One night in December 1956, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins played an extraordinary jam session at Sun Records in Memphis, Tennessee under the direction of pop music visionary Sam Philips. These four amazing musicians helped create the lasting legacy of the music of the 1950’s, the “best music ever” according to the members of my generation. We were teenagers at the time. Our parents were horrified by the sinful gyrations of Elvis and the incestuous proclivities of Jerry Lee Lewis, but hey — this was our music.

One night in June,1959, the Brunswick Summer Playhouse put on its first-ever production (“Song of Norway”) at Pickard Theater on the Bowdoin College Campus under the direction of musical theater impresario Victoria Crandall. The inaugural season of the organization (now the Maine State Music Theatre) featured nine shows. Incidentally, my wife Tina attended every show that summer with her mother Betsey Savell. Sixty years later, the Maine State Music Theatre, under the superb leadership of Artistic Director Curt Dale Clark, has earned a reputation as a cultural gem in midcoast Maine and one of the nation’s finest summer music theaters.

One day in September 1960, 200 young men stepped onto the Bowdoin College campus to begin their college careers. The members of the Class of 1964 went on to become one of — if not the — most successful and loyal classes in Bowdoin’s history as measured by financial support, reunion attendance and lifelong friendships.

On June 13, 2018, about 40 people met at the house of Rob and Cathy Jarratt for their pre-MSMT pot luck supper. (The group meets at a different house before every MSMT play.) Twelve of those people (including Rob Jarratt and myself) were members of Bowdoin’s Class of 1964, which represents a whopping 6 percent of the class. (The percent of living classmates is even higher). The gathering, it must be noted, also included a dozen Bowdoin graduates from other classes. Like elephants returning to the watering hole, many of us old Polar Bears have returned to the site of the College that meant so much to us.

After lively conversations which covered topics ranging from hip replacements to the college choices of grandchildren to a world cruise, the group went on to Pickard Theater to see MSMT’s production of the Million Dollar Quartet, a theatrical reprise of the memorable jam by the four famous musicians at Sun Records. A superb cast rocked the show, highlighted by the guys who played Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis. How can anyone not get pumped up by such 50’s classics as “Blue Suede Shoes,” “Great Balls of Fire” and “Walk the Line?” The audience loved the whole show.

As we older folks lose friends to death, body parts to metallic or synthetic replacements and memories to who knows where, it’s good to be with people whom we’ve known since way back when. And it’s even better to be with them listening to great music, to 50’s music, to our music. It was a very good night. And so, on with the show.

David Treadwell, a Brunswick writer, welcomes commentary and suggestions for future “Just a Little Old” columns at [email protected].