Churchgoing

For a half-Jewish kid, I have spent a lot of time in churches.

One of my earliest memories is being in an old country church with my mother. It must have been hot - all the windows were open and everyone was fanning themselves with cardboard fans that had Biblical verses and pictures on them.

Some time later, my father asserted his prerogative as paterfamilias and I started going to Sunday School at the West End Synagogue. That went on for several years. When I was nine, I started going to Hebrew School there, two afternoons a week, after school. The purpose of this was to prepare me for Bar Mitzvah. The whole year before my thirteenth birthday I spent memorizing a long passage from the Torah in Hebrew. And I had to learn how to chant it, as well, in the same way that Cantor Glusman would sing it. So I had to memorize the chanting, too. I learned it by repeating the lines over and over again. Cantor Glusman taught me the chanting, one phrase at a time, until I could do the whole thing perfectly. I also had to memorize a speech, written for me by Rabbi Hertzberg.

At my Bar Mitzvah ceremony, I did the Hebrew chanting part fine, but I forgot the last line of the speech. I was mortified. I looked over at Rabbi Hertzberg, but he didn't know. Finally, I mumbled something under my breath and sat down.

Later at the reception, an old man took me aside and said, "Don't worry - last year, Rabbi Hertzberg, himself, forgot what he was going to say."

By tradition, everybody congratulated me for becoming a man. I've always respected my Jewish heritage, but, afterward, I decided that being a man meant making your own decisions. So I stopped going to Synagogue.

For a while, I went to the Woodmont Christian Church at Woodmont and Hillsboro Road, but I don't remember why. I liked the church and I liked the steeple, but I don't remember any of the people I met there. Across the street, the Woodmont Baptist Church was a complete mystery to me. I didn't know what went on in there.

Betty went to Second Presbyterian Church on Belmont. So, when we hooked up, I started going there with her. I went there for five years, until we got married and moved away.

I liked the church building at Second. It was small, but it looked just the way you'd want a church to look. I liked the people, too. Mr. Bittinger was the minister and Mary Bittinger was his wife. She had a Ph.D. in religious history, but, apparently, it was something you didn't talk about much in church. Mr. Bittinger had a more emotional approach to religion. He would stand in the pulpit and stare out into the air above the congregation until something welled up in him that he couldn't suppress. It was hard not to be affected by the full-of-grace look that would come over his face as the words rolled out, so fast, at times, that he seemed to be talking like a little child.

I liked Mr. Bittinger's sermons for the way they made me feel. I also enjoyed the choir, featuring the purest of Irish tenors, Ross Mandigo.

Among the congregation, first and foremost for their spiritual dedication, were Oscar and Henrietta Nelson, medical missionaries to Africa. I remember Mrs. Nelson for the loudness of her singing. Then there was, although I don't remember seeing him in church, Dr. Otis Graham, the head of the Monroe Harding Orphanage, and father of Otis, Jr., Fred and Hugh. All the Monroe Harding children, of course, went to Second Presbyterian.

And so many others - Finleys, Braceys, Geers, Stearns. Rick Drewry and Edward Lyman went to Second Presbyterian with their families.

But the real light of the congregation, the one person who seemed to represent bright hope to everyone, was Betty's mother. Ruth Harris had a light around her. She made everyone happy by just being there. Betty idolized her mother. And so did I.

Betty and I got married at Second Presbyterian and it was just the right size. We had a small wedding with just the families, but they filled the church. A couple of my father's sisters - my aunts - came, and I believe they had never been in a Christian church before. I remember that they seemed uneasy and nervous about being there, as though they expected Yahweh to strike them down at any second.

After the wedding, we drove off for California and never came back to live in Nashville again. A few years ago, Second Presbyterian Church burned beyond repair. We heard about it when it happened and then we heard that the church would be re-built.

A couple of years ago, we had occasion to visit Second Presbyterian again, where the new congregation had raised a fine, new building. We marveled at the sight of it, but realized that they had not re-built the church at all. They had built another church there, on the spot where the old one used to be. And it suited them just fine.

A Child's Christmas in Nashville

It's well regarded that Christmas, as we Americans practice it, is a special time for children. Children see the magical aspect of everything, but especially Christmas.

One of the things that I try to do, each year, is to recover the ways I felt as a child in Nashville, during the Christmas season. I know now that I imbued the things I saw with magical qualities back then, but at the time I thought that the magic was in the things.

The feeling of Christmas started for me early in the fall, when the weather became chilly and the winds blew the leaves off the trees. At school, we kept our minds off the darkening days outside by reading stories and drawing pictures about, first, Halloween, then Thanksgiving, and finally Christmas.

We got ideas by reading Play Mate magazine which was written, each month, by Esther Cooper and illustrated by Fern Bisel Peat. I was especially taken with "A Tale of Peter Pig", a story written in rhyme, each time, by Cooper about some pigly adventure, in keeping with the season. Every installment began in the same way: "Now, Peter Pig decided..." At Christmas, there were adventures with snow and sharing winter cheer and singing carols.

Nowadays, we hear Christmas carols sung constantly at Christmastime, but in school we sang them. The song that, for some reason, always takes me back to those times is this one:

Up on the rooftop,
Click, click, click!
Down through the chimney
With good Saint Nick!

I remember, once, during these early days, my father took me to a barber shop on West End Avenue on Christmas Eve. It was around 6 o'clock, but already dark outside, where wisps of snow were threatening to become something more.

I don't remember whether I got a haircut, or my father did, but there was a radio playing behind the barber, and at one point the program was interrupted by an announcement that Santa Claus had been sighted, making his way toward Nashville. Both the barber and my father made a big deal out of that with me. At the time, I was old enough to be skeptical about Santa Claus, but young enough to be impressed that the news was coming over the radio. When we left the shop, I thought that it was awfully cold out to be riding a sleigh through the air, but at Christmas, the idea was exciting.

Christmastime, then, was a time for going out, despite the cold. A special treat was going downtown to look in the windows of the department stores. We would always look in the window of the Krystal on Church Street to see the doughnuts coming out of the doughnut machine.

Sometimes, we would end up eating at the Krystal, but in those years when the Spirit of Christmas Present had smiled on our family, we would go around on Union to the B&W for a treat. We would walk down the cafeteria line, salivating like Cratchits, before the bounty of food that was laid out. There were several kinds of everything! I always got the fried haddock, which I covered with ketchup.

After such a fine repast, we would once again brave the chilly winds outside, but not without stopping at the window of the B.H. Stief Jewelry company. At Christmas, and at no other time, there were the most marvelous automatons on display in B.H. Stief's windows. Mechanical figures of firemen or farmers, or what not (there was a new display every year), driven by some invisible, but intelligent force to put out the fire or milk the cow, or what not.

In the eighth grade, we put on the Christmas Pageant and tried out, in our own declaiming, the great cadences of Luke:

And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field,
keeping watch over their flock by night...

And Carolyn Suter played the Twelfth Street Rag on the piano.

And I have a memory of being on the fourth floor of Loveman's with my mother, near Christmas, when the elevator door opened and a band of carolers stepped out, singing "Adeste Fideles" for everyone there.

And on our televisions, we watched "Amahl and the Night Visitors."

And one night, we saw Buzz Evans sing "O Holy Night" on TV.

Christmas was everywhere celebrated and observed, then. Now, it isn't. It's getting hard, even, to find Scrooge during this season. We have, instead, "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas" and "A Christmas Story", and we may think there's no magic in them. And we may feel sorry for our children. But our children continue to do what children always do. They put the magic in.

The Legend of Rinkey Blumen

He was born in Birmingham, Alabama, to Russian immigrant parents in late 1912. His name was Abraham. His mother, who never learned a word of English, called him in Russian, "Avrum."

When she called him in from playing in the neighborhood, she used his nickname: "Avrumkey!" The kids in the neighborhood didn't know what she was saying. To them, it sounded like "Rinkey!" She kept on calling him "Avrumkey." But Rinkey stuck.

When he was nine years old, he sold newspapers on a corner in downtown Birmingham. What he had to do to secure that corner is not known, but he brought money back to his family every night.

When they all moved to Nashville, he got another corner and kept on selling papers. Once, during this time, he fell off the back of a paper truck and injured his back. He didn't go to a doctor. His idea of medical treatment was to spend the night in the local steambath. So he developed chronic arthritis in his back, which caused him to bend over slightly when he walked. Nevertheless, he grew up, went to high school in Nashville, played on the basketball team and kept on selling newspapers. Rinkey Blumen stayed in the newspaper circulation business his entire life.

In the thirties, he became a route manager. He had paperboys working for him. I don't know exactly when, or how long, he did this, but somehow he became beloved by a whole generation of Nashville kids who grew up during the depression. Years later, when grown men would find out that I was Rinkey Blumen's son, they all had to tell me about how they carried a paper route for my daddy, back in the old days. One time, Richard Fulton, the Tennessee Congressman, told me that he used to carry a paper route for Rinkey Blumen. I guess he thought I would be impressed.

In the thirties, times were hard. A lot of people didn't have the price of a newspaper. During these lean times, Rinkey Blumen took advantage of other skills that he had learned on the street: he could count cards and he could calculate odds. So he got jobs in Nashville roadhouses, on the outskirts of town, dealing blackjack. He never gambled himself, because he knew that the odds favored the house. He worked for the house.

I know very little about the things he was doing, during this period, but he probably ran numbers, for a while. By that time, he was married with a family to support. I remember once, when we were living in a duplex on Granny White Pike, he came home after dark, pulled down the shades, and threw four thousand dollars, in small bills, out on the kitchen table for counting. Mamma didn't like that and she made him quit. Later on, he was glad he did, because several of his buddies got arrested and went to Federal prison for being in the numbers racket.

He never talked about his life much, but in later years he retained a keen interest in the football teams of colleges he never went to. I saw him, more than once, looking wistfully at football cards on saturday afternoons in the fall.

And he played solitaire all the time. In between games, he would shuffle the deck in a way that I have never seen anyone else do: he would start out, holding the deck in front of him with both hands, thumbs in front and fingers in back. With his left thumb, he would cut the deck precisely in two, separating it into two halves, grasping the top half in his left hand and the bottom half in his right. Then he would position each half-deck so that their corners were almost touching. His thumbs were in just the right position: he riffled both sets of cards simultaneously in a way that produced a very slight fluttering sound and the cards in the two half-decks interleaved in precise sequence at the corners. Finally, he would move the two halves together, with his hands, in one smooth motion, so that he ended with the cards united again into one deck, held in both his hands, exactly as he had started out. This allowed him to do several quick shuffles in succession. It was the most elegant set of moves I have ever seen.

Only once, did I get a glimpse of him in real action. I was twelve and he took me to the pool hall that is still halfway between the defunct Melrose theater, that is on one end of that stretch, and the Melrose Bowling Alley on the other end. I sat on a tall stool and watched him run a few balls by himself, just for fun. Then a couple of young slicks came in and watched him for a while. After a few minutes, one of them asked him if he would like to play a little game for money. My father said that he was just having a little fun by himself, but they encouraged him, saying that he was a better player than they were and he'd probably win. Finally, my old man took a five dollar bill from his pocket and put it on the table. The slick did the same and made a big deal out of letting the "older" man go first. My father broke, a ball went in and he took another shot, but missed. The slick then stepped up, with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, and ran a couple of balls off the table, before he missed. My father chalked his cue and then - holding the stick at its back end with just one hand, and resting the the tip end on the cushion of the table - he ran all the remaining balls in, while the slick looked on, with the cigarette still hanging out of his mouth. My father swept up the money, stepped quickly over to me, and said, "Let's go, son."

We went down to the bowling alley and had a couple of cokes from the fountain. He told me there that the best pool player he had ever seen was Willie Mosconi.

After he quit his evil ways, the newspaper business became my father's sole occupation. At that time, the top guy at the Newspaper Printing Corporation was a man named Joe Connor, the City Circulation Director, who held up his pants with galluses and always had a cigar in his mouth. He measured progress by how many people started taking the paper and how many stopped. Back then, Tennessee was solidly democratic, so the circulation of the Tennessean was always up, but that of the Banner was always down. Around that time, I wrote a short story called "The Devil and Joe Connor", about a man who would go to Hell for a Banner start. It tickled my father and he showed it to Joe Connor. I never heard what he thought about it.

Rinkey Blumen's ambition was to become the City Circulation Director, himself, some day. When Joe Connor died, he thought he had a chance, but the job was given to Cleo Barbee, instead. The top executive at the paper who made the decision was Walter Seigenthaler, who for years published the "Hambone" feature on the Tennessean's first page, under the name of "Seig". My father idolized the man, calling him "Mr. Seig". Seigenthaler explained that it was Cleo Barbee's turn for the job and that my father would have his time eventually. And, in time, it came to pass.

In his later years, Rinkey Blumen joined the Elks Club that was located next to the Andrew Jackson hotel on the square opposite the State Capitol. There he spent his spare time, playing hearts and gin rummy with his pals, where more than once, in the plush rooms on the second floor, he was heard to say with a flourish, "I have ginned on you, Averbush!"

12th Avenue South

Down on 12th Avenue South, near the park, there were a couple of places that my family and I went during the Stokes years. On one corner of this block I'm thinking about, there was Cayce's Restaurant, and on the other corner of the same block, there was Becker's Bakery.

We went out to eat, once or twice a month, at Cayce's. In the winter, we would get there just as it was getting dark, and, through the big plate glass window near the door, everything inside looked warm and bright. Up front, as you went in, there was a bar where you could get, mainly, beer. And I remember, on the walls, there were these dazzling advertising displays for Budweiser which showed pictures of sport fishing, but with cutouts and a light bulb turning behind, so that the display seemed to sparkle and move - the trout rose magically to the fisherman's fly.

Besides Cayce, who mostly presided over things from behind the bar, there were two waiters, one quiet and the other sharp with the banter, who worked there for years. We got to know them pretty well and they would always kid around with us kids.

When Cayce retired to a life of fishing, he gave the restaurant to the two waiters. They were thrilled to have an opportunity to run a restaurant of their own. We went there several times after they took over, but it wasn't the same - they always met us formally at the door and escorted us to our table with great finesse. There was no more kidding around. I liked them better when they were waiters.

Becker's Bakery was the best bakery in town. Quiet, smiling Mrs. Frensley became an institution there to several generations, both before and after us. Betty and I discovered, fairly early in our relationship, that we had Becker's in common. I liked the Petit Fours and she liked the little pink, green and yellow cookies, shaped like fleurettes, that weren't too sweet, but went all crumbly in your mouth.

Between Cayce's and Becker's Bakery, there was a gravel parking area with a small concrete building at the rear. This was where, during my later Hillsboro years, I used to pick up my papers to deliver on my paper route. I was the only paperboy there who wasn't from the neighborhood. I had to drive there. The other paperboys weren't sure what to make of me. I was quiet and so I didn't give them many clues about whether I had anything going for me or not.

Among themselves, they were a rowdy lot, always ganging up on one or another of their number and throwing him into the rain barrel, outside the building. They never tried to throw me in the barrel, not even in fun.

One time, I remember, one of the boys came up and handed me a small paper sack, while the others looked on. I didn't know that they had put some little whiz-bang device in the bag. I looked inside and the thing snapped up at me. I looked up and the guy who had given me the bag said to the others, "See? I told you!" I said, "What?" and the guy said, "I told them you wouldn't jump!"

Back then, I figured they thought I was the kind of guy who didn't jump. Today, I realize that they held me in respect because my father was Rinkey Blumen.

Roads' End

I told Betty about giving Roy Ackland a ride and what he said about wanting to go to Hollywood. I compared him to Charlton Heston and so we decided to call him "Royton Ackland" after that. Actually, we didn't talk about him all that much.

But, somehow, word came around that Royton had gotten himself in a movie, so we determined to go see it. It was called "The Alamo" with John Wayne. Roy didn't have a big part. In the credits (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053580/fullcredits#cast) , he is listed as "Ray Ackland", one of Travis' men. Travis had several men.

We went to the movie and searched for him. He was in one scene, near the end. He was the kid who blew the bugle. It wasn't much, but it was pretty exciting, because after that all hell broke loose.

Roads

What were we doing from April 2 to April 22, 1951?

I don't know. Memory doesn't work that way. There's no book that you can go to and open to 4/2/1951, to find out. You have to think of something close to it and then construct the memory with help from external signposts, like calendars. I remember that 1951 was the year of the Great Blizzard in Nashville. Betty remembers that she was in sixth grade when the blizzard hit. So, from April 2 to April 22, 1951, we were in sixth grade.

In New York City, during those same three weeks, Jack Kerouac, working like a crazy man, wrote out a whole novel that he had been thinking about for years. He got a lot of paper and taped the sheets together, end to end, so he could type without stopping to put new pages in. He typed it out in one long paragraph. When he got through, he wrote his friend, Neal, in San Francisco, and said: "I've telled all the road, now." He said the paper it was written on looked like a road, stretching out from his typewriter. He called his book "On the Road." It was about getting out and going somewhere - anywhere - without turning around or stopping.

We didn't know anything about that. But the idea of getting out and going somewhere caught people's fancies. It seemed a particularly American way of thinking in the fifties. You didn't have to be a beatnik to want to do it. Ran Pickell and Wally Wolfe got out one summer and biked across the country and got their pictures in the National Geographic. They were probably influenced more by Open Road for Boys than "On the Road."

Once, in the summer of our Junior year, my mother was driving down Hillsboro Road, near the Presbyterian Church, and I was in the car. At the corner of Hillsboro Road and Stokes Lane, she stopped to pick up a hitchhiker. It was Roy Ackland.

My mother asked him what he was going to do with his life. He said he was going to go to Hollywood and be a stuntman.

Annual Report

In March, 2006, I undertook this blog with no clear idea of what to make of it. For the first year, Betty and I were the only readers, and she didn't like it. But I kept doing it. Then reunion planning started up and I heard from Alice Ann. By then I had one real reader, and there were soon to be a few more. By any statistical measure, I am humbled by the experience. During the past month, I had twelve different readers, and the truth is, I'm tickled by that. That level of readership places us all securely in the long tail of human endeavors and I can't think of a better place to be.

The Rest of Her Life

Four years before Rachel was born, we had decided on her name. We had gone to a black-and-white English movie about a little girl and boy. The girl was named Rachel. Betty said, "If we ever have a girl, I want to name her Rachel."

I thought that was fine. At the time, the idea that we would ever have a girl had not yet hit me. In my family, there were five boys and no girls. I knew nothing about girls.

Four years later, I started learning. Rachel was an easy child; she slept all night through from the start. And she was pleasant - laughing and smiling when she was six weeks old.

And she was a whizzer with words. When she was nine months old, she gained renown in the neighborhood for saying "hippopotamus" in front of witnesses. People came over just to see her do that and she always obliged them. There was a rumor that she wouldn't talk unless you gave her a quarter, but I don't believe it.

Over the years, I learned that girls are different from boys, although Rachel and I always thought the same things were funny. She has a little sense of humor that's all her own.

When she hit high school in the early eighties, the world had changed from the one we knew. Her high school generation was the first one to go public with obscenity - the autograph pages in her annuals can not be examined in mixed company, even today. On a more positive note, her generation adopted the word "heinous" as a universal adjective, indicating a general state of opprobrium.

Those were heady days. Then came graduation and, following that, the yawning maw of the rest of her life. Rachel showed no particular inclination or enthusiasm for going to college. Betty was sympathetic to her feelings, but I was adamant that she would go.

Rachel said, "What's so important about going to college?"

I said, "It's important because, if you don't go, then for the rest of your life, you'll wonder what it was all about."

"That's all?"

"That's it."

"Why can't I just get a job?"

"Do you want to work at McDonald's for the rest of your life?"

"Heinous."

So, it was settled. She went to Georgia for a year and then finished at Georgia State, magna cum laude. And she hasn't wondered about it since. But there was still the matter of the rest of her life.

The summer before her graduation, I took her to CDC and helped her get a job. On the way home, I asked her how it felt to be employed. She was reading the qualifications on her job description. She said, "I didn't need to go to college to get this job."

But she enjoyed working in an office. Still, it didn't seem like something she would want to do for the rest of her life. Then she met this guy. All during high school and college, she had not shown much interest in any particular boy. So I was surprised, when Betty told me, one evening: "Rachel has met somebody." He was Rob Merritt, a Health Scientist at CDC.

They hit it off. They were suprised to learn that, even though they grew up in different places, they thought the same things were heinous. She brought him home to meet us and he took her home to meet his parents. His father said that he never thought a son of his could ever attract the interest of a girl as fine as Rachel.

So, when everyone had been informed, they got married. Now, they have three children - William, 13, Andrew, 9, and Molly, 7. And for the rest of her life, Rachel hasn't wondered about the rest of her life.

Yonge Sonne

Tristram Shandy's father had a theory of names, regarding one's offspring, which for me boiled down to the idea that it's good to have a good name, and bad to have a bad one. Before our first was born, we had several conversations on this topic.

If it were up to me-

It is up to you-

Well then, if it were up to me, and we have a boy, I would name him after Bertrand Russell.

Bertrand?

No, Russell.

I thought Russell was a fine name, and still do. Betty agreed, so we went with that. And it was a boy. But Betty trumped my effort at naming with her choice of an epithet, as she was being wheeled out of the delivery room, still a little giddy from the ordeal. As I took her hand, she managed a sleepy smile and whispered, "He's a yonge sonne."

I didn't get it. Later, she reminded me of Senior English when we had to learn the opening lines of the Canterbury Tales and recite them in the original Middle English...

...Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his half cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye....

And so it stuck, as one of the several names by which we refer to Russell. But, since Middle English is not well understood, these days, I prefer the American rendition: I call him Son.

Anyway, he grew up and was a good boy. When he was about six years old, we discovered that, through some strange chance, he had been born an engineer. We had given him a train set for Christmas, complete with transformer, tracks and smoke tablets, and later we found that he had taken the transformer apart and rewired it, for some purpose of his own.



Then, when he was twelve, he came home from school one day with a book he had found in the library. It was a technical manual, describing all the inputs and outputs of the pins on the 8080 Central Processing Unit. He read it every day and soon knew it by heart. We took him to the doctor to see if anything could be done, but the doctor said, rejoice, he's wired for double-E.

So we sent him to Georgia Tech to get the education he needed for that. And soon he was waiting for offers of work to come in. But, for a week or so, after graduation, there weren't any.

He said, "I'm a loser."

But then, the next day, IBM called with a career in designing computer chips, which was just what he wanted to do. It all worked out.

But he wasn't through: he married one of those Nashville Portnoy girls. They have two boys, Matthew and Jared, 12 and 8, both born engineers. Lynn had a difficult delivery with the first and was worn out and recuperating the first few weeks. Russell took over the task of dealing with child and household at the same time and managed them both handily, to our amazement. He bathed, dressed, and fed baby, and changed dirty diapers 24 hours a day. He washed dishes with one hand, while holding the baby in his other arm like a little football. We couldn't believe it. There's nothing in the engineer's manual about dealing with delicate little creatures. Or maybe there is: when I complimented him on his parenting skills, he shrugged it off with an observation. He said, "Even computer chips need a lot of care."

Before it's too late

The word went out: the man was coming to town. This might be the last time, they said. He can't live forever.



Saturday, they started coming in. They came in ships and boats. They came in planes, trains and automobiles. They came in, biking triking and hitch-hiking. They steamed and streamed from every direction.

There were the aged and the infirm, the halt and the lame, the sore in spirit, ancient faces and bad cases, old codgers and draft dodgers, long-time slackers, hackers and safecrackers, double dealers and ballerinas.

They came to pay their respects. To see what kind of moves he had left. They didn't have to wait long.

He showed. With his men behind him, he started it up and it was loud. Everybody grinned and turned up their hearing aids. He labored long and hard, and then he was gone.

Everybody streamed out, gratified. Going across the parking lot, I passed an old mariner with a plastic cup of beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other. He had on a T shirt that said, "I can't march anymore." His hair in back hung in a little ring around his bald head like a little curtain down to his shoulders.

When he saw me, he said, "It wasn't too late! I hope I'll get to see him again!"

I said, "I'm sure he'll be back."

The old grizzler said, "I hope I'll be back!"

So do we all, brother.

Reunion Autobiography Blues

I think my reunion autobiography is pretty funny. What do you think?

I think you didn't mention either of our children by name. Or their children.

You told me you didn't want their names on the Internet.

That wasn't the Internet - it was Patsy Bradley.

I want to make it right: I will dedicate a couple of blogs to our children. I will mention them by name.

Oh, no.

My Kingdom for that Picture

Betty went to Burton and I went to Stokes. We didn't know anybody who went to Woodmont. So, at Hillsboro, she kept seeing Burton People and I kept seeing Stokes people and we never saw any Woodmont people. It was like we were on these tectonic plates that moved around and bumped into each other, but never really came together.

I went to Woodmont once, after school. It was early fall and I remember being out on the basketball court. I had a camera with me. I cannot imagine why I would have been carrying a camera around, but I know I had it because I took a picture with it.

I took a picture of Cam Talley and Trish Champion. Both standing together, in angora sweaters and sheath skirts, holding their books in their arms, and smiling. I pointed my kodak at them and took their picture. I can't believe I had the guts to do that. Cam, I had blown my chance with in first grade, and I never even spoke to Trish Champion until we were both in our forties. But somehow, through gestures and signs, I guess, I conveyed to them both that I wanted to take their picture.

I kept that picture for forty years. It was in a big cardboard box in the attic with hundreds of other pictures, taken over the years, but I knew where it was. One day, Betty told me that she had thrown out all the old pictures in that old box, except those of our immediate family. She knew what she was doing.

But I still have that picture in my mind. It was late afternoon and the sun was behind them, low in the sky. And there were leaves on the ground.

Civics Lesson

In the fall of 1956, we were brand-new seniors. And, throughout the land, a presidential election was coming to a head. At Hillsboro, we had a mock election. It meant nothing to the national body politic, but it kept our minds off studying, for a while.

It was Eisenhower against Stevenson. People started making signs and taking sides. The first inkling I had that it was going to be anything more than that came when I ran into Jeter, coming out of Study Hall. He pressed a little card into my hand. The card said:

Vote Early and Vote Often!

for

T. Coleman Andrews

Jeter grinned and said, "We'd appreciate your support." That afternoon, four other guys gave me the same card. The last one gave me a stack and asked me to hand them out.

Before long, word spread through the school that certain scurrilous miscreants were trying to turn the election into a three-way race. Indignation was raised in the halls and there were calls to have those responsible ousted from the county. Other high-minded individuals countered that the injection of a third party was a positive example of democracy at the grass roots level.

Reason prevailed and write-in votes were allowed for the additional candidate. The campaigns then proceeded with vigor until the mock-election was held, the week before the real election.

It took a couple of days for the votes to be tallied. Then, with some fanfare, a special assembly was convened to announce the results. As expected, Eisenhower won handily and Stevenson came in second. T. Coleman Andrews came in third with a total of 0.00 votes.

After the assembly, a meeting of Andrews' supporters was hastily called in the second floor boy's room. I was permitted to attend because I had handed out the most cards. The main discussion centered around the mathematical impossibility that no votes had been cast for their candidate. Jeter said, "I personally voted for him 17 times." The others agreed. When the number of times that everybody had voted was tallied, it was clear that several hundred votes had been spirited away. Stolen, as it were.

Outrage ran rampant in the john. Throats became hoarse with a general call to accuse the election commission of fraud and demand a recount. Just as things were getting ugly, Jeter came forward and said, "Wait a minute - we can't do this."

"Why not?" everybody wanted to know.

Jeter paused for effect, then said, in tones of civic virtue, "It would tear the school apart."

He was immediately pummeled by the whole group.

The rest is history, or something like it.

Funny Stories

If you gotta play at garden parties
I wish you a lotta luck
But if memories were all I sang
I'd rather drive a truck

I'm thinking I've run this reunion thing dry. What kind of person goes around telling funny stories about people he knew fifty years ago? Our high school class is just a tiny sliver of the people we've known in our lives. And when we were at Hillsboro, a lot of the people we hung with were in classes other than ours, anyway. I'm thinking that I might want to talk about some of them, sometime. And I've known a lot of people who've never heard of John Koen. I might want to get sentimental about some of them, too.

Just a little earlier tonight, I started thinking about a guy I used to know at work. He was five or ten years my senior; big, tall and hulking, but also an incredibly gentle human being. I never saw him without a smile on his face, but he always seemed sad to me. His name was Tom Leonard.

I decided, just now, to google his name, with "CDC" as a qualifier. The first hit showed a URL for a CDC site and this citation: "There has been no official Tree planting for Tom Leonard." That didn't sound good. I went to the page and, sure enough, it was all about the suicide of Tom Leonard. But, on closer examination, the Tom Leonard who committed suicide was a teenage boy. It was a wrenching site, but it wasn't the Tom Leonard that I knew.

The funny thing is, if it had been the Tom Leonard I knew, I wouldn't have been surprised.

Golden Words

Oh Shenandoah
I long to hear you
Far away
You rolling river!

Oh Shenandoah
I long to see you
Away
I'm bound away
Across the wide Missouri.

16th Avenue

A lot of lives were changed
down on that little one-way street

I enjoyed being able to sit down at the reunion, this time. But just when I got comfortable, I heard the M.C. introduce Bergen White. Bergen White is, arguably, the most illustrious member of our class, bar none. His accomplishments are huge. I admire him greatly.

So, when I heard his name mentioned and saw him walk forth into the light, I began the process of rising from my chair, anticipating the inevitable ovation. About midway into my rise, I became aware that there wasn't any ovation. Just average crowd noise. It's not easy for an old man to change direction when he's into his rise, but I managed to sit back down before anybody noticed.

But I tell you what: that was pitiful. We should have given that man the ovation he was due. Why? Because he went down to the other end of 16th Avenue and got his life changed.

There were others, too, that we knew: Buzz Cason (remember the "Casuals"?) and Bobby Russell. Even Vance Bulla got his face on a record album.

Bobby was probably the best known. In the fall of 1958, word started going around that he and some others were getting a record deal. I didn't believe it, but I checked it out and there it was:

I bought the record. It was pretty good. But after that, I didn't hear anything more about him. I guess, like everybody else in that part of town, he wanted to write songs. There's thirteen-hundred and fifty-two guitar pickers in Nashville, but there's about a zillion song writers. Even John Robins and I went down there one day with a tape. But Bobby really did it. He earned everybody's respect.

He was a member of the Felsted Class of 1958. The other artists recorded by Felsted that year were:

Steve Schulte
Jiv-A-Tones
Andy Anderson
Mickey Michaels
David Orrell
LaVerne Stovall
Harley Botts

Bobby was the Valedictorian of that class. Flat out.

. . . .

Then one night in some empty room
Where no curtains ever hung,
like a miracle, some golden words rolled
Off of someone's tongue...

A Great Notion

I saw Peggy Lauderdale Shackleford briefly at the reunion and then, later, we exchanged E-Mails. Peggy had a good idea: she said there ought to be a way to keep everybody in touch with each other over the years.

That got me thinking. E-Mail is great and we've made good use of it this time around, but it's neither efficient nor practical: with E-Mail alone, keeping everybody in the loop means that we all have to let everybody else know when our E-Mail addresses change, and we all have to keep our own Address Books up-to-date. It's either that or a few people end up doing all the work, like the people on our Reunion Committee. But, really, we want to give those folks a rest, after the great job they did on the reunion.

We need something that goes beyond E-Mail. Something that is designed to maintain connections between people. Something that does all the housekeeping, leaving us free to get in, find out what's going on, and get out. We need a Social Network.

There are such things. MySpace and Facebook are the best known examples, and of the two, Facebook is the best. Bill Gates and Jim Cramer have both joined Facebook.

The idea behind Facebook is simple. It's an elegantly wrought website that you can join. When you join, you get a Profile where you can store information about yourself, pictures of the grandkids, stuff like that. Stuff that no one else can see unless you let them. You can also exchange messages with other people, like E-Mail, except that you don't have to know anybody's address. You just have to be associated with them, in Facebook, as a friend or member of the same group. And it's all free.

If this sounds like a commercial, it is.

The catch is, everybody has to join Facebook. Actually, not everybody - just those who want to keep up with everybody who wants to be kept up with. Let it not be said that the Class of '57 eschews individualism and the right to be left alone. But I would say, if it works for Bill Gates, what have you got to lose?

I joined Facebook. Then I invited Betty to join, in the hope of staying out of Divorcebook. The invitation went to Betty's E-Mail address, and contained a link that took her straight to the Facebook Registration Page. When she joined, she accepted my invitation to associate and we were able to agree on a relationship, which we both designated as "married". As I understand it, that prevents us from having that relationship with anyone else in Facebook.

Then I put up pictures of three of my grandchildren. It was as easy as sending them through E-Mail. But the nice thing about it is, you don't have to scatter your pictures all over the Internet; you just put them up in one place, and then all those who have a connection with you can come to see them whenever they want to. If you let them.

Next, I created a group and called it "Hillsboro Class of 1957". I invited Betty to join this group. Another invitation went out, this time to her Facebook Profile, since she was a member of Facebook by then, and she accepted. Flush with success, I then invited Peggy to join and she did. As they joined, I made them both Administrators, which allows them to invite others to join the group, too. So Peggy invited Gayle Bulleit Moses and Alice Ann Taylor Parks. Now, when Gayle and Alice Ann get a spare moment, they're going to start inviting people, and so on. When this gets going, the law of geometric progression and my calculations indicate that the whole class should be registered in Facebook in about 3 seconds. The Internet is scary. But, in Facebook, everybody knows your name. And the idea is, any news, good or bad, from anybody, gets posted to the "Hillsboro Class of 1957" group. And everybody goes there to find out what's going on.

Wait for an invitation. Then be there.

Remembering the Crow

It was the summer before we started Hillsboro. The days were balmy and we were rising freshmen. We didn't know that schools could burn down. One day, a bunch of us gathered at Charlotte Kinnard's house for an afternoon of unsupervised slow dancing to records. The funny thing is, I don't remember any of the other girls there, besides Charlotte. But I do know that Rick Drewry was there.

Rick remembers that, at one point, he went outside and sat down in a swing that was part of a child's swing set. Soon after that, a big, black crow flew down and sat on the top of the swing frame. The crow looked down at Rick and said, "Hello!"

Rick was astonished. A crow had never spoken to him before. He told Charlotte what happened and how it had startled him. Charlotte said that anybody would have been startled by that.

I wish that I had been out there. I could have saved Rick half a century of wondering about it.

I knew this crow. His name was Sam. He was the crow in our family. He lived in a chicken wire cage, the size of a phone booth, that my mother had gotten somebody to build in our yard.

There was a latch on the cage door and Sam figured out how to pull it up and let himself out. So he could fly free whenever he wanted to. But mainly, he followed my brothers and me around. He was often seen at Stokes School, perched on the back corner of the building and making a lot of noise, when any of us were out at recess.

So I’m sure he just followed me down to Charlotte’s house to see what I was up to, and maybe to see if there was anybody there that he could meet.

Good Lew, Good Ralph

Betty doesn't like the Internet and uses as little of it as possible. But when she found out, a few years back, that you could look up people's phone numbers on it, she decided to give it a whirl. The first person she wanted to look up was Kent Washburn.

Kent Washburn, along with Ralph Sandler and Lewis White, used to ride on her bus. They were all a year behind us, but Betty thought that they treated her with just the right amount of awe and respect due a senior. Especially Kent. She recalls that he, alone of the three, actually talked to her. The other two were just along for the laughs. She told me that Kent had names for them: they were "Good Lew" and "Good Ralph". Every time he talked about them, it was always "Good Lew" and "Good Ralph".

I said, "What are you going to do if you find his phone number?"

She said, "I'm going to call him up."

But Yahoo! didn't know him. She was disappointed. I thought I detected a touch of maternal feeling in her concern for the younger man. But I'm probably overstating it - it doesn't take much, really, to wonder what might have happened to Good Lew and Good Ralph and Good Kent.

1709 Memory Lane

For the reunion weekend, Betty and I made reservations with the Daisy Hill Bed and Breakfast on Blair. Check-in time was 4 PM and they meant it. We arrived a little before three; so, with an hour to kill, we decided to take a tour of the roundabout.

It was familiar territory. During my school years, I carried two different paper routes in the area between Belmont Boulevard and Hillsboro road, from Blair all the way to Gale Lane. Every morning and afternoon I would throw all my papers onto people's porches, for free, and then, once a week, I'd go around, asking to be paid for them. It was an odd arrangement, but most of the time it worked.

We came to the intersection of Blair and Hillsboro Road. On one corner, Pee Wee Blankenship had his drugstore and, on the other corner, Mr. Kinnard had his restaurant. Charlotte says that, years ago, Mr. Apple worked as night manager there. And at Blankenship's, one afternoon, the Reverend Savoy treated me to a coke, even though I wasn't an Episcopalian.

Why did they call him Pee Wee?

My mother went to school with him and she told me that, in sixth grade, he wet his pants, one day, while standing before the class. Later on, he did it again.

You're not going to put that in your blog, are you?

When we crossed over Hillsboro Road, still on Blair, we entered the zone where I delivered my papers. Back then, I knew who lived in every house in the whole area, and was on speaking terms with them. Today, I live in a subdivision of strangers. We wave, but we don't speak. It's my fault, actually: I like it that way.

The first house we came to on the left was where little Jimmy Tarver lived. Jimmy was twelve years old and reminded me of Tiny Tim. He wasn't handicapped, but he was little, bright-eyed and eager. If you've ever seen Freddie Bartholomew in one of those old movies, you'll know what I mean. Jimmy had never been out on a date, but he wanted to go on one. He got a girl to say she would go, but then the logistics got complicated. His mother appealed to me for help, and together we devised a plan.

What was the plan?

Don't you remember? You and I went out on a double date with this little kid and his girlfriend. We picked him up and then we picked up his date. He was all dressed up in a suit and tie and had his hair slicked back. I don't remember what she had on, but he gave her a corsage to wear. After the movie, we took her home first and then we drove Jimmy home.

I don't remember that at all.

Most of the people on Blair were old, but not everybody: on the right, three doors up from the end, two grown girls (I didn't know what else to call them) rented the house. When I made my rounds to collect, one of these girls always came to the door in a bikini, rain or shine. It may not seem worth noting today, but in 1956 this was news. I tried to arrange my visits to coincide with the times that she was there.

About halfway between Belmont and Hillsboro, on the corner, Professor Dewey Grantham moved in, one day, with his family. He was in his thirties, then, just starting his tenure at Vanderbilt. He recently died, emeritus.

And down a few more doors, on the same side of the street, at 1804 Blair, Joe Claxton's grandmother lived in a big house. Every week, when I came by to collect, she asked me how Joe was doing.

At the corner of Blair and Belmont was Sterling Court, the apartment complex with its 11 sections, each having 6 units, up three flights of stairs, for a total of 66 small apartments. Built in the twenties, it was grand in its day. Behind it was a long, wooden, ten car garage. Inside one of the garages, written in chalk on the wooden wall, was this inscription: "I'm the Sheik of Araby." Those garages don't exist, anymore.

Sterling Court was a gothic place back then, set well off the street by a large courtyard with tall trees that held back the sun and made the building and yard always seem dark. In the centermost section, down a half flight of stairs, Mr. Collie, the taciturn manager of the complex, had his office: on one side of the narrow passageway, a small room with a desk, covered by architectural drawings; on the other side, through an open doorway, the coal furnace room, which, in winter, was always going. I saw Mr. Collie often. But I never heard him speak. Certainly, not to me, a mere lad of sixteen. As far as I knew, he was there to fix leaky pipes and shovel coal in the furnace. Nevertheless, in my teenage mind, it was easy to see him as an Ayn Randian type of architect-engineer-hero who created great edifices with one hand, while stoking the furnaces of industry with the other. A somber man in a somber place.

Every morning promptly at 5:15 AM, I would come tearing through Sterling Court like a bat out of hell. I would run up and down the stairs of each of the 11 sections, throwing rolled-up papers, left and right, and be out of there in five minutes flat. They called me the Alarm Clock of Sterling Court.

Really?

Of course.

We turned right, onto Belmont from Blair, and passed the Albemarle Apartments, on the left. They were smaller and stranger than Sterling Court, starting with the name. Who calls anything Albemarle, anymore? Maybe it was named after somebody's dog. I don't know.

It was out in front of the Albemarle Apartments that I ran into Jimmy Jeter, one afternoon, going on about the speed of light, which, in his opinion, was not what it was cracked up to be. During that same time, I used the Albemarle's address as a mail drop for letters I wrote, anonymously, to the Nashville Banner. I wrote one letter, comparing Christianity to Buddhism. I thought that I might get a response from an outraged Christian. Instead, I got a response from an outraged Buddhist.

I had a few customers in the Albemarle, but I seldom saw any of them. I would leave the papers during the week and then, on Friday, they would slip envelopes under their doors into the hallway, with my money in them. Around on the side of the building, however, in a basement apartment, there was a guy who paid me in person. He always came to the door in his shorts. I mention that to dispel any notion that my paper route was all fun and games.

At least, he wasn't a criminal.

True.

The criminal, on my route, rented a room around the corner, on Ashwood. He was one of my best customers. He was also on the FBI's Most Wanted List. The landlady told me that, as the police were hauling him away, he slipped her a couple of bucks, "for the paperboy."

One summer day, I saw Larry Stumb on top of a tall ladder, leaning up against a house on my route. It was at the corner of Ashwood and Oakland, and he was painting it. I don't think he went to Hillsboro, but he must have gone somewhere close, because he kept turning up in different places where I was. Years later, he worked for Merrill Lynch and recommended Texaco to my mother.

We drove down Oakland, past where Miss Van Valkenburgh lived - who gave me a tin of cookies at Christmas time, when a quarter would have done - down to the end of the block, where my route ended. The next few blocks were a no-man's-land to me. I didn't know anybody there. I remembered that the cross streets were all named after trees - Ashwood and Linden, which were on my route; then Primrose, Sweetbriar and Rosewood, which weren't. But then we came to Wildwood and the memories began to come again. I knew Wildwood. It was the boundary of my first paper route. Archeologically, it was older than my other route: the memories were buried deeper.

Wildwood led to Brightwood and the place where all the Holzapfels lived. There were twelve of them. The one in the middle, near my age, was always straight with me. We had mutual respect. For years, I thought his real name was "Hosey".

Further up Brightwood, we came to a place where I lived when I was little - 2902 Brightwood. We lived in the back, in a basement apartment - my parents and me. It was hard times, but I didn't know it.

I have a memory of standing out in front of this place, by the mailbox, with Robin Beard. It's like we were waiting for a school bus, but the problem is, when I started to school, I was living on Lealand Lane. Those two memories don't go together. They don't hook up. One of these days, I'm going to sit down, assemble the facts and figure this out.

Am I boring you?

Keep going. You're doing fine. Just don't drive the car into a ditch.

Ah...

I drove the car into a ditch, early one morning, around the corner at the bottom of Gale Lane. Betty and I had been to a dance and to Mrs. Brown's afterward and, after taking her home, I just went straight to my route. It was six AM and I was coming down Gale Lane in my father's Chrysler and woke up with the car in a ditch. I guess I went to sleep.

Further on down Gale Lane was the dry cleaners owned by Ewing Nicholson's father. And then the grocery store owned, in part, by Bobby Martin's father. The other half being owned by somebody we never heard of, named Cooper. Next to the Grocery was Moore's Drugstore. Across the street was Kusan Plastics Co. And next to that was a Dairy Queen.

Back up Gale Lane was where Sally Dykes lived. That was a base for us in the old days. The Class Prophecy was written in Sally Dykes' living room.

Do you think there should be a plaque?

I tell the jokes around here.

Sorry.

We drove back down Belmont to Blair and then up to the Daisy Hill B&B to check in. Later that evening, we were hobnobbing with the swells we used to know. I saw Sally Dykes out on the patio and made for her. When she saw me, she started crying. I took it as a compliment. But she was just happy to see me after fifty years. And I was happy to see her. I told her that we had driven by her old house earlier in the afternoon.

Sally said, "I'm still living there!"

The only thing I could think of to say was, "1709 Gale Lane!"

The Picture of Hale Harris

Somewhere, there must be a portrait of Hale Harris that has been aging over the years. Because the man himself keeps getting younger with each passing reunion. If we ever have another one, my calculations indicate that he will appear as a teenager.



Hale Harris in 2017

Across a Crowded Room

Some enchanted evening, you may see a stranger.
You may see a stranger across a crowded room,
And somehow you know, you know even then,
That somewhere, you'll see him again and again.

When we first arrived at Southfork, the big house was full of people. We picked up our name tags in the front parlor and then started looking around the room at all the other name tags. Soon, we were meeting people, left and right. At one point, I looked over the shoulder of the person who was talking to me and instantly recognized someone on the other side of the room who, I noticed, was at that moment instantly recognizing me. It was Dick Abernathy. We both waded toward each other. We shook hands. I told Dick that I recognized him and he said that he recognized me. I told him where his old house used to be and he told me where my old house had been. We slapped each other on the back, and waded off into the crowd.

Later, out on the patio, we ran into each other again. I asked him if he had seen Caleb Wallwork. Much later, after the dinner under the tent and after the program, we ran into each other yet again. This time we didn't speak, but just smiled as we passed by, as though to acknowledge the essential futility of the situation.

I never thought I would get to do this

Betty and I were sitting in a half-circular booth in the Bistro, beneath a soft skylight, Saturday, at lunchtime. Archtypes of our school years were moving all around us. Out of nowhere, Cam Talley materialized in our booth, sitting next to Betty. We exchanged stories...

My mother drove me to my first day of school. I didn't like it one bit. I let Miss McCord know about it. Miss McCord took me to one side and said, "Look at Cam Talley, over there. It's her first day of school, too. But she's having fun, coloring, and getting to know everyone."

And, now, Cam Talley was sitting in my booth. We talked about Alan Cohen.

I said, "Alan told me that you were a cafe singer in Boston."

She said, "I was."

We never much thought

While riding on a train goin' west
I fell asleep for to take my rest
I dreamed a dream that made me sad
Concerning myself and the first few friends I had.

With half-damp eyes I stared to the room
Where my friends and I had spent many an afternoon
Where we together weathered many a storm
Laughin' and singing 'till the early hours of the morn’.

By the old wooden stove where our hats was hung
Our words was told and our songs was sung
Where we longed for nothin' and were satisfied
Joking and talking about the world outside.

With haunted hearts through the heat and cold
We never much thought we could get very old
We thought we could sit forever in fun
But our chances really was a million to one.

As easy it was to tell black from white
It was all that easy to tell wrong from right
And our choices they was few so the thought never hit
That the one road we traveled would ever shatter and split.

Now many a year has passed and gone
Many a gamble has been lost and won
And many a road taken by many a first friend
And each one I've never seen again.

I wish, I wish, I wish in vain
That we could sit simply in that room again
Ten thousand dollars at the drop of a hat
I'd give it all gladly if our lives could be like that.

Bob Dylan

Odell Tucker

There they all are in those eighth grade pictures - children, really. Right now, I'm looking at Johnny Boatman, Odell Tucker and Johnny Jenkins. But there were others, in the other schools. I remember Boatman as an interesting guy, but, in retrospect, you can see his future in his face, in that picture. That's not true of Odell. Look at his picture and what you see is a happy, funny kid.

What I don't understand is how they went from those pictures to hood-dom. That must have been some rite of passage. One that most of us missed out on.

Did they all go to see that Marlon Brando biker movie and get transformed? Did they suddenly see the light in a dark theater?...

Townsman: "What are you boys rebelling against?"

Brando: "Whaddya got?"

Or did they hear their ancestors calling them from Shiloh, Chickamauga and Redoubt Number One in South Nashville, telling them to get free?

The metamorphosis didn't take place overnight. But over the Hillsboro years, one by one, their pictures drop out of the Annuals.

The time we all remember is the week before graduation. We don't know what happened. We can only imagine...

There was no moon that night. The only light was from the houses that lined the streets. Maybe he told his mother he'd be home, soon. Maybe he didn't. He had nowhere special to go. The thing was to get out and ride.

He found the roads where the houses thinned out and opened it up, all the way, a few times. He felt safe and confident in the darker-than-dark night.

On his way home, he decided to make one last run down a road that was long, but lined with houses, half-hidden by trees. At the end of the road, a car was backing slowly out of a driveway. Black on black. Night on night... He racked it all the way back, leaned into the wind... and graduated early.

Reminiscing at the Reunion

I ran into Bill Daniel on the other side of the food line, Saturday night.

He leaned across and said, "You remember that bully I told you about who chased me all over the playground in the sixth grade?"

I said, "Yeah."

Bill said, "He's here tonight!"

I said, "Let's you and me take him outside and straighten him out."

Bill flashed that famous Bill Daniel grin and said, "Deal!"

And we moved on down the line.

When We Was Fab

A note from Alice Ann, today, reminds the Stokesians among us that the big deal is about a week away. If the Stokes contingent is representative of what's going on this time, then there's a lot going on - more than the last two times put together. And those last two times were no slouch, either.

There is a great anticipation, this time - that's what's different. I'm looking forward to this more than I did the last times. I imagine the thing - it's like the song: "I'm going to go 'round, shaking everybody's hand." People I thought I'd never see again.

If I were a crying man, I'd be gearing up about now. I'd be hearing bagpipes in the distance. I'd be thinking about being able to publish nonsense in the United States of America and get away with it. I'd be thinking about Johnny Wilson's Civil War, and Bill Daniel's bullies, and Rick Drewry's Uncle Dean and Tandy, and Caleb Wallwork's amazing data-driven history, and Edward Lyman's Cadillac and Copeland's fancy Texas boots...

We're going to have a good time. We're going to make all them other classes wish they was us.

Amo, Amas, Amat

From my first day in her Latin I class, I was in love with Mrs. Rawls. Besotted is probably a better word. My guess is, every boy in that class felt the same way, but it wasn't something we could talk about.

Because she was a teacher. She was, in fact, the cutest teacher in the school. Maybe, in the history of the school. But that still didn't give us license to harbor sappy feelings. There were only a couple of girls in the whole school that a guy could legitimately be in love with and still be cool...

"You in love with her?"

"Yeah."

"Me, too."

But you couldn't say that about Mrs. Rawls. So we kept it to ourselves, thinking we were the only ones with sense enough to appreciate her rarer qualities.

The strangest thing that ever happened to me with Mrs. Rawls was the summer afternoon she appeared at the door of my house, where I lived with my parents and my brothers. No teacher had ever come to my house, before. And she had on short shorts and a halter top. No teacher had ever had so little on, in my presence, before. I was struck dumb.

There was a perfectly good reason why she came to my house, but I can't remember what it was. I think I invited her in, but I'm not sure. She had some message for my parents. I promised to tell them. And then she was off.

My brother came by the door as she was leaving. He said, "Who was that?"

I said, "Just some girl."

Funny

On page 14 of the 1957 Hillsburro...

Mrs. Thackston is shown watering an array of plants, with the caption, "Blackboard Jungle?"

That's not funny.

Mrs. Price is shown with her eyes closed and holding two phones to her ears, with the caption, "Mrs. Price, Mr. Koen wants you."

That's not funny.

Mrs. Frierson is shown, holding up an empty coke bottle, with the caption, "The pause that refreshes."

That's not funny.

While several students of learning look on, Miss Allen places the tip of her pencil at the top of a conical solid, with the caption, "Let's see if it has grown any."

That's funny!

Thackstonia

In the winter of our discontent, we took up Richard III... And there were old stone walls, covered with snow, while the gentle wind wafted over the new mown hay. Stuff like that.

Midway through the hour, the discussion devolved into a teacher's monologue, which seemed a little off-topic, unless you considered the literary context. Which we didn't.

Walking out, I said to the guy next to me, "What was that all about?"

The guy said, "What?"

I said, "The part where she said there were things in life that we had no knowledge of."

The guy said, "I think she was saying, only teachers can have sex."

"You might be right," I said.

Just then, Felix Perry passed by. I grabbed him and said, "What do you think?"

Felix said, "My kingdom for a B."

Emerson was a Television

Emerson Keaton just sort of turned up one day. At first, we couldn't deal with "Emerson" as a first name. It was delaying his acceptance into the rank and file. Then Mr. Dorris started calling him "Buster" and everybody fell in with that. We knew the real Buster was a famous person, but we didn't know what for. Years later, I went to a Buster Keaton movie and I thought, he doesn't look anything like Buster Keaton.

Buster had blue transparent eyes that reminded me of Wendell Corey. Wendell Corey was in that movie with Grace Kelly and Jimmy Stewart. Jimmy Stewart always reminded me of Billy Cochran.

A Way of Looking at Norfleet

Norfleet had a flair for the dramatic.

One time, I remember, we were at somebody's house with a bunch of people. I was playing cards with a guy and Norfleet was kibitzing. When it was the guy's turn to deal, he started fumbling around and acting stupid, and finally he spilled the cards on the floor. We had to wait while he picked them up. Later on, Norfleet took me to one side and said, "Please, please don't ever do that to me. I'm not psychologically secure enough for you to do that to me. Promise you won't ever do that to me, ever." I said, "What did I do?" And he said, "It was that look! Please don't ever look at me like that!" I said, "I only have one look." We argued for a while about how many looks I had, and then he got down on his knees and clasped his hands and said, "Please promise you won't ever do that to me!"

I remember one other time, when we sat and talked quietly one night, in Norfleet's car, outside the Sweet Shop, while Andrea Horsnell looked on.

I have no idea what happened to him. I guess I saw him as the kind of guy who would leave town and never look back.

A Little Knowledge

Today, kids have it easy: the Internet and the modern search engine have placed everything they always wanted to know about anything at their fingertips. We had to scratch for every little scrap of knowledge we could find.

I remember one time, a bunch of us guys were sitting around after school, desperately trying to further our educations. We were fresh out of ideas. Then somebody said, "My father has some magazines in his closet with pictures of women in them."

Somebody else said, "Are they naked?"

The first guy said, "Almost."

He was hooted down. Almost was not good enough for the likes of us. Then somebody said, "I know where we can get a 16-millimeter movie."

Suddenly everybody was making noise at the same time. When we settled down, I think I spoke for everyone there, when I said, "Now, you're talking."

But then, soberer heads said, "Where are we going to get a movie?"

All eyes turned to the originator of the suggestion. He said, "It's easy - there's a bunch of them in my brother's fraternity house at college."

The rest of the afternoon was spent laying out a general plan and logistics for acquiring this bit of knowledge. In addition to the film, a projector of the right caliber had to be procured, a place had to be found and a date had to be set. We were ready in three days.

That morning, we gathered on the front terrace of the school and synchronized our watches. I got cold feet. I said, "I'm not sure that I want to do this with people I know."

They all said, "Good, we'll give your seat to somebody else." I decided to go.

The plan was to meet at this guy's house, whose mother worked afternoons. After school, we all gathered in his driveway until the guy got there, and then we filed, furtively, into the house. Especially furtive was the guy who had to carry the projector.

It took less than 45 seconds to set everything up: blankets over the windows; sheet up on the wall; film loaded; projector going; fight for the best viewing positions. I stood up in the back.

We looked at the sheet on the wall; at the little square of light coming from the projector. At first, there was nothing; then there were a lot of moving spots, which we took for progress; and finally, these words:

%
CHANGING PARTNERS
%

That was the title. That's what it was all about. We realized that a rite of passage was really about to happen. We sat, silent as carpenters, watching. What came next was not as clear as the title. Mainly, it was more spots, moving around on the screen. Nobody wanted to say anything. A minute went by. Finally, in frustration, somebody said, "What are they doing out in the snow for?"

It was a reasonable question. But we had no time to take it up, because right then the projector went clunk and stopped, but the light stayed on and burned through the film, which was the most interesting thing we had seen yet.

The projector had to be fixed. A quick poll of the group for mechanical aptitude turned up a guy who helped his father work on cars. He was given the job. He looked on all sides of the projector and said, "Where's the clutch?"

Next, we got a guy who had completed a year of shop. He looked at the projector and said, "Here's the problem - somebody spliced the film with friction tape." We found some scissors, cut the splice out of the film, threaded it from that point on and resumed the show.

We saw more spots. But the longer we looked at them, the more they seemed to resolve into moving shadow images of something. We were transfixed. Then, the projector went clunk again as another piece of friction tape went through the gate. This time, there was damage to the projector's delicate mechanism. A couple of guys set about repairing it. We turned the lights on, but left the blankets up. Somebody started doing his homework. One guy went to sleep. I began to think of home.

The next thing we knew, the guy's mother was pulling into the driveway. Chaos ensued. At all costs, we had to hide the projector and the film. Then we all got busy doing our homework. Except for the guy who was asleep.

When the mother came back to where we were, she smiled and said, "All doing your homework - very good!"

"Yes, ma'am," we all said.

"And whose idea was it to put blankets over the windows?" She said. "Was it to help you concentrate on your studies?"

"Yes, ma'am."

The Teachers

I'm thinking about the teachers, and why I had some of them and not the others. Why did I have Allen, Apple, Dorris, Hall, Nicholson, Pistol, Phillips, Rawls, Regen, Sherwood and Thackston, but not Batey, Burnette, Dvorsky, Floyd, Frierson, Harris, Johns, Landiss, Nance, Spalding or Stroh?

How can I possibly relate, at the reunion, to someone who had Frierson, but not Thackston? Frierson was like a foreign country to me. I didn't go there. I was from the country of Thackston. And Nicholson. And Rawls. I feel nostalgic for them now, not so much as people, but as places where I used to live. Each with its own culture and folkways. How can I explain that to somebody who has never been there?

On the other hand, what do I really remember about Thackston? Memory fails.

"Thackston?"

"No. Frierson."

"Sorry."

"Thackston?"

"Yes."

"Thackstonia?"

"Definitely."

"Thackbeth??"

"Extremely!"

"Nicholson?"

"No. Harris."

"Sorry."

Thumbnail Sketches

Mr. Apple

Told us he wanted to run for public office, some day.


Mr. Dorris

Rectitude, Fortitude and Longitude


Mr. Hessey

Ate a crocodile.


Miss Jim Lee Allen

Semper Fidelis


Mr. Nicholson

Told us Castro wasn't what he seemed.


Mrs. Thackston

Told us Shakespeare wasn't what he seemed.

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