‘Whatever the Future Brings Us . . .’ Memories From the Class of 1963

That’s a line from the Swarthmore High School alma mater. Earlier this year, as the Class of 1963 planned to celebrate our class members turning 75, the pandemic hit. What to do? Abandon our reunion? Postpone it a year — or more? Could we come together at this significant milestone in our lives? Yes! A reunion, online.

And so we embraced the future, as we have always done, by holding four reunion sessions via Zoom on November 7, 8, and 9. Out of our original class of 106 students, 37 of us took part. We celebrated the journeys that have brought us to this point. We have been (and many of us continue to be) writers, printers, artists, sculptors, musicians, ministers, professors, librarians, social workers, TV producers, publishers, ecologists, consultants, chemists, financial advisors and analysts, nurses, doctors, lawyers, veterinarians, dentists, researchers, engineers, farmers, office managers, interior designers, data processors, social workers, fundraisers, realtors, insurance agents, engineers, and volunteers, as well as parents and grandparents. Our common bond, of course, was growing up in the Swarthmore-Rutledge neighborhoods from the mid-1940s to the mid-1960s. So we also celebrated our past as memories kept spilling out.

Many memories centered on food: Ingleneuk butterscotch biscuits; vanilla or cherry Cokes and grilled sticky buns, dripping with butter, at The Fountain; boxes of cookies from The Cake Box, tied with string; shared meals at The Spot, on Dartmouth Avenue, and The Cracker Barrel, on South Chester Road, both owned by parents of classmates. There were two pharmacies, and you pretty much went to one or the other: Michael’s or Catherman’s. We listened to 45s at the Music Box and rummaged through the card catalogue at the library. We shopped for gifts at Hoys 5 & 10, the Hollyhock Shop, and the Hobby Shop. On Saturday afternoons, we forked over 25 cents for a matinee at the College Theatre, where we could make a Sugar Daddy last until the lights came back on.

In the winter, we went sledding – down a hill at the end of Vassar Avenue or in front of Parrish Hall, and we skated on Crum Creek above the Yale Avenue falls. In warm weather, some of us caught crayfish, salamanders, and muskrats. Every year, on Memorial Day, the Scouts marched down Park Avenue to Eastlawn Cemetery; on the Fourth of July, we rode our decorated bikes in the holiday parade; and, yes, on Mischief Night, we went toilet papering and soaping windows.

We hunted for garnets behind the Rutgers Avenue School. On Saturday evenings, we attended “canteen” in the high school’s multi-purpose room. The school’s field was home ground for our football team, and every Thanksgiving Day we played arch-rival Lansdowne, either home or away. In elementary school, many of us served on the Safety Patrol. And in eighth grade we managed to survive Junior Assemblies held at the Woman’s Club, where we learned to dance. Of course, a most memorable occasion in our school career was the 1958 Easter Sunday nighttime fire at the College Avenue School, which caused so much damage that Grades 7 through12 were forced to go on split session for more than a year.

Speaking of fires, we knew the fire-horn signals by heart: 3-2-3 meant the fire was south of the tracks, 3-3-3 meant north of the tracks, 3-5-3 meant the business district, and 4-4-4 meant Swarthmore College’s main campus. Back then, Cresson Lane was unpaved, and we had little red license tags for our bikes. In the summer, we often ran after the “DDT trucks” as they fogged the neighborhoods with pesticide; in the spring, we heard the peepers as we drifted off to sleep; in the fall, we smelled the burning of leaves in our neighborhoods; and, during the Christmas season, we awaited with great anticipation the twice-a-day arrival of the mailman.

Surely the vividness of our memories lends credence to T.S. Eliot’s words in his poem “Burnt Norton”: “Time present and time past/Are both perhaps present in time future.”