OCOEE – Memories of my hometown are still in black and white, just like our Class of 1975 photo.

Miles of orange groves have been paved over by concrete, apartment complexes and progress. The old barn where the boys in my graduating class of 50 years ago met on cold nights, when we might be needed to light smudge pots to keep orange trees alive, is now a Walmart. The car wash where we rinsed off our cars after racing in the mud is a Sonny’s. The woods where we used to make out with our dates is a shopping mall.

The massive cemetery on Old Winter Garden Road, Woodlawn Cemetery, is now hidden among housing developments. Blink and you’ll miss several thousand graves, including those of my mother, painter Bob Ross, and baseball players Tim Crews and Mike Cuellar.

Ocoee High closed the day we received our diplomas. We said we were “the last class with class.” Ocoee and its bitter rival, Lakeview, which was about four miles away across the tracks – literally – combined to create West Orange. My sister was in the first graduating class of West Orange – and the first Homecoming Queen. I still have a photo of me standing on the sideline that night wearing a lime green leisure suit. I’m thankful that’s in black and white, too.

When I graduated, the City of Ocoee had two traffic lights, a Hardee’s, a Tastee Swirl ice cream shop, two gas stations and a Boogaarts grocery store. Tastee Swirl relocated 40 feet to a different part of the parking lot. Boogaarts is boarded up. There are at least 25 gas stations, 15 hamburger joints, eight shopping strip centers and crime.

I was a tourist in my hometown.

The only common denominators of my return were my classmates. The more we talked, the more we remembered. We shared the most minor details, especially of the classmates we’ve lost.

Although most of us have been separated by 50 years, time didn’t erase our memories. Perhaps the plaid bell-bottom pants, long sideburns, lack of air-conditioned classrooms, and dress codes that required girls to wear dresses no higher than two inches above the knee and boys to wear sleeved shirts, made an impact.

We remembered getting paddled for not doing homework. We laughed about not having cellphones and beepers. Boys bragged about having a shotgun on a rack in the back window of a pickup truck – and nobody was concerned.

We missed those days. We missed each other. Life took all of us down different roads, some more bumpy than others, but it eventually led us back to the same spot 50 years later.

I think we all regretted waiting 50 years for the reunion. We all realized how much we cared about each other and how much we missed reminiscing.

They can change the city, pave it over with progress, but they can never change the friendships forged by the Ocoee Class of 1975. I can’t wait to meet again – sooner than later.