Shezam! No. 77 on the undefeated Lakeshore High School football team IS 77

Romantic glimpses throughout the Late 20th century.

August 4 – On this life path threshold, I am going to be both narcistic and nostalgic! After the past four months I’ve earned it!

Back in those days from long ago, I was known by team-mates as OZ as in The Wizard of Oz, because I always seemed able to know what the other team’s backs were going to do before they did it. Throughout my time in high school, I never played in a losing game..

Yes, I have the same birthday as actor Billy Bob Thornton and President Barack Obama. Actually, I was supposed to be elected president in 2008, but at the last minute, we discovered that the Okefenokee Swamp was not considered to be part of the USA in 1949.

by Richard L. Thornton, Architect & City Planner

The 1967 hit that was Linda Sue’s and mine “Theme Song”

It was time when young women and men loved “making out” more than anything else . . . but it was practiced with love and tenderness,

Life in the suburbs of Atlanta – 60 years ago

Lakeshore in College Park, GA was a very special high school. It was a new building. My class was the first one to attend 8th grade through 12th grade there. We were all middle class, yet by the time I was a senior, we were the number one academically-rated public high school in Georgia. One of my classmates, Lisa Blackstone, scored a perfect 1600 on the SAT college entrance exam and was named Star Student for the state of Georgia. I had the highest grade point average of all first string high school football players in the Metropolitan Atlanta Area, but over half our first string players were honor graduates. Our football team was the first of five consecutive undefeated seasons, I received a big surprise during our graduation class 20th anniversary party. My former guidance counselor told me that I had achieved the highest ever score in Deductive Reasoning among all Fulton County graduates. Apparently, this was another test, different than the SAT. I did well on the SAT, but nowhere near prefect like Lisa Blackstone.

A visual trip down memory lane to the early days

Sweet Sixteen and the first Junior-Senior Prom

Mary Jane Lowe (L) and Jo Evelyn Kelly (R)were my dear neighborhood friends. Mary Jane is a subscriber to The Americas Revealed. Here we are working on the decorations for the Junior-Senior Prom. Jo Evelyn and I lived very near each other. We went together to the Prom. We had a wonderful time, However, afterward I was inept. She leaned back into my lap for me to kiss her passionately and I froze. I have never forgotten that moment of being the ultimate dumb guy. I was afraid to lose her as a friend. Living so close together, our relationship would have quickly heated up and then her parents would have found us and made us break up . . . or at least that was my delusion.

My Senior Year Girlfriend became a childhood friend’s eternal soulmate

These are photos from the high school yearbook that matched me at a football pep rally with Sue Rex, my girlfriend. “Sexy Rexy” later married one of my fraternity brothers at Georgia Tech. Here is what happened. I did not have a car of my own. When I went off to Tech, it quickly became apparent that I would have very little time to date, even if I could find a ride to the South Metro area to borrow a car from my parents.

Sue was Captain of the cheerleaders her senior year. It would be terribly unfair to make her sit at home so I set her free with a hug. She was able to drive up to the Tech campus a couple of times so we could be together. In the process, she made a big impression of a childhood friend from Gainesville, GA. A couple of years later, he asked about her. I put them in touch with each other. They fell in love and married . . . and are still married!

Christmas Day – Freshman year at Georgia Tech

When home for Christmas Holidays, I called Jo Evelyn to see if she would like to be my model for an over-the-holidays assignment in Freehand Art to sketch a high school sweetheart. That is when I finally told her that I always adored her, but was afraid that if we formally dated, we would eventually break up and no longer be friends. She laughed and said that I would always be her Beaver (Leave It to Beaver TV show.) She invited me to come on Christmas Day afternoon, while her parents were visiting friends . She had a Christ\mas gift for me.

Both of us had changed during the three months of fall quarter. We had known each other as close friends for five years with no unpleasant memories. There was complete trust as we for the first time had significant physical contact. In fact, it became increasing difficult for me to continue the sketching. Just when she was about to present the Christmas gift to me, her parents showed up. Oh, they were delighted to see me and invited me to stay for dinner. However, I don’t think that they would have been very comfortable, if we had not spruced up a bit before they came through the front door.

For the remainder of the holidays, we dated, but both of us were staying in our respective parents’ homes. When back to universities 60 miles apart, neither of us owned cars, so there was no way to see each other in person. We traded the old fashion type of mail for awhile, but I had to work all the time and she was surrounded by 3,063 male students, while there were 28 female students at Georgia Tech. She eventually entered a serious relationship . Jo Evelyn eventually quit school and married to an older man.

Jo Evelyn and her husband owned a dry cleaners near my parent’s house. Through the decades that followed, I would always stop by the dry cleaners to pay platonic visits to her. Her deep smile and twinkling eyes let me know that she also knew that there was something special between us that would problem never come to fruition.

July 1970 – December 1970 – There was instant fireworks when Alicia Rozanes and I first met July 3 at a high school graduation ceremony in Downtown Mexico City. She was a sophomore at the University of Anahuac. We were telepathic with each other, which accelerated the process. Within two weeks, she announced that she had decided that I would be the first one. However, her elaborate “becoming a woman” ceremony, while her mother was in Pueblo, Mexico on business, turned into a comical disaster.

Her evil aunt knocked at the front door at the worst possible moment. I grabbed my clothes and Alicia pushed me into the closet – which was too shallow for the door to close completely. Alicia brilliantly left the door open, so her aunt would not look in it.

When her aunt went upstairs looking for me, I dashed out the rear servant’s entrance. That experience soured me on the relationship, I would be out in the boonies of Mexico for the remainder of July and most of August, She promised me that if I came to see her at Christmas, she would be treated like a 20 year old woman rather than a teeny bopper . That didn’t happen. Nevertheless, it took me decades for the feelings for Alicia to finally atrophy..

July 16, 1970 – I climbed 10,000 ft. Cerro Gordo and looked down at Teotihuacan

Ana at the bar of the Hotel Campeche Night Club

Kidnaping Georgia Gov. Lester Maddox in November 1970

How I got on the cover of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution

We captured Maddox in the State Capitol then whisked him away to the Georgia Tech Campus in the Rambling Wreck. Now that is one way to hitch a ride on Tech’s automotive mascot. We threatened to return him to the Capitol unless state employees filled to office rooms with food for the needy. This operation cleared the way for me to work in the Governor’s Office the following June.

Life in the year 2000

Governor Jimmy Carter is sitting around the fire with his first group of college interns, wearing blue jeans and a flannel shirt.. Our group of “exceptional” college students were supposed to predict what life would be like in the United States in the year 2000. At that time, Apollo missions were regularly going to the Moon, so we assumed that there would be large colonies on the Moon by 2000. War would be a thing of the past.

President Nixon was pushing for a National Healthcare System, so we assumed that by 2000, the USA would have long since joined the civilized world. We totally missed the appearance of FAX machines, the internet, email, personal computers, cellular phones and CADD./. I had no clue that in the three days after the retreat, two friends and I were become castaways on an Atlantic island for two weeks.

One Swedish Summer Long Ago

Agnetha Fältskog

I first danced to Agnetha and Anni-Frid at the the Midsommarsfest Dance at Lund University. It was sponsored by the College Division of the Center Political Party, of which my official “Swedish tour guide” was president. For this dance, they were lead singers for a popular Swedish Rock band that copied the American Rock group, “Chicago.” The band had a weekly show on Sveriges TV1 without the two gals. After the dance, the band, my three Swedish friends and I drove over to a waterfront restaurant in Malmö, Sweden for a Midnight Sun dinner.

Agneta Fältskog is Jo Evelyn’s twin . . .The dumb things young folks say . . . and learning the dark secrets of ABBA two years before there was an ABBA

Agnetha and Anni-Frid initially were siting besides each other near the other band members at the far end of a very long restaurant table. She perked up when she heard someone say that I arrived from America two weeks earlier and was just learning Swedish. Soon she got up and walked over to front of me and asked in hesitating English if xhe could sit across from me. At this point Britt Louis Manson considered herself only a tour guide and dating service. She introduced me in Swedish. I noticed that she added that I was much more a gentleman than typical American men. (Agnetha at that time in her life liked to wear pigtails, but that night she had long shoulder length hair like Jo Evelyn’s in December 1967.)

So what would the dashing young architect from Atlanta first say to the future international icon? “You look just like Jo Evelyn Kelly! Well, the truth was that Agnetha and Jo Evelyn DID look identical, when they were laughing, Compare the photo on the right with the photo above of Jo Evelyn painting Prom decorations. However, Agnetha looked confused at first, then asked me, “Is she a famous America singer?

I tried to explain that Jo Evelyn was a dear neighborhood friend, not a lover, who I had not seen in 5 1/2 years, She didn’t believe me, and didn’t seem to care. You see neither Agnetha nor Anni-Frid were wearing wedding rings. I would not know until 2022 that both young ladies were married, when I met them. It is obvious that the marriages in ABBA were intended to provide two pretty and talented singers in order to further the careers of two men, who were talented song-writers, but had voices like chipmunks. The original name of ABBA was “Bjorn, Benny and the Swedish Girls.”

She introduced herself in English and said that she planned to move to America soon, so she could sing on Broadway. We tried to carry on a conversation, but there were too many people speaking too many languages. She asked if we could move to a separate table for two. I said,”Jagvsst!” (and thought, “Sweden, what a country.”

When I stood up, Agneta smiled and said, “You are very tall! that is good. My former boyfriend, Bjorn is short. Whenever we went out, he wore 15 cm (6 inch) platform shoes. How tall are you?”

I answered, “191,5 cm” (6′-3″) She giggled, “I am 171 cm. That would be interesting . . . beomg wotj a tall, strong man like you. Bjorn tells people that he is taller then me, but he is really much shorter. “

That is a dirty little secret, which the international media, even the many postings on YouTube have missed. The description in Wikipedia and many other websites of Björn Ulvaeus being 5′-9″ tall are lies. He is 5′-3″ or perhaps shorter. In most concerts, beginning with “Saturday Night Live” in November 1975, Bjorn hid his legs behind speakers or musical instruments. In the few occassions when his legs were exposed on stage, the cameramen were instructed to not focus on his feet.

A wonderful day on Ven Island, Sweden with Britt Louise Manson – July 1972. Britt initially considered herself to be my official tour guide and dating service. By mid-July, she confessed that she was becoming jealous of the Swedish flickas, whom she was setting me up with. I actually had much more in common with Britt than any of her friends, like Agnetha, whom she introduced me to. I am certain that Britt did not know that Agnetha was married.

The Oresund Channel separates Sweden from Denmark

August 1972 – Over 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle in Lapland with Joana

Sketch made on my first day of work as Director of the Downtown Revitalization Program

The farm in the Reems Creek Valley near Asheville around 1984

Dec. 19, 1990 – Vivi in the Old Summer Kitchen in the Colonial Era house on Toms Brook Vivi’s only hit record in the United States was a remake of the Spanish song, “Eres Tu”. She is fluent in Spanish because one of her grandmothers was a Tamulte Maya from Tabasco State, Mexico. Vivi was the only woman, I was in love with, who was truly interested in what I did . . . architecture, Mesoamerican archaeology, ceramics, farming and nature.

We still dream about each other from time time and consider each other eternal soulmates. A psychic told Vivi in 2020 that she and I had once been husband and wife in Pre-Columbian Southern Mexico and we would marry again in the future. The weird thing is that we carry almost identical Native American DNA. Vivi was turning 27 the night I met her. Both she and my mother were born on December 16. It would be years later, when I realized that she and my mother could have passed as twins at age 27.

Susan . . . the Swedish Friend With Benefits

. . . who inspired the X-Files

Our second meeting was on my farm in the Shenandoah Valley. She led me to the center of the pasture, adjacent to my house. There she anointed my head with holy oil from Israel then tranferred some of that oil to her head. She then performed an ancient Hebrew royal marriage ceremony. Not your usual second date. Well, I guess you would say that in God’s eye, she was more than a friend with benefits.

We first met at the Wendy’s Restaurant in Front Royal, Virginia on June 21, 1991. Vivi encouraged the relationship, The two gals became friends and even signed a legal contract stating that either one of them died, the other would raise the children they had with me. The contract was signed in Harpers Ferry, overlooking the Shenandoah River.

When I wrote The Shenandoah Chronicles in 2021, I assumed that Susan had been killed in action overseas in June 2006. Two years later, I learned that she was alive. A few months later she briefly stopped by my home, but told me nothing in regard to where she now lived, who she worked for or what her current name is. I have a feeling that we will see each other again. We have so many shared romantic memories.

It Was a Very Good Year