Got a Dream to Take Them There

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A most happy birthday to you, dear bunnyhugger.

The one big event for Earlham's reunion Friday night was a big hangout at a downtown bar, Eight To The Bar. It's one of those spaces renovated from some business associated with Richmond, Indiana's music history --- some of the doors still had the names of dance and music instructors; I need hardly tell you that Richmond is one of the cradles of recorded jazz, with some of the first recordings of Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, Hoagy Carmichael, and more --- and the spot is actually on the corner in the photograph Wikipedia uses to represent Richmond's downtown historic district. (The photograph shows the consignment shop that was in the building previously.) This would be a gettogether of all the classes, although ribbons stuck to the identification badges gave people a chance to figure who their classmates were.

Also they had the block closed to traffic, to set up several grease trucks, giving folks the chance to have whatever kind of food they enjoy without specific catering. We would end up looking over all the places and then huddling nearby the patio heaters that were set up against the chill and light rain. Had it only been chilly we might have eaten outside but the rain was just a little too much. There was also a giant bounce house set up in a small park, and we wouldn't know whether that was set up for the reunion event that night or for the community at large until Sunday when we drove past the same spot and saw it was gone.

Inside the bar, there was a good-size crowd. Also a DJ, and a dance floor set up with infinity-mirror squares that could light distinct colors. The first couple hours nobody was on the dance floor except for some kids curiously examining how the infinity mirrors worked and why there seemed to be a bottomless pit in the middle of the room. But in some time a couple of the adults finally got on the dance floor, and more followed, and a column of the infinity-mirror lights went dark, and then came back on, and then another column went dark, and can I explain all this? No, but it was an amusing sideline while we were listening to the music slowly drift back to the 80s and sometimes getting on the dance floor ourselves and sometimes even moving in some mutually understood pattern.

As for classmates? We encountered a couple, although none that bunnyhugger actually knew. The most interesting of them turned out to be a guy who'd been a football player back in the day --- back before the school closed its football program to save desperately needed money --- and who turned out to be just outgoing enough for our needs. Very amiable, very chatty, and also quite sympathetic to the school's current fixes. Later in the weekend some of the other former football players would ask the school president if the program was going to be restarted; this guy, though? He put it directly: the football program does not make a lick of difference when the issue is whether the school can keep functioning. It's a hard thing to admit, especially when it's about something that focused your connection to the school. But it is hard not to admire a person who is content to sacrifice their particular interest for the communal good.

That, mind you, was in the future; this night, we got to know him mostly through a story about how he had injured his foot jumping off one boat into another after taking a bunch of hallucinogens that a friend offered. So while we could respect some of his judgement, it would never be untempered.

We stayed around to the end, as you might imagine, and even got some of the silly themed cocktails made for the reunion. (I got a Squirrelly Temple; squirrels are the unofficial[?] mascot of the school anymore.) And went back to our temporary home in the most charming of motels we could have hoped to visit.

And now, for pictures, I share more of Little Amerricka pictures.

The spiral tower of the Toboggan ride, a once-common fairground roller coaster that's all but extinct now; we've ridden three of these (counting this one) and seen a disassembled fourth (at Conneaut Lake Park).

The end of the Toboggan ride goes through a couple bunny hops like this to burn off speed.

Here's the ride height sign and as you see, The Swiss Toboggan does not dare you to ride it, but does fail to capitalize both 'Swiss' and 'Toboggan'.

Test Pilot, the Eyerley Aircraft Roll-O-Plane that sends you spiralling forever as if you're about to tip upside-down yet never do. I took two rides.

Meteor is not just a wooden coaster; it's a wooden coaster that was moved. Twice, from Kiddytown to Hillcrest Park (both in Illinois) and then most recently here to Wisconsin. The ride had not yet been reassembled last time bunnyhugger visited.

Meteor has a curved loading station so you know what that means: I love it. Also it still has the big wooden levers for braking.

Trivia: In 1867 unrest in Exeter over rising food prices the day before led the local council to ban the traditional 5 November bonfire. Outraged residents rioted in defence of ``our rights and usage which has not been interfered with for centuries''. Source: A History of Fireworks: From Their Origin to the Present Day, John Withington.

Currently Reading: Track Changes: A Literary History of Word Processing, Matthew G Kirschenbaum.

austin_dern