If Napa High School alumni, Class of ’56, had their druthers, they would probably meet weekly at Chick’s Burgers or Kenny’s Drive-in, two landmarks from their teen years.

But Chick’s and Kenny’s are no more. The same is true of much of the Napa of a half-century ago. So the alums gather every Wednesday at 9 a.m. outside the swankest supermarket of the new Napa, Whole Foods.

They tank up at Whole Foods or Peet’s, then sit for an hour or two, chewing over old times, new times, good times, bad times.

“It’s a different world,” said Foster “Scooter” Clark, who remembered carrying a .22 rifle to Wooden Valley Elementary School so he could shoot squirrels and rabbits coming and going.

His senior year at Napa High, he and his buddies dumped a Wooden Valley outhouse — “a two-seater” — on the high school lawn. They signed it “Long’s Lunch House” for dean of boys Clayton Long.

Never got caught, Clark said.

Back in their day, Bel Aire Plaza was but a gleam in a developer’s eye, said real estate agent John Prince. The land was planted with prunes, served by a prune dehydrator across what is now Highway 29, he said.

At the mention of prunes, faces lit up. To a man ... and woman ... everyone at the Whole Foods table picked prunes as a teenager. “It was what you did,” Prince said.

“If you didn’t pick prunes, you didn’t have clothes for school,” said Herb Burquez, a retired St. Helena high school teacher.

“You tried to get the other guy to pick on the sunny side of the tree,” Clark said.

“They didn’t start school until the prunes were picked,” Dale Parker said. Wages were 25 cents a box.

Wine grapes were not common around Napa in that era, said Marsha Hartley, who went by Marsha Andrews as a school girl. North Napa was prunes and walnuts, she said.

“We were born in a golden time,” said Parker, who once owned Papa Joe’s Pizza.

“No one worried about being abducted,” said Carolyn Clark, formerly Carolyn Mills.

Hartley conceded that Napa had changed radically since high school, but some essential characteristics remained, she said. “Compared to other cities, it’s still a small town,” she said.

Napa used to be more working class. Today’s demographic is more affluent, with tourists added to the mix, Carolyn Clark said.

The average worker used to be able to afford a house here, Prince said. After the price run-up earlier in this decade, “most of the locals got displaced. This happened to St. Helena a long time ago,” he said.

A new three-bedroom, two-bath Bel Aire house sold for $14,000 in the ‘50s, old-timers recalled.

Prince, who briefly lived in Yountville, remembered when no one would admit to living there. “It was a shanty town,” he said. “My dad used to buy the shacks for a couple of thousand dollars.”

Napa was another hometown you didn’t admit to when you went into the Bay Area, Carolyn Clark said. “People would immediately think of the mental institution,” she said.

“They’d say, ‘Oh, they let you out,’” Hartley said.

The Class of ‘56 entered high school as TV and rock and roll were establishing themselves on the cultural landscape. Carolyn Clark remembers coming home from high school to watch musical acts on “Coke Time.” Elvis had just become a sensation, she said.

Not every student watched TV after school. “I was a farm girl. I had to do my chores,” said Hartley, who grew up on a small farm on Big Ranch Road.

Hartley remembers the warning her mother gave her when she headed off to high school in town. “You’ll be meeting city kids,” she said.

In truth, the city kids weren’t all that different, Hartley said. All subscribed to the dress code of the time, which for girls meant no pants except for special occasions, Carolyn Clark said.

Many guys in the Class of ‘56 went into the military for a couple of years, prompted by the draft or the threat of the draft. Most graduates had an interlude in their adult lives when they lived somewhere else.

In the end, many came back to Napa. Family ties proved stronger than expected, several said.

Anyone from the Class of ‘56 is invited to drop in on Wednesday mornings. Alumni from surrounding classes would also get a warm greeting, members of the group said.

Most members of the group are now 70, which means exactly what?

Hartley uses the phrase “when I’m an old lady” when she talks about the future. A friend tried to correct her saying, “Marsha, you are an old lady,” she said.

“I don’t feel like an old lady,” Hartley said. “Being around friends helps keep us young.”