Cool weather had given way to the warm days of presummer. I was studying for final exams and looking forward to graduating. My father was cutting the hayfield beside our house with his antiquated cycle mower and I knew what awaited me as soon as school let out. Hard, hot work. Within two weeks of being handed my diploma I turned eighteen, registered for the draft and began a real paying job at the local clock factory. I made $1.50 an hour. Sixty bucks a week.

That was fifty years ago. It’s frightening how fast those fifty years have flown by.

I had imagined that after I marched down that aisle I would have had it all figured out. I’d be grown up. Boy, was I in for a surprise. I’ve heard it said that when you make plans God laughs. I think I’ve kept him rolling for the last half a century. He and that guy Murphy, the law writer, haven’t had much of a break.

Despite all the detours along the way and an unplanned career laboring a paper mill I must admit that my life has turned out better than my wildest expectations. He has blessed me and I have trusted him throughout it all.

How about you? When you were handed that diploma did you have a plan? How’d it work out for you? I sincerely hope you’ve had a wonderful life.

A few of my former classmates and I had been working the past several months gathering contact information, hoping to have a fiftieth class reunion Memorial Day weekend. Just as we were making final preparations the pandemic hit. You can’t make this stuff up. Truth is always stranger than fiction and Murphy’s Law struck again.

Hopefully, we will be able to have a reunion at a later date. We will just have to wait and see how this virus plays out. I would hate for us to hold it too soon and be known as the class that held a fiftieth reunion only to wipe each other out! My daughters keep reminding me that I’m among the elderly and have to be careful.

I realize time is slipping by, but if we play it safe perhaps we’ll have another grandchild’s picture to share or another story to tell when we are able to have a reunion.

Until we meet again, be safe and may God bless you all.

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Rick Algood
May 16, 2020