And the fabric of memories

By Bill Fields

Measured by bricks and mortar, Pinecrest High School wasn’t quite finished in 1977 — having recently gained a cafeteria and a gymnasium, it still lacked an auditorium — but goodness knows, those of us graduating that spring also were works in progress.

“Home is where one starts from,” T.S. Eliot wrote in a poem quoted in our senior yearbook, the Spectrum.

Those three years at Pinecrest, which commenced when, as sophomores, we were herded by alphabet into homerooms for fall semester in 1974, were part of our opening lap. At the same time, though, it was a finish line, the familiar about to be traded in for something else, make and model to be determined.

Can it really be 40 years? The color of my hair and the length of my belt say it’s so, yet the gap between then and now is bridged by sharp, scattered memories: benevolent teacher Julianna White doing her very best to help a clueless student grasp a concept in Advanced Math; assistant principal Bobby Brendell reading the daily skip list over the intercom with his distinct inflections; coach John Williams in the field house warming up for calisthenics and a cross-country run by doing arm circles and toe touches.

Mrs. White was indeed very good to me, realizing the subject she taught was a requirement and, given my career goals, not my future. She gave me the benefit of the doubt during one senior year grading period so that I would have no worse than a C on my high school transcript, an assist I sorely needed since my SAT math score was so poor I still treat it like a state secret.

If not for her kindness, I have a hunch I wouldn’t have been handed an envelope by my father on my 18th birthday a couple of weeks before graduation.

On May 25, the day Star Wars was released, I found out by letter that I had been accepted off the waiting list by UNC-Chapel Hill, where I’d long wanted to attend. In a season of Cross pens and Belk ties this was the only present I really wanted, and my parents didn’t fret over the loss of my dorm room deposit at East Carolina. Nor was I bothered that a number of classmates had wished me luck at ECU when they signed my yearbook because it appeared I was bound for Greenville. 

If the proximity to graduation hadn’t heightened spring fever, then getting into Carolina and turning 18 surely did. By that juncture we were more intent on the Pizza Hut buffet or a Tastee-Freez burger than any classes before or after our lunchtime excursions, although I didn’t have much of an appetite on May 26.

Thanks to a classmate whose family had connections to Terry Sanford, our commencement speaker was a cut above average, to say the least. I wish I could remember what wisdom the former North Carolina governor — then president of Duke University and a future U.S. senator — offered the approximately 300 capped-and-gowned Patriots. Unfortunately, my overarching recollection of that Friday night in the campus gym is how badly some in the audience behaved, talking and yelling over Gov. Sanford’s speech, Southerners having forgotten their manners.

I didn’t have a lot of school pride that evening, but when I look through my 1977 edition of the Spectrum, it returns. It was my school. They were my classmates, too many now absent. In the formal yearbook pictures — clip-on bow ties for the boys, v-neck tops for the girls — most everyone is following the photographer’s command and looking slightly away from the camera. I have overcooked his direction, my gaze appearing to be down the right field line.

Forty years later, after home runs and strikeouts, for this member of the Class of ’77, the pleasure is in coming up to the plate.   PS

Southern Pines native Bill Fields, who writes about golf and other things, moved north in 1986 but hasn’t lost his accent..

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