From The Arbor Spring Emerges Slowly
Of Chaucer’s Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, that’s all I remember committing to memory. The English language has changed a lot in the six-hundred odd years since Chaucer’s day. Thanks to my days of English Literature classes, I’m reminded of the bard’s words each spring and can offer a loose translation of the lines above. However, a better rendering follows but doesn’t rhyme as well as the original words: The language has indeed changed, but Nature still does her magic each spring. And, while we generally credit the changes associated with the seasons to Mother Nature, the rightful recipient of our praise should be Almighty God who established the universe and gave order to all things created. Language changes, our seasons change, and even the earth’s climate changes. Of that which we understand, the most enduring aspect of our universe was phrased more than twelve hundred years before Chaucer lived. Isaiah, a messianic prophet of Israel, wrote, "The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever." I don’t know how to write the words of Isaiah as he might have spoken them, so that which is written here are English words of the King James era. In the Bible Belt, we believe death and taxes rank alongside God’s word as being certainties of life, and if you’re like this writer, you’re waiting until mid April to write that check to Uncle Sam for your 2009 tax liability. Spring has finally sprung as has Daylight Saving Time, though some of us may be more grateful for the former than the latter. Ours was a cold winter in Pontotoc, Mississippi. I don’t put much stock in the weather predictions elicited from a groundhog’s shadow, but I did note a good six weeks of winter followed February 2nd. How cold was it? Well, it was so cold that I found it necessary to supplement our central heating system by burning the gas logs in the fireplace of my living room for an extended period of time. Our living room is an informal one and doubles as a den with a TV and is where most family members congregate to text friends and family during commercials. Thus, it is important that the temperature of this room be eight to ten degrees greater than that of the master bedroom, where my wife and I prefer to sleep with temperatures less than sixty-five degrees. This winter was so cold that with the exception of one day, our gas logs burned continuously from the first week of December until March 6th. We’ve wintered in this house for 12 consecutive years, and this is the first year we’ve needed supplemental heat for three straight months. This winter was so cold that the Global Warming alarmists took a beating, and I was happy to land a punch or two of my own. However, I have a hunch this summer will be as hot and dry as our winter was cold and wet. We editors of The Bodock Post appreciate the many reader submissions we’re had in the past eighteen months. We plan to have a complete index of writers on our website and have already begun that initiative at http://www.rrnews.org/bp/writers.html. We hope to complete this work before summer, and thereafter maintain updates on a monthly basis. We are pleased to share three articles by four contributors this month. Bluebirds Return by Russ Russell, Gardening With Tim by Tim Burress, Toxish Memories by Jackie Crosby and Family Reunions by Rhea Palmer. We welcome your stories that conform to our guidelines for reader submissions. These guidelines can be read at http://rrnews.org/bp/submissions.htm, but may be summarized as something less than 1000 words that your grandmother would not be embarrassed to read. Submissions may be made through any of the editors or simply to editor@bodockpost.com ~ By Wayne Carter, Associate Editor & Publisher
Bluebirds Return If You Build... If you build it, he will come. That was a line in the movie, "The Field of Dreams." Of course the voice in the movie was speaking of the building of a baseball field, and the return of a baseball player. "If you build them, they will come." That’s what I told my brother when I asked him to build a bluebird house for my backyard. The difference was that I was speaking of bluebirds coming, not baseball players. While growing up in the hills of Pontotoc County in North Mississippi, it was not unusual to hear the beautiful song of the Bluebird. During that time, which was the 1940’s and 1950’s, bluebirds were plentiful. It was not unusual at all to find bluebird nests in old fence posts and in dead trees where woodpeckers had made their holes. To me, while roaming the red hills when I was growing up, there was no more peaceful sound than the song of the bluebird. Then it seemed that one day there were no more bluebirds. Some said that it was because they built their nests so close to the ground, which made them vulnerable to all sorts of animals, reptiles, and other birds. Others think that since we lived in cotton country the arrival of insect pesticides caused the demise of the bluebird. In any case they almost completely disappeared. Then a few years ago a few bluebirds began to re-appear, and now in many places they are plentiful. You may not see the bluebird if you live in a populated area where there are many houses. They seem to like open fields, and open areas. That’s probably the reason that no birds visited the bird house in my back yard, which is in a sub-division in the city.
Bluebirds are also pretty picky about their houses. The entrance must be almost exactly the correct size, and the houses must be built only about four or five feet off the ground. My bluebird house did not work out that well. First off, it was the first one that my brother attempted to build, so it was not a work of art, and in addition to that the only place I could place it was in a crowded area. He improved his pattern on the ones that he built for himself, and since he has several open acres around his house, he kind of got carried away and built, and put up bluebird houses on every post and tree on his place. And did the bluebirds come to the houses in his yard? As my mother would have said, "I’ll say they came." They began showing up by the drove, or by the flock, or however bluebirds arrive. They came in fighting each other for the houses, and even crashed into the windows of my brother’s house, apparently thinking they were seeing another bird in the reflection. I am not so sure he is all that happy with me for suggesting the building of the bluebird houses, but this spring he will build more houses for them. Why more houses? Because recently he observed bluebirds attacking their reflection in the shiny chrome on his dodge pick-up truck! ~ By M. G. "Russ" Russell, Contributor
Springtime Busy Planting Time Nears Spring has sprung. My friend and amateur gardener Tommy already has tomato plants with blooms under a growing light in his garage and is brewing ten gallons of alfalfa tea on his patio. Not to be outdone and trying to maintain my tomato growing reputation, I have several tomato plants in containers on my patio. They are heirloom varieties which came in the mail as seed packets. Thus it was necessary to get them into containers post haste. Other than the containers already planted and set on the patio with full southeast sunshine exposure, my tomato garden currently consists of two yards of planting mix, twenty-plus black plastic and rubber large and medium containers, a stack of used wooden pallets to put the containers on, six bales of pine straw to place the wooden pallets on, ten gallons of alfalfa fertilizer brewing in the sun, and visions of homemade BLT's on light bread slathered with Duke's Mayonnaise with four slices of bacon and topped with thick slices of salted juicy red homegrown vine ripened heirloom maters. Mimi is figuring how much it will cost if I make 100 tomatoes. I watched a TV program last night to learn how to raise tomatoes and avoid problems with blossom end rot, blight, cracked tomato skins, poor blossom set, etc. I can't let Tommy beat me again this year. March came in like a lion and went out like a lion and was cold. We're past the vernal equinox. The days are getting longer and warmer, and according to Uncle Aubrey of Laws Hill, MS, the extra hour of sunshine is welcome now but is what's causing global warming. He says there's no such thing as having your cake and eating it, too, and Rhett Buttler, his pet billy goat, is not observing daylight savings time either.
I've been busy as a packrat in a windstorm lately. My tree and shrub pruning are complete except for the azaleas, which must be pruned after they bloom to avoid removing next year's blooms. The lawn is properly manicured with an assortment of what I call wildflowers and Mimi calls weeds. The chickweed, henbit and dandelions are blooming just below the height of the mower blade. I admit to having done a little chemical trimming, telling myself I am saving the wooden fence from weed eater string damage. I have possibly wasted some seed by planting them early, but I planted a large container of zinnias. Hellon, my peony, is growing rapidly and full of promise. The Addams Family, my small carnivorous plant collection, is greening up. I have three new mail order pitcher plant rhizomes I need to plant. Another collector has offered to give me cuttings, and I have offered two others to do the same for them. Gardeners love to share plants. We call them pass-alongs. My 60 or so sweet peas have sprouted. Mimi says she hopes we make more than a cupful like last year. I told her I know what I did wrong last year and will add more home brewed alfalfa tea fertilizer. ~ By Carl Wayne Hardeman, Editor
Mail Order Chickens Food Locker Bound Years ago in the early spring, the post office in Pontotoc would often sound like a chicken hatchery as people would order baby chickens from Sears, Roebuck and Company. They would be mailed in large, flat, cardboard boxes just tall enough for the chicks to walk around in with holes strategically cut to allow ventilation. Dad would check each day and then hurry down and pick up our order of twenty-five, or more, chickens when they arrived. When he reached home with the cheeping box, he would hand it to me and say, "Ralph you have some chickens to raise." They were cute little guys at first, so soft, fluffy, and innocent. Ours were so fuzzy and yellow at first, but molted into white-feathered demons. It got to the point that I absolutely hated chickens. They were so messy and stinky you almost had to have rubber gloves and a gas mask to deal with them. We had a good cage to raise and tend to them, but that did little to make them any more hygienic. Inside the rather limited enclosure, Dad placed a cardboard box in the corner with a light bulb hanging from the top. The chicks really liked the heat from the light and would huddle around it and make the most contented sound. However, none of this makes them smell good or behave any better. My job was to keep them fed, watered, and from killing one another. A special tablet, "Checker Tab," was put into their water to keep them healthy and of course they had the best food "Checkerboard Square" offered. I kept the feed trough filled, but no sooner had it been cleaned, filled, and returned to their cage; there were several on top of it doing their business just like it was a public toilet. At the same time, others were trying to scratch the food out of the trough, why, I never figured out. They were just plain ornery. I learned quickly that they were downright mean to one another. Let one get sickly and the others would kill it if you didn’t separate them. The weak ones were the targets of the healthier ones. Soon enough they began to grow and outgrew the baby chick cage. As they got large enough they were let out into the "chicken yard." It did not take long for them to become large enough to be called "fryers." I liked that because I knew it would not be long before we would begin to have fried chicken with all the trimmings. Chicken, if cooked properly, is a most delicious meal. Having one now and again for Sunday dinner or some special occasion was a treat. My favorite parts were the liver and breast, although thighs and drumsticks were not bad either; wings and necks were way down on the list, however. As the group got to be a good size Dad would declare that this Saturday was chicken killing day. He would tie a half dozen or so by their feet to the clothesline and go along and cut their heads off. This way they drained well and you did not have to chase the headless carcass all over the yard. During this time I would get the big oblong copper tub that just fit over two of the stove burners and fill it half way with water. This was for scalding the chickens so that the feathers could be plucked easier. Once again, the smell was horrendous and to top it off, after the wet, limp, feathers were plucked the chicken was passed over an open flame stove to singe all the fuzz and pen feathers; again another different but equally horrible smell.
Before home freezers became plentiful, Mr. Giles operated the Pontotoc Frozen Food Locker in town that the community used for frozen things. Each family could have a freezer drawer or box where they could store their frozen foods and then go fetch it whenever they desired. I can remember going to the "frozen food locker" barefooted and without a shirt to get a box or two of chicken or strawberries or some such. They kept a large artic type coat and a pair of large galoshes just for kids like me. It was so rewarding to sit down to a big piece of golden fried chicken with hot biscuits, gravy and the trimmings. Chicken is one food that tastes as good as it smells while cooking. That wonderful aroma would flood the entire house. How we ever keep enough fried chicken around is beyond me. However, the magic of those great fried chicken dinners somehow seemed to evaporate when Dad came home with another of those large boxes of baby chickens and saying, "Ralph you have some more chickens to raise." ~ By Ralph Jones, Managing Editor
Toxish Memories Grandma Lived With Us My recent attendance at a birthday party in the Beckham/Toxish Community of Pontotoc County kindled memories of a time when I lived in this same community. The year was 1949. My family sharecropped a cotton farm on Mr. Seal Harris’ place on Toxish Road. I started to Beckham School. Ms. Jodie Phillips was my teacher and I loved her dearly. She would read a Bible story to us each day after lunch. She knew just where to stop reading so that the suspense would pique our interest the next day. I was the bride in a wedding play. We all had to put smut on our faces because it was a black play. Mrs. Harris made me a beautiful bridal spray of magnolia blooms and leaves from the tree in her yard. I was so excited about being in the play I left the bouquet at home! The year I attended Beckham was the year indoor restrooms were installed in the school building. What excitement! I remember Mr. Arnold the principal would stand watch at the door when we lined up to use the new restroom. I loved playing outside at recess under the big trees with roots extending out of the ground and no grass, just red dust and dirt. We would eat our lunches under the trees exchanging with each other food our mothers had packed that we did not like. I loved living on the Harris place. The house that went with the farm had not been lived in for some years and needed repairs. My dad used his empty Prince Albert tobacco cans to repair the floors. He would open the tin can, flatten it with a hammer and then nail the piece of metal over the cracks and knot holes. He and mother papered all the walls with extra wide thick brown paper. They covered the floors with linoleum and a quilt was hung over the door to the bedroom for privacy and to keep out the cold drafts. Grandma Thompson came for an extended stay. I slept with her. She would tell me scary ghost stories to the point I would be afraid to get out of the bed fearing there was a monster under the bed ready to grab my ankles.
Grandma liked to go walking in the pasture to look for a sweet gum tooth brush for her snuff. We would pick muscadines, plums, wild blackberries and crab apples. The truck patch was across the pasture and up the hill. One day grandma decided we should go dig a few sweet potatoes. She told me to go to the barn and find something to dig with. I opened daddy’s tool box and found a brand new file right on the top tray. We took the file to dig sweet potatoes in red clay dirt. Daddy was really mad at me for ruining his brand new file. We generally always had sweet potatoes roasting in the fireplace in winter. Grandma kept her smoothing irons in the fireplace, too. She ironed the wrinkles and creases out of her scraps of material. That made it easier to cut the pieces for quilt tops. She always had a quilt in progress, but that would be set aside when there were peas or butterbeans to shell or green beans to snap. The quilt’s frame hung from the ceiling and could be rolled up high out of the way. At night after supper we would all shell peanuts or corn. Dad would take the shelled corn to the grist mill to be ground into cornmeal. The shelled peanuts would be parched by adding a little grease to a black iron skillet and placing it over the fire. The peanuts would crackle as they browned. After several shakes of the skillet and a generous sprinkle of salt, they were just right for eating with a spoon. After crops had been laid by daddy started working on a playhouse for me. I was so excited I could hardly wait to get home from school to see how much he had done. The little wood house had a floor, a window and electricity! The outside was carefully covered with brick siding and the roof was slanted just like a real house. There was a small door. I could stand up in it without bumping my head. There was room for my red rocking chair, my dolls and more. I just loved playing in that little doll house. I might have spent the night if mother would have allowed it. Then spring came. Imagine my surprise when I came home from school one day to find my rocking chair and dolls had been replaced with lots of baby chickens! My dad had been building a chicken brooder all along and just let me believe it was my play house! ~ By Jackie Thompson Crosby, Guest Contributor
American Decadence We Know Not What We Do Slowly but surely America is decaying from within. We’re living out the example set by the Romans and others who allowed their greatness to decline into decadence. Whether the liberals of this land want to believe it or not, this country was founded on the religious principles of the Christian faith. The Great American Dream is being replaced by the Great American Nightmare. America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, is poised to become history and someday a historian will be chronicling "The Rise and Fall of America -The Beautiful." Americans need not fear invasion or being overrun by the Russians, North Koreans, or Chinese. While any of that may eventually come to pass, it won’t be the invaders that destroy America. America will have fallen long before. And, of that fall, we’ll find no one to blame but ourselves. Look around at how far this land now lies to the left of the American Dream. Can anyone now fifty years or older, not see less of the entrepreneurial spirit that once characterized individuals seeking a better life? What’s happened to the pride of the American worker and the label, "Made In America?" The American automobile industry is completely unrecognizable with respect to its greatness a few decades ago. It is so encumbered with unions, uncaring workers, and a resistance to produce automobiles that consumers want and can afford that of The Big Three automakers, only Ford had the backbone and economic stability to say no to the bailout funds made available by politicians willing to give away your money and mine. Front page news isn’t always front page news. As I see it, just because it’s good, bad, or ugly doesn’t mean it’s important. Regardless the motto of The New York Times, all the news that’s fit to print isn’t necessarily fit to print. A decision by a school board in a Northeast Mississippi community recently made national news and headlines in regional papers. It seems the school board of Itawamba Agricultural High School, Fulton, Mississippi, voted to disallow a school-sponsored prom for juniors and seniors because a lesbian student, backed by the ACLU, threatened a discriminatory lawsuit if the administration refused to allow the lesbian to wear a tuxedo and bring her girlfriend to the prom.
But, a lot of water has passed under the bridge in my lifetime. Remember all that Gay Rights stuff we thought would never amount to much? Well, it’s now fully developed and is bearing fruit (no pun intended). We have allowed politicians to be influenced by every sort of special interest group known to man. And, the politicians bought into the idea of granting non-discrimination clauses and rights to any group that can show it’s a minority. Actually, they didn’t buy into it so much as they sold themselves to the highest bidder. I believe things are sure to worsen. Just you wait and see; one of these days somebody’s going to want to date a polar bear, maybe even marry that polar bear. When that happens, there’ll be others wanting to do the same thing. They’ll lobby for minority status, and it’ll be granted them. Then, they’ll get to enjoy the same benefits of marriage the rest of us enjoy, and because they are a minority they’ll even benefit from the same marriage penalty we married folk suffer at tax time, unless of course they convince Congress it should not apply to them. Furthermore, no public place or venue, no organization, no high school, no place anywhere in this once great land can refuse to accommodate them on the basis of whatever it is they are or desire to be, for to do so would be discriminatory. We who are Christians are taught to hate the sin but to love the sinner. Sometimes that’s hard to do, and it’s true that some of us do a better job of loving the sinner than do others. The line between loving the sinner and endorsing the sin is a fine line, indeed. Blessed is the man or woman that walketh the line. Our politicians don’t have to be Christians, nor is this a requirement for American citizenship. However, I feel that as a nation, we’ve become too lax in our morals, in what we see as right or wrong. We’ve made the narrow line a wide one, one so wide we can no longer tell if we’re loving the sinner or loving and endorsing the sin. God help us, we know not what we do. ~ By Wayne Carter, Associate Editor & Publisher
Gardening With Tim Roses Take To Tending Some of the most beautiful flowers grown in the landscape today are roses. There are some 25,000 to 30,000 different rose cultivars grown around the world today. They are grown for a variety of reasons. Roses make gorgeous cut flowers that you can show off in your home, give to your sweetheart or friends, make arrangements, or even exhibit in a show. You can use them to anchor your landscape or compliment your pool, deck, or patio. Some roses can even be successfully grown in containers. Roses are fun, but can also be serious work. Some require little care and others demand a lot of time and money. If you have very little time that you can spend in your garden, I would suggest that you plant shrub or Earth-kind roses. The most popular of these roses would be the knockout roses. Others would be some of the David Austin and Buck roses. These roses require only a few hours a month maintenance and are very disease and pest resistant. If you have two to five hours a week to spend in your garden for rose maintenance, then I would suggest the old garden and old tea roses. Old tea roses are the ones that have been around since the pre- 1900’s. These would be the roses that your Grandmother grew and could also be found in an old cemetery. These roses are also fairly disease and pest resistant, but do require being deadheaded and pruned a little more. If you have five to eight hours a week to spend on maintenance, then you can go for the hybrid teas. They are also known as the "Queen of the Flower Garden." They will also be the most fragrant of the roses. They produce long stems and large showy blooms. These are the flowers that will take the big prizes at exhibitions. They are great to cut and take in the house. When placed in an arrangement in the house their fragrance will fill a room for days. These roses also demand a lot of care – pruning, deadheading, and spraying for pests and diseases. Roses are amazing flowers and I can go on and on about them. Ms. Janet and I have two hundred plus roses in our garden and we love them. They are a lot of hard work, but the rewards are great. I love to go out and cut several stems from different roses, sneak in the house, and watch Ms. Janet’s face light up when I hand them to her.
I encourage you to attend the Northeast Mississippi Rose Society’s 11th Annual Rose Show. It will be held at the Renasant Bank Lobby located at 209 Troy Street in Tupelo, MS from 9:00am to 4:00pm on May 6, 2010. If you have any questions, email me at colorsbytim@hotmail.com . ~ By Tim Burress, Contributing Editor
Family Reunions Memories Of Relatives And Foods As I typed the date, March 15, 2010 in my journal, I realized it was the birthday of two people who have now passed on: my Uncle Joe and my Great-Aunt Lottie. When I was growing up, we used tohave family reunions in Glenfield, Mississippi at the fairgrounds this time of year. There was a dual purpose: for the family to get together to visit and also to celebrate my Aunt Lottie’s birthday. Aunt Lottie lived down old Hwy 78 in an old white house next to the railroad tracks. I found the house years later on my own armed with the memory of visiting Aunt Lottie in that home. No one lives in it now as Aunt Lottie died when she was 92 in 1997, and I’m assuming the house is still owned by her daughter, Geneva Bailey. Aunt Lottie is buried in Wallerville Baptist Church Cemetery. Anyway, I used to look forward to these family reunions. I usually would ride down there with my Dad. We would enjoy the hour and a half ride in silence. Neither one of us was big talkers, but we always enjoyed each other’s company. One year I rode down with my Uncle Pete, whom I love to death, but he smoked cigars that would choke a mule. I about died of asphyxiation before we would make it down to Glenfield. Family members from all around would bring dishes like dressing, green beans, and chocolate cake made from a recipe that probably went two generations back. There were usually three or four different batches of dressing and Lord help you if you didn’t try every one and praise each one as the best to whoever made it – regardless if it was drowned in sage. We always prayed before we ate; it was unthinkable not to. Relatives, whose names I’m ashamed to say I never learned, would come up to me and exclaim how much I had grown that year. I was my Grandma Lois’ little princess, and every time I received a compliment she beamed as if she were my mother herself. Aunt Lottie always got a huge birthday cake, and we would all sing Happy Birthday to her. My other cousins and I would run off to play in the horse stalls or the playground. One year someone got out some water balloons. That was probably my cousin Jason’s idea. We would spend that whole afternoon visiting, eating, playing, eating again, visiting again and would be absolutely exhausted at the end of the day. We were happy, though. Those few hours we got to visit each year were some of the best times. But, Aunt Lottie passed away which broke the tie. We didn’t really have any family reunions after that and most of the family members who I grew up with have passed away as well. All that is left are the wonderful memories of togetherness we shared that one day a year. I always loved a big family – immediate or extended – and one of my greatest joys is to have everyone over to eat, laugh and visit. I would truly enjoy starting up another family reunion. There is no way to express the joys of it unless you are there to experience it yourself. ~ By Rhea Palmer, Guest Contributor Biographical Sketch: Rhea Palmer was raised in Eads, Tennessee and attended Collierville High School. She was adopted at birth and was lucky enough to reconnect with her natural family through Ridge Rider News a few years back. She is a single Mom with a 12-year-old son who attends Macon Road Baptist School. She is currently living on campus and working on her bachelor's degree in Psychology at University of Memphis. She loves to read, write, crochet, cross-stitch and do genealogy research.
US 78 To Tupelo More Than A Transportation Artery
I got the radio blastin US 78 is part of the old Indian trail system. Multiple trails flowed together to form a single trail to Tennessee, the shared hunting grounds of the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Shawnee, and others. Today it is the commercial lifeline between Memphis and Birmingham, and is soon to be the new I-22 corridor. Its western segment is Lamar Avenue in Memphis, named for Civil War General L.Q.C. Lamar. The University of Mississippi Lamar Law Center is named for him. That's Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar. Don't you love those old Southern names! An interesting historical tidbit is the original state line between Tennessee and Mississippi was 4.5 miles too far north due to the inaccuracies of the then used technology. The old state line was Winchester Road. Major streets south of Winchester are laid out as one mile apart section lines. Tennessee was not laid out in sections. Since we now live east of Memphis, we connect to US 78 at Byhalia, Victoria, Red Banks, or Holly Springs, using roads connecting from US 72. That sometimes depends whether I want the AYCE seafood buffet in Byhalia, catfish at Red Banks, a unique southern Phillip's hamburger in Holly Springs, or the City Cafe for home cooking on the square in Holly Springs. Another Indian Trail, MS 7, joins US 78 here. Memphis is Elvis's end place. Tupelo was his beginning. And Holly Springs has the Pink House museum devoted to him. An attraction for some is the Psychic Reader near Victoria. Apparently enough paying customers are attracted for it to stay in business. Just east of the Red Banks exit is the old fire tower. I see where people have been buying them, sometimes relocating them, and turning them into tourist attractions. I remember the thrill and terror of climbing one. Stanley Wise could make that happen. The Lake Center exit leads to the generally unknown Chewalla National Park. It's clean and uncrowded and charges a small per car fee. Have a few dollars correct change and a fishing pole and bait and stringer ready. Just beyond Lake Center, try to catch a glimpse of the Oreo cows. A farm there raises Belted Galloway cattle. Stop at Potts Camp for one of the best homemade fried fruit pies that ever crossed your lips. Just beyond Potts Camp you will see the Haley Barbour for President. On the west side of the building, you will see a sign offering sugar gliders for sale. These are tiny flying mammals with bodies about as thick as your thumb. Think about one getting loose in your car or home. Mimi says she doesn't want to think about it. From Holly Springs east the topology changes from the delta's alluvial plain to the Pontotoc Ridge system. Tupelo is the northeast corner of the ancient Gulf of Mexico. The silt of the Big Muddy has filled it in to south of New Orleans. Washouts in the road cuts show the windblown glacial till, called loess, which covers the exposed lime beds made of countless fossilized shells. When you pass through New Albany, you might want to use the old highway through town and see the nice renovation. This is William Faulkner's birthplace. Some folks claim this is where Billy Joe McAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge. Watch for the Blue Springs exit. This is the present and future home of the Toyota automobile assembly plant. You will pass the Action Corp recliner manufacturing plant. On request, they will make you a custom recliner. Many big and tall major league athletes have done just that. In Tupelo is the North Mississippi Medical Center. It's a wonderful facility with the friendliest and most attentive staff anywhere. I suspect the hospital would win the award hands down for the most floor changes and corridors to navigate from anywhere to the cafeteria, but the food is worth that inconvenience. ~ Carl Wayne Hardeman, Editor
High School Math Educator Appreciated In 1954 a course of "Advanced General Math" was offered in our high school, the teacher, Mr. Leroy Roberson. I had not had any classes under him but knew him as a long time teacher there in the Pontotoc School System. Since I enjoyed math and had already taken all of the courses offered in the subject, I opted for his new math class. You know how "scuttle" runs around a school among the students and the rumor was that he was terribly hard and was teaching the most difficult math class yet. By the time I heard the scuttle, it was too late; I had already signed up for the class. First, let me describe the man as I remember him. Mr. Roberson was a tall, slender man with nice, but baggy suits that sort of hung from his tall frame. He had difficulty walking; it seemed that one leg was crippled in some manner. He had a long, angular face with a large "Dick Tracy" nose; a sort of "Ichabod Crain" type, only with glasses. He did not seem to smile much, possibly because he may have been in discomfort much of the time, I do not know.
However, as it turned out, he was that fine gentleman and a super teacher to boot. We all came to know and love him as the year progressed. Since there was only about a dozen in the class, he arranged the desks in a circle. He would sit with us in the circle and teach in that manner, which was totally new to us. It got us all closer together and to a point where we could all see, and interact, with one another, and the teacher as well. He began with a tough introduction to math. Not just a mathematical approach but also one that meshed with our daily world. Not just the usual, if you had one hundred "widgets" that cost one dollar apiece and you sold them for two dollars each, how much money would you make. He introduced the real possibility that one might have to borrow the money to purchase the widgets and that the bank would charge interest on the money. Now, throw in an employee or two into the mix, how long it took to sell the merchandise, and then determine if the venture was successful or not. As we figured interest, salaries, and the like, he really got us into reality. You must remember that this all had to be figured without the aid of a calculator or computer, not even a slide rule; just pencil and notebook paper, oh, and the math had to be perfect. Some would say in today’s world that it is too demanding, too hard for teenagers, too difficult for young minds to grasp. Wrong! When we left the class we knew how to solve real, every day type problems; problems that we would face throughout our lives. We hated Mr. Roberson for this! Wrong again! We loved him for teaching us how to apply the mathematical things we had learned. It would be wonderful if we had more teachers and instructors that require youngsters to use their God given brains to solve problems. Toward the end of the year, Mr. Roberson said he was going to teach us Algebra. Well, enough to get through a college freshman level Algebra class anyhow. Sure enough, as I was signing up for first year classes at college, there was a required Algebra course. You could opt for a beginner class or just jump into the advanced class to begin with. Either way, sooner or later, you had to master the advanced one. I remembered what Mr. Roberson had said, and so I signed up for the advanced class. It was a breeze, I came out with an excellent grade; he had taught me well. Thank you Mr. Roberson for all your good teaching, for loving us kids enough to have us learn what was important in math back in the 1950s. ~ By Ralph R. Jones, Managing Editor
Sweethearts Okolona, Mississippi 1953 About the time I reached the age of nine or ten, I began to notice girls. By that I mean that I viewed them differently than before. Previously, girls were persons to engage in games of chase on the playground or to avoid sitting beside in the classroom. Suddenly, but not overnight, girls became tolerable, even desirable for companionship. My fourth and fifth grade years were spent in Okolona, MS. I remember two girls in my class, who at times were my ‘girlfriends,’ Sandra Henson and Merri Wilson. Sandra was a blonde and Merri a brunette. I had the same dilemma as the comic book character, Archie, who somehow managed to date two girls at the same time. I have fond memories of many Saturday afternoons spent sitting beside one of them at the theatre. I didn’t know what I was feeling at the time, but I would later learn the term, puppy love, and saw how it applied to my feelings for both Sandra and Merri.
Early into the second semester of the fifth grade, Merri’s family moved from Okolona. If it’s possible for the heart of a fifth-grader to be broken by romance, I’ll say mine was broken. Until that time, the fifth grade had been the best year of my life. On the playground, I was among the first chosen when it was time to choose sides for games. Athletically, I was above average, and on top of that, I had girlfriends. Life was great, until Merri moved, and then that summer my family moved back to Pontotoc. Pontotoc was like starting a popularity buildup all over again, making new friends, contending with playground bullies, finding myself much lower in the pecking order, and no girlfriend to meet at the movies on Saturday afternoon. Being the new kid on the block was not to my liking. In my adolescence, I pined for Merri. I often envisioned her beauty as I remembered and thought she must surely be more beautiful than ever. What would it be like to see her again, still better to be able to date her? "Why, I’d be the envy of every boy in my class, if Merri lived in Pontotoc!" My high school years were pretty boring in the romance department. All the pretty girls were "taken." Generally speaking the girls in my class preferred older men. My dad needed me to work in his grocery store every Saturday and Saturday night. Our family car had not been an object of envy by anyone in my lifetime. My high school dating was sparse to non-existent. My dad’s older brother and his wife lived on campus at the junior college in Senatobia, Mississippi, and they encouraged me to forego attending Ole Miss and instead attend Northwest Mississippi Junior College, which is what I did. I greatly appreciated their helping me adjust to living away from home as well as providing some financial assistance. As I was in line registering for my sophomore year at NWJC, I read the name tag of one of the students helping in the process. It read, Merri Wilson. "Naw, it couldn’t be," I thought. "The Merri Wilson I know, is prettier, shorter, daintier." This Merri was long-limbed, even gangly looking and much larger than my fifth-grade Merri. But, Merri, short for Meridith, was spelled with an I not a Y, just like my Merri. As I moved up in the line and our eyes met, I introduced myself and commented, "I knew a Merri Wilson in the Okolona school system when I was in the fifth grade." "That’s me," she said. Words I’d longed to hear suddenly didn’t sound as sweet as I had imagined they would. It’s not that Merri was unbecoming, but through the years, I had conjured up a vision of loveliness so large in my mind that I was crestfallen with the reality in front of me. At that moment, I said what was the dumbest thing I had uttered up to that point in my life. I’ve since topped it, but all I could say then, in trying to contain my disappointment, was, "You sure don’t look like you used to." If the statue of limitations on dumbness has not expired, it’s okay if anyone wants to stone me. I deserve it. It was an insensitive remark, at best. Today, I confess that I’m ashamed of my words and actions, but they are characteristic of my defining personality in 1961, and even reflect the certain frankness that I still possess. Thankfully, I’ve since learned to speak more tactfully. Merri reciprocated, "You don’t either!"
She laughed as I stammered and tried to dig myself out of the hole I was
in, and I asked, "Where do you live, now?" I learned Merri lived in Holly Springs (may have been Olive Branch) and planned to commute that semester. I may have seen her on campus afterwards, but I no longer remember if I did. I have thought about that day a lot since then and even thought of many things I should have said. I’ve been told my face is "an easy read." If that’s true, Merri saw right through me that day, right down to my very core. If, within her, there still lives the sweet little girl of my childhood, she’s forgiven me. ~ By Wayne Carter, Associate Editor & Publisher
Bubba Bodock Terrorism Today Bubba relies on emails forwarded to him for material to share in this space. If there’s less here at times than one expects, it’s because the humor received was inappropriate or else not much arrived over the past month.
A public school teacher was arrested today at John
F. Kennedy International Airport as he attempted to board
a flight while in possession of a ruler, a protractor, a compass,
a slide-rule and a calculator.
As the Greek philanderer Isosceles used to say, "There are 3 sides to
every triangle." Insights: Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea. The reason congressmen try so hard to get re-elected is that they would hate to have to make a living under the laws they've passed.
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Whan that Aprille with his shoures sote 
By this time the house smelled like a
slaughterhouse or worse. Mom would begin removing the entrails and cutting
the bird up into pieces. Parts were cleaned, placed in plastic bags, and
fitted inside small, serving size, cardboard containers. They were now ready
for the freezer.
I learned many things from Grandma
while she lived with us. We would sing church songs from the songbook until
I had them all memorized; songs like "Jesus Loves Me," "What a Friend We
Have In Jesus," and "Standing on the Promises."
Same sex prom dates may have existed fifty
years ago, but most of us never heard about it, or else we figured the two
girls showed up together because none of the boys wanted to ask them to the
prom.
I think roses should be a part of every
garden. If you are serious about growing roses, I recommend that you join
a local rose society and learn all you can from them. There are several good
reference books that you can purchase also. Take the time to go to a rose
show, observe and ask plenty of questions. Rose people love for you to ask
questions about their roses. When you buy roses, always purchase from a reputable
source.
We that went into that class did so with
much fear and trembling, not knowing what was to be our fate. My parents
assured me that he was a fine family man, fair in his dealings, and an upstanding
citizen. But you know how kids are, they put a lot of emphasis on what they
see and hear from their peers.
It is Merri that I best remember. There was
something about her brown eyes, the animations of her smile, and the dimples
of her cheeks that intrigued me. We were too young to kiss or neck inside
the theatre, but there was no social rule against holding hands. We held
hands a lot, and I found it to my liking.
