50 years since I graduated High School

I was watching a commercial on TV and it was about the Class of 66 in a high school reunion dance.
I thought to myself why would they be featuring a 1966 Class reunion in this advertisement?

Then it hit me. This year it is 50 years since the class of 1966 which was my class. I graduated from a Private school in Santa Fe, New Mexico in May then. I grew up mostly in southern California but because I started dating at 15 and then by 16 was dating a 21 year old girl from my Church then, I grew up sort of too fast. So by 17 I was ready to drop out of high school and get a job (life was much different then than now). So, my parents convinced me to go to our church private school in Santa Fe, New Mexico which I realized was a good idea because I got to ski and get into the snow there and I had a friend there at the school who had a car. (I wasn't allowed to bring my car there at the time). So, at least I had a friend who had a car there. Also, I wouldn't have to work and I could get away from my parents for a year which I thought was great at the time.

Often during the winter we would get then 2 to 3 feet of snow and our school would close and so often we would have snow ball fights and build forts of snow which was great fun because I never got to do this before growing up. Also, there was a great Inner tubing run we used to go there with really big truck inner tubes and slide down hills and fly 5 to 7 feet into the air. The only problem is one time a little 3 year old ran away from his parents and got in front of me. I was going about 30 miles per hour at the time on an inner tube so all I could do was throw him over my head but luckily he landed on his feet behind me. The parents were really apologetic that they let their kid loose but I felt bad because he was crying. There were at least 20 people on truck inner tubes on this run so it was a really dangerous place for a 3 year old to be walking around.

One of the girls who was 16 from Los Angeles like me went into convulsions from an ulcer so I picked her up and carried her to a car so the adults could drive her to the hospital. I was always very strong and 6 foot 4 even at 17. She later became a very good friend of mine and we often rode the train back to Los Angeles together. It was called the El Capitan train then and it had dome cars for a great view in all directions.