So now it’s June, the month that launches 1,000 reunions. Time to get together with old friends and share memories—the crazy, fun kind.
Like my forty-fifth at Wellesley. I was staying on the fourth floor of a dorm turned co-ed for the occasion and, heading for the loo in the middle of the night, got locked out of my room in my nightgown. Thank God I was wearing my glasses. All doors were shut; all was quiet; no help at hand. So, I rode the elevator to the first floor, rummaged around the unmanned bell desk and came up with a bunch of keys—meanwhile checking out the living room for what I might sleep on and use for cover. But blessedly I got back to my room unobserved, and one of the keys worked.
Dorms were never my favorite accommodation. Jack and I took the kids to Princeton reunions to march in many P-Rades, usually staying at Kay and Don Wert’s sprawling old Victorian just off campus. But once we ended up on the top floor of Little Hall. The room was filthy, the bathrooms in the basement, and we got no sleep listening to the racket of aluminum beer kegs being rolled down three flights of stairs in some sort of bizarre undergrad contest. That was it for me.
Meanwhile, the smart wife of a classmate of Jack’s from Greenwich had insisted on staying at a hotel. On Saturday night, she and the kids retired well ahead of her husband, who partied on and on. Finally returning, he stood in the corridor outside their door and made a momentous decision. Rather than wake everyone up, he’d just undress in the hall. His wife heard the commotion, opened the door to be confronted with a naked man and quickly pulled the “damned fool” inside.
I don’t think she has ever been to another reunion.
One Princeton reunion was enough for our friend Peter Ward from Darien. His first. And he was there only long enough to pick up his uniform—a T-shirt reading “Fabulous First” on the front and “1947” on the back. After a few pops, he and classmate Joe Gordon decided it would be much more fun to drive up to La Rue, a respectable New York nightclub for the college set.
(He learned years later that the father of a girl he used to take there had La Rue send him a copy of their bills to see how much she was drinking.)
Just as Peter and Joe arrived, so did somebody driving a “flying car”—an airplane with its wings folded back converted to a car. The doorman left his gold-roped post, and everyone in the restaurant rushed out to gawk, which allowed the boys a chance to slip inside—unsuitably dressed in their T-shirts, shorts and loafers. Eventually, of course, they were thrown out.
It was Peter’s first and last reunion.
Silly things happen at reunions. Once, in the Princeton Museum shop, Jack and I bought a large, furry, rocking-horse tiger and christened him Plimpton. Then we had the awkward and somewhat embarrassing job of carrying him across campus to our car. En route, a young lady full of beer gave Plimpton a big kiss that left a bright red lipstick mark on his muzzle forever. In any case, he was a huge hit with the grandchildren and is still safely stabled under my piano.
Then there was the year I went back to Cleveland for my Hathaway Brown fortieth and fell to chatting with a guy I had briefly dated in high school. We exchanged tales of children (his three, my two), businesses (his cars, my magazines), et al. Until he finally observed: “Gee, Donna, you turned out a lot better than I thought you would!” Thanks, Arthur.
Memories. As long as old friends get together, there will be stories.