Nostalgia In An Antique Mall

You may remember reading that one of my favorite hobbies is strolling through antique malls. You just never know what you’ll find that will bring back a memory.

Last week, I was in such a shop not far from home. I’d walked by a particular corner a couple of times, but as I was about to head to the ‘check-out’, something caught my eye.

These two yearbooks had been placed on a table as you would put books on a bookshelf. The green one was to the outside and I could tell immediately by the color that it was a yearbook from my school.

I actually have these two yearbooks (or ‘annuals’ as we called them).  They were from my sophomore and junior years.  But I couldn’t help opening these and looking inside to see who was the original owner and to read the entries (greetings) written by fellow students.

They belonged to “Melvin”, who was two years older than me.  Melvin and I passed the time on the school bus, laughing and talking with some other kids, and he took me to his senior prom. (Sorry, no pictures, but let me just say that my evening involved a borrowed formal gown, a wrist corsage and an upswept hairdo that was NOT ‘me”.)

The last time I spoke with Melvin was by phone in the early 1970’s. Marshall’s dad and I were dating, and he was at my house one evening. The phone rang, Mom answered it and said that Melvin was on the phone. He told her that he was shipping out the next day for Viet Nam and wanted to talk to me.

So I took the call. There really was nothing memorable about it, just forced lighthearted conversation between two school buddies.

Melvin returned safely from the war, but I never saw or heard from him again. Sadly, he passed away in 2020, and apparently had been in poor health for several years. He lived in the same city where I found his yearbooks at the antique mall.

And, on one of the pages:

Yes, I did buy both of those yearbooks.

~These Days Of Mine~