"Time, be my friend..."---Ritch Christopher

TIME BE MY FRIEND, LET ME SEE MY CLASSMATES AGAIN!

Often, when I wake up and find my fibromyalgia so painfully unbearable or when my blood pressure or blood sugar gets too high, I think of how old I am...how old we ALL are....how many classmates have died...and I realize how those of us who remain are looking forward to a reunion which is still a year and a half away. How many more of us will be gone by then? How many of us will be able to attend...a year from now.

Actually, the line, "Time, be my friend" is from the musical, "The Wiz"...It's Dorothy's final song when she's singing about going back home and she sings, "Time be my friend. Let me start again..." Diana Ross sang it in the movie. The complete text of the song is:



When I think of home
I think of a place where there's love overflowing
I wish I was home
I wish I was back there with the things I been knowing

Wind that makes the tall trees bend into leaning
Suddenly the snowflakes that fall have a meaning
Sprinklin' the scene, makes it all clean

Maybe there's a chance for me to go back there
Now that I have some direction
It would sure be nice to be back home
Where there's love and affection
And just maybe I can convince time to slow up
Giving me enough time in my life to grow up
TIME BE MY FRIEND, let me start again

Suddenly my world has changed it's face
But I still know where I'm going
I have had my mind spun around in space
And yet I've watched it growing

If you're list'ning God
Please don't make it hard to know
If we should believe in the things that we see
Tell us, should we run away
Should we try and stay
Or would it be better just to let things be?

Living here, in this brand new world
Might be a fantasy
But it taught me to love
So it's real, real to me

And I've learned
That we must look inside our hearts
To find a world full of love
Like yours
Like me

Like home...





Going back to City High after fifty years is like 'going home'...where life really began for a lot of us.

I haven't even seen Chattanooga for over thirty years. From pictures which have been sent to me, I don't even recognize Market Street . The house where I lived as a child is now a parking lot. My friends that I laughed, loved, cried, and shared with are all but unrecognizable to me. Even people who were my best friends...I can't see any resemblance. I had to write to ask you who someone was in one of the pictures you sent...and it was Marty Brown...who was as my real sister to me. Even when I look at it now, I don't see Marty...I don't think she'd know me. J.D. Barton said that he went to a reunion a few years back and was so grateful for name tags or he wouldn't have known half the people there. So, in many, many ways...time is our enemy...but as we prepare to assemble for perhaps&nbs p;the last time...time, be our friend...for just a little while longer. Gee, how I wish I had gotten to see my best friend, Buddy Cox or my longtime friend, Pat Norris, before they died. I never saw either after we graduated...and I deeply regret it.

Sure, after City, I dined with a President, had famous stars as good friends and working companions, but I recall my three "Stunt Nights"..."Prevues"..."Porgy and Bess" and "The Pajama Game" more than any of those events which followed in New York or in California. Often, I think of going to dances given by the Stardusters, the Lamplighters, the Shipmates, the Penguins, the Hi-De-Ho's at the Read House or Patten Hotels. I remember Drucilla Smith in homeroom every morning. She was the first person I ever knew who wore contact lens and how everyone would groan as we watched her insert them next to her eyeballs.

I think about a passage from a novel by Lawrence Sanders, "The Pleasures of Helen" where he describes each of us traveling along a life-clock. He talks about each hour as being an important stage of our lives. It ends as we approach twelve from the other side. When we reach eleven, we can suddenly remember things we had forgotten long ago...your third grade teacher's name or what she gave you on a spelling test. You remember that neighbor's dog's name that you played with as a child. You recall that queasy feeling when you experienced holding hands or kissing for the first time. Everything that you'd forgotten, suddenly comes back to you as you get near twelve for the final time.

Yes, we ALL had graduations after City, but that's the one we ALL remember and have we ever stopped to think why? What was there about those teachers, those classmates, those wonderful, wonderful events that we had scheduled for nearly EVERY weekend for three years??? I'm sure we've had many more important things to happen during the past fifty years...but when we're sad, depressed, or feeling sentimental...someone, some thing, that came into our lives from 1956 to 1959 always seems to make us feel better.

Most of us will be 68 years old when we get together. Damn, we were supposed to be allotted only seventy...nearly half of us didn't reach sixty. I'm glad I still have my long-term memory to think back on those three years. Yes, I played the piano with the likes of Barbra Streisand, Ethel Merman, Mary Martin, Richard Rodgers, and Irving Berlin...but I also played while the CHS choir sang "All The Things You Are" when Trudy Walker was crowned Miss CHS....when Marty Brown sang, "I'll Take Romance", or Pat Norris to sing, "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man" just as well...

"Time, be my friend..."

Ritch Christopher (Butch) Snyder