The Last Reunion
I'm the one who takes care of this website. I'm the one who updates the lists. I live with the reunions more than most because I try to add things here through the year, either about the old days or Paramount Ranch now. I beg people to send me new things to post. Adding a name to our "missing friends" doesn't hit me that hard. It's a way of honoring a memory - a wake, not a funeral. It's saying that we don't forget the ones who have passed their legacy on to those of us who remain, that their being here is important. There was some confusion over the email list this year. I was just updating a copy of my latest list. I want to consolidate it with whatever other lists we were using to help keep this widely scattered group we are together, to make sure everyone knows of future reunions. I came to some of the same names. I don't know why it's harder to take people off a list than it is to add them. I hesitate. Damn it, it hurts. There's a new hole in our family, a void. It's like the space where a tooth used to be, familiar until you run your tongue over the space and feel a shock to your system. Because of a glitch I'm not working from an alphabetized list. The first name that stopped me this year is Linda Underhill. I don't want to remove it; it feels like a betrayal. I have to. Her loss hit me hard, maybe because I started Faire as a singer, maybe not. Maybe it's because I shared a stage with her, maybe it's just because. Her loss hit a lot of people hard, people who knew her better than I did, people who didn't. I mention her by name because she was the first I came to, but there are others. The reunions will go on. We'll still meet here in the Spring, gather and remember. But as I changed the list it came to me that someday it will all come to an end, that we won't go on forever even though Spring will. I had a vision, a dream, maybe. The first day of spring, the land alive again. Someone is walking out alone, laboriously dragging a tired body up to the top of Procession Hill. Standing there in sunlight, eyes sparkling, looking around the land and seeing it as it used to be. Ribbons and music fill the air, and dust. Hawkers are calling; actors are playing their parts. All around are legends and memories, friends and ghosts. The smells of turkey legs, sticky buns, pasties and sweat hang in the air. "Fine beef steak. Make no mistake, it's steak on a stake." "Taste my fresh, hot, sticky buns." Drench a Wench and Soak a Bloke; Billy's death defying leap from the top deck of Main Stage. Sheep to Coat and the pinwheel booth; Ocarinas and Gerd Jacobs clay flutes. Maybe this person will read the list, maybe not; it really doesn't matter. The memories are there. Maybe a toast will be raised, real or symbolic. Maybe the memories will bring laughter, maybe tears, maybe both. A last look, the walk down the hill and back to the parking lot. The last traveler is gone. The last reunion is over. Marc Mangano, March, 2005
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