Well, this column would neither be written nor posted here; I wouldn’t be writing it, and you wouldn’t be reading it if not for the fact that my parents got married on this date 70 years ago. I felt the need to take personal privilege to mention that as Mother and Daddy, sleeping side by side down in Tyler for more than 30 of those years, are so often mentioned in this column.
In East Tyler, one might say the pine cone doesn’t fall far from the tree. The truth of this adapted old maxim becomes more obvious the longer we live and the more we observe. That said, I sometimes think I didn’t fall from the tree so to speak. I just took the tree with me.
With this milestone coming up, anniversaries and that sort of thing have been on my mind recently. Karl and I have what I think of as a nickel anniversary coming up in January, that being one that ends in a 5. Sort of a mini milestone, if you will, but still an occasion for a thoughtful gift, if you catch my meaning.
Just the other day, an anniversary of a completely different sort hit my radar, and I’ve allowed myself to give this one some not-so-serious thought. But since we seem to be living through some serious times, a diversion seems appropriate.
It was almost 50 years ago that many folks first heard about the worst prom experience in a world full of bad prom experiences. I am speaking of the events at the Bates High School gym that led to the deaths of at least 135 people including students, teachers, and faculty members. A fire broke out at that prom for reasons that might never be clear to anyone who wasn’t there to die in it.
Yes, it has been 50 years since Carrie was first unleashed on the world as a movie, after the publication of the Stephen King novel a couple of years earlier. For our purposes, I will not deal with the subsequent remakes and other adaptations or the book itself, just the gold standard of the franchise that starred Sissy Spacek. She always carried an ethereal quality in most of her acting, but she was downright otherworldly in this one.
While everything seems to move so much faster today, Hollywood was certainly capable of getting things done much more quickly back then. The movie started filming on March 1, 1976, and was released in theaters on November 3. The Academy Award nominations announced on February 10, 1977, included Ms. Spacek as well as Piper Laurie as her mother. How Ms. Laurie didn’t win the award for playing one of the greatest monster mothers of all time is still being debated by Oscar nerds.
But now that I’ve had some time to think about this, I have a few questions. Was it common for high school proms to be held in the gym? I mean, we had sock hops in the gym in my day, but I believe our prom was held at the local Sheraton. Even so, that was not the end all and be all of elegant venues in Tyler at that time. But senior prom was a public event, after all, to which all graduating seniors were invited even though many, if not most, did not attend.
Now this Bates High School looked like a pretty big school, so it seems like a whole bunch of the class of 1976 weren’t at the prom that night. Truth be told, I think almost everyone there was white. So did Sue, who would have been at the prom that night with Tommy if she hadn’t made him take Carrie and thereby put the whole disaster in motion, help organize a reunion for those who survived prom night and the following 50 years? I kind of hope not.
I’d rather think that Sue ended up all right and not tied to that traumatic event. Maybe she went off to that faster paced Hollywood. Maybe she had a Goldilocks little acting career, not too big, not too small. Maybe she even married really well as so often happens to those ladies with not too big, not too small careers. I like the idea of her getting away from thoughts of Carrie’s hand coming out of the grave.
In my denouement, she’s been sitting pretty all these years with her $100 million divorce settlement. Maybe she and Ms. Spacek get together every once in a while to talk over old times.
I’m not going anywhere with this one. Not going to try to tie this to anything going on in the real world that is so unreal. I just hope your attention was diverted for a little bit like mine was when I watched that old movie.
