On the last weekend of July, an amazing discovery was made in the area surrounding Big Sandy. In recent years several examples of prehistoric fossils have been uncovered in this area, but this massive influx of petrified specimens were all, apparently, alive and breathing.
A total of twenty-one 1974 survivors appeared on or near Main Street over the weekend, all traceable through carbon dating back to the year 1974, when they were congregated as seniors at Big Sandy High School. A total of thirty-four such creatures are said to still exist, making this accumulation of so many in one place at one time, nothing short of a miracle.
Jan Butler Booth (Silvan), one of the primary organizers of this reunion, was pleased with the turnout. "Hey, we are going way back here," she said. "You won't find this many semi-intact beings walking around in broad daylight anywhere this side of Barnum and Bailey." Indeed, some of these folks were very well preserved while others were looking their age and then some. Some, such as the author himself, were less than ambulatory. Others were formidable and easily mistaken for something larger than life: Kenny Berlinger, for example, was an eerie echo of the Piltdown Man.
Some were still local, like Harvey Keller, Alma Lanning Terry, Gay Halter Pearson, and Ray Sibra, just to name a few. Some were still in the general vicinity if not located right in Big Sandy: Loren Terry, for example; also Nancy Gullickson, and Marge Handl. Still others come and go and can be hard to track down on a moment's notice, such as Jon Tester, Willie Smith and Randy Cline.
A few had not been back in fifty years. Some were here under mysterious circumstances that made it impossible (for me) to say where they were living these days – maybe local, maybe exotic, definitely enigmatic. Examples would be Elliot Blazek, Rick Redd, Dolly LaBuda and Ron Ramer. Finally, some will not be mentioned by name because I cannot think of anything smart alecky enough to say about them.
Overall, we visited and wheezed and huffed and puffed and had a pretty good time, much of it centered around the Mint. Prime rib on Friday night, breakfast on Saturday morning and a picnic style lunch during the day Saturday. I took advantage of the captive audience and read a short story I had published a year or so back, it was about a young man who was having so much trouble with his love life, dating girls, he decided to chuck it all and just start dating a chicken. It went over okay, nobody beat me up for it afterwards.
Towards evening most started to wander, zombie-like, into the local wilderness. We assume everyone made it back to their points of origin, since there were no fresh graves at the cemetery come Monday morning. We all had a pretty good time and many will reconvene for Homecoming in 2025, Good Lord willing and the creek don't rise.
