a few years now, folks have been telling me that I need to go eat at the Loveless Café. It’s been voted the best breakfast in all of Middle Tennessee. I had a hard time believing this as I remember the Loveless Café and Motel from when I was growing up. You could catch an STD just pulling into the parking lot. You would have been better off with a bottle of hot sauce and a spoon and a road kill squirrel than if you would have tried actually eating there. The Loveless was where you went with a 12 pack of beer and a girl of questionable integrity, when it was too cold, too rainy, or she was just too ugly to go out to the river or a nearby cow pasture to get drunk and naked. A good fire would have more than doubled the property values of the Loveless Café and Motel.

I was surprised when I came up on it. Somebody went in and bought the place and spent a bunch of money cleaning the place up. All the hotel rooms/cribs were gutted and replaced with boutique shops. They have a BBQ smoker outside that makes the entire area smell of hickory smoke and pork. Your mouth starts watering the minute you get out of your vehicle. I grabbed a quick sandwich to go, wishing I had more time to eat, but it was time to actually go attend the reunion.

When I was in High School, I don’t remember having very many friends. The one I do remember, Kenny, was going to be out of town and unable to attend the reunion. I honestly don’t remember a whole lot about High School. I remember showing up…occasionally. I remember my English Teacher Mrs DJ who treated me much better than I deserved. I remember drinking and smoking in the parking lot. That’s about it. I don’t remember any of the people I went to school with. I didn’t have a long history with them. We didn’t grow up together (except for Teresa Gibson who I have lost track of.)

I didn’t stay in touch with anyone from High School and to the best of knowledge none of them tried very hard to stay in touch with me either. So why in the hell was I there? Why did I drive almost 500 miles to meet people I hadn’t seen nor talked to in 30 years? I don’t know why. I just know I was there. I showed up early and met a bunch of people for what seemed like the very first time. It was strange, it was actually kind of neat. It turns out that we were all terribly shy and self aware in High School. I was surprised to discover that I wasn’t the only one. It also turns out that we were ALL drunk and high the majority of the time, EVERY SINGLE ONE OF US, which scares the shit out of me since I am now a parent too. Is my kid going to follow in my footsteps? God, I hope not. I’m surprised I even lived through some of the shit I did. I don’t know if she has the lucky dumbass gene in her or not.

When we arrived, there was a questionnaire that we were asked to fill out.
“How far did you travel?”
”How many kids do you have?“
”How many times have you been divorced?”
“How many rehab centers have you been to?”
“How many DUI’s have you gotten?”
“How’s your blood pressure?”
“Have you had a Colonoscopy yet?”

…and a bunch of similar type questions. If you had the most of any of these things, you won a free drink coupon. I won for having lived in the most different cities with something like 20 and for having visited the most foreign countries with something like 28. There were people there who had never left the State of Tennessee. There were people there who had lived in that same little community since birth. I couldn’t believe it. Just as they found my travels amazing, I found their ability/choice to stay put equally amazing. God Bless ‘em, I have no idea how they do it without losing their minds.

I won a drink ticket for having traveled the greatest distance at 468 miles. I’m sure there were others who traveled equally as far or further. One came from Little Rock, another came from Mobile. I also won a drink ticket for being the person who had changed the most. I couldn’t see it. How had I changed? Sure, I had cleaned up and given up the dope and liquor almost 25 years ago. I have a bit more self confidence now and I have a beard. I also smoke cigars now instead of cigarettes, but in my head I am essentially the same person that I was 20-30 years ago.

In High School I was about 6’1” or 6’2” tall and weighed maybe 150 lbs. Today I am 6’7” tall and weigh somewhere around 315lbs. In my mind, physically, I’m still the same guy I was in my early twenties.
I’m still young, I’m as strong as an ox, I’m virile as a rutting buck, I’m skinny and good looking, I have a pecker you can bust concrete with, and the chicks all dig me and want to be with me. The reality is that I have somehow gotten old. I have a big gut and man boobs. I now have to take medication for high blood pressure, acid reflux, arthritis, depression, ADD, and for crankiness and bloating during that time of the month. I have spent tons of time and money laying on couches talking about my “issues” as well as all the psycho family history crap that I grew up with, that I think it’s pretty amazing that I am even able to uncurl from the fetal position each day, and stand upright, much less be a responsible, productive functioning member of society.


I’ve gotten old and fat, but in my head, I’m still young, skinny, and have an erection that you couldn’t scratch with a diamond. Chicks dig me, even if they aren’t immediately aware of it. Self deceit is something I am very skilled at. It is something that all guys are good at. It has to be the cruelest trick God ever played upon us.

The reunion was awesome and it filled me with amazement and joy. I found out that all the High School fuckups somehow got their shit together and had good lives. Meanwhile it was the super achiever “good kids” who ended up strung out, in prison, or dead. All the chicks were hot. The ones who were hot in High School stayed hot. (Yes, I am talking about you) The ones who were geeky and gawky grew into their hotness. Maybe it’s the self-confidence that a woman has once she has reached her late 40’s. There was no drama. There was no bullshit. There was no game playing. Just women with smiles, having real discussions with people. One of them even gave me a kiss on the cheek.



The guys, well, most of the guys all got old and fat and started losing their hair… except for me. I don’t know how they all got so old while I hardly aged at all. It must have something to do with my innate awesomeness. I had several wonderful conversations with the guys that I went to school with. I really didn’t know any of these people but they were all interested in me and exceptionally nice to me. Pat offered to try and help me find work. Webb introduced me around. Shannon and Edgar were awesome as was Dallas and Mike. I just felt a lot of love, respect, and acceptance from everyone.

I was sad to leave when it was all over. I drove back to Lebanon but the Old Man had actually locked me out of the house. I ran into my brother who is working as a Sheriff Deputy. The asshole lit me up in the yard as I was checking the doors and windows for an open one. At least he didn’t shoot me. We got the chance to visit for a while and to share the fact that neither one of us knew a damned thing when it comes to women. He went on to bed and I decided to drive back east toward the house through the night.

As I was driving I got to thinking. I was nervous when I went to the reunion for fear that I wouldn’t fit in, that I didn’t belong, that I somehow wasn’t good enough, and I found out that I was wrong. Then I began to look at this in a little more detail. Why was it that I felt this way? What made me feel like this? I could find nothing that supported these feelings. Then I had an epiphany (an epiphany I had experienced before to tell the truth) There could only be one explanation. The only person who thinks I don’t belong is me. The only person who doubts my ability is me. The only person who prevents me from fitting in is me. If you treated me the way that I treat myself, I’d have to whip your ass, if not shoot you. Why is it that I allow me to treat myself that way? Something new to be aware of. Something new to look at. I’m glad I went. I’ve made some new friends.

Thanks so much to the Bellevue High School Class of 1979 for your love and friendship. It really means a lot to me.