Seventeen years on this date old the World changed forever. Others will be more eloquent and more analytical about the importance and reverberations echoing from that terrible evil act and I will leave such remembrances to their skillful prose. So, not to ignore but to reflect on a happier occasion I’m going to post about the only party I ever went to during my high school years.

In high school I was very much a loner, I had a small tight circle of friends, but the larger social environment simply was alien. Because of that I don’t have the usual American experience of attending games, proms, or parties held while a student’s parents had departed for an evening or weekend. However there was one exception to this, my acting class.

In my senior year, 1979, as an elective I took a class in acting taught by the engaging Mrs. Linda Crumbo. It was a fun and lively class and one where I even slipped in a bit of my own original writing as a prose piece that I performed. The class was small, we became friends, and towards the end of 1978 it was planned that there would be party held at Mrs Crumbo’s house. Her husband had been wrangled by members of the class to arrange things so that the party would surprise to Linda. The event’s evening arrived and I rode out to the party with four classmates, among our little troupe was Roberta and Pam who during the entire drive out discussed a horror film, Halloween,  that they had recently gone out and watched.

The drive I must tell you was not an urban one. We drove through darkened wood on a small two-lane road with only the car’s headlights for illumination. Pam and Roberta recounted to film with great detail and the tension in the car grew as we transverse the dark and somewhat threatening forest. Eventually we arrived at Linda’s two-story wood-frame house.

Every window was dark.

We sat for a few moments debating how to proceed. Naturally someone had to go to the door and find out what was going on but after the tales of violence and murder no one wanted to venture alone from the car. The wood seemed to close in around the house and around us. Several more moments passed and together we got out of the car and crowded around the door, knocking loudly. A second story window illuminated and footsteps proceeded down the stairs and to the door. Linda Crumbo, a robe closed around her, her eyes bleary from sleep, her blond hair disheveled, opened the door.

“We’re having a party!”

I’m not sure who or how many shouted that as greeting and the scrum of students invaded her house. Nearly at once we encountered her husband, half way down the interior staircase and her said. “I forgot!’

The Crumbos got dressed and a pleasant party filled the remainder of the evening hours. This was not a drunken bacchanal and it is one of my more pleasant memories from that time.