From the “Legacy Park”, we meander on around town before heading back to Twin Falls, driving past the city park with the original swimming pool and old stone bath house; the old school sites (all of the school buildings torn down now), the church, and the still lovely home of a parishioner that Annie Lou told us manages to get to church regularly at 100+ years young!; then back to Twin Falls, where we continue our meandering until it is time to freshen up and head to dinner at the Clear Lakes Country Club.
This is another fun visit of old stomping grounds. We are impressed with the size of the homes now built along the rim of the Snake River Canyon and around the country club. We are also amazed at the size of the fish hatcheries, apparently very successful. The old wooden bridge is still being used and as we drive across it, Julia shares memories of looking for and catching a glimpse of the big sturgeon that occupied that area of the river.
This final event of the class reunion is even more fun than the previous ones, with more new faces to recognize. We manage to get a ‘class picture’ taken which is a challenge akin to gathering and organizing first graders with everyone excitedly chatting while recognizing and greeting each other!
The local class members who have organized the entire event have out done themselves. We enjoy a continuous slide show of early class pictures (we are talking back to kindergarten here!) and newspaper articles and pictures of special accomplishments, and recognitions, homecomings and such. We have fun with a challenging by a contest which concludes with a group effort to identify class members in some of those elementary school class pictures. Then we have some special recognitions for various participant feats such as distance traveled (driving from El Paso, TX), longest marriage (day of graduation), most children (8), least changed/most changed, etc. Julia wins with the most Grandchildren (13 to brag about!). A proposal was made and the group agreed that we should not wait another 10 years before getting together again. Our Senior Class President didn’t realize back then that his position would be for ‘life’ but he grins and agrees to continue leading our class to another reunion in five years. Besides, they’re on a role with the success of this one, might as well keep the momentum going!