POULSBO — During the same decade when Frank Sinatra was singing his way into the homes of a warring America while the country endured some of its worst-ever work stoppages under President Harry S. Truman, the North Kitsap High School class of 1946 was just a bunch of kids.

Fast forward to Sept. 13, 2006, grown, gray and wiser than ever, the remaining members of that class got together at the Poulsbo Sons of Norway to reminisce and rewind the clock — if only in their minds.

“It’s interesting, these people will pretty soon take on their old personalities,” Wanda Fuller said at the beginning of the gathering.

And sure enough, Charles P. Larson, still the class joker 60 years after graduation, was once again evoking laughter at the lunch table with off-the-collar “Ole and Ingrid” funnies.

“You haven’t changed a bit,” Emilie Herrald said as she patted Larson on the back.

The Trolls Den at the Sons of Norway Grieg Hall was filled with long overdue hugs and kind-hearted pats on the back as nearly 20 members of the original 69-member graduating class peered again into each other’s smiling eyes.

They came from across the stretches of Western Washington and beyond, hailing from as far away as Minnesota and as close as from across the Puget Sound. Still many have chosen to remain in the North End.

How much has Poulsbo changed since NK’s class of ‘46’s high school days?

“Terribly, I don’t even come to Poulsbo anymore,” Avis Halderson said, noting of the city’s small- town luster, “It’s gone.”

But that which can never be taken away is the memory of the days gone by.

“Probably what I remember most from high school is the long bus ride — it was 11 miles in each direction, plus the half-mile walk that we took to the bus stop,” Fuller said. “My kids don’t believe me when I tell them that.”

Among that and the absence of the apparent technological necessities of today, students in 2006 may also have a tough time grasping another of facet of the hard times which NK’s class of ‘46 endured — a federally imposed gas ration.

While teenagers today face the ever-rising prices at the pump and are forced to fork over heftier pieces of their allowances or job earnings, back then, teens were only allowed four gallons per week, depending on exactly where they needed to travel.

“It was so different then, during the war. With gas rationing, we shared rides,” Kathleen Titterness said. “When I think of high school, I remember the war.”

World War II shaped many aspects of the early 1940’s for the Puget Sound, including the size of NK’s class of 1946, the curriculum which students learned and the destination of some of its boys like Charley Larson.

“On my 17th birthday our principal, Mr. Meek, brought me and my friend into his office and put his arm around me and said, Charley … would you rather be expelled our join the service,” Larson recalled. “So we joined the service and that was that.”

“When I went to school it was wartime, you didn’t have any foreign language classes or anything like that, it was just the basic education,” Mary Ann Anderson said. “Kids have it so good these days.”

On second thought, these surviving members of the NKHS class of 1946 don’t have it so bad either, Mary Ellen Ferguson noted.

“You know the spirit never ages, it’s only when you look in the mirror,” she said. “We’re all still as young as we were.”