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 age 70 or more without experiencing the extremes of incredible joy and soul-stealing sadness. Most of us made it this far!

As 9th-graders in 1967, we each had accumulated less information than modern 6-year-olds. Social media and cable television didn’t exist, and most of us didn’t have a color TV in our homes. Family sets of encyclopedias were usually dated. The general knowledge we had acquired was relayed to us by mass media outlets such as the three major TV networks, a few national-brand magazines such as Time, Look, Life, Reader’s Digest, and Newsweek, along with our local newspapers and radio stations.

That year, we began 9th grade at a brand-new school, 11 miles east of downtown Birmingham, Alabama. This was not just any new school, but one made up of round buildings—two the first year and two more by the second.

We came from four Grade 1-8 schools, but were pretty familiar with each other through sports, church activities, and older siblings who attended nearby high schools. Huffman High School was 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? Nope. New kids just showed up.

We thought our round school was so cool, but now it seems that only a drunken architect and a confederacy of dunces could’ve thought it made 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 hallway of the main classroom building, often passing the same people many times before the bell rang. We even wanted to get to school early so we could walk in circles! Our unique tradition was simultaneously quaint and idiotic.

We were enthusiastically helping build traditions with a brand-new student body, a new faculty, new school colors, and a new mascot (Viking). Don’t judge us. It was the hand we were dealt–and we loved it! An idealistic, romantic time…

Our enthusiasm soon developed into mischief. Most of us were scared to death of our principal, but teacher discipline was inconsistent. They often struggled to keep classes under control. On the surface, the place was pretty ordinary, but many crazy stories stayed out of sight ot the adult world. We were blissfully ignorant, but hidden behind our suburban Leave-It-to-Beaver curtain was quite a bit of mayhem and mischief.

So, let’s go back in time!