This past weekend was an extremely enjoyable one for me.

After watching the Bainbridge High School Bearcats put on a dominating performance in defeating the Dothan (Ala.) High School Tigers, 34-7, Friday night at Centennial Field, I went to Cairo Saturday to attend my 50th Cairo High School reunion.

At the reunion, I had the opportunity to visit with some old and dear friends, many of whom I had not seen for some time.

I especially enjoyed visiting with my dear friend Jimmy Walker, who has been dealing with some health problems, and his dear wife, Linda. Jimmy, who lives in Jacksonville, Fla., and I have been best friends since the sixth grade and I was so happy to see him and Linda.

Jason Rash, the son of my classmate and dear friend Cecil Rash and his wife Jennifer, who were our master and mistress of ceremonies for the night, shared with us some of the headlines from our senior year of 1962.

During that year, President John Kennedy was dealing with the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Beatles were at the top of the music charts and in sports the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Maury Wills broke Georgia native Ty Cobb’s single-season stolen base record.

Wills’s stolen base record was later broken by the St. Louis Cardinals’ Lou Brock.

Also in 1962, there were just three television networks, ABC, CBS and NBC and gas was just 30 cents a gallon. You could buy $10 worth of gas and drive for quite a while.

During my high school years, my dear late dad ran a fast foot restaurant in Cairo. It was before the era of drive-thru windows. Instead, our customers were served by car hops, who hooked customers’ food trays on their car windows.

While we didn’t have current conveniences like cell phones, computers and cable and satellite television allowing access to numerous stations, we got along fine.

Parents in Cairo, like my dear late mom, who was Grady County Tax Commissioner, and my dad, along with parents in Bainbridge and other small Southwest Georgia communities made sure  that we were grounded in strong moral and spiritual values.

In concusion, I would just like to thank Cecil Rash, Diane Davis, Larry Cook and other classmates who still live in Cairo and Grady County for planning and bringing about such a wonderful reunion.

They did an outstanding job and left all of us with memories we will cherish the rest of our lives.