A generation (or two) after high school, 'old hens' winging it in Vegas

When we last spoke, everybody was in agreement that 40 seemed old.

"We'll be five cackling old hens in the bar," 39-year-old Linda Young of Lake Zurich said in 1988, explaining to my barely out-of-my-20s, newlywed columnist self how to find her and her old high school girlfriends celebrating their 40th birthdays at a Lincolnshire resort.

In those days, Sarah Jessica Parker was still famous for being the little girl in "Annie," and a decade away from downing her first cosmo on "Sex and the City." Nobody had built a sisterhood around traveling pants. Thelma wouldn't meet Louise for another three years.

But these "girls" knew what was needed. With age 40 staring them in the face, former airline employee and mom Young, homemaker and mom Cheryl Widen of Wisconsin, substitute teacher and mom Camille Palm of Elmwood Park, teacher and mom Judi Breen of Elk Grove Village, and Schaumburg teacher and mom Linda Rosholt longed for one weekend of what they had as teenagers - secrets, fun, drinks, no husbands, no kids, no responsibilities and lots of girl talk.

"This is the female version of 'male bonding,'" one said at the time. "You can't hide anything from friends. We saw each other when we had pimples."

They dragged out old photos and yearbooks from Elmwood Park's class of 1966, chatted about their Girl Scout days when the wife of mobster Jackie "The Lackey" was their leader, reminisced about "greasers" they dated, told of sneaking into drive-in movies and recalled that time one of them got so drunk she ate an orchid. By 3 a.m., the two who used to crash first during high school slumber parties were asleep. But not before these five great friends talked about the one pending divorce, a child's health crisis, how their bodies had changed since high school, and their worries about their parents growing old.

Now that the "girls" are 60, so much has changed. For starters, they call me out-of-the-blue from their penthouse suite at Bellagio in Las Vegas, where the handwritten sign on their door reads, "It's our 60th birthday."

"We're all going on four hours (of sleep) a night," says a voice from the speaker phone, acknowledging that penny slot machines take time.

"Getting ready in the morning, it's not a pretty sight," says another as laughs and barbs fly.

Was that the pop of a champagne cork?

"Don't get all excited," a voice assures the gaggle. "It's the cheap stuff."

But there is nothing cheap about these friendships that have endured in some cases since kindergarten.

They were there for each other through the deaths of their parents. (Widen's mother, 97, is not only still around, but driving.) They were there for each other 12 years ago when Young's son, Billy, finally got the lifesaving kidney transplant he desperately needed, and celebrate the fact that he and his donor sister are both doing great today. They were there for the one who recorded the only divorce in the group, but now is Camille Jackson and about to celebrate her 20th wedding anniversary with her second husband in their happy home in Laughlin, Nev.

And they all take an interest in Rosholt's new project. The retired teacher volunteers at Holy Family Lutheran School on Chicago's West Side, where she helped build a library from scratch. Breen, another retired teacher, volunteers in that library. Everybody is retired, expect for Widen, who was home with kids 20 years ago, but now works as a substitute teacher.

They don't bring the yearbooks and old photos now. If they want to see what they used to look like, they just look at their kids, one quips.

The women might gripe about arthritis, bunions or the need to lose a few pounds, but no one faces health issues that would keep them from doing a girls' getaway in another 20 years. It won't matter a lick if 80 seems old.

"In our minds," one speaks for the group, "we are seeing each other as we did when we were 16."