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	Earth and Her Moon	In the spring of 1959, in the Milky Way Galaxy, on the third rock from a medium-sized star, in a flat, West Texas land with infinite sky but only one skyscraper, somebody played Pomp and Circumstance, our parents and the faculty and administrators of Monterey got misty-eyed with pride, sighed with relief . . . and we graduated!
	Got it!	Eisenhower was president. Route 66 was America's "mother road," but interstate highways were still only a concept. Cars were made in America and had fins and lots of chrome. Gas was 19 cents a gallon. Neither of Lubbock's two television stations broadcast in color. Not only were we not thinking seriously about putting a man on the moon within 10 years, we were still watching U.S. rockets ignite, topple and self-destruct on their launch pads. Castro had taken over Cuba in January. He was a peculiar man and we didn't know exactly what to think of him, but our fathers still smoked Cuban cigars. Many of us had never heard of Viet Nam. Those who had still assumed that any problems there were not our problems. The Empire State Building was the tallest building in the world, and Clark Kent could easily find phone booths in which to change into Superman. We did not use the term "PC" to mean "personal computer." We didn't even use it to mean "politically correct." Both concepts were foreign to us.
	Our Buddy	Lubbock High School grad Buddy Holly's plane had crashed in a field in Wisconsin four months earlier and, "The music died." Some of us had known him when he was Buddy Holley. A lot of us had seen him at the skating rink and bought his 45s. None of us had any idea of the impact the boy from Lubbock would have on world culture. We knew about Mac Davis and Ralna English. The rest of the country didn't but they would soon enough. Lloyd Maines, father of Natalie, was only eight years old.
	Barry Corbin	Over at Monterey, Barry Corbin—who would become one of the most prolific character actors of our age in both movies and television—and Al (Buzz) Strehli—who as a composer in genres from C&W to classical would set his own beautiful poetry to his own beautiful music for others to perform—graduated with us that day. So did Jane Wylie Aebersold, whose stunning ceramics are in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the New Orleans Museum of Art and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London among many.
	Sacagawea	We left behind us in the classes of '61 and '62, the incredible talent of a renaissance man with a West Texas twang, artist/designer/architect/ writer/composer/performer Terry Allen, his future wife actress/playwright Jo Harvey Koontz, as well as Jimmie Dale Gilmore who would become famous on his own as well as one of the three boys who would become a C&W legend as "The Flatlanders." (The second and third Flatlanders, Joe Ely and Butch Hancock, were still in junior high, but they, too would graduate from Monterey.) A girl named Glenna Maxey had graduated at the end of our sophomore year. Eventually she would meet a man named Goodacre, and with his name added to hers be nationally recognized for making a lot of very good art, including the Women's Vietnam Memorial in Washington D.C., the bas relief of Sacagawea on the U.S. golden dollar coin, the huge monument to the Irish immigration in Philadelphia and the sculpture garden near the University Ave. entrance to Texas Tech University. As an irrelevant footnote to her prodigious talent, we note that she is mother of Victoria's Secret model Jill Goodacre and therefore mother-in-law of actor/musician Harry Connick, Jr.
If they didn't look like ducks, or quack like ducks, or fly like ducks, why are we supposed to believe they were ducks?		It is amazing that so many remarkably creative people came out of a relatively small, extraordinarily conservative city in a profoundly inhospitable climate in so short a time. It is a phenomenon frequently discussed, especially among Lubbock expatriates. Theories include: The flying saucers sprinkled us with stardust. Something in the water turned our teeth brown but aligned our creative souls with the universe. There is nothing else to do in Lubbock except make art or play music to keep from going crazy. And, of course, there's the old if Buddy could do it I could, too, thing. All silly, of course. But still, there is was then and may still be something going on in Lubbock that nobody has adequately explained.
On, ye mighty Plainsmen, Show them Monterey is here!		That said, for this 50th anniversary of the graduation of some of the best looking, cleverest, handsomest, wittiest, hardest working, hardest playing, smartest, bravest, most loyal people on the face of the earth,* we want to celebrate all of us, not just the ones who had agents and publicists and publishers. To do this well, we will need your help. Email us and let us know what you're up to these days. Write us a letter. Write us an essay. Send us your picture and you, too, can be on the "Show and Tell" page of this site. If you have a web page, give us the address. Pick up the phone and call one of the committee chairs. Send us a smoke signal, but get in touch with us, please. This is your website, and your input is critical to its success. In return for your help we will keep adding pictures, stories, links we think you will love, anecdotes, random musings, maybe even some music if we can get permission. Add us to your "Favorites" and check back often. *Among our stellar group there is at least one professional copywriter/public relations representative/publicist/ humorist and consummate B.S. artist.