A few weekends ago, I attended a high school reunion back in my hometown of Flint, Michigan. I had mentioned these plans in an essay that ran just over a month ago, and was later reminded of a very important lesson in not counting my proverbial chickens before they hatch due to a COVID-19 diagnosis following my Las Vegas vacation earlier in the month. Thankfully, the timing and my recovery were such that I was still able to attend. I honestly don’t feel like I’ve been out of high school for as many years decades since graduation. However, interacting with my former classmates in a truly fun and joyous celebration of our memories of the days of attending our beloved, long-shuttered high school made me reflect on how I’ve grown and changed from the uncertainty of those years into today’s focused, grounded, adult version of myself.
The former Flint Central High School.
A ’69 Chevelle like our featured car is one of two different cars I had chosen to pose next to at random during the photo sessions for my high school senior pictures. Seeing this one at the downtown branch of the U.S. Post Office last month seemed to represent things coming full circle. (The other car was a red Pontiac Fiero.) Long one of my favorite combinations of year, make, model, and body style, one of these Chevelle coupes will probably always make me happy just to see it. Only in a place like Flint, the birthplace of General Motors and onetime manufacturing powerhouse, does it seem like a normal occurrence for classic GM cars in beautiful shape to be out and about during nicer weather and not just during an event. This was also the case when, as a teenager in the early ’90s, I spotted a different ’69 Chevelle from our professional photographer’s car and implored my mom to let me get some snaps next to it.
I was never the popular kid in school, but that really didn’t bother me. Being constantly low-key shamed for my sexual orientation by a largely unchecked and deeply narcissistic parent had the effect of me wanting to retract into my shell and not call attention to myself. Ironically and looking back, I had all the basic, raw ingredients for wide acceptance as an otherwise healthy, unassuming, fun-loving, good-hearted teenager. I’m still genuinely surprised when people tell me they had admired me back then, with them not having known more of the story at the time.
While I had a small, solid group of friends in high school, I had still been gaslighted by an ashamed parent into believing that I was inherently flawed and inferior, and I simply didn’t seek out acceptance and inclusion into large gatherings with my classmates. I didn’t even go to my prom, even with a female friend. (Tameka and I are still close, and she and I recently laughed about how we were supposed to go to prom in a Chevette.) I can’t draw a straight line between these facts and my natural tendency toward introversion, but what’s true today is that I’m gregarious and capable of great extroversion when I want to be, and on my own terms. I wouldn’t trade this comfort in my own skin for anything.
I cherish having attended this recent high school reunion as a fully-realized adult full of self-love, grace, and forgiveness (both received and given), and I will treasure the memories, laughter, reinforcement of long-time connections, and new friendships I made over that weekend. It’s like I could see myself in my mind’s eye during this most recent gathering in clearer focus than at any other point in my life up until recent years, within the context of relating to my peers and having been part of a wonderful and diverse student body. So much of my healing has taken place since making different behavioral choices (no alcohol), hard work with a good therapist, elimination or severe reduction of contact with toxic people, and erecting and maintaining effective personal boundaries.
When I spotted this gorgeous A-body sitting behind that chain link fence at the post office, I was frustrated that I couldn’t photograph its distinctive front end that appears to be canted forward. The idea flashed through my mind for a split second that I might be able to enter the parking lot at the gate and get my shots, but I thought better of it. This Chevelle was parked far away from the other employees’ cars, toward the back of the lot, to protect it from dings and unwanted attention. Access to it was restricted to those who were able to enter this secured area, which was likely limited to only other mail carriers and postal workers. It’s great that its owner chose to drive this Chevelle and not his or her other, workaday ride on that beautiful autumn day, and to put it on display facing the street for others to admire it. Look, but don’t touch.
For much of my life up to a certain point, I had operated under the principle that if anyone paid me some kind of compliment, that I might owe them something in return besides “thank you”. I just wanted to be liked, by anyone… by myself, and I had too often settled for any scraps my family or peers would toss me. It’s not only acceptable, but also healthy and correct to set personal boundaries with others, whether or not you perceive them as being narcissists or possessing any other maladaptive, hurtful personality disorders. I wonder sometimes if good boundaries could have saved my beautiful, empty, old high school building from senseless destruction and vandalism, but security and maintenance both cost money, and Flint didn’t have it. Fences and locks exist for a reason. Think about it this way…
Imagine that years after being treated like an unloved beater car with an otherwise nice configuration, powertrain, and color combination, a ’69 Chevelle like our featured car has been purchased and rescued via a painstaking restoration that involved a lot of hard work. The narcissist who again wants access to you after you eliminate contact is like that former owner who sees the newly shiny Chevelle, still feels possessive of it, senses the challenge in damaging or destroying it in this restored state, and wants the keys to take it for a drive.
There can be only one, sad outcome if you let that person back in, and this is a lesson you can save yourself. It takes discernment, determination, and sometimes sacrifice to maintain your boundaries and keep those people away from your metaphorical car and out of your life. It can mean your very survival. I am glad, humbled, and thankful that I was able to be a warmer, wiser, and more authentic and enlightened version of myself at the reunion to friends both old and new, like the strong, straightforward, vintage “Chevelle” I was always meant to be. To paraphrase the great poet Robert Frost, good fences can, indeed, make good neighbors.
Flint, Michigan.
Saturday, October 29, 2022.
I don’t blame that owner for taking the Chevelle out on one of the beautiful autumn days we’ve been having here in Michigan. Unfortunately, accumulating snow is in the forecast for this week, so the fun’s over for a while.
One of the nice things about aging is that your interactions with people are filtered through the extra wisdom you’ve (hopefully) accumulated. Long story short – you care less what people think of you and do your own thing. 🙂
And that effect only increases with even more age. I keep thinking I’ve hit the max in that regard, but then some other remaining vestige falls away.
I remember thinking my late father was so much more fun when the disintegration of his filter had started to accelerate when he was in his 70s. I can see in my own life that the same process has been underway, and I’m only in my 40s. Or maybe not – maybe it’s just the lingering “Flint”-style bluntness in me.
Aaron, your last sentence is a great encapsulation of basically where things are today. The previous Flint Central reunion was also great, but I’m really enjoying being the age that I am and, as you stated, the extra wisdom.
The snow is here in Chicago today, but it’s still too warm to accumulate. Let’s see what happens later. I’ve learned to appreciate the five minutes of fall. It seems like only a few weeks ago, I was writing about this summer’s automotive finds. I still may by year’s end.
It is funny how even now, I still have a visceral negative reaction on seeing one of these. Is it because they came out after a family breakup and were part of a world so different from what I had grown up with until that point? Is it because they were anointed as cool by the tastemakers of the time which crashed against my tendency to go against the grain? Whatever the reason, I still struggle with a kind of emotional acid reflux when I see one of these, even though I realize the silliness of it. It’s just a car. Maybe I need to buy one as a kind of therapy?
Associations are very real, and I get this completely. Sometimes an inadvertent association forms between an otherwise neutral thing and an unpleasant event. I work at this same thing sometimes, in trying to form new and positive associations with things I know I’ll still come into some kind of contact with and know I can’t avoid completely.
I like the idea of buying a ’69 Chevelle as therapy. It would definitely be a form of therapy for me, albeit in a different form than what you’ve described.
Joseph: another great article. It’s amazing the memories that cars dredge up. Good and bad, but those memories help to remind you of how you became the person you are today.
Thanks so much, CD. And it’s great to look back at the roadmap and just give thanks for having made it / been brought through it all safely.
Nice car, and a fine article Joseph. Too bad your old school is in such a sad state, my 1927 high school was demolished in the 90’s, and aside from a couple of people that’s a door in my life that’ll remain closed.
A Chevelle with mag wheels used to be ubiquitous in high school parking lots, I get a smile every time I see one too.
Thank you so much, Doug. Your old high school would have been built just four years after this campus of Flint Central opened back in 1923. It seems unreal that if Central had held on and stayed open until next year, it could have celebrated a century of educating Flint.
And Chevelles were / are just cool.
There’s a reason the Chevelle SS396 was the second best selling musclecar for 1969, overtaken only by the one-year-old Road Runner as supply caught up with demand for the Plymouth, while the perennial number one selling GTO dropped all the way down to number three.
While some are less than enamored with the Chevelle hardtop’s C-pillar treatment, it looks okay, to me. Along with a Dodge Super Bee and Ford Fairlane Cobra hardtop, a Chevelle SS396 would complete the trifecta of 1969 musclecars in my dream garage.
The flag-shaped rear quarter windows and upward-swept C-pillar treatment on these Chevelles are one of its trademarks. Maybe when I had first seen a ’68 or ’69 Chevelle, I may not have liked it immediately, but I’ve loved it for most of my life.
What? There are people who don’t like the C pillar? That whole design, the profile and how it blends down through the non-existent belt line, is one of the features that made these A Bodies so special. Along with Opel Kadetts. The heyday of GM styling (well, except for the Buick). Thanks for another great Tuesday read and thoughtful photo, Joseph. This style Chevelle bookended my high school years, as the Colonnades came out the fall of my senior year. So, as new or nearly new cars, no one drove these in my school.
Hahaha – that’s what I say! The entire look of these works for me, without exception. Or, to use a word I probably learned in Mr. Bearden’s Humanities class during senior year, it’s the gestalt, the overall effect, that seems greater than the sum of its parts. And I appreciate the good words.
Nice essay, as always Joseph. Wisdom obtained over time definitely puts things into proper perspective.
Seeing one’s alma mater in such bad shape is sad, and I can relate. They recently tore down my own [elementary school] alma mater in my parents’ neighborhood. In that school’s case, a new one is being built on its site. But it was a brand new school in 1966 when I entered it for the first time starting first grade.
I am old enough to remember seeing these cars being assembled at the Broening Highway Assembly Plant here in Baltimore, long since torn down and replaced with an Amazon Fulfilment Center.
Like Doug says above, these were regularly seen as used cars owned by students in my own high school parking lot in 1978.
Thanks, Rick. To see these coming down the assembly line would have been burned into the retinas of my mind as one of my great, all-time automotive memories.
Only one of the five schools I attended from K-12 is still open as a school. I’m sure this has something to do with Flint’s population being a fraction of what it was by the time my family moved away.
That was a good essay about growing older and high school memories and all of that. I can certainly relate.
There is definitely something about that generation of Chevelles. Every car show I have been to in recent memory is dominated by those cars (and recent Corvettes). Meanwhile, my beloved old 60s and 70s Lincolns and Cadillacs are few and far between. Not to rag on anyone’s dream cars, but……
Thanks, Jose. And to your point, I’m also much more interested in shows that have a variety of all kinds and types of classic vehicles and not just the obvious choices. I want to drool over my ’69 Chevelle, but also see and appreciate a wide assortment of cars.
The Back To The Bricks annual car show and festival in Flint is great in that regard, though I haven’t been back since 2019. Maybe for 2023. I’ve still been trying to find good classic car shows here in Chicago.
That’s a handsome building – Flint Central High School – and it’s a shame that the city cannot find a way to sell it for rehabilitation as housing or perhaps a mixed use development. It could be reborn just like the Chevelle. Old, urban, school buildings like these were built to last and also sited so that they are generally central to city populations (although I realize that could have changed a lot in Flint). Unfortunately, they’re also often full of asbestos, so maybe that’s a problem with Flint Central.
Personally, I believe that most people spend their lives rising above what they were in High School. Virtually no one is their best selves at age 17/18. Onward and upward.
Jeff, it really is / was a beautiful campus. Every time I’ve read some clickbait article about how there’s a proposal to refurbish and repurpose Flint Central (and adjacent Whittier Middle School), I allow myself to get my hopes up. Rumor has it that parts of Central are collapsing in on themselves, but I hope that’s not true. Even if a part of the building can be saved and reused, it would make me so happy.
Time has benefitted you and the Chevelle. Not so your old HS. Still, 2 out of 3 ain’t bad.
Agreed, and I like that math. Thanks, Rob.
Boundaries; what an essay. The Chevelle behind the fence makes it a natural. Poignant that in seven years time that fence pattern would serve as the Chevelle’s grille texture – subliminally to keep owners out of the engine bay? 😉
It must be nice to have positive memories of high school. I’ve never been back. I had a difficult time through those difficult years, being all brains and no brawn, so to speak, as well as having a speech impediment and severe self-esteem issues. Being teased for a lack of interest in girls didn’t help, but it wasn’t sexual orientation issues, just general people issues. That led to me spending more and more time alone, which in turn led to a lot of this sort of thing. 🙂
One memory that just came back – One time we had to give a talk to the class. I kept putting off the inevitable, and the teacher took pity on me and let me choose my topic, Easy: Car design 1930 to 1960, with six models to illustrate my points. It was very well received; good marks for explaining my topic, poor marks for delivery. One girl asked about the models, and seemed stunned that I’d made them. Yeah, some guys actually do that instead of asking you out…
Peter, that’s a brilliant observation about the ’76 Chevelle Malibu Classic’s grille texture, and I wouldn’t have made that connection without you pointing that out – even if that ’76 Malibu CC Deadly Sin article just reran recently.
And the older I get, the more I’m convinced (even though I’m still a social person) that time alone is underrated and so very valuable. I don’t even take phone calls past a certain time of day, and I offer no apologies for this. Just good boundary setting.
Beautiful model, by the way.
Thanks!
Oh, the beauty of high school. 43 in my graduating class – my third-cousin was valedictorian; I was salutatorian; another cousin was in the class; my father was president of the school board; another cousin was also on the school board; that cousin’s brother-in-law was the valedictorian’s father as well as my fourth- and fifth-grade teacher; my grandmother (my father’s mom) was head cook; yet another cousin was the school secretary (a job later inhabited by my aunt); my English teacher was a high-school classmate of my father’s, whom he had dated briefly; a classmate’s father was the math/chemistry teacher and the classmate’s mother was the speech pathologist…yeah, high school is a distant memory and I have seen none of my classmates (to whom I am not related) in over 20 years.
Perhaps that has set boundaries?
Joe, this was quite enjoyable and a bit deeper than usual. In a sense, I was the dormant Chevelle behind the fence while in high school…my potential wasn’t really used as it would have been on full display for too many too quickly and too close to home.
Now, I am this Chevelle pre-restoration and with a straight-six. The beauty has faded with age and I’m not as quick (anymore) as I’d like to be.
Jason, thank you so much for this – and the much appreciated levity. I like that your high school was on the smaller side (compared to Flint Central, anyway), and seems like the experience was very much a family affair.
And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with having a straight six under the hood, being reliable, and getting it done. And none of us are as quick as we used to be. You should have seen me panting a little bit after climbing the stairs from the Red Line subway station this morning since the escalator wasn’t working. (Yes, I’m admitting to this.)
Nice bit of introspection. Advancing age, falling leaves, and deteriorating buildings seem to bring out latent thoughtful feelings of all kinds in this season of waning warmth and sun.
My wife’s step-father, Jack, a truly cheapskate corporate lawyer, or shall we say a thrifty Scotsman who vetted defense contracts for Westinghouse, in April of ’69, traded in his stripped white ’65 Falcon with manual shift, the R & H being the only options, on a new maroon Malibu coupe with automatic, being forced to do so by a stroke he suffered earlier in the winter of 1969.
Bought off the lot as an emergency purchase, no doubt it normally would have been a Chevelle 300, the very cheapest model, but this Malibu was available immediately, so he unintentionally moved up. Still, it was a semi-stripper with only Powerglide automatic, R&H, power steering… no air, no V8, no PB. It was nothing to him but economical transportation, and that was all he ever asked of a car.
When he died in 1985 the maroon paint was dull, it was rusting a bit around the fender bottoms, rattled and squeaked over every bump, but had only about 90k miles and the big 250 six and PG still performed surprisingly well. The interior seemed cheap and cheesy in every way, especially the plastic-y dash, but once the cigar ashes were swept off the seat and vacuumed off the carpet it was presentable and the black vinyl was still rip free. I was asked to sell it for my MIL, and the eventual buyer, an older lady in her 60s, seemed happy with the $900 asking price. It was simply an honest, inexpensive, decent value, solid car for the masses, like GM built back then. She got a car she could drive economically for at least a few more years. Jack would have liked that.
Really enjoyed reading this. I could picture Jack’s Chevelle throughout all stages of its life, from the first point of purchase to when the lady in her 60s took possession of it for $900 ($2,500 today). Your description of it as “honest, inexpensive, decent value, solid car for the masses” is perfectly consistent with my impression of these cars, and of pre-Vega Chevrolets in general.
Wow, high school madness .
Thanx for the memories .
I remember going to three proms all in a clapped out VW Beetle that now would be the epitome of ‘! COOL ! PATINA !’ lunacy .
I too like my own company, I don’t think those in charge of things like this .
I remember riding the PCC cars on the red line in the early 1960’s BOSTON ! WOOT ! .
-Nate
I neglected to mention I used to have a base model 1968 Malibu ex Sacramento, Ca. cop car, it had a 250 CID i6 and powerglide, no power anything .
What a great car it was : light and easy to drive, economical beyond belief .
Nate
That’s cool. I’ve deduced it wasn’t a pursuit car, but I suppose not all of them were.
Correct .
It was a detective’s car, I still don’t get the 250 i6 and PG but I was grateful as I used it as a taxi, folks coming and going to Guatemala constantly .
When my son grew up I told him it’s a mid size car and he was shocked ~ he remembered a cavernous rear seat .
-Nate
High school memories are often quite poignant. So many instances are recalled where we hoped that we could have done something different, wanted to do something different, or just fantasized that we had done something different. As with all of your stories, it is well written, relatable and intelligent.
High school seems to extract its pound of misery from most kids, it’s a small select group that thrives during this period. I had a few good friends, and a motorcycle, so it wasn’t the worst. Just think, for some people, high school years are the apex of their life, and it’s all downhill after that.
Being able to establish boundaries is hard enough with your peers, but It’s so much harder with an insensitive parent or relative. Of course it’s due to the uneven balance of power. Children and young people have none.
My fifty year h.s. reunion is coming up next year, I hope to attend. I went to my 10 and 20 year events. I don’t expect anything great from it, h.s. has never meant that much to me, and overall, my adult life has been pretty satisfying.
“69 Chevies are definitely cool.
Thank you so much, Jose. And these are some great reflections and food for thought. I’ve spent plenty of time thinking about how I’d be a different person today, and not someone I might not appreciate as much, if I had had a different “row to hoe” during those formative years. Everything happens (or doesn’t happen) for a reason.
Suppose I had everything I wanted, high school had been my high point, and for whatever reason hadn’t learned compassion and ended up a jerk. That would have been way, way worse than having the character I ended up developing and learning to compromise and thrive under less-than-ideal circumstances.
And the truth is that my interpersonal relationships feel that much more authentic given what I’ve learned and experienced. I’d be remiss also if I didn’t reference giving thanks to my Higher Power for bringing me through (and continuing to bring me through) it all – making beautiful things out of ugly situations. …And giving me the words and inspiration to occasionally make reference to them here.
I remember you mentioning your wanting to attend your HS 50 year in a comment to an earlier essay, and I really hope you go and enjoy it.
For some reason I associate this car with the movie “Dazed and Confused” which was filmed in the city I’ve lived in for the past 40 years. Before that…we moved around a lot as my Dad was in the semiconductor business and since he worked on processes, he needed to live nearby the actual facility, but lots of shakeups in the field (probably because it is so capital intensive) led him to changing jobs frequently especially early on. One result on us is that only my youngest sister started and finished high school at the same place (in fact we spent senior year at the new school) so I’ve had no motivation to go to any of my reunions. The funny thing is that I went to a consolidated High school that covered 5 towns, and my sister ended up buying her first house in the town where the high school was located (not the town we lived in when I went to that school, which was pretty far from it). She didn’t live there long, it was really more like a summer cabin than a home, they even got their water from a tube that needed to be submerged in the lake in front of their house, else they wouldn’t have any water once it froze up until spring.
I actually graduated the same year that “Dazed and Confused” was supposed to have taken place, but of course in a far different town about 2000 miles away…and my experiences were anything but like that movie. I had gotten my license the year before, but had to take another driver’s test when we moved since I was still young enough they didn’t trust the previous state’s certification of my passing the behind the wheel test. I didn’t drive much yet though, still took the bus to school which took about 30 min each way. There were lots of cars like the Chevelle in the school parking lot back then, many of them hand-me-downs to students and of course many teachers as these were just seen as 7 year old cars, nothing too special at that time, except that people were concerned with gas mileage…my driving career started right at the time the first fuel shortage happened, so it’s nothing new to me. I got my 1st car as lots of people do once I left high school and started college, but it was just an economy car, nothing special…my Dad got one too, for commuting, he bought a Subaru DL, which was his 1st FWD car (traction was a big deal since winters were long)…he didn’t have it but about 4 years, the hood flew open once when the hood catch failed, and rather than replace it we put shock cords between the front wheel wells and that held the hood down….not too good a look for a 2 year old car, but style wasn’t a priority with us at the time.