Why you should go to those class reunions

Last week I spent mostly nursing a shoulder injury. I couldn't raise my right arm to save my life, but then again what saxophone player needs that arm to rise beyond his or her belt anyway?

With that in mind, I've been less than forthcoming about last weekend, which was the weekend we were admonished by the UCSC Alumni Association to return to our "Happy Place," and hopefully drop some excess cash on the various care and feeding operations that UCSC offers.

So there we were, having lunch in the College V Dining Hall once again, and the lunch reminded me that it wasn't just my Happy Place, it was my only place.

How I dreaded that weekend! I just seemed to play the same tape of my failures over and over again, sure that I'd deposit them into a wheelbarrow and push them up the hill to the world's most beautiful college campus, where I was in the founding class on the west side of campus, just isolated enough that we back in 1969 felt in some way special. Back then just getting into UCSC was an accomplishment.

I foolishly applied to just UCSC back when I was getting my high school done. While others were welcomed by the giant bosom of such places as Cal State Fullerton, I heard only the siren call of UCSC. It proved to be a tricky process. Ernestine Anderson helped me through the minefield that was the UC system, showing me how to declare myself an emancipated minor, as my mother had gone off on an ill-fated sobriety mission with her sad husband to his ancestral home in the midwest. My test scores were enough to qualify me for a California State Scholarship, which meant I could attend any college or university in the state without a worry about paying the tuition bill. (Soon thereafter UC adopted something they called something else, but was clearly tuition. Quarterly total was $229.50.)

Now the context you have to understand all this in is this: Kids my age were needed by the Army to carry rifles in our glorious was of liberation of the Vietnamese people from their native oppressors, the Vietnamese people. The more options you had, the better.

My options were: (1) being accepted by the one UC campus that had thousands of qualified applicants at that time or (2) hotfooting it north to Canada when my draft notice arrived.

To hedge my bets, I applied as an EOP student, thinking my last name could be misinterpreted from "occupant  of the fens and bogs" to something Spanish.

Anyway, all that's ancient history, and as with so much of ancient history there's an element of twisted irony afoot, as I ultimately rejected my student deferment but my birthday was picked over #300 in the lottery in my junior year.

So I cleaned myself up and went up the hill with my invisible wheelbarrow full of failure. When I arrived, I found that everyone had their wheelbarrows, but nobody cared to talk about them.

Whew! What a relief.

There were Janet Rocklin Katz (whose perfect pitch I benefited from in Music 10), Richard Opper (on the back of whose Honda 350 I rode to the Altamont concert of destiny), Gail Harper ("no pictures please"), David Beryessa (without the overcoat), Deb Barlow (art exhibit of her dense and lively layered acrylics), and this person, Roma Sprung:

Roma was what we College V students were supposed to be back then, a bright biology student with a passion for music. And now she's the perfect example of a College V graduate, an internist who still retains her passion for music, diversifying from being a section violinist to also playing classical guitar. Her passion for music still burns within her, tempered by her role as a healer. All I've got to say to Roma, Dr. Roma, is bravo. You turned out well.

So many were absent from this special weekend that I don't wish to speculate, other than to say that the woman who came up to me at the 20th and said she had some work for me, Marjorie Baer, is no longer with us. How she figured out that I could rub some sentences together to get a result, I'll never know. I miss you, Margie.

Off to ice the shoulder.