Blue Ridge High School (CUSD 18) Class of 2001 Senior Prophecies

Since I never went to the senior prom for my graduating class, I never got to hear the entire set of senior prophecies. I was vaguely aware that I was in them somewhere, as someone told me that I'd been portrayed as updating the cash registers at the local grocery store with "new and improved computer technology". (Well, they weren't too far off. I did work there for a while and I even set up a laser printer there once.)

I figured that this had been lost to the sands of time long ago--after all, who would care to save a copy about eight years on? Who (other than myself) would still be using the same computer? (This document was written toward the end of 2009.) Turns out I pulled over one day to pick up a computer balanced on the edge of a dumpster. The power supply proved to be bad, but the computer itself and its hard drive were fine. And to my complete amazement, the complete set of Senior Prophecies was on this computer.

They are presented below in unedited form for your viewing enjoyment. I have nothing to say here, because I'm too busy being amazed. Seriously, what were the odds?

Some of these turned out to be pretty close to the mark. Others didn't. And still more of them name people that I haven't heard from or about since the graduation.

If you graduated from the Blue Ridge High School Class of 2001 and happen to find this, I'd love to hear from you. Thanks.


SENIOR PROPHECIES

    2011 and still living in Farmer City.  With nothing else to do, the bank parking lot was about the only option.   While we were reminiscing about  the past, ironically, Craig Hethke came along in his Red Chevy Nova.  Being the friendly person that he is, Craig stopped by to say "hi".  He told us that he had just talked to Seth King and that he was supposed to help round everyone up for the class reunion of 2001, which would be taking place in a couple of weeks.   To make our Friday night a little more exciting, we  decided to help Craig find the class of 2001, by taking a road trip around the US  Before we began our excursion, we went to see what was going on at the oh so exciting races.  As the winning driver stepped out of his car to claim his $1,000 prize, we exclaimed in unison, "Oh my goodness, its Craig Noble!"  Amongst the pit crew that came out to congratulate him was Chuck Riblet.  We went and flagged them down to tell them to hop in the Nova and to join us on our quest to Chicago.  "That's perfect, since I was heading there anyway to coach first base for the Cubs game tomorrow," said Craig.
 
     We got to the game just in time to hear Brent Salyards leading the crowd in "Take Me Out to the Ball game".   He was a great imitator of Harry Carry.  While we were in line waiting to buy peanuts, we glanced at the T.V to find it was Seth King announcing the game on ESPN.  As we returned to our seats, we spotted someone we knew out in center field.  "It's a bird, it's a plane, NO, it's Curt Burton!"  As Curt was trying to figure out who was shouting his name, he got pegged in the head with the baseball.  Before we knew it, here came Laura Hocker running out onto the field with her sports medicine degree.  Not too far behind her was Bethany Lee in the ambulance.  They checked Curt out and Bethany said he would have to miss the rest of this game.  This worked out great for us since we needed to take them with us to find everyone else.  We were getting a little crowded in the Nova so Brent offered to take the "Corse".  We were off to New York with a new car load of people.

    On our way we saw a bus broken down on the side of the road.  Come to find out, Dut Basham was driving the N*SYNC tour bus with Kati Anderson as a roadie and Jessi Sheild as the fashion designer.  All they needed was to recharge their battery, so we got out the jumper cables.  To get a little extra cash, we sold Craig and Brent's cars and all hopped on the bus.  We finally arrived in New York City.  We had some down time, so we decided to catch a Broadway show.  Much to our surprise, out came Gibby Kirby and Luke Thomas.  We finished watching the show and then told them to come with us to find the rest of the crew.  We were headed to Vermont when out of nowhere we see someone walking along the road.  We usually don't pick up hitchhikers, but we decided to go with our instinct on this one.  It turned out to be beneficial for us because the man was Nick Bateman.  When we got to Vermont we found the location of the school in which Michelle Holstein and her sidekick Amanda Harman were teaching Preschool. On our way out we stopped by the ag shop, only to find Jessica Bottles trying not to get her beautiful hair caught in the conveyer belt on a machine.  Next, we  were going to Maine to have a look, when out of nowhere some crazy driver eating KFC chicken ran into us.  Oh my, I think that's Andrew Smith!  Here comes another ticket!  I guess we'll have to go to the collision repair shop.  When we got there it was our good friends Travis Shoudel and Mark Vanderwarf working.  I bet they will give us a good deal. 

While in Maine, we stumbled upon two familiar faces at a coffee shop.  The voice reading the poem sounded familiar.  Who would have known, it was Katie Mecum and close by was her publicist Ashley Rudisill.  We are now on our way with five new passengers and are headed to Georgia.  We decided our tunes and upholstery weren't hip enough.  We heard Josh Moody and Blake Young are in the stereo equipment business and maybe before we get them on board they will "modernize" our bus for a better ride.  After they fixed us up we were headed to Florida.  As we arrived in Ft. Lauderdale, we planned for a fun afternoon at the golf course.  We went to buy some snacks when out of nowhere came Adam Hawkins.  He said that he had been running his own golf resort for about a year now and that Jessica Hoffman had just got done winning the LPGA tour.  He also told us that Brant Hendricks was out playing a round of nine and that he would be in shortly.  So we waited for him and then were off to find the remaining classmates. 

On our way to Tennessee we stopped by the mall to pick up some things.  When we ran into Bobbi Davis.  After our trip to the mall we decided to catch some WWF action.  In the ring, we spotted Bryce Walters. Apparently he had become a famous wrestler.   As the match started and the referees were being announced we heard them say that Jason Maxwell was refereeing Beavis's match.  When the match was over we loaded up the bus and hit the road heading to California.  On the way we saw signs for a circus a few miles down the road.  While we were there, we happened to notice that the lion tamers looked familiar.  We finally realized it was Sheena X [ed. actual surname of Burton], Caroline Fernald, and Molly Hart with their whips they made in art years ago.  They were extremely extremely excited about going on our adventure.  Everyone was exhausted, so we decided to stop at a little motel that was by the side of the road.  The first person we saw was Nilay Patel who was carrying on the family business of owning his own motel. 

We turned on the news only to find Jacob Foulks and Matt Plunk were labeled as the next Bill Gates on CNN Live.  We called them up and they told us they'd meet us in California with their private jets which were designed by aeronautical engineer Pete Walsh.  We stayed the night there, and the next day Nilay joined us on our trip.  Still  on our way toward California we saw a river, so we decided to go fishing.  On the path to the river, we noticed a van.  As we looked in it we discovered it was Mandy Cupp, Kenna Dunlap, and Briana Harvey.  Since high school, they had been living in a van down by the river.  Kenna was still "the hottest thing to ever hit this town."  There was something whimpering in the grass next to the van.  Come to find out it was an injured rabbit.  We took it to the nearest vet.  Strange, but true it was Ashley Baxter.  She nursed the rabbit back to health and we were on the road again. 

We heard that due to Eric Zimmerman's outstanding school spirit he had become a cheerleader at Texas A&M.  We told him we were on our way to Vegas.  He said that worked for him, since he had to check on his casino, the 4th dimension.    While we were in Vegas, we ran into Audra May.  She had become a Las Vegas wedding planner and had just finished planning a big wedding.  It was time to hit the road again.  We had to go through a construction zone and saw Joe Bingham and Graham Franklin working on the highway.  They told us Rusty Woliung was right down the road surveying, so we told them to get on the bus and we went to pick up Rusty.  As we finally approached the California border, we decided it was time for a little rest and relaxation.  We headed to the beach where they were filming Baywatch.  We went to see what was going on and saw Jeremy Lindstrom who had become the next David Hasslehoff from Baywatch.  Krisha Otto was in charge of suntan lotion application.  After the beach, we needed to freshen up so we went to the nearest salon which happened to be owned by Jamie Baker and April Partlow.  They informed us that Janae Harper was going to be modeling in a fashion show and that Kim Whalen was going to be there drawing portraits for her Art Gallery. 

We were listening to the radio on our bus and heard they were giving away WNBA tickets for the tenth caller.  We all got out our cell phones and started dialing.  We ended up winning the tickets!  We went to the game that night and what do you know, Shawna Kidd had become the star player for the LA Sparks!  We started a cheering section and began chanting "guns don't kill, Shawna kills" just like old times.  After the game, it was back on the bus.  We heard about a successful accounting firm in Hawaii, owned and operated by Brenda Ruch, with Erin McKinley and Dion Lathrom as her accountants.  We called them up and told them to meet us back in Farmer City because we were getting ready to head back to Illinois hoping to find the remaining eight classmates.   On the bus we were watching TV and what we thought was Judge Judy had turned into Judge Brianna, starring Brianna Roe.  In the current case Ryan Peyton and Jenny Rawlings were doing some serious FBI detective work.  So we called up the TV station and had them join us. 

On our way out of California we saw a beautiful mansion and had to stop and take a picture.  Coincidentally, out came Betsy Power.  Apparently she had won the lottery and was a millionaire.  She was still good friends with Karla Strum, who was an actress in Hollywood, so she gave her a call and we went and picked her up.  We had finally made it back to Farmer City with only one day to go until the reunion.  We had to get some food to take with us, so we stopped by the IGA.  Down came Nathan Boyles from his apartment above the IGA.  After we checked out, Ben Blacker bagged our groceries in record time.  We saw William Walsh at the IGA updating the cash registers with his new and improved computer technology.  We finally had the whole gang back together so it was off to the reunion.  A good time was had by all and the Class of 2001 was happy to be back together again.


...I look forward to my ten year class reunion, and hopefully this has come online in time that some of my classmates will have seen it. I wonder how many will be there?

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I make no claim to any of the text on this page apart from the introduction/explanation and the closing line, which are Copyright © 2009-2012 William R. Walsh. All Rights Reserved. The original set of prophecies were created on Wednesday, May 02, 2001, 5:04:14 PM