WELCOME TO GRANDPARENTS DAY!

I don't know why functions insist on scheduling things early in the morning, especially when they involve retired grandparents!  Don't they know we need our rest?!

Nah, it didn't matter, it was Grandparent/Special Friend Day at one of my granddaughter's school.  I would have been there at 6AM, if need be!

She was a special child in her class.  She had six grandparents following her around, like follow the leader!  Her dad's mom and I divorced years ago, but we have since grown to be close friends, and my wife and I enjoy Connie and her husband Gary's company.  We often visit and and break bread together, but usually it has something to do with one or both of our grandchildren.  Besides, we have lots in common, like our son, the grand kids, and her family, especially her dad, who has been like a father to me through it all.

But today we roamed the halls of the Christian school, getting stares from people wondering why so many people were following this little girl, who was on a mission to show us her school.

Me, Judy, Dwight, Joyce, Gary, and Connie on Grandparents Day!

She loves school and is disappointed when classes are suspended for snow or holidays.  She loves her friends, and she certainly seems to have lots of them.  She often tells me their names and what they did in school that day...talking about them as if she was much older than her five years.

She, if I may brag, and who doesn't when it comes to grandchildren, is beautiful, the image of her mom in looks and actions, according to her dad, and she is very intelligent, which is something she gets from both her parents.  The children all seem much smarter than when I was at that age.  They even put up the words to their songs on a monitor so they can read the words!  Heck, I had trouble with Dick and Jane when I was a year older than she is now!

The church welcomed us old folks with name tags, an orientation, and later a catered lunch of fired chicken.  You know you're in a Baptist church when there's fired chicken around!

The old people departed the orientation to head to the appropriate class presentations in different areas of the complex.  I was amazed at how huge the church was, and was glad there were 8th graders at every door to direct us during our morning tour of the school and church.

In her program room, Lily was seated in the middle of several kindergarten children, flanked by first and second graders, seated on a raised bleacher.  They recited scripture and sang songs of welcome and praise to us, while we sat focused on Lily...barely seeing the other children!  

She read and sang every word, rarely looking out into the audience, but she did playfully poke and touch a young boy seated next to her.  Later she confessed he was her boyfriend, and even ran over to him and pulled him in front of my camera.  She's not shy!

After the singing, the children were asked to find their grandparents and visit with them for a short time.  Lily had already spotted and waved at us earlier, so she immediately ran to us.  We took turns hugging and holding her on our laps.  She was so blessed to have so many people there that love her.

Later we visited Lily in her room, where she continued to talk to her classmates, sometimes ignoring us as if it were a normal class day.

It was a great morning filled with warm friendship and love.  Judy and I really enjoyed the other grandparents and look forward to the next opportunity to be together.

Dwight and Joyce have been my friends long before our children married.  We shared Sunday School rooms and fellowships long ago in another church.  They have recently retired from over thirty years of missionary work in Africa.  They are salt of the earth folks, with many a wonderful story to tell.  No wonder I love being around them too.

Looking forward to next year's "old folks day"!  By then, we'll have another grandchild in the same school.  Wow, then we'll have to decide who is going to which class presentation first!

I guess that's why you have to get there so early...there are lots of decisions to be made when you are sharing special moments in your grand children's lives. 

PEER PRESSURE

Do you know that feeling in the pit of your stomach when you realize that you could not pull something back out of the air and have a second chance at doing the right thing? The ache of knowing you have screwed up and you pray so hard in that moment that maybe no one will know it happened, but it does and you are the most outraged one by its occurrence.

Mr. Hallcocks was not a pretty man, and most people thought of him as being one of the stooped hairy men on the evolutionary chart, two or three back from modern man. His head seemed to be just a skull with the skin drawn very tightly over it, and you were afraid his chin would soon poke a hole through it.

Beyond this, he was a very nice man – a quiet man that always dressed in a suit and nodded his bony head at everyone he passed in the hallway. His specialty was English and best I remember he was good at what he did.

I sat in the back of the classroom with two of my friends, Barry and James, both, the “Fonzie” or “Danny Zuko” characters from my high school days. Each had the classic black hair combed back into a “ducktail.” They did not wear leather jackets, only because none of us was from families that could afford them, although dark shirts and jeans were our usual attire.

Now “Mr. Hallpussy,” as us tough guys preferred to refer to him, had a propensity to brag a little about his exploits in the military. If you played the timing just right, and asked a military question about ten minutes before the bell rang, he would often times get sidetracked into telling one of his yarns and forget to make assignments.

Barry played the Army card near the end of one class and Hallcocks began a story. He also liked to illustrate on the board as he talked and turned to diagram a maneuver, the field of play, or something, drawing a circle on the blackboard.

James nudged me and handed me an eraser he had gotten off the blackboard rail in the rear of the classroom. I took it and looked puzzled. James motioned toward the front of the class to where the “war story” was getting into full swing. I still did not understand what he wanted me to do. He then made a throwing motion.

James and Barry both looked at me and looked toward the front. Everyone was naturally focused on Mr. Hallcocks' story, and the thought passed through my brain that it was harmless and no one would ever know who it was.

I really did not think about it much further than that. I just looked at James and Barry and felt the pressure to follow through. What the heck?

Mr. Hallcocks would occasionally turn toward the class and then look back up at the board. Each time he turned away, James and Barry would whisper, “Go on…do it!”

I decided that I would throw the eraser, hit the board, and then look nonchalant. Surely, he will not think it was I and blame someone else. He turned and I threw the eraser!

Somehow, the eraser seemed to pick up momentum as it traveled the fifteen yards to the front and my heart sank into my stomach. “Oh my God,” I thought to myself, “It is going straight at the back of his Neanderthal skull!"

I do not remember ever seeing anything travel as fast in slow motion as that eraser did that day. “Please God! Let it miss, please!”

In a split second God did intervene – the chalk broke as he drew; he bent over to pick it up off the floor, and…POW! In a cloud of white chalk dust the eraser hit the board exactly where his little bony head had been a split second earlier!

In the second it took for Hallcocks to stand up and whirl around, I had thanked God for not letting me kill him, and then recoiled into an “I didn’t do it!” pose.

It was then and only then, that I realized that James, Barry, and I was the only three students sitting in the back of the room, and were the only people in the room who could have thrown the eraser.

I tried looking the most innocent, all the while thanking God for saving Hallpussy’s life! But then, the prayer changed to “Oh please don’t let him find out it was me!”

Luckily, no one in the front of the room, who might have been more prone to “rat us out,” saw anything, but you could tell they had their suspicions. Hallcocks had the same suspicions and immediately asked, “Which one you guys threw that?”

Long story short, neither of us said a word, except, “What?”

I do not, for the life of me, remember how it all turned out, only remember him saying, “We’ll stay right here until someone tells me who did it!”

I do not remember a “paddling,” but it seems to me since he could not decide between us, that he punished us all in some way…probably some writing drill like “I will not throw things a Hallpussy’s Neanderthal head ever again!”

The things we do trying to fit in with a tougher gang!

CHEMISTRY INTERRUPTUS

I sat in the first row next to the door in “Wee Willie” White’s chemistry class and we were usually the last to turn in test papers and first out the door when the period ended. I liked this arrangement, plus I was surrounded by the brightest in the class and this often came in handy. Now, I am not saying we cheated, but we often double-checked our answers before turning in our test papers!

This particular day I am remembering involved a “pop quiz” that had caught me completely off guard. I was really struggling with some of the answers, and wished more than once that I was not one of those that studied only the night before test!

Just as I was about to offer up a prayer for some assistance, the fire alarm sounded! What a break! “Just weave yo papers on yo desk and file out da door,” Mr. White directed.

As we had been drilled many times, we quickly filed out the door, turned right, and headed out the backdoor to the fire-drill designated area outside. Once we stopped at the top of a small hill and looked back toward the school, secretly hoping to see real smoke, the whispering began. “What did you get for number 3?” “What?” “How did you get that?”

I was taking it all in and memorizing answers to the three questions with which I had been having problems. Just as I was about to get the last one from someone, “Wee Willie,” who had a German accent, and spoke English with a sort of lisp, mounted the hill and walked among us warning everyone to not discuss the test.

He scanned the little crowd and it was obvious that answers were being exchanged.

As soon as the all clear was given, we filed back in and took our seats. Some of us, me for one, began frantically erasing and changing or filling in blank questions.

“Puease pass yo papers to da front,” Willie announced!

I heard what he said, but still thought I had time, especially since his voice came from near the window seats. I continued to write and somebody began to tug at my paper, “Wait a minute,” I said, thinking it was the student sitting in front of me.

Then, I noticed the old dark skinned hands at the top of the paper and realized that I was playing “tug of war” with “Wee Willie” himself!

“Oh my God,” I thought with eyes wide open and mouth agape!

“Musee, I said no changin’ answers! For dat you get a zewoe,” he said as he tore up my test paper! I do not remember a teacher ever being that mad at me…well, maybe one more!

It was a long time before I was ever more embarrassed than I was at that moment. Everyone looked at me, my face flushed, and bountiful beads of sweat dotted my brow. Oh, I hate that hot glowing feeling that makes you feel dirty all over.

I sat back in my desk and contemplated killing myself with the now dull number two pencil I was nervously rolling between the fingers of my right hand. “Naw,” I said to myself, letting it pass, “that would be entirely too much pain!”

This was the second very stupid act I had committed in a chemistry class. If there were to be other imprudent incidents in school, I decided to let them happen in other classrooms.

Yeah…I know what you’re thinking…there is at least one more on the way!

…and yes…I did pass high school chemistry with a C+ average, but that was the end of my chemistry education. Here it comes…it seems me and chemistry just did not mix!

THE FIGHT CLUB

Looking back, I had a lot of fistfights in school, starting with the third grade, having had a scary episode with the “beast within” that I described earlier.

David was the first guy I met in Harriman that junior year that I felt deserved to have his head taken off. I do not know why he first rubbed me raw and instilled such a dislike for him, but it happened.

The first fight episode ended with the principal getting in the last and more memorable licks!

Purely by accident, because I am not normally a bully, my foot hit some books hanging out of David’s desk and they went sprawling out on the floor. “Don’t do that again,” he said before I could excuse myself!

I looked up surprised and caught the eye of two other fellow students with that “Go on! Do it again and see what happens,” look in their eyes.

So, I nudged the books out again and again David warned me, “Do it again and I’ll beat the crap out’ta you!”

There were those looks again – straight from the devil and prodding me on. This time I kicked the books so hard they shot out the other side, and before I could look up for the rewarding look from my fans, David was on his feet laying blow after blow on my head! “Gees, I guess he wasn’t kiddin’,” I thought!

Somehow I avoided a killer blow and managed to loose myself from the desk swinging around my waist, and pushed David back enough to allow me to recoil into my fighter pose.

David had stepped around between another row of students and desks, and like in your favorite western I flung myself across them, knocking the cards, chips, and whiskey bottles off (just made that up – it was test tubes that were breaking), and grabbed David around the waist and wrestled him to the floor between screaming girls and “get’em!” yelling boys.

Before David and I could finish one another off, Mr. White, our chemistry teacher, reentered the classroom and started yelling at everyone to “get back” and “Mushy (not his real name) and David! Stop dat right now,” he said with his German accented American lisp!

Holding each of us by a shoulder, and with his special sounding lisp, “Wee Willie” said, “Daveed and Musee (not his real name), u two r vaweey vaweey wooed” and lead us out the door!

Later, as we sat snickering in the principal’s office awaiting our sentence, we realized we had just committed a grand act. The significance of the “cowboy fight” seemed to wash over us at the same moment. We were legends – we had destroyed the chemistry lab (well, turned over several desks, broke several test tubes, and flasks) and disrupted “Wee Willie’s” chemistry class! We would be famous! “Now these towns, they all know our names…”

Principal Crowel walked in and handed down his decision…ten licks each, from his wooden paddle with the holes drilled in it! Believe me, there were tears in our eyes by the time the corporal punishment ended, but the thought of what we had done carried us through.

For days after that, guys would try to get David and me into another fight, telling first one then the other what was being said about the other. David and I kept our cool, though we still did not like each other very much, and talked when away from school. We finally came to the decision of putting on fake fights after school! Stupid? Yes!

However, that is just what we did, well, about five times that year. We would begin by barking slurs at the other and talking up what would seem to be the worst fight ever.

After school, behind the Gulf Station, a crowd of a dozen or more would gather and the name calling and posturing would begin. Soon David and I would be exchanging blows – real blows, with bloody noses, black eyes, and torn shirts! We were really fighting and for nothing more than the attention!

Seriously, for those that have never had fist fight, after the first good stinging punch that numbs your nose, cheek, or ear, you hardly feel a thing until several hours later. The only bravery comes in standing your ground long enough to get that first blow over – then adrenalin and the taste of blood protect you from any follow up.

The only real benefit from all the fisticuffs was that none of the senior bullies, actually no one, ever bothered us in school. They figured we were crazy and experienced and that it was best to leave us to kill each other.

For David and me…we chalked up one of the greatest “school daze” stories ever to come out of SHHS! We had torn up the chemistry lab! As I look back on it I now realize that I love David for being part of my life – part of my youth!

We have seen each other several times since and we have great respect for each other and behind each smile are the memories of the “fight club” – and its two youthful members. David and I have been friends ever since.

My days in the fight club finally ended my junior year, same year I joined, out behind the Gulf Station, in one final exhibition “cowboy fight” for schoolmates, with my “fight partner” David. It ended like the first, with someone else getting in the last licks - my dad for getting mud and grass stains on a new pair of “white” jeans.

It was the final showdown, because we finally became “seniors” – time to act like men.

THE OLD GREEN BOMB

Woody was my first new friend in Harriman. We did not meet until after our junior year began. His dad owned a great little nursery across the highway from where we parked our trailer. Later, I got work at the nursery, very hard work that involved a shovel, a mattock, and “other implements of destruction” most days. The only worthwhile part of it, besides the $5 or so I made a week, was working a long side of Woody.

He was my age, very skinny, very fickle, undependable, and never seemed to buy his own cigarettes, but he and I connected on many levels. We both had a great work ethic and we loved music, cigarettes, guns, girls, and beer.

Woody was a philosopher of sorts, and contemplated the deeper things of life. He often quoted phrases and ideas from Khalil Gibran’s “The Prophet,” a collection of essays about the human condition.

Woody made the author’s view of love, marriage, eating and drinking, work, joy and sorrow, crime and punishment, laws, freedom, pain, friendship, time, good and evil, prayer, pleasure, religion, and death, among other things his own. By the end of that first year at the nursery, Woody had related almost every word of the book.

We talked endlessly, with me doing more of the listening, but even after work we would sit somewhere, puff cigarettes, and discuss countless things. He was Church of Christ and I was raised Baptist, so religion was often a topic which always ended in an argument. We finally learned to avoid the topic. It seems sometimes, that religion is good for nothing else.

Our favorite place to talk was in the “Green Bomb” which was his dad’s ’48 Chevy pickup. It was a classic with a strong straight six, three-on-the-tree, and it would run forever on $2 of gas – of course that was about eight gallons back then!

The only flaw in the “Green Bomb” was the passenger door that would suddenly swing open in the middle of a curve, but after the first time you learned to anticipated it. Many were the times I would swing out on that door with a hoot and a holler, banging on the outside panel, and swing back up in the seat as the road straightened out! The ease with which it opened came in handy when you wanted to “roll” a big dog!

We did not get permission to take her out as much as we liked, but we made up for it by stealing it! The truck was always parked on a hill and if you released the parking brake and pushed in the clutch it would quietly roll off and over the next hill. Woody would then turn the key, put it in second gear, pop the clutch, and we were off!

Once Woody’s mom and dad settled into watching TV in the living room, they rarely moved. So, on the return trip we simply doused the lights, killed the engine, and rolled the “Green Bomb” silently into its former position and stopped. I remember one night, just as we stopped; Woody’s dad came around the corner, from the back of the house and just said, “Howdy boys.”

We sucked in a breath of air and “howdied” him back, waiting for a lecture. As it turned out, he never knew what we had the truck out, just went on into the house.

Woody even dated in that old truck from time to time, which reminds me of a saying his brother-in-law had about girls that would date a guy in a truck! “If you can truck’em, you can _ _ _ _’em!” Believe me, that old adage was put to the test!

I loved that old truck and when I think back to my high school days, this truck stands out as that time’s icon. It was not a beauty, never turned girl’s heads, but took us everywhere we wanted and should not have gone. I can smell the musty dusty cab now, and feel my hand slam the glove compartment shut again for the tenth time on every trip.

Once we took it upon ourselves to teach Wayne, another friend, to drive a straight-shift. He did fine until he failed to negotiate a sharp curve and took out about six mailboxes! There was not a scratch on that old truck – they don’t mak’em like that anymore!

I bet, if I look outside just now, I can see ol’ Woody pulling up in the ol’ “Green Bomb” looking to bum a Winston.

IT WAS THE SUMMER OF ‘62

Just before my sophomore year at Coffee High ended in Florence, Alabama, dad gave us the news that we would be moving to Harriman, Tennessee as soon as school was out. He had gotten transferred by TVA to the Kingston Steam Plant on the Tennessee River near Kingston, Tennessee.

This was the only time I remember moving that I did not have a girlfriend. In a way that might seem sad, but at least it was not near as sad as spending the remaining days pining over each other and looking deeply into each other’s eyes while explaining that you had "...no control over things, and besides we will stay in contact and meet up again someday soon." I suppose our young and tender hearts actually believed that or we have just run away somewhere and starved to death on the fruits of love!

The real pain of such partings came while looking back through a rear car window and slowly waving goodbye while mouthing, “I love you – I’ll write you” to the fading image of a little heart broken girl. All the time, I was trying to keep my emotions in check and hidden from my parents in the front seat. Besides, I was not speaking to them for ruining my entire life – again!

We had lived in Harriman before from the second part of the first grade in 1953 until the middle of my fourth year in 1956. Therefore, I had high expectations of knowing at least a few people when school started in the fall. However, I had to spend the entire spring and summer of ’62 without friends or at least that is what I expected.

Turns out I met “Jaybee Whale,” or that is what the neighborhood kids called him. His real name was Bennie, but we rarely called him that. He was and has always been “Jaybee” to me, and if you ask anyone in these parts about ol’ Jaybee, they know about whom you speak, since they will probably not remember his first name either!

The “Whale” part was added by someone because of his size, which was befitting an Our Gang character and official “He-man Women-haters Club" member! Truth be told, “Jaybee” did not have a lot of friends and played by himself in his basement most days.

“Jaybee” had an exclusive club himself and that was my first introduction to his world. Having been invited to visit the club in the basement, I found him to be a funny guy, not funny – funny, but very humorous, quick witted, and very talented. He was at least four years younger than I was, but he made me laugh frequently and we soon had comedy and model cars in common.

His passion was the model car demolition setup he had fashioned from plywood. If you had model cars, and I had plenty, then you would quickly be inducted into the “crash club” at “Jaybee Whale’s” demolition track! Guys all over the neighborhood showed up at the “demolition derby” once a week, having worked the rest of the week at reinforcing their plastic models to win the next “smash off!”

Anything went and nothing was illegal as long as the car was still the original model on the outside and had its original working wheels.

I soon learned to pour molten lead inside the front fenders and around the grille area, using aluminum foil as an insulating shield. Extra strips of plastic, like those long round pieces the pretty chromed parts came attached to worked well…just like 2'' reinforcing pipe used in real race cars. A whole tube of glue might be used in one “welding” session!

During the event, opponents ran their cars down two opposing eight-foot sheets of plywood and into each other at full speed…by the end of the tournament, owners would be using full-arm shoves to increase the speed to that necessary to crack the opponents car into splinters! What fun - juvenile yes, but loads of fun!
“Jaybee” and I were fast friends that summer and he kept me from being bored and lonely for those few weeks before school.

Soon, summer ended, school started, and as I got reacquainted with former classmates, I soon put the childish things aside. “Jaybee” must have been hurt when I began to ignore him for my older friends.

I never went to his basement again after the summer of ’62; however, as I passed by “Jaybee’s” house with a new friend or date, I would see him standing alone in his yard. I thought about the basement and even longed, at times, to be laughing again with him as our cars exploded into a hundred pieces – probably much like his heart did as he watched me pass.

1 Corinthians - 13:11. When I was a child, I spoke as a child; I understood as a child, I thought as a child. But, when I became a man, I put away the things of a child.