When I was in high school, at the beginning of my senior year, our class voted for: DEATH IS THE ULTIMATE BUZZ as our motto. Sadly, the Principal shot down what we thought would be the most hilarious credo ever devised in the history of Huntington East High School. I have no clue what its replacement was, but as I recall the word DREAMS was hiding somewhere in the contents of our alleged 8-word philosophy. And I’m betting that no one in my class of 303 individuals remembers the motto either.
Do we sound a tad EMO? Maudlin and apathetic, perhaps? Well, as a matter of fact, we were, and, apparently, still are. The second celebration of our 25th high school reunion or maybe our 30th…or is it the 20th? I don’t know. I was too busy soaking my brain cells in Natty Light and Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill (and sometimes even Mad Dog 20/20) during my tenure at HEHS, so I’m not sure. At any rate, said reunion is this weekend. Originally, a dinner at Guyan Country Club was scheduled.
However, less then 30% of the class was slated to attend, so it was cancelled. Then another a week or so later, I received an email that it was still on, but plans had changed, and people were meeting at Tascali’s Italian restaurant. There was a gathering at a bar last night, the name of which I don’t remember because I opted to stay home and watch THE EVIL DEAD with my son, Max, and my husband, Charlie. Actually, I was supposed to have a dinner meeting with a client at 6PM last night, but she cancelled at the last minute, which was fine.
There’s a picnic today at a local park, which I’m also skipping because I’m way to lazy to get up at 6 AM on a Saturday in order to make the 3-hour trip to my hometown by 11 AM to sit in the miserable heat, which will be cresting around 97 F (37 Celsius thereabouts) in the shade while fighting off flies and bats and whatever else might fall out of the sky on a hot summer day in West Virginia during one’s midday meal.
That said, don’t get me wrong. Though I hated most everything about high school, I’m looking forward to seeing the 15-20 folks who are going to be at Tascalis this evening. And I’ll elaborate in a future post as to why I hated most of the three years of my adolescent subsistence at HEHS.
I’ve never been to Tascali’s, so I decided to look up the address because I don’t recall exactly where it is in Barboursville, which is about 7 or 8 miles from where the high school had been.
The high school itself has now become either an abandoned crackhouse – or possibly houses some offices for the Board of Education, can’t remember which. I haven’t spent much time in WV since Dad died in 2009, so I’m not privy to the specifics of my former alma mater at present.
They built a new high school that I could spit on from my parents’ house sometime in 2000 that consolidated HEHS with Huntington High School, so the building where I acquired my high school diploma is no longer the actual high school.
ANYWHO…when I went cyber-traveling to determine Tascali’s proximity from my hotel, I stumbled upon this hysterical graphic:
ONLY in West Virginia would you find a PINK elephant as a landmark to look for in relation to a particular address! And, YES, there is a pink elephant on Route 60 East in Barboursville. I remember it vividly and always pondered as to its odd existence.
If there were an Indian restaurant or, perhaps Ethiopian restaurant or something, it might make sense to have a statue of a pink elephant as a beacon calling all those who like that sort of cuisine, sort of like the fat boy associated with Shoney’s or Frisch’s restaurant. However, this is WV. The only ethnic restaurants are Chinese and Mexican. I can’t remember what businesses are in/around said PINK elephant, but I shall make certain to photograph said pachyderm for all my wonderful followers to feast their eyes upon.
That said, TIME TO GO…
P.S. IF ANYONE who is MORE adept at formatting than me on WordPress could help me FIX the color of my damned fonts, I would greatly appreciate it. For some stupid reason, all my links are now RED. I have no idea how that happened, and no matter what I do, I can’t seem to change it. And I’ll change the headers back to blue, and then…they’ll revert to red again. HELP from my more technically savvy friends would save me from losing any more hair due to this technical glitch! 
Tenacious BITCH and her band of truth-spouting hippies…:)
