Pine Nuts: Reuniting with one’s high school sweetheart
Submitted by Jeff Munson on Sun, 07/28/2024 - 5:58pm
I just remembered why it was that I had a longing to survive while fighting in the rainforests of Vietnam away back in 1966. One, was to see our country win. That did not happen. But two, was to see my high school sweetheart again and therein I won the lottery.
Yes, she just left after a long-anticipated reunion, and I’m so undone I can’t scratch my ear. For a few dreamy days we were kids together, finishing each other’s sentences with laughter and glee. Sure, we’re properly adorned with a couple regal carbuncles, but our hearts are still pumping warm red blood while we retain a teenage love for music, “Still the One,” and satire, “Boys are so yucky.”
I can’t remember being so deliciously happy. She took my breath away with her fresh outlook on life, her infectious laugh, and easy manner of tearing up.
Being accustomed to delivering 90-minute programs as an impressionist of Mark Twain, I believed I could hold my ground with anybody when it came to talking, but there were some welcome moments when I was relieved to set my jaw up on a shelf, and give it a rightful rest, while she blossomed into a fountainhead of interesting information.
We had collaborated from afar in building a library of romantic songs from our early days together, including, “All My Roads Lead Back to You.” And we reveled in listening to all 40 of those songs — a few at a time.
We shared Happy Hour with friends, and I took her to the Potlatch, where Melissa, also a proud graduate of Miramonte High School, helped pick out a Tahoe treasure for Miss Tina to wear. It was a necklace with a blue stone shaped like Lake Tahoe, and had a heart carved out of the middle of it. I can’t be sure, but I think I saw a tear run down her beautiful face.
I don’t tear up easily myself, but it happened later that evening, when she asked me to close my eyes and hold out my hand. I did as she told, and hoped she might put her hand in mine and kiss me, but no, she placed something that felt vaguely familiar into my hand and told me to open my eyes. There in my hand was my dog tag from the Marine Corps, and a tear ran down my chiseled cheek. Giving your dog tag signifies the highest level of trust and respect.
Well, I would suspect that if we had pooled all the joyful tears we shed, and placed them in a cup, we could have watered a sprig of baby sugar pine just outside the front door, and watched that sprig sprout into a regal sugar pine tree before our eyes.
In closing, there are a few solemn moments in one’s life, but not one so delightful as a long-awaited reunion with one’s high school sweetheart and love of one’s life. A goat roping in Winnemucca is nothing to it.
— For more than 35 years, in over 4,000 performances, columnist and Chautauquan McAvoy Layne has been dedicated to preserving the wit and wisdom of “The Wild Humorist of the Pacific Slope,” Mark Twain. As Layne puts it: “It’s like being a Monday through Friday preacher, whose sermon, though not reverently pious, is fervently American."
Go here to listen to this and other McAvoy Layne columns.
