Reunion dream

The pressure to come to the reunion is invading my dreams. Susan called me up and asked to meet me at the casino. I drive along a two-lane country road and come to the ‘casino’. It’s a kind of open air snack bar. I park in a gravel parking lot and walk towards the shelter. It’s a large cement pad with a roof over it and a wooden concession stand along the back. No walls. There are wooden picnic tables lined up in rows of four tables across about six tables deep. Susan is sitting at a table one in from the front left. I join her and we embrace. It’s been decades. Her husband is at home so she can’t stay long. We talk about the reunion and i tell her that i won’t be attending but that people keep asking me to. She says she understands and smiles. We talk about ?her dad. It’s getting dark and she needs to leave. We walk out to the parking lot together. She gets in a dark blue four-door sedan – i think it’s a Volvo – and heads out on the two-lane country road going right. I get in my car and think about my old classmates that have been in touch with me and go through their names like in a mental rolodex. I feel torn about going/not going but know i won’t go and start up my car to drive away from the ‘casino’.

No secret message there. That’s reality. I got the latest contact from DaveW asking me about the class reunion. He graduated a year early like i did so never gets the reunion stuff from the class he really associates himself with. It might be paranoia, but i wonder who asked him to contact me when he could have just as easily looked up the information himself. It doesn’t matter i guess. But he still lives in VA and so do a lot of my old classmates. Guess it could’ve been synchronicity but really doesn’t feel magical like that.

Ah! I just realized the ‘casino’ was Mr. Sabula’s land where us Trails End Road kids used to play softball and he used to hold his annual Polish picnic. That was an amazing event. Steamers and music and people. Kielbasa and beer (for the adults) and games of chance to play. Everything, even the games, were home-made out of wood planks. There was a wooden stage…. I’d forgotten about that. After several years when, i guess, his alcoholism got incapacitating his family put a stop to the picnic. I always assumed that they didn’t like the idea of him spending his money instead of keeping it in the bank so they could inherit it all, along with all his property. But then it got so they wouldn’t even let us use the field to play softball which didn’t hurt the field OR cost anything. He was nice but they weren’t. Hmmm. I wonder what that land looks like now. Probably covered with houses. Maybe a 7-Eleven. Manassas (Independent Hill). It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Best to keep it buried, wot?