ONE MORE RIDE UP ST. LEONARD HILL (2009)

It would have been a day like this one, perhaps a January or February in 1957 or 1958. The radio was tuned to WBAL in Baltimore, as I got ready for the 23-mile bus ride to Calvert County High School. My mother and I listened intently to the closing announcements, but were surprised and disappointed (me anyway) that my school wasn't on the list. So I put on my boots and struggled half a mile down the snow-covered dirt road to catch Charlie Gray's school bus.

Snow was a big deal in rural Southern Maryland, a rare delight that wreaked havoc for the road crews. Three inches were enough to almost shut down Solomons Island Road, the main drag that connected the lower and upper ends of the county - and my house to my school. As Charlie headed north out of Solomons, everyone wondered whether he was going to get us up St. Leonard Hill, as we called it. About a mile south of the tiny village of St. Leonard, the hill went a long way down, then a long way up.

As we got near, the level of raucous school bus chatter got louder. "Turn around Charlie," someone yelled. "You won't make it," another shouted. "I don't want to go to school," added a third hopeful rider. As we slowly descended the first hill, it got quiet. Everyone held their breath. Then we started the slow, hard climb. Alas, Charlie made it, we exhaled, and 20 minutes later, we pulled up in front of the school, 30 minutes tardy.

On August 15, 2009, I attended my 50^th high school reunion. I was called Howard back then, which is my middle name. By the time I had attended college for two years and served four years in the Air Force, my parents had sold the house and moved across the Chesapeake Bay to Maryland's Eastern Shore. Because we were not originally from Southern Maryland, we had no family ties to Solomons. I finished college in upstate New York, married and moved to New England. I didn't keep in touch with any of my classmates with any regularity. Since 1965, the only times I have been back were for my 10^th, 20^th, 30^th, 40^th and 45^th reunions. This one seemed redundant, but how could I miss the 50th?

So my wife and I booked a hotel room in Prince Frederick, the town where the high school was, and drove 300 miles (halfway each day) through Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Delaware and finally Maryland. Around noon on August 14, the day before the reunion, we headed into Calvert County on Route 4, now mostly a four-lane limited access highway. For much of the time, it runs almost parallel to the old Solomons Island Road, which is now Route 765.

We pulled into the parking lot of my old Calvert County High School, now the Calvert Middle School. The new high school, about a mile away, was built in 1962. The old brick building looked relatively the same, but the windows and the main entrance facing the road were filled in with bricks, and other buildings had been added on. I hadn't been in the school since I graduated.