Class of ‘74
The class of 1974 was the last high school class allowed to have its graduation at Wolf Trap. Ever. Over seven hundred students picked up their diplomas onstage, as quickly as they might take a metro card out of a turnstile. A hundred were drunk, seventy were stoned. Five got stuck on Route 7 and never made it. Bottles of booze and billows of smoke were ignored by apathetic chaperones. Parents only attended because they felt obliged. They desperately hoped their teenagers would move out. Teachers and Administrators made sure the entire class graduated, so none would return. One student stripped off his black robe and streaked across stage. My mother thought it was me, and fainted dead away in the balcony. Strings of firecrackers were thrown onstage, forcing administrators and dignitaries to dance like cowboys in a boot-shooting contest. My father thought it was gunfire and didn’t speak to me until Thanksgiving.
The next day, the cool kids filled Ocean City, twenty to a hotel room. My parents wouldn’t let me go with them. I went to a Leon Russell concert at RFK instead. I hated Leon Russell. We sat in the cheap seats, lamenting lost friendships, dreading crowded dorms, planning the easiest majors.
At Wolf Trap’s last stand, the smart kids behaved, hoping to avoid having police records. They would go on to make the world a better place. The jocks would fade away and be forgotten. The freaks would go into computer science and vote for Carter. The nerds would go to ivy league schools. The marching band would become well-adjusted, productive members of society. The teachers would take yoga and valium. Coaches would be fired for hanging out around the shower room too long. Realistic kids skipped college and got real jobs. Other kids went to Virginia, Tech, JMU, Roanoke, Richmond, and NOVA. No self-respecting Hornet went to the University of Maryland. Kids who wore glasses got academic scholarships. Debate team members became Senators. Those who got advanced degrees moved away, while local homeboys like me stayed in the DC area, the land of small minds and rude traffic.
After the great Wolf Trap disaster of 1974, all subsequent graduations were held on the football field, home of the hapless Hornets, while their parents sat baking on the wood-plank, steel-girder bleachers.
On August 8, 1974, I rolled up my Farrah Fawcett posters and packed the station wagon for college. Everything with a red H on it went in the attic. The next day, August 9, Nixon resigned while I was throwing a frisbee at Lake Elsa.
Last week my basement flooded. While mopping up, I found my 1974 yearbook, soaked and molding in the bottom of a Bounty box behind the water heater. I pried apart its stuck pages, looking at the faces of the children I grew up with.
Charles Dickens said “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” I think he was in my home room.