I loved my high school.  Good old New Trier in Winnetka, Illinois.  I mean, I really loved it all.

From advisory (home room to you un New Trier people) to study hall, I relished every moment of it.

WNTH (our radio station), the swim team, (some of my beaux), the mobile classrooms, the crowds (the reason we needed mobile classrooms in the first place. My class alone was 1200 out of the 4700 students), everything about New Trier resonated loud and clear with me.

I bet I had three sick days total in four years.  I just hated missing out on anything that was going on in school that day.  It was where the action was.  And to say that I was proud to be a Trevian was an understatement.

At the age of thirteen, New Trier gave me an identity beyond my immediate family.  I was part of something larger now- an entity that didn’t believe in divisive, superficial things like prom queens, homecoming court or high school fraternities and sororities.

New Trier had great academic and sports tradition, and a belief in itself as a place where great teachers molded future generations of movers and shakers.

And a preppy dress code that suited me down to the ground.

Weejuns, wheat jeans, Gant shirts for boys, Villager, Lanz, nothing blouses, circle pins, John Romaine purses and Betty’s of Winnetka for girls.

I had a blast.

Good grades and good boyfriends.  Homecoming motorcades (although my buddy, Steve Gersten, did get the entire caravan lost on its way to Hinsdale), proms, Choraliers (my voice wasn’t good enough for Musettes) Lagniappe, Inklings (our literary magazine. I don’t think my poetry was good enough for that, either) honor roll (with three A’s- and a D.  When I went in to take the senior year honor roll picture for “Echoes,” our yearbook, I got a standing ovation.  Very few people made honor roll with a D on their transcript.)

Every day there was terrific.  And it’s easy to see why I get nostalgic at the sight of the old place.

So it was surefire that when I found a group on Facebook called “You lived on Chicago’s North Shore if you remember…”  (courtesy of my sister-in-law Mary Lu, former pom pom girl and 2015 inductee in New Trier’s Hall of Honor) that I would jump in with both feet.

The group was started by John Yager and Terry Winkless.  Both ahead of me at New Trier and both, I remember, very cute.  They had moved away from Chicago- John lives in Cali and Terry in Canada now-  and they had this brilliant inspiration to reach out to people all over the world who felt the same way about spending their childhood on the North Shore as they did.

They guessed right.  The group has over 1800 members now and is growing every day.  And it’s fun.

It’s a fab way to reconnect with long-lost friends- and make some new ones.

Old photos of long ago icons like the Teatro and Glencoe movie theaters are put up.  Guys and gals wax nostalgic about Silver Dollar Surveys and their favorite slow dance songs. Wilmette Beach pics are posted, thoughts about beloved homes now torn down in the name of McMansions are aired, nostalgia runs high.

I started a whole discussion with one word.

“Madras.”

And members contribute precious memories and photos of long-saved beloved icons. Like this:

That’s John Yager’s old assignment notebook.

And he brought it along when we had lunch in Los Angeles.  He had come from out Pasadena way just to show me his town.

Over lunch we reminisced, of course, about our beloved high school and how and why we still felt to passionately about it- and its alumni.  We both came to the same conclusion that we felt a bond, a kinship of spirit, with all who had gone there.

“It’s like shorthand,” John said.  “It just saves so much time with all the cultural references and stuff.  You know they’re going to get them.”

“And have the same core values, too,” I chimed in.

(I know this is a sweeping generalization.  I’m sure if you try hard enough, you can come up with New Trier alums who have done awful things.  But as for myself, I prefer to remember all the fabulous kids who went there.)

When lunch was over, John graciously offered me my pick of tours.  I’ve spent a lot of time in L.A. but I had never been to the Greystone Mansion off Sunset in Beverly Hills.  So off we roared.

It was built by the Doheny oil baron of There will Be Blood fame. (For those of you who aren’t familiar with this landmark, click here.)

And it was spectacular.  A huge Norman castle with battlements, turrets, flagstone paving and black and white marble floors.

And landscaped gardens to die for.  I could have moved in happily in a heartbeat.

I was busy snapping away with my iPhone, but John is a gifted photographer who actually brought a CAMERA.  And when I remarked that the lily pond put me in mind of Giverney…

Voilà!

A very nice hommage to Monet, courtesy of John.

And also courtesy of New Trier- and the loyalty we still feel towards it.

“Here’s to our team, they’re the green and the gray…

Rah Rah for old New Trier.”

That Beach Boy’s hit came out in 1963, btw. The same year I entered New Trier.

And if you’d like to see how the Beach Boys- and all the rest of us- looked back then, check this out.

See you in the rotunda.

Hi, everybody.  I’m back!  Fresh off a whirlwind trip to sunny Palm Springs and trendy L.A.  And I had a ball.  From takeoff to touchdown, the trip was a blast.  Tons of fun, friends, family- and food.

And a wedding.  OMG.  The Wedding of The Century.

JICYMI click here.

Did you miss me?  I missed all of you.  And good news.  While I was on vacay, the tech issues between Youtube and Google or whatever have been resolved, and once again, you can watch all my clips on whatever device you chose.  Yeah!

And now, lots of nifty things to tell you about so, “Let’s start at the very beginning.  That’s a very good place to start….”

I flew out to Cali with my brother Kenny and my sister-in-law Mary Lu.  We were  all going to the above wedding weekend, and we were supposed to be sitting together.

But when we convened at O’Hare and looked at our boarding passes, their seats were in row 8.  And I was assigned seat 37C.

Ick.

Aka “the back of the bus.”

“What happened?” I whined.  “When I looked at the reservation we were all together.  I hate bad seats.”

“Don’t worry.  I’ll handle it,” soothed my million-miler, million dollar brother.

So we all adjourned to the Red Carpet Club where Kenny worked his charm on the powers of seating and came back bearing a boarding pass that read “7E.”

“That’s better than our seats!” exclaimed Mary Lu.

And it was.  The bulkhead in Economy Plus. Now I had just as much room as First Class. (My second-favorite seating arrangement.  My first is what is known as “private aviation.” The ONLY way to fly.)

Private Aviation Sidebar:  If you ever get the opportunity to hitch a ride in someone’s plane, say “YES.”  No lines, no hassle, the time you save, the snotty frisson you get knowing that while the rest of the poor schnooks are stuck in some germ-ridden, kid-screaming, baggage-loosing aviation hell, you are blissfully winging your way quickly to a secluded tarmac where your car awaits you- usually already washed.

Back to reality.

When we boarded the plane I checked out my seat mates.  I was in the middle, after all.

The guy on my right?  Unremarkable.  Working industriously away on a laptop.  And everything about this guy screamed “married.”

To my left was another story.

Nerdy-but-cute, and smiling at me.

Okay.  Let the games begin.

As the rest of the plane trooped in, we made small talk.  He had his Ph.D from M.I.T. and he had just moved from Boston to teach at the U. of C.

Marketing.

Okay again.

This was going to be a nice flight.  By his questions, I could see that he was not adverse to my company.  Believe it or not, I’m pretty mellow on a plane.  In fact, I make it a rule to shut up and read or do crosswords or sleep.  I don’t engage my Up In The Air neighbors in small talk.

But I was in a festive, devil may care, pre-wedding mood, and this guy’s encouraging glances were enough for me to think about breaking my rule.

I was just thinking up some good blog-marketing questions when the flight attendant loomed into view.

“Can I move you, please?  This gentleman wants to change seats, and there is nowhere else.”

I glanced over to the across-the-aisle, middle seat she was pointing to.

I wasn’t feeling the move.

“Uh, do I have to?” I asked.  And spurred on by the disappointed look on Dr. Marketing’s face, I added, “I’m pretty happy here.”

“No, you don’t have to,” she conceded.  “But it would really be appreciated.”

“Just do it already, Ellen,” chimed in Kenny from the row behind me.  “Maybe there’s a free muffin in it for you.”

I moved.  But not because of the free muffin.  I just couldn’t take the pressure of all eyes in the row watching to see what I would do.

Now, in my new location, I was stuck in between a young guy in fingerless gloves wearing a hoodie wailing away on his iPhone, and a older woman who was reading a Kindle.

Not a good upgrade.

Oh well.

“I was supposed to be over there,” the guy in the hoodie said.  “You would have been seated next to me no matter what.”  And he smiled apologetically.

I felt bad.

“Yeah, I guess it was Kismet or Karma or fate that we were destined to be neighbors, after all.”

Hoodie Guy turned out to be terrific.  He was originally from Bloomington, Indiana- which led to all sorts of fun Breaking Away associations.  His sister is Quentin Tarrantino’s casting director- which led to the great Pulp Fiction reminiscences.

We talked about his new start up, and touched briefly on our romance problems.  He laughed when I told him about the pitfalls of dating- or not- at my age. (He was the same age as my son, Nick.)

He told me that he appreciated my honesty when I told him, that as the shallowest person on earth, I am only interested in tall, great-looking men with awesome cars.

He countered by telling me that his dad was the original broker on Steve McQueen’s Porsche, (drool) and that he was going to be doing some car racing in Cali when he went out to visit casting director Sis.

Then he told me that he had been up all night to make this flight, and he wanted to catch some z’s. No problem for me.  I had a Friday New York Times, and the crossword was just burning a hole in my paper.

I went to work and he went to sleep.  Right before the landing he awoke with a start.  He turned to me with a smile.

“It was great meeting you.  You really made my trip go faster.  And it’s the strangest thing. I never talk to people on planes.  But I felt a real connection with you.  A vibe.  It was actually really weird.”

“Yep, it was nice meeting you, too,” I said truthfully.  “Have a great time in Cali.  Uh, and I’m Ellen.”

“You have a great time, too, Ellen,” he said as he shook my hand good bye.

“And by the way, my name is Benedict.”