September 14, 2004

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E-mail cocoahigh65.com and we'll get it into print. Pix are always welcome (please include captions if possible), along with news of upcoming events and links of interest.

As content is collected, the organization will get sorted out. Until then it'll be messy.

Click here for hurricane links from site map page.

CHS Links
Our links page (below) is fun stuff, but Bob Mayo's CHS site is very comprehensive. Check it out - you won't be disappointed.

Other Links
Tried and tested, these sites offer a variety of content for the internet traveler needing rest and relaxation.

Reunion Committee
here, with email links.

Archives And Site Links
Check here for past issues, individual pages, odds and ends.

The American Museum of the Moving Image web site The Living Room Candidate hosts a fascinating collection of television derived political ads from 1952 - 2004. Take your pick, from both sides of the spectrum. My interest is in the power of media to drive opinion, and how it's created. See if, by clicking on the thumbnails, you can guess the year the bridge from b&w to color tv was crossed.

Check the preview for the 2000 half-reunion in the PDF Reunion Times, published in 2000 and put together from the '95 event flix. You'll need Adobe Acrobat Reader (free).

We've also posted a FREE! cocoahigh65.com souvenir post card. Encountered on the road out of town after the '00 event, you'll want to send this to all your friends up north. Just a little west of Lone Cabbage - apparently Aunt Martha's brakes didn't quite catch hold in time - and way too appetizing to pass by unrecorded.

July 20, 1969
How time flies. July 20th, 2004 - the day after our official launch - was the 35th anniversary of 1969's Apollo 11 and astronaut Neil Armstrong's first walk on the moon! We were gathered with friends in Gainesville around a b&w portable, listening to Walter Cronkite's broadcast of the event on CBS.

©MMIV/cocoahigh65.com

If It's Monday, It Must Be A New Hurricane…
The local video outlet remains shrouded in ply. Same for the post office over on the beach, only their's is government issue, 4x12, 3/4" variety; heavy as original sin and twice as difficult to get out from under.

top, l to r: handy little PlyLox® cost maybe a farthing to make, sell for $30/bag of 20. Desired effect is achieved by clipping hardware over 1/2" plywood, then just shoving the cut-to-fit board into the window opening, below.

September 13, 2004 I love the smell of fresh, hot plywood just off the press. Stacked to the rafters of the Big Box Warehouse stores, tied down with garden twine to the tops of sagging KIAs, plywood is now the official sub-currency of Florida, a fact the rest of the Gulf states will soon discover. That, along with “Generators Are Our Friends”, “TapCons vs. PlyLox — You Decide!”, and “Eye Wall, Schmy Wall — We're Moving To Idaho!”

And not just any plywood. No. The best entry under brands you can understand is Georgia Pacific's Plytanium®, our pulpwood byproduct protection of choice. Of course, plywood's not for everyone.

A neighbor invested (less than $1,000, more than a case of Corona) in a shiny new set of corrugated aluminum shutters — about five minutes before Ivan's left turn was announced and the block long plywood line disappeared. But that's for two entire windows, mind you, and pay no attention to the mounting holes on the side of his house that resemble a woodpecker's wandering on a bug-infested pine. Crazy stuff, this.

But frankly, we're ready to move on from the Weather Channel All Stars and phraseology like, “shelter in place” and “seek protection NOW!” In short, we have a life. We want it back, even if it means yet even more toenail fungus commercials.

At this point, here's the deal: we consider ourselves (in the Tampa Bay region) real damn lucky. Real. We dodged Charley's bullseye, got grazed a bit by Frances, and looks now like someone else will have to stand in for us with Ivan. But sooner or later…

Susan (Harward) Barwell shares her perspective on the Frances experience — thanks, Susan, for the effort in getting us news we can all relate to; we offer a well thought out Hurricane Tips and Tricks list (also courtesy of Susan); and Ivan gets an update over in the archives. Meanwhile, if anyone knows of classmates needing help or info, let us know if we can help in some way. There's a lot of people hurting out there.

Normally I can cruise right by the hapless opossum, the luckless armadillo, the too brazen raccoon, but it's pretty darn hard to miss a "What's This? An Eight Foot Gator!" laying half out in the highway.

I dunno', I guess I'm just a sucker for tube-topped, dancehall elephant freaks. Like peanut butter snack bars? You can play, and replay, Skippy's homage to computer generated elephants here. (It's a six-meg download, so if you're using a dial-up connection, it could take 30 minutes or more to retrieve.)