This Last Friday was Anderson’s homecoming football game.  For the previous 4 years, my wife Carla and I enjoyed helping our twin Granddaughters and their classmates build their homecoming floats. Now off to college, it was strange not seeing the twins in Anderson’s “Blue Crew” cheering section.  While watching the game I realized how much Anderson High has changed since we went to school there.  Gone are the days when  you could just feel the pulse of excitement coming from the parents and students packing the stands at Anderson High games. 

The opening of West Valley high school played a part in the school’s declining enrollment which today is less than 600 students. But I would say a bigger reason is that Anderson  is no longer the industrial hub north of Sacramento.  Gone are the days of Kimberly Clark, US Plywood, Paul Bunyan and Simpson Paper Mill.  With them also went many Anderson families

So as my 40 year reunion approaches I feel very lucky to have gone to school at a time of Anderson’s heyday.  To have been a part of a huge “Blue Crew” consisting of students in a marching band playing Anderson’s unique fight song, cheerleaders clapping and stomping their feet, a flag team proudly waving their flags in perfect unison and who will ever forget our drill team performing their precision routines at half time.

All is not gloom, Anderson High has a new band instructor and over the last 2 years the band has improved dramatically. Recently, I had a conversation with Coach Reid who told me that in 1966 when Kimberly Clark opened the school’s enrollment shot up 600 students that year. So lets hope we can draw another economic power house to Anderson and the return of our Drill and Flag teams and the days when “Big Blue” ruled.

Does anyone remember when we were Juniors and Shasta High came to play us in football?  They brought with them a huge school flag which they planted at midfield during warm ups.  After the game, I think it was John Ledford that went over to their side lines and grabbed that flag and started running with it towards the gym.  When he did, all you could see was a mass of players from both teams chasing after that flag.  At the moment it was pretty funny. Unfortunately, there was a woman who did get hurt during that chase

I offered to shake the hand of the shasta player that was holding the flag, It was Lonnie Pruitt who orginally grabbed the flag and ran, while the Shasta players slipped and fell on their asses since the Blue Room cement was there without the building. I ran fast too! 

It was coach Junior Starrett who said, "I want that flag," causing Lonnie Pruitt to grab and go. The Shasta players did not really slip on the concrete - as they ran down the slope they collided with the benches outside the locker room. One of the Shasta players not to hurt himself was a former Cub, Jack Church.

And where was I? Helping the lady up who got hurt. 

Good times.

I'm sure I was not the only incoming freshman who was a bit nervous starting their first day of high school at AUHS.  Back then tales of freshman kids being initiated by being thrown into the canal was folk lore. I do recall a few kids taking the plunge but it was mostly urban legend.  As was freshman walking across the senior lawn being stuffed into garbage cans, although as a freshman I once was chased off of it.  Above is a current pic of the no longer recognized senior lawn. The back entrance canal bridge that kids used to cross to skip school is gone and the grassy area behind the 40 wing has been replaced with a building.  Its classrooms that often filled with the arroma of burning cigarettes and other things on warm spring days are now used for storage due to many years of declining student enrollment.

Who can forget.  Jakes is currently being remodeled and will reopen in June 2016 as "The Tailgate", offering burgers, fries and yes beer and wine. Back then, a short walk could get you a sub from Jakes, awesome fries from Aunt Fannies and of course A&W had the killer root beer floats.

Who remembers Anderson VS Enterprise Basket Ball Game when several crazy football cheerleaders (myself included) dressed up in bumble bee outfits, painters overalls with exterminator spray cans, and talked the guy at the appliance store downtown Anderson into giving us 2 dryer boxes.   We decorated the boxes up to look like raid pest spray cans.  (we spent some time planning this skit for the Friday night game).... well, major fail/uh oh with the 2 assigned to dryer box running through the basket ball game-1 girl tipped over, fell, the bumble bees and exterminators ran in different directions to get away, as our plan to exit out of the back door of the gym did not work.  Mrs. Eberle ended up chasing most of us across the football field as we tried to get away.   The fallen dryer box girl was caught, (Janet Walden), she was forced to fess up on the rest of the Exterminator Team-on Monday we were all called to Mrs. Eberle's office, suspended for a week.  (the empty Annie Green Springs Wine Bottles out back had our names attached somehow).   GO CUBS BEAT THE HORNETS!!! 

How did I not hear about this? I would have paid the price of admission just to see Janet fall down and a bunch of bees trying to escape.  I assume the wine bottles were the reason for such a long suspension for a harmless prank gone wrong or was that the reason Janet fell down.  Lol

Ahhhh, the Annie Green Springs wine!  Between that, my Impala and the Old Spice, Carla never had a chance. Lol

Back in the day before schools faced budget cuts, Anderson used to play football teams from afar like Sparks and Proctor Hug Nevada and Ashland Oregon. When we were freshman our upper classmates played Oakland High School.

Oakland's chartered buses arrived just as school was getting out for the day.  As their team exited the buses you could hear gasps from our student body because of the size of the Oakland players.  Cub students also made comments that they were going to kill us.  Well, that Friday night Anderson players were giant killers.  Never have I seen an Anderson team play so hard.  By game's end, they had physically beat up the Oakland team, winning 20-12. 

Looking back at it, in 1972, when those Oakland players exited their buses and saw our student body they must have thought this is what segration looks like.

One of the friday night games Mrs. Eberly I think that was her name, was in the main hall along with a few students looking at the floor looking for something. I asked her what they were looking for and she said that her diamond had fallen out of her wedding ring. So they were looking for it. I happen to glance down and saw the diamond right away. She was so happy to get it back she took me and a friend out to lunch the following Monday. When we got there we ordered quite a bit, like we pigged out and it was her treat.

Never being known for school spirit, I found what I thought was a perfect opportunity to rectify past sins put the matter to rest.  My father had bought an old school bus at an auction and struggled to find uses for it.  After a few years, I saw him one day with a sawsall which he, over the course of several nights, managed to cut the entire top off leaving a flatbed with a cab.  I now joined him in musing what manner of use we could come up with for such a unique device.  It dawned on me one day, what about a highschool homecoming float?!  I called the school and beamingly presented my offer.  "Well, everybodies got a float vehicle already, except for maybe the freshmen, they never have it together."  Have them call me.  After a little coaxing on my part, the freshmen class presidents father was on board and they built what, in my unbiased opinion, was the best float ever.  The cabs front was transformed into a cubs face with ears on the mirrors and eyes on the windshield.  A cub with a cape was flying for the  goal post at one end of the deck which was a football field. It won first place and that was a first for the Freshmen.  It bested a gleaming blue semi and had to be one proud moment for that bus, now enshrined forever in the hearts of those who witnessed her as an ambassador of school transportation.  All I had to do was drive her from point A to point B at the designated time Mrs.Eberly gave me and I receive my spiritual atonement, at least in my brains desperate economy.  Now, I guess if I really wanted atonement for a lack of school spirit, I would have just stayed at the game and waited till halftime.  But no, I chose to leave and return at the appointed time instead.  That proved to be a mistake.  I arrive to my name being blasted over the loud speaker.  Running, now winded, i throw open the hood and coax the "little engine that could" to life with a little gas down the carburetor.  Then fire her up and proceed through the crowd with no horn or lights in a scene that would give an insurance agent nightmares.  Yes, the glorious float and her imbecilic driver made it from A to B and the glory goes to the winner, not the poser.  Gee Dave, who were you doing it for anyways inquires the voice? The school, the kids, busdom I respond...but it would have been nice you know.  The bus returned home, fittingly content to rust in peace till dad found another home for her. I, on the other hand, never got my atonement.  I know, I will paint a big "76" on the road up the hill like the old days.  It will inspire the next generation!  No, the voice whispers, it will just be taken as a spiritually depraved soul trying to make atonement for decades old sins.  Besides, imagine the news if you get caught?  I could use chalk I whisper back...

Here's to those that had school spirit, from one of those who didn't.  You were right!