Re-post by
Billy Ray

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Mr. Solomon and good old jr. high days at E.E. Bass

 

 

Kings Daughter's Hospital where many of us were born.

 

 

 

 

This was written by Robert St. John, executive chef and owner of the Purple Parrot Cafe, Crescent City Grill and Mahogany Bar of Hattiesburg , MS.

Thirty years ago I visited my first cousin in Virginia . While hanging out with his friend, the discussion turned to popular movies of the day.

When I offered my two-cents on the authenticity and social relevance of the movie Billy Jack, one of the boys asked, in all seriousness; 'Do you guys have movie theaters down there?' To which I replied, 'Yep. We wear shoes too.'
Just three years ago, my wife and I were attending a food and wine seminar in Aspen , Colo. We were seated with two couples from Las Vegas . One of the Glitter Gulch gals was amused and downright rude when I described our restaurant as a fine-dining restaurant.
' Mississippi doesn't have fine-dining restaurants!' she insisted and nudged her companion. I fought back the strong desire to mention that she lived in the land that invented the 99-cent breakfast buffet.

I wanted badly to defend my state, my region, and my restaurant with a 15-minute soliloquy and public relations rant that would surely change her mind. It was at that precise moment that I was hit with a blinding jolt of enlightenment, and in a moment of complete and absolute clarity it dawned on me -- my South is the best-kept secret in the country. Why would I try to win this woman over? She might move down here.

I am always amused by Holly wood 's interpretation of the South. We are still, on occasion, depicted as a collective group of sweaty, stupid, backwards-minded, racist rednecks. The South of movies and TV, the Holly wood South, is not my South.

This is my South:

My South is full of honest, hardworking people. My South is the birthplace of blues and jazz, and rock n' roll. It has banjo pickers and fiddle players, but it also has BB King, Muddy Waters, the Allman Brothers, Emmylou Harris and Elvis - and Leontyn Price.

My South is hot. My South smells of newly mowed grass. My South was kick the can, creek swimming, cane-pole fishing and bird hunting.

In my South, football is king, and the Southeastern Conference is the kingdom.

My South is home to the most beautiful women on the planet.

In my South, soul food and country cooking are the same thing.

My South is full of fig preserves, cornbread, butter beans, fried chicken, grits and catfish.

In my South we eat foie gras, caviar and truffles. In my South, our transistor radios introduced us to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones at the same time they were introduced to the rest of the country.

In my South, grandmothers cook a big lunch every Sunday, so big that we call it dinner (supper comes later).

In my South, family matters, deeply.

My South is boiled shrimp, blackberry cobbler, peach ice cream, banana pudding and oatmeal cream pies.

In my South people put peanuts in bottles of Coca-Cola and hot sauce on almost everything.

In my South the tea is iced and almost as sweet as the women. My South has air-conditioning.

My South is camellias, azaleas, wisteria and hydrangeas.

In my South, the only person that has to sit on the back of the bus is the last person that got on the bus.

In my South, people still say 'Yes, ma'am,' 'No ma'am,' 'Please' and 'Thank you.'
In my South, we all wear shoes....most of the time.

My South is the best-kept secret in the country.

Please continue to keep the secret....it keeps the idiots away.

THOUGHTS ON OUR TEACHERS

From Lynda Watson

Mrs. Tucker was my 1st grade teacher at Carrie Stern. I was thrilled to be at big school, and the day I learned "Look, look" from Dick and Jane was extraordinary.
A student's birthday was his/her special day. Mrs. Tucker would let you chose a best friend and both of you could stand in front of the class holding a birthday cake. Now this "cake" was actually a small metal dish pan that she had turned upside down and painted and decorated like a cake. It was set on a tray. The class would sing Happy Birthday. After the serenade, you and the friend could go to the cloak room (remember those) and look under the pan. There would be 2 pieces of candy to share together. That was so impressive to me, that the years I taught Kindergarten, I had to do the same thing.
At Bass, I was lucky enough to have Mrs. Cochran for history. I liked her, and I believe she liked me. Now all I can say is that she was just plain fun. That's not to say we didn't work and learn. Back then, that was a given. Personally I love history, but this lady knew how to make, what some call, a bland subject fun. I suspect whatever she had taught would have been fun.
Even my own children say I went through the golden years of public education, so I truly treasure all those hardworking high school teachers we had. I had Faye Chrismond for Spanish 4 years. That enabled us to have a little different, more personal relationship that one that I might have had with a teacher for only 1 semester or year.
Those years were the years of nuclear threat, Sputnik and the space race. The USSR loomed large over all of us. Even we teenagers were very aware of the tensions. One day in class when the textbook gave way to casual conversation in our small class, this race for domination became the subject of the moment. Someone asked her who was going to eventually win, The U.S.A. or the Soviets. She answered the Soviets were going to destroy us. Now, a teacher today who told a class of students such a thing would, of course, have to resign and eventually be sued by the entire school district. But she said it and scared me to death.
If she were living today, I would be very interested to know her opinion on what did actually happen. See,history really is a very interesting subject.


Teachers - Many of us have had memory lapses about teachers and I promised to put them on site. Then forgot. This is from Senior year:

Principal - J.T. Hall    Assistant Principal - John Ward

Art - Mrs. Barney Allen  Chorus - Mr. Craft & Louise Wilson   Band - Mr. Wayne Childers  P.E. Roxie Outzen, Carolyn Palmer, Fred Perkins Coaches - Wally Beach, Jack Carter, George Arendale

Librarian - Mable Gaston, Mrs. Kent McFarland  Latin - Miss Mary Keady  Spanish - Faye Chrismond D.E. - Ida Wilkerson  Counselors - Heno Head, J.H. Chrestman

Business- Maxine Killian (typing, general business), Frances Ratliff (Bookkeeping), Katherine Reilly (typing & OWP)

English - Helen Blanks (11th grade), Arlette Dudley (11th grade & French), Carolyn Groner (12th & Laureate), Patricia Inman (9th), Thryzra McCollum (9 and Latin I), Edna McCorkle (9), Mary Jane McKay (10 & 11), Jane Phoenix (10), Lynette Sibo (10 & Speech & Drama), Nell Thomas (12, world lit & debate), Louise Wilson (9) 

Math - Janet Carolla (trig, advanced Algebra, Algebra II), Emily Faulkner (plane geometry, Algebra I), Barbara Hogue (Algebra II & plane geomerty), Kenneth McClain (Algebra I & plane geometry), Jerry Pevey (Algebra II), Kelton Smith (Algebra I), Charles Wall (general math & P.E. I & II- he taught geometry earlier) Huglene Hall (Algebra I & Spanish I)

History & related subjects - Robert Barnett (MS history & American History), Betty Cooper (World History), Cora Ervin (American History), Lee H. Groner - Government, economics, journalism, Pica & Vespa), Beaty Morris (MS History)

Sciences - H. N. Carl (biology & general science), Claude Stuart (Chemistry, senior science), James McGregor (Physics)

Home Economics and Industrial Arts, Machanical Drawing, Machine Shop Izella Cranston (H. E. I, II), M. R. Eaves(I.A. & M. D.), Robert Kizer (I.A), Fred Robinson(M.S. I, II), Kay Rushin(H.E. III, IV) Kelly D. Lee (T & I)

Others that were not pictured in Faculty Pics  Sam Dunlap(audio-visual club), Charles Hull(Coach)

 Our 1963 annual shows:

Principal: Frank Warnock   Assistant Principal: William Earl Morgan

Social Studies: Billy Bishop, John Ward

English: Mary Bush (later married Charles Wall), Patricia Inman, Nancy Rouse

P.E., Coach: E.E. Castles,    Band: J. H. Rennick

Math: Inez Chaney, James Ishee,

Science: Helen Perry

Commercial: Nancy Pilgreen   Home Economics: Kathleen Warnock

Freshman Year Annual

Coaches: Kenneth Farris (John Ward and William Earl Morgan- MS History), Paul Ferguson

 Math: Janice Clark, Sale Randle, C. J. Riley, Ann Smith

English: Ann Bonner, Juanita Crespino, Lillian Fulmer, Gail Weaver

Social Studies: Norma DeLong, C. E. Foster

Science: James Pollard

Art: Maxine Holcomb  Commercial: Mavis Troyer  Vocational Coordinator: Winon Starnes

The following is from www.SuddenlySeniors.com  (used with permission)

Forever Ain't What It Used To Be
		by Frank Kaiser
THIS IS THE SECOND ARTICLE FROM FRANK KAISER. ENJOY!!
By Frank Kaiser INCREDIBLE, SHRINKING ME! Behind my back, while I was busy doing other things, my body shrank. Big time! Last I checked, I was a hair over six feet tall. Now my doctor tells me that I've shriveled down to a shrimp-size five foot ten inches. And I'm becoming more abbreviated by the day! If I were a mouse, I'd have disappeared already. My thinning topside (my ears often hairier than my head) can't account for the entire two inches. I suppose if I could somehow stretch the wrinkles, bags and sags out of my face, I'd gain a half-inch or so. Time may be a great healer, but it's a lousy beautician. On the plus side, I now have an excuse for my expanding potbelly; those inches had to go somewhere. My doc says, "Don't worry. Get used to it. It's just part of the aging process." The aging process, my butt! Death is just part of the aging process. Suddenly Trivia: Who or what is our Earth's oldest living inhabitant? a) A Russian living in Siberia on a diet of nothing but yogurt; b) a Bristlecone Pine tree in Calif.; c) Methuselah, son of Enoch, last seen when he was 969 years old. The thing is, no one ever tells us what we're in for once we reach age 60 or so. Aging Process 101 ought to be mandatory somewhere along the way. Instead, we breeze through life unconcerned, oblivious to the calamities dead ahead upon reaching the so-called Golden Age. (Have you noticed? You don't hear that ridiculous golden phrase much anymore. It was such a whopper, even politicians now are embarrassed to use it.) THEY SAY WISDOM COMES WITH AGE. BUT SOMETIMES, AGE COMES ALONE. Looking back, I see that I should have paid far more attention to the commercials accompanying the evening news. You know, those little horror flicks about arthritis pain relievers, false teeth paste, adult diapers and wickedly acidic stomachs. But I was never going to get old. Neither were you, I'll bet. We never remotely considered it. Then, suddenly, we're the Incredible Shrinking Geezers with all manner of maladies, wondering what the hell we did to deserve this regrettable turn of events. Certainly, if we'd known we were going to live this long, we'd have taken better care of ourselves. It's pathetic, really. Inside, we're this healthy, strong and — I don't mind saying — good-looking 23-year-old with hair, suddenly astonished that we can no longer remember where we parked our car. Humorist George Carlin has an interesting thought about all this. He says that the current life cycle is backward. We should begin life by getting old and dying thus getting all that unpleasantness out of the way early on. Then we get a gold watch, go to work until we're young enough to enjoy our retirement. We party. Do drugs. Go back to school. Have no responsibilities. Become a baby. Return to the womb where we spend our last nine months floating. Finally, we finish off as an orgasm. Are you listening, God? Suddenly Trivia Answer: c) Earth's oldest living inhabitant, "Methuselah," is an ancient Bristlecone tree living in California's White Mountains. At 4,767 years old, it has lived more than a millennium longer than any other tree. Copyright © 2006-2010 - Frank Kaiser RDR GET SUDDENLY SENIOR EVERY WEEK. SIMPLY SEND A BLANK E-MAIL TO GET-SS@SUDDENLYSENIOR.COM                                                     SUNG TO THE TUNE OF "ANCHORS AWEIGH" AKA NAVY HYMN ONWARD BASS JUNIOR HIGH! ONWARD TO FAME! LET US ALL BRAVELY TRY TO MAKE A LASTING NAME, RAH, RAH, RAH! THOUGH THE WORK MAY BE LONG, HOPE NEVER DIES, WITH OUR SCHOOL SPIRIT STRONG, UPON OUR GOAL WE'LL EVER KEEP OUR EYE. II SO COME, ALL GOOD FELLOWS, EVERYBODY HELP US WHILE YOU MAY, SO COME ALL GOOD FELLOW, WE'LL MAKE A JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL DAY! WORK AWAY, WORK AWAY FOR WE START THIS VERY DAY, HEY! III STAND JUNIORS IN THE FIELD LOOK TO THE SKY! WE'LL NEVER CHANGE OUR COURSE, SO FOEMEN YOU STEER SHY-Y-Y-Y! fLING OUT THE BANNER RED, BRILLIANT AND GAY, STAND JUNIORS IN THE FIELD, WHERE THERE'S A WILL THERE ALWAYS IS A WAY!