There was only going to be one 63rd reunion of the Biddeford High Class of 1946 so Mary and I made a quick trip to Maine last week, flying up on Tuesday, attending the reunion at noon on Wednesday and flying back, to Baltimore/Washington International, on Thursday.

    It was worth the trip, seeing old friends and classmates at what was generally conceded could well be the last of these reunions.

    There were 52 in the class. Fourteen members attended. That’s about 27%.

    The chief organizer of the event, Priscilla Garnache Kelley, used pictures from the 1946 yearbook to show on three panels who was coming, who could not come for various reasons and who had died. It happened that one class member, who had planned to come, had a slight heart attack six days before the reunion and died two days after his classmates met.

    Those who were there enjoyed talking and remembering old times, with Emmett Polk the master of ceremonies because he keeps in telephone contact with nearly everyone in the class.

    Though it was not mentioned, a gathering like this illustrates one of the problems in devising a national health program that is both effective and affordable. It’s well known that as people reach old age, and early 80s does qualify for that designation, the expenses for health care go up. One feisty classmate mentioned she had survived 19 operations along with illnesses, and she was still pointing toward reaching the age of 90.

    How many survivors in the class, including me, would not have made the happy get-together were it not for the advances in U.S. medicine in recent years?

    *****

    While the reunion was actually at a small inn on the ocean at Old Orchard Beach, about five miles from Biddeford, I managed to make the trip more exciting by missing the right route three times. First it was at BWI, where somehow I didn’t make the right turn to find the long-term parking area, something I have managed to find on previous occasions. Were it not for a very kind guy I asked for directions actually leading the way to my goal we would have missed the plane.

    Then, after the hour and a quarter flight to Portland, a wrong turn after picking up a rental car found us deep in the hilly interior of Maine before there was a reasonable place to turn around. Interesting scenery, but that wasn’t the intention of the ride.

    And leaving BWI there was a sign that indicated straight ahead at a Y intersection; of course with a 50/50 chance of getting it right, I got it wrong. Solving that mistake was only a matter of a few minutes, however.

    Mary brings up getting lost as the first comment about the trip.

    One other thing about the rental car. The rate was high — I could have been making a down payment on the vehicle — and I asked the young lady handling the rental if these were the usual rates.

    “Oh yes,” she said, and after a pause in a lower tone, “at this time of year.”

    The summer season in Maine is delightful but it is also very short. Prices reflect that fact.

    *****

    Delaware’s Joe Biden had made it clear to President Obama early on he wanted to be present at any significant meeting. So there he was, a bit of a surprise nevertheless, at the Great Beer Sitdown of 2009, as future historians might record the occasion.

    The meeting around a small table in the Rose Garden was intended to relieve the tension concerning the arrest of Henry Louis “Skip” Gates Jr. by Sgt. James Crowley, an incident that was sharply escalated as a news story by the president’s referral to it as showing the police “acted stupidly.”

    The meeting did seem to change the atmosphere, although perhaps not the minds of the key players.

    But what kind of beer did the four men choose? Gates drank a Boston beer, Sam Adams Light. Crowley chose Blue Moon. Obama picked Bud Light.

    And our Joe? A news story in the Washington Post noted that Biden, “a lifelong teetotaler, requested Buckler, a nonalcoholic beer.”

    *****

    I’m sure you have seen the news coverage about how the federal “clunker” program has pushed up sharply the sale of new cars with better gas mileage than the cars being turned in. A clunker trade is worth up to $4,500.

    The idea has been so successful that a billion dollars set aside for the program was quickly exhausted, causing the House of Representatives to okay another two billion to keep the spurt in car sales rolling along. The Senate now has to agree.

    Admittedly, there is not universal approval of this approach, Republicans in particular have said, in effect, why not extend the idea to all kinds of big ticket items?

    Daughter Mary Kaltreider pointed out to me that what makes the involvement of car dealers different is that almost all car dealerships are local enterprises, mostly family owned, and the sales generated produce income which is quickly spent locally for the most part.

    Big ticket purchases of things like TVs, refrigerators and other household appliances almost always, on the other hand, involve major national chains.

    That’s something to think about.

    *****

    A couple of daily papers I have seen in the past day or two have carried a brief news story with a Washington dateline and this first sentence:

    “President Barack Obama’s treasury secretary said Sunday he cannot rule out higher taxes to help tame an exploding budget deficit, and his chief economic advisor would not dismiss raising them on middle-class Americans as part of a health care overhaul.”

    Just that one sentence scares me.

    *****

    A beggar walks up to a well-dressed woman shopping on an expensive Hollywood street and says: “I haven’t eaten anything in four days.”

    She looks at him and says, “Wow, I wish I had your willpower!”