MONA LISAS AND MAD HATTERS

 On more than one occasion I’ve thrown out the challenge, that’s so far gone uncontested, that while in high school me and my friends were able to stand around drinking beer in our parents’ basements and garages while listening to the greatest variety of REALLY GOOD music - better music than any generation before or since.

Heck, my kids listen to, and enjoy, the music of my generation. Dad even used some of our music in his worship services on Sunday mornings.

Boston, Cat Stevens, Journey, Springsteen, Boz Scaggs, Billy Joel, Steely Dan, Michael Jackson, and Elton John.
I believe these stars, and many others, too numerous to name, that performed the soundtrack of my youth, rose to prominence during my Junior and Senior High years.
Hearing many of their songs today takes me back to good times spent with great friends back in the day.

I myself never learned to read music nor to play an instrument.
Many of my classmates did though.
We had an excellent music program at Bloomington Lincoln High but those resources were lost on me.
I did, however, go to school with some EXTREMELY musically gifted kids.
Through talent and hard work they honed their skills and performed at many games, concerts, and other school gatherings.

On a recent trip with old friends to Wally’s Roast Beef in Bloomington we noticed, on a shelf of memorabilia, an old vinyl album made by the marching band from Lincoln High our senior year.
Who knew?
I wished that Wally’s had a turntable and stereo so I could play the album and hear those tunes from our school days too. Just looking at the list of my classmates on the back of the dust jacket brought A LOT of memories flooding back.

In 1697, William Congreve, in his poem, THE MOURNING BRIDE, wrote that, “Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast, to soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak.”

I’d also add, far less eloquently than Mr. Congreve said it, that music also has the power to transport us through time, to hearken old memories, and to change and refine how we remember those golden days too.

In my youth I was blessed with a lot of good friends, great schools, and very good health.
Oh sure I had a few minor medical issues. Stitches, broken bones, and more than my share of ear infections, but by comparison, I think I was pretty damn fortunate that all of my issues were really minor.

My classmates were a varied lot.
When thinking of my high school class I’m reminded of the lyric from an Elton John song,
“…Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters,
sons of bankers, sons of lawyers…”
To be sure, there were some classic beauties, some crazies, and sons and daughters of people of ALL professions.
We also had a classmate named Karl Nygaard.

Karl was a guy who was not as fortunate as most of us health-wise.
His twin sister graduated the year before Karl and most of my friends did.
Karl suffered from hydrocephalus, a condition where an accumulation of cerebrospinal fluid occurs within the brain.
Hydrocephalus symptoms can include a larger than usual head, double vision, headaches, mental impairment, and consistently elevated pressure inside the skull.
Karl had a distinctive, tripping, gait, overly active salivary glands, and cognitive challenges that we, as his peers, could not fully grasp.
What many of us knew and appreciated most was that Karl was just a genuinely nice guy.
Like most of us he loved to stop and chat in the hallways between classes.
He liked to feel as if he belonged.
I think many of us admired Karl because he had to work very hard to achieve many of the things that came so much easier for most of us.

Times were simpler back then. I believe there was an overriding live and let live attitude like the lyric from the Paul McCartney and Wings theme song from a James Bond 007 movie,
“When you were young and your heart was an open book,
You used to say live and let live.
(You know you did, you know you did, you know you did).”

In the six years I went to school with him I never once saw or heard a classmate disparage, tease, or bully Karl. My classmates didn’t roll that way. Karl was one of us so we treated him as such.

The movie, URBAN COWBOY wouldn’t be released until 2 years after we graduated, but a few of my friends and I caught the bug early. We used to wear cowboy hats and boots to parties and while bombing around town during our high school careers.

At our school, during the final week of the school year, the seniors could pretty much do whatever we wanted as long as we showed up sober and nobody got hurt.
So I wore my cowboy hat to school the last 5 days at Lincoln High.
Wednesday of that week my Behavioral Science instructor, Mr. Dimond, asked me,
“Are you going to wear that thing to graduation too?”

I’m not sure if everyone in the classroom that day actually saw the light bulb, in a thought bubble over my head, flicker on or not, but the seed had been planted, a plot was about to be hatched.
A ‘truly stupid gesture’ (ANIMAL HOUSE, 1978 Universal Pictures) would occur in a few days in front of all manner of friends, family, and assembled guests at the Bloomington Lincoln High School class of ’78 graduation commencement ceremony.

I’m not certain whether it was the cowboy hats we donned seconds after we passed the faculty member who stood guard to prevent such hijinks (Yeah he was none too happy), or the “HI MOM” sign we flashed to the crowd while our classmates threw their mortarboard hats to the sky, but we made an impression that night. Some liked it, others hated it, but many remembered it.

For a lot of years wearing a cowboy hat to graduate from high school in was pretty much my most vivid memory of that event.

Fast forward to September 22^nd, 2012, that was the day that our classmate Karl Nygaard passed away.

As typically happens at funeral visitations I was relieved to see a familiar face or two at the cemetery chapel. One of my sisters was a high school classmate of Karl’s oldest sister.
I came to know her too, thanks to their friendship.
After signing the guest book, filling out a memorial card, and looking at the photo boards, I was able to talk with Karl’s sister.

We exchanged pleasantries, and small talk, and stories of Karl.
Then I heard a story that changed the way I will always remember that graduation night.

Karl’s sister reminded me that on the night that more than 600 of us heard our names announced and walked across the stage that was set up on the field at Bloomington Stadium, the loudest cheers, led by the graduating students and mirrored by the family and friends in the stands, was not for a star athlete, the valedictorian, nor the group as a whole.
Spontaneously, when Karl’s name was announced, an ovation began and grew to a level neither Karl nor his family ever imagined he’d achieve in his lifetime.
I found out that our graduation night was definitely the happiest night of Karl’s life, and one of the proudest nights for his family.
They were proud, not just for Karl, but for the kindness shown by his classmates and the entire crowd in attendance that June night in 1978. *

In my view that night no longer belongs to any Mona Lisas nor Mad Hatters.
I will forevermore remember that night as Karl’s night.

A forever-lasting warm memory was made because a whole group of very decent people performed a kind and simple gesture.

And now whenever I recall that night I think of Karl, his family, all of the friends, and families who gathered that night and I’m reminded of another lyric from the Elton John song,

“…And I thank the Lord for the people I have found,
I thank the Lord for the people I have found…”

*If you were in attendance at the graduation ceremony for the LHS class of ’78 Karl’s family wishes to thank you for making his night so incredibly special. They are eternally grateful to you all for being so kind.