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O.K. Let's do this: I am going to post an outline, as you will see. Now, everyone is invited to tell a story about any period, person, or thing that you remember and that others would enjoy; I will incorporate it into the story with your byline and your name if you wish. It will not be in the comments, except for your original post. I will copy it and insert your story into the main body of our story and repost the whole story every time I get a comment that is a story. Make since? Odessa, Texas / The Permian Basin A Journey Through the Decades From Bonham Junior High to the Golden Years in the Permian Basin Introduction We were the last of the war babies and the first edge of the baby boom generation. We grew up in Odessa, Texas, during a time when the Permian Basin seemed destined to power America forever. We witnessed the end of steam locomotives, the rise of television, the birth of the Space Age, the Vietnam War, moon landings, oil booms and busts, and eventually the arrival of computers and the Internet. This is the story of one generation, the Permian High School Class of 1962, and of the city that shaped us. ________________________________ Chapter 1 Bonham Junior High: The Late 1950s If you attended Bonham Junior High in the late 1950s, you might remember voting on the name, mascot, and colors for the new Permian High School. None of us realized at the time that the school would someday become famous throughout Texas and beyond. It was simply the new school on the north side, a place where we hoped to end up once we survived junior high. Bonham could be a rough place for a seventh grader. Hazing was considered almost a rite of passage. Older boys might make a newcomer push a penny across the floor with his nose or invent some other embarrassment. Looking back, it sounds cruel, but that was simply how things worked. We quickly learned there were divisions in Odessa. People judged where you lived, what your parents did for a living, and how much money they made. The railroad tracks separated more than neighborhoods. South Side was considered another world. Most north-side kids were warned not to go wandering there after dark. Inside Bonham there were different tribes. The athletes dominated the sports fields. The thugs wore their jeans low, placed taps on their shoes, smoked cigarettes, and seemed to challenge authority every chance they got. Most of us floated somewhere between the two groups. There was no air conditioning. West Texas heat poured through the windows. Fistfights after school were common enough that they rarely attracted much attention. News traveled through the grapevine long before social media existed. Most students walked home. A few rode bicycles, though by junior high that no longer carried much status. Coolness came from other things. If you owned a motorcycle at fourteen or fifteen, people noticed. I rode an Allstate motorcycle during ninth grade and thought I was doing pretty well. The legendary Mr. Macintire led the Bonham band. He was probably one of the finest band directors Odessa ever had and one of the craziest men I ever encountered in education. I lasted exactly one day under his instruction. Even then, change was coming. Odessa was growing, Permian High School was opening, and our generation was moving toward a decade none of us could possibly imagine. ________________________________ Chapter 2 Ninth Grade and the End of Childhood By ninth grade, everything seemed to be changing at once. Our bodies were changing. Our interests were changing. Even the tools we used in school were changing. Fountain pens were slowly being replaced by ballpoint pens. The world itself appeared to be speeding up. Rock and roll had swept across America. Elvis Presley had been drafted and sent to Germany. Fidel Castro had taken control of Cuba. Alaska became the forty-ninth state, meaning Texas was no longer the nation's largest state. Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper died in a plane crash that later became known as "The Day the Music Died." Television fascinated us. Most programs were still black and white. Families gathered together each evening to watch the same shows. Stations often signed off at midnight. Before programming began, an Indian-head test pattern filled the screen. If your television broke, you could remove the vacuum tubes and carry them to Cabel's to test them. If one had gone bad, replacements were available right there at the store. Many teenagers worked after school. Some sacked groceries at Bill Sears or Piggly Wiggly. Others carried newspaper routes. The Odessa American was still an afternoon newspaper. School dances, the ninth-grade prom, football games, and telephone conversations occupied our lives. Many afternoons were spent listening to KECK radio, and many nights ended with KOMA drifting in through the darkness. By then most of us were already deciding who we wanted to become. ________________________________ Chapter 3 Entering Permian Permian High School felt like a completely different world. The social divisions we had known at Bonham became even more obvious. There were athletes, scholars, band members, cheerleaders, and troublemakers. Students were judged by clothes, hairstyles, cars, grades, and athletic ability. The football players wore their status proudly. The thugs favored low-slung jeans and ducktail haircuts. The academic crowd usually looked somewhere in between. Girls faced strict dress codes. No pants. No jeans. Spaghetti straps could get you sent home. Going steady meant loaning your football jacket, band jacket, or choir jacket to a girl. Pep rallies filled the auditorium. Football ruled everything. Cheerleaders led chants while players promised victory. Breaking rules could earn licks from a paddle or a trip to D-Hall. Three-day suspensions were considered serious punishment. Counselors would come later. The school snack bar sold candy, pencils, paper, and soft drinks. Students could leave campus for lunch. Fifty cents would buy a hamburger, French fries, and a cherry Coke at Watts Burger or one of the many drive-ins. By then many students were experimenting with cigarettes, chewing tobacco, and occasionally beer. A surprising number gathered before school at the telephone company building across from Permian, cigarettes in hand. We thought we understood the world. We did not. ________________________________ Chapter 4 Summer of 1960 The summer of 1960 belonged to teenagers. Grant Street became Odessa's version of Main Street. Teenagers cruised from one drive-in to another, visiting places like Tommie's, Days, Speedway, Nick's, Danny's, Park Inn, and A&W. The Speedway was famous for its colorful drinks and plastic stir sticks topped with miniature animals. The Park Inn remained a favorite gathering place. Across town, South Side and Ector students had their own territory around Murphy Street and the Frost Top. Most evenings began with the simple phrase: "I'm going to get a Coke." Parents often knew that meant something much larger. Cars cruised endlessly. Drag races occurred. Raw eggs occasionally flew through open windows. Fistfights were arranged. Friendships formed. Future husbands and wives met. We were sixteen-year-old bodies carrying twelve-year-old wisdom. Drive-in theaters were another summer ritual. Odessa had five of them. Speakers hung from the car window. Double features were standard. Cartoons played before the movies. The bouncing ball encouraged sing-alongs. A breakdown in the projection booth produced a symphony of impatient car horns. For some teenagers, the drive-in theater had very little to do with the movie. ________________________________ Chapter 5 The Last of the War Babies When the 1960-61 school year began, we entered our junior year at Permian High School. World War II had ended only fifteen years earlier. Looking back, our class occupied a unique place. We were among the last students directly shaped by a generation that had lived through the Depression and fought the war. Childhood was disappearing. Bicycles, lunch boxes, marbles, coloring books, and cartoons faded into memory. Christmas presents became practical. Most of us worked after school. Gasoline averaged twenty-five cents a gallon, and fierce price wars sometimes pushed it down to 17.9 cents. Older friends bought beer. Paper driver's licenses occasionally developed "improved" birth dates. Some drive-ins served draft beer curbside. The Park Inn became legendary. Football remained the center of school life. Permian finished 8-3 that season. The homecoming bonfire tradition began. The band could be heard every morning before class. The members seemed to belong to their own secret society. P.E. class meant laps, touch football, soccer, basketball, and the dreaded rope climb. Principal Gail Smith guided the school. Teachers who remain vivid in memory include Mr. Cariker, Mr. Crawley, Ms. Dial, Ms. Doyle, Mr. Jacobs, and Mr. Tiner. Breakfast was usually Cheerios or Post Toasties. By mid-morning our stomachs often growled loudly enough that we were certain everyone could hear. ________________________________ Chapter 6 Senior Year: 1961-62 By senior year we had reached the summit. Twelve years of school were nearly over. Cars became increasingly important. Hot rods, fuzzy dice, pinstriping, glass packs, and four-on-the-floor transmissions dominated conversations. Songs like "Runaway," "Crying," "I Fall to Pieces," and "Take Good Care of My Baby" filled radios. Television favorites included Gunsmoke, Bonanza, Red Skelton, and Candid Camera. Graduation seemed both exciting and frightening. The senior prom arrived. So did adulthood. Some classmates became roughnecks, welders, mechanics, soldiers, cashiers, teachers, housewives, or college students. The class of 1962 stepped into a world that would soon be transformed by war, politics, and technology. ________________________________ Chapter 7 Assassinations, Vietnam, and the Space Race Three forces shaped our generation more than any others. The first was political violence. John F. Kennedy's assassination in Dallas in 1963 stunned the nation. We watched Lee Harvey Oswald killed on live television two days later. Lyndon Baines Johnson, another Texan, became president. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy were both assassinated in 1968. The second force was Vietnam. By late 1967 nearly half a million Americans served there. Ultimately more than 2.7 million Americans would serve in Vietnam and over 58,000 would die. Some of our classmates went. Some returned changed forever. Some never returned at all. The third force was the Space Race. We were the "Duck and Cover" generation. We believed beating the Russians mattered. Odessa's dark skies sometimes revealed satellites crossing overhead. The Apollo program pushed forward despite setbacks, including the tragic fire that killed Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee. The moon seemed impossibly far away. Yet somehow it no longer felt unreachable. ________________________________ Chapter 8 The 1970s The 1970s found most of us firmly planted in adulthood. We were husbands and wives. Parents. Workers. Veterans. College graduates. Oil-field hands. Many were still trying to figure life out. Disco arrived, and Odessa danced right along with the rest of the country. The local nightlife revolved around Herb Gram's clubs. The Shadows played pop music. Across Andrews Highway, the Stardust catered to country fans. For a brief and ridiculous moment, streaking became a national craze. The Gatlin Brothers became Odessa's hometown stars. In 1972, Permian High School won the state championship and was named national co-champion. Mojo became more than a nickname. It became a rallying cry. Nationally, Nixon resigned. The Vietnam War ended. The oil embargo created recession. Elvis died. Margaret Thatcher rose to power in Britain. The Iran hostage crisis began. Locally, the Permian Basin suffered through painful boom-and-bust cycles. Businesses closed. Buildings stood empty. Workers departed in search of opportunity elsewhere. Yet Odessa endured. It always had. ________________________________ Chapter 9 The 1980s The babies of the forties and fifties entered middle age. Most of us passed forty. Some called the 1980s the "Decade of Decadence." Ronald Reagan occupied the White House for nearly the entire decade. Many of us now had teenagers of our own. Permian football reached legendary status. State championships came in 1980, 1984, and 1989. The 1989 team added a national championship. Mojo was everywhere. The world brought dramatic change. CNN arrived. Personal computers entered ordinary homes. The Challenger exploded. The AIDS epidemic spread. Chernobyl shocked the world. The Berlin Wall fell. MTV revolutionized music. Meanwhile we watched Dallas, Cheers, CHiPs, and Hill Street Blues while listening to Olivia Newton-John, Pink Floyd, George Jones, Dolly Parton, Conway Twitty, and a young Garth Brooks. Many of us noticed new gray hairs. Some noticed a few extra pounds. By the end of the decade, many had become grandparents. Life was moving faster than ever. ________________________________ Chapter 10 Approaching Fifty: The 1990s By the middle of the 1990s, most of us were approaching fifty years old. Half a century. The phrase "golden years" began appearing in conversation, half joke and half hope. Operation Desert Storm introduced another generation to war. Bill Clinton was elected president. The Dallas Cowboys became America's Team once again. The Internet arrived. eBay appeared. The iMac was introduced. Scientists cloned Dolly the sheep. Country music flourished with Garth Brooks, George Strait, and Brooks & Dunn. Television gave us The West Wing and The Sopranos. Movies included Titanic, Casino, and The Shawshank Redemption. The decade also produced tragedies, controversies, and unforgettable headlines. Oklahoma City. Waco. O.J. Simpson. Ruby Ridge. The world we had entered as children scarcely resembled the one around us now. ________________________________ Epilogue Looking Back When we walked the halls of Permian High School in 1960, none of us could have imagined everything we would witness. We saw the end of segregation and the beginning of space exploration. We watched Kennedy's funeral, Armstrong's moonwalk, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the birth of the Internet. We survived recessions, oil busts, wars, social upheaval, and personal heartbreaks. Some classmates became wealthy. Some struggled. Some were taken far too early. Others remain with us today. What binds us together is not simply that we attended the same school. It is that we traveled through one of the most extraordinary periods in American history together. We were the last of the war babies. We were the Class of 1962. Hollywood even made a movie about us. "American Graffiti" And for a little while, under the vast West Texas sky, the Permian Basin was the center of our world

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Fiction becomes reality: ATLAS SHRUGGED by Ayn Rand SpaceX officially suspended all launch pads, rocket telemetry codes, and orbit integration for European government satellites. Elon Musk canceled the launch contracts after the EU slapped X and Starlink with arbitrary billions in fines. The European Space Command labeled it an "act of war" and threatened to freeze bank accounts, prompting Musk to fire back that bureaucracy won't launch a 5-ton defense satellite. Globalist bureaucrats are finding out the hard way that weaponizing regulations against private innovation will leave their entire space defense infrastructure grounded. Do you back Elon Musk for cutting off the hostile EU?