Pali High Class of ’64 Celebrates 50 Year Reunion

Graduates of Palisades High School Class of ’64 celebrated their 50th reunion with “Back to the Pali Quad” picnic on June 15. Alumni gathered to enjoy a classic car show, ’60s music and an art show while exchanging memorabilia and yearbooks from their graduation year. In the spirit of mischief and nostalgia, several of the senior class pranksters took the chance to re-enact a prank that went awry so many years ago.

Pali High gained fame from a best-selling book about the class of ‘65 (whatever ever happened to them anyway?). But we were there first, the Spartans of ‘64, the first class to go through all grades in the new school. We were ragged but cool, as pioneers often are. In town this past weekend for our 50th Reunion, it was clear we baby boomers who made history in the 1960s are still going strong.

Here is the story of a world-class senior prank that almost worked – like many of the aspirations of our generation – and finally found “consummation” 50 years later.

In the spring of 1964, seniors Mike Buettell (“Tane”) and Lowell Turner (“Lanny the Limp”) came up with the harebrained idea of putting tires over the flagpole.

They rounded up eight testosterone-driven classmates to join the campaign: Bill McGowan (“Memo”), Jim Reinsch, Dave Westin, Bill Delemeter, Alex Burton, Rocky Knickerbocker, Rich Moss, and whoever else we may be forgetting.

Buettell and Turner built a wooden tire-holder that clipped onto the flagpole rope. In May the machine was tested, late at night, on the football field flagpole; and it almost worked. Dave Westin took the machine home, added ropes and honed it to perfection. In the meantime, the crew rounded up 20 old tires from behind gas stations to hide in the bushes across from the school.

A written plan was circulated: 10 “commandos,” each with specific instructions, an exercise in military precision. There were lookouts, tire haulers, rope pullers, a “circuit breaker guy” and a towel man. (Back in 1961, during Pali construction, “someone” found keys to the circuit breaker boxes outside each classroom. The circuit breaker guy’s job was to open each box and flip the breakers so no lights could come on. The towel guy had a stack of gym towels to stuff inside the hallway bells so no one would hear them when they went off (security was primitive in those days).

So on a dark night in June 1964 these senior pranksters – dressed in black, carbon paper rubbed on faces – gathered at midnight in the underpass tunnel. The team was there, excited, chomping at the bit – until an uninvited guest showed up. Westin’s father caught him leaving the house and came to investigate. Dave was a smart guy, but a believable excuse for sneaking out at midnight, dressed like a ninja, hauling a large cross-like contraption in the back of the family car eluded him at that moment. Old man Westin said we were committing malicious mischief, breaking a few other laws, and who knew if we would graduate. A life of ruin loomed over our scheme. Not yet battle-hardened, we left tires in the underpass and went home.

But that’s history, now to the present – June 14, 2014, the night of our 50th class reunion at The Beach Club. After a few drinks and some hot dancing to prove to ourselves that we were not yet over the hill, three better-not-to-be-named Spartans drove to Pali for the re-enactment. With the car parked recklessly on the street, two motorcycle tires were hauled up the flagpole and padlocked in place and two other tires were hung here and there, along with a class of ’64 banner strung up high – narratives of the earlier foiled attempt posted around with duct tape – in place and ready for the all-class picnic of Sunday, June 15.

Smooth as aging silk, we were so cool on Saturday night, until we returned to the car to find the hatchback and driver’s-side doors left wide open – a “here-we-are, come-and-get-us” call if ever there was one. Cars drove by, but no patrols, and with high-fives all around we drove off into the night.

This 50-year anniversary consummation of our foiled prank is dedicated to fallen comrades Jim Reinsch (rope puller) and Bill McGowan (tire hauler) and to the mighty Spartan class of 1964.

Editors note: When Palisades High was first formed, the class of ’64 had two classes; a winter graduating class and a summer graduating class. The summer graduates elected to call themselves the Spartans while the winter graduates opted to be known as the Phoenicians.