It Seems Like Yesterday

It’s been over half a century since we walked out of Huffman High School. We’re getting old and beat up. We’ve lost several of our beloved classmates, and the demographics no longer work in our favor. As with every generation, we’ve been through hell and back through the years, but you don’t get to be 70 or more without experiencing incredible joy and soul-stealing sadness.

In 1967, we began the 9th grade in a brand-new school, eleven miles east of downtown Birmingham, Alabama. This was not just any new school, but one that consisted of circular buildings. There were two buildings the first year and four by the second.

We came from four Grade 1-8 schools, but were somewhat familiar with each other through sports, church activities, and older siblings who attended nearby high schools. The school filled with students who had been rezoned into it and, because the area was growing so fast, many transfers joined us. Quite a few white-flight transfers showed up, too. Did we understand the phenomenon of white flight then? Probably not. New kids just showed up.

We, along with the students one grade ahead of us, were helping to build a brand-new student body with a new faculty, new school colors (green and orange), and a new mascot (Viking). Don’t judge us. It was the hand we were dealt–and we loved it!

We thought our school was so cool, but now it seems that only a drunken architect and a confederacy of dunces could’ve thought that round buildings made any sense. There wasn’t a square corner in the school. A kid could run out of sight of a pursuing adult in two seconds.

We didn’t gather in select locations before the first bell. We walked in opposite circles the whole time in the main classroom building hallway, often passing the same people ten or fifteen times before the bell rang. We even wanted to get to school early in order to walk in circles! Our unique tradition was simultaneously quaint and idiotic.

There was quite a bit of teacher turnover while we were there. Back then, most teachers weren’t very hands-on. We were scared of our principal, but teacher discipline was inconsistent. The place was pretty ordinary on the surface, but we have so many crazy stories that mostly stayed hidden from view.

As 9th-graders in 1967, we each had accumulated less information than modern 6-year-olds. Social media and cable television didn’t exist; we were lucky if we had a color TV in our homes. Most family sets of encyclopedias were dated. The general knowledge that we had acquired was relayed to us by mass outlets such as the three major TV networks, a few national brand magazines such as Time, Look, Life, and Newsweek, and our local newspapers.

We were blissfully ignorant, but hidden behind a suburban Leave-It-to-Beaver curtain was quite a bit of mayhem and mischief.

So, lets go back in time!