“There are places I remember
All my life, though some have changed.
Some forever, not for better.
Some have gone and some remain.”
— “In My Life” The Beatles 1965
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Lord willing, in a couple of weeks I’ll join members of the Mount Pleasant, Texas, High School graduating class of 1966 for our 60th reunion.
Anticipating seeing my classmates prompted me to reflect on today’s world through the eyes of the eighteen-year-olds we were in the summer of ‘66. It also reminded me of all the old class photos—rows of little oval portraits in huge frames—hanging high above hallway lockers 60 years ago.
And how I used to wonder what life was like when they graduated and what these graduates had seen and experienced since someone hung their pictures there.
Monday after our graduation, I reported early for work at Jerry Benton’s Monticello Highway peach orchards with a commercial driver’s license that was just days older than my diploma. By sunup, I was wrangling a refrigerated truckload of fruit headed to Dallas.
Life was tangible in 1966. It was whatever we could see and touch. Most everything else was a dream. Working was the reality behind my dream of Kilgore College. Plans? I had none other than playing in the marching band: something I had immensely enjoyed doing at MPHS.
The band performing with the Kilgore Rangerettes at bowl games and Dallas Cowboys’ halftime shows? Well, that was just an unanticipated bonus.
Life marched to a different tune in 1966. No computerized cars for late-night drag racing out at “three bridges” or listening to our favorite tunes with our dates. Just simple motors and radios we tuned ourselves.
And look at what we’ve survived. Sixties muscle cars sipping cheap leaded gasoline morphed into computerized electric powerhouses purring like kittens, sporting digitized sound systems better than what the Beatles had for their Ed Sullivan appearance. And performance far beyond the idolized cars we still cherish today as classics.
We grew up on transistor radios in junior high, then tuned into crackling AM car stations like KLIF in Dallas or WNOE in New Orleans. We were the generation that watched rock and roll and country blend with Motown, British Invasion, and psychedelic music. We heard Buddy Holly, Patsy Cline, and the 13th Floor Elevators.
Often on the same radio station.
While today’s graduates access every song ever recorded instantly and on demand, we combed record racks at White’s Auto and Western Auto before joining the Columbia Record Club so we could forget to reject the automatic monthly record selection.
For us, the “Information Highway” meant we hoofed it upstairs to the library in the old school building downtown and hit the card catalog. Then prayed the needed book wasn’t checked out. Today’s 18-year-olds carry a supercomputer in their pocket, rendering the sum of all human knowledge in the time it takes to say, “… going to the library.”
In 1966, “staying connected” meant a rotary phone on the kitchen wall with a tangled cord that wrapped around the corner for privacy. That came with risks, however. Like me talking to a potential Friday night date and risking one of my little sisters eavesdropping on the hallway extension.
Graduates today communicate entirely through glowing rectangles, using a language made up mostly of digital graphics and acronyms that could pass for secret government codes.
Looking back on the degree in psychology that East Texas State University so graciously let me leave with, I had no idea I’d spend a career in newspaper publishing and communication. Or that I’d watch the world transition from analog to digital, from newsprint to small screens, and paper boys to digital publishing.
Going with a flow that would’ve sounded like “The Twilight Zone” the night we marched across the stage in Mount Pleasant.
But beneath all the mind-boggling changes, the experience remains stubbornly the same. We stepped out into the unknown summer heat 60 years ago, filled with the same concoction of nervous terror and invincible optimism that graduates feel today.
Like them, we wanted to make our mark, find our groove, fall for what we loved—whatever that was. Then see where that road took us.
When we meet in a few days to celebrate six decades of stories, scars, and triumphs, we—the MPHS class of ‘66—can tip our hats to the ghosts of the teenagers we used to be. We survived the peach orchards, the college midterms, the changing tides of our businesses, careers, and families … AND the baffling evolution of television remotes.
We’ll relive memories and compare stories. Acknowledging that, indeed, “Some have gone and some remain.”
Noting the enduring truth that no matter how much the world changes, a good tune, the thrill of a loud, fast car, and a road untraveled never really went out of style.
—Leon Aldridge
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Leon Aldridge is a veteran editor, publisher, and communications professional, currently enjoying semi-retirement while awaiting the next challenge. His columns appear in: The Center Light and Champion, The Mount Pleasant Tribune, the Rosenberg Fort Bend Herald, the Taylor Press, the Alpine Avalanche, the Fort Stockton Pioneer, the Elgin Courier, The Monitor in Naples, and Motor Sports Magazine.
© Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 2026. Feel free to use excerpts with full and clear credit given to Leon Aldridge and ‘A Story Worth Telling.’
