Lucky Rimpila still gets together with about 20 Hastings High School Class of 1968 classmates every month.
They reminisce about the good old days and the Hastings they remember.
Rimpila put his fond memories of his hometown on paper in his new book “As Luck Would Have It,” based largely on stories and historical references of growing up in the Cold War era in Hastings.
Lucky is his real name. He’s named after Hopalong Cassidy’s sidekick Lucky Jenkins, his mom’s favorite television show.
Lucky was born in New York Mills and his family moved to Hastings in 1957.
“Hastings was such a great place to live. It was a great place to grow up. It was one of those places that our generation talks about now. There were so many things to do, and you could just play all day with friends. You told your parents where you were, and you just had to be home before suppertime,” he recalled. “We lived on Hwy 316, and it was no problem to stay after school a while and then just walk home. It would be a couple miles, and we were never fearful of anything. Both my parents worked in Hastings, and had two brothers and a sister, and we all went to school in Hastings. I loved going to school there. I loved the teachers.”
There was one particular part of the school day that he loved.
“I loved the school lunches,” he joked.
He caught the writing bug from a high school teacher. He penned a book of poetry in 2007 evoking imagery of the Baby Boom era.
“I started writing in the 11th grade. In school, I had some great English teachers that really promoted me. I was writing more poetry then. I published my first book. It took me 40 years to get that one done,” he said. “I just love writing. That’s when that started, and I wrote poems through my young adult history and then through my midlife history. When I had the first book published, I told my kids, ‘This is my life story. And it’s in poetry.’ My daughter came up with a lot of questions. So, I know she read it.”
Rimpila moved to Northfield 45 years ago but loves keeping in contact with his former classmates. They were getting together Wednesday this week at the Hastings Public House.
“Our class tries to get together at least once a month for lunch. It’s great. Usually about 20 people show up,” he said.
Reminiscing at those gatherings gave him ideas for the new book.
“We were at King’s Place in Miesville. We’re all talking about all our ailments and everything, and then we started talking about a few things that happened while we were growing up, the assassination of Kennedy, some of the integration, the astronauts. I started thinking about how I viewed the world back then. How much did we really miss? You know, we were more thinking about music and dating and everything like that,” said Rimpila.
He spent years researching Hastings through old copies of the Gazette on microfiche.
“I went back through various years and months and then saw all the history that happened that we probably really weren’t concerned about at the time, but it has impacted our life so much today,” Rimpila shared. “I remember the Cold War and the blockade, the Russian ships and stuff like that, and that was scary at that time, because we were becoming junior or seniors, and the Vietnam thing was really happening. One of my brothers enlisted in the Navy, and he went off to Vietnam. We were all worried about that. And we were worried about getting drafted.”
Lucky enlisted in the Navy and went to dental tech school and was stationed for two years at the Great Lakes Naval Academy in Illinois. “
Only two of us decided to go to school. The rest of the platoon went to Vietnam,” he said.
He described “As Luck Would Have It” as “more of a Hastings book. It’s more around the class of 1968, 1969, that generation.”
Did he warn his classmates their stories may appear in print?
“I told some people they were in it, but I didn’t use any last names, but we can pretty well guess,” he said. “It was fun writing this. I left out a few of the shenanigans.”
Along with recounting stories and events, he culled information from ads on how much the price of hamburger was at the meat market or Super Value.
What’s his view of Hastings today?
“It’s a busy place. I remember Vermillion Street, cruising up and down in our cars and giving the Peace sign to everyone when we passed,” he said. “It’s a busy city now. It’s a vibrant city now, but it still has that hometown feel to me when I come back and visit.”
Purchase “As Luck Would Have It” on iUniverse.com, Amazon.com or barnlesandnoble.com. Contact Lucky at Luckyrimpila@gmail.com if you are interested in a signed copy.
