Year: 2023

Yesterday we started going through some of the Bogardus/Morrison archives. We have a half dozen fairly large plastic storage boxes, that are full of photos and stuff from both sides of the family, just sitting around in the family room downstairs since we have moved in here 4 years ago. We have been vowing to go through them to sort them into manageable chunks and weed out anything that might no longer have any significance to anyone.

Most of it belongs to Donna’s side of the family, but one box was chock full of stuff that belongs to me. Some of that was I inherited when my mom passed away in 2007, like report cards from elementary school through high school, my diploma from good ol’ New Britain High School. There were also a few certificates from U.S. Navy schools and even a commendation letter for being the highest ranked person in the Basic Electronics course. The bulk of things in that box though were proofs, negatives and submitted projects for everyone of the half dozen photography courses I took at Delgado Community College in New Orleans.

The one thing that caught my eye was the fifty year old Senior Class Will. There were around 600 kids in my high school class and with a circle of friends of maybe 1% of the that, I was practically invisible among the graduating class, except for this one thing.

In the fall of senior year our Current Events class made a field trip to NYC, about a 100 miles away, to see a couple of Broadway plays. Most of the details of the trip are lost to dying brain cells, but two of them are indelibly etched in my memory. The first play was Jesus Christ Superstar which I love to this day and I, along with 2 other classmates, were left behind in the Big Apple.

The two plays were at different theaters about 10 city blocks apart. We were told that after the second show the bus would be parked right outside the theater and to just get on it. After the wonder that was JCS rock opera, the second play was a real drag and the three of us, based on the Playbill listing, ducked out of that second theater at the beginning of the last song to get a good seat on the bus for the ride home. There was no bus!

In typical teenager fashion, none of us had really paid that much attention to the details, so we put our heads together and we decided that maybe the bus was parked at the first theater. We hustled back the 10 blocks to theater number one and of course there was no bus there either. Well, hell. So, we high-tailed it back to theater number two only to find no bus there either.

Obviously the bus was supposed to be at theater #2, but had yet to arrive when we ducked out early, so there we were 100 miles from home and no ride back. We walked a a few blocks over to Grand Central Station. I was broke, along with one other kid, but the third had enough money to buy three tickets for a Greyhound or Trailways bus that was bound for Boston with one of its stops being New Britain. Now with all of us penniless we had to call parents collect to let them know what happened so no one was panic at the other end when 3 less kids got off the charter bus. I think the three of us got a stern talking to from the vice-principal the next day at school, but I’m betting our teacher and any chaperons got it a lot worse.