Part 4 of Beyond The Cotton Fields shares a few of my favorite chapters. This part begins with the murder of the three civil rights workers near my home in Mississippi. Other chapters share stories from my school days, growing up in the Methodist Church, dating and going off to college as a very innocent young man.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

1964: THE THREE CIVIL RIGHTS WORKERS

The truck was kicking up dust as it bounced down the path along the edge of the cotton field. From my view-point on the porch I could tell my father was nearing the far side of the field where the trespassers were.

It wasn't unusual for people to trespass on the farm, but for the most part, folks were considerate and would first ask permission to fish or hunt on our land. Seldom was anyone refused access to the land as long as they obeyed the rules.

The rules were simple: first, ask permission to be on the land; second, never shoot around or toward the livestock; third, always, always close the gaps so the cows and horses would not get out. Most folks had no problem with any of those rules, but if they did, it was their last visit to the farm.

I could tell today was different. From my view on the porch banister it was easy to see they were not the usual trespassers. They were driving newer cars and there were several of them. Never had trespassers come in so many vehicles and rarely in cars, much less, new ones. Several white shirts were bobbing through the cotton field. I had never seen anyone wear a Sunday shirt out in the fields.

As I watched, our truck stopped at the edge of a cotton row and the door swung open on the old Dodge. One of the "White Shirts" moved in my father's direction. When the two met they faced each other for a long time. I could imagine my father giving the stranger a good piece of his mind for being on the farm without permission. It would not be long before the men would be loading back into their vehicles and leaving the field.

But, that never happened. As I watched, my father walked back to his truck, got in, shut the door and fired it up. The blue smoke from the tail pipe soon mixed with the dust at the edge of the field as my father turned the old Dodge around and made his way back to the house. The men were still in the cotton field walking up and down the rows when my father pulled up along side the oak tree in the yard.

Tippy hopped out of the back of the truck and ran toward his water pan to chase the sparrows away. The old red hound hated birds drinking his water or eating his food. The birds scattered, leaving Tippy staring up in the direction they were fleeing. The white tip of his tail was waving side to side as he railed in his accomplishment. It was the white tip on the end of his tail that had tagged him with his name.

"What's going on, Daddy? Why didn't you run those men off the place?" I asked.

"They're here on business," he said as he turned to look back toward the cotton field.

"Who are they?"

"They are lawmen. Some Federal, some State. They are looking for three fellows who are missing. I told them I hadn't seen anyone else on the place, unless you count the hands. Sure can't imagine why anyone would want to be out in the middle of a cotton field in this heat, especially wearing Sunday britches and Sunday shoes." He was still squinting to watch the white shirts moving through the field. "Hope they're careful not to knock off any of the blooms. All I need after last year's drought is to have a good year and some fancy pant city slicker to run through the field knocking off blooms!"

"Get out of my flower bed, dog! GET!" My mother had startled us both on her way out of the house to get a better look at what was taking place out in the field. She never called the dogs or cats by their names. It was always Dog or Cat. Most of her conversations with them included "GET" and "SCAT". "What is happening out there, Harold?"

"Federal and State boys are looking for some missing folks. Don't know why they'd be missing on our place. It's not hunting season. And there aren't any ponds or creeks near that patch of cotton. So, they can't be fishing." Daddy turned and looked up the steps at Mother. "You hear anything on the radio about someone missing today?"

"No, but, that doesn't mean anything wasn't said. I turned it off right after Switch and Swap was over."

"Phone been ringing much, today?"

"The neighbor's ring is all I've heard."

"Go see if anyone's on the line talking about this."

Daddy did not have to ask twice. Mother's favorite past time was eavesdropping on the party line to catch the latest gossip. With eight families on the same line, it was unusual for someone not to have the line tied up. There were times we would have to interrupt someone's conversation in order to make an important call. It was understood among the neighbors that if someone had business to conduct they could ask and get the line for a few minutes. Of course the other person would pick up during the call and make sure it was actually an important call. Plus, everyone knew everyone's business. If it was a call that required privacy, we had to go into town and call from a phone booth or see the other party face to face. Anything spoken over the party line was considered "shared" information.

Mother picked up the receiver as gently as she could. She quickly placed one hand over the mouth piece to prevent any voices or noises from our house being heard and identified over the phone. It was an art she had perfected through years of practice. The new phone required more expertise than the old wall phone. On the old wall phone the mouth piece was on the front and the mouth piece could be covered before the ear piece on the side was lifted from its receiver.

We eased into the hall and watched as she listened on the phone. We knew a conversation was in progress because she always shut her eyes while she was listening. I never figured out how shutting her eyes had anything to do with her hearing anything on the phone. Once I asked her about it. She just turned red and told me to "hush up".

"Two neighbor ladies were talking about it. One said she heard they were looking all over the county for them. State and Federal men have been combing farms in three counties the last couple of days."

"Did they say who those people were that they are looking for?"

"Said something about them being Civil Rights Workers."

"What are Civil Rights Workers, Daddy?"

"I don't really know, but I do know, wherever they show up there is usually trouble. I can't understand what they would be doing out here on our farm."

Mother interrupted, "They said they were from up north and were down here to help people sign up to vote."

That is how we learned of the three Civil Rights Workers disappearance in our area of the country. It was the summer of 1964 and we later learned all three, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, were found buried in an earthen dam in Neshoba County south of us.

Apparently, some people in law enforcement and the Klan were involved. Their car was pushed off into a swamp in Neshoba County and the three were buried in the dam of a pond that was being built. With the help of informants the FBI was able to retrieve the bodies and arrest several involved with the crime.

Forty years later Edgar Killen was convicted as one of the men who was involved in the killings and was sent to prison for life. I read the news online while visiting my daughter in Anchorage, Alaska. As I read the report it amazed me, forty years earlier I had been a boy growing up on the edge of a cotton field in the middle of Mississippi near where all that had happened.

Suddenly, it was forty years later and I was fifty three years old. The man had lived a life time free of his crime while three young men lay in their graves. It was so unfair. Their families had waited years for justice before it had come. I had grown up, married, raised three daughters and had become a grandfather while they waited for justice.

I wondered what Edgar Killen had done over the last forty years. Had he lived in fear he would be found out everyday, or had he gone about his days enjoying life with no thought of what he had participated in? Had he repented and lived a good life after that?

I guess most of us who hear of crimes of this sort will never know the answers to those questions. But, I am comforted in knowing sooner or later the bad things men do will catch up with them, in this life or the next, and there will be a time of accountability.

Byron De La Beckwith's 1963 crime of shooting Medgar Evers in the back as he was coming home to his family caught up with him in 1994.

Frank Cherry's crime of bombing a church in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963 where four young girls died caught up with him in 2002.

Just as Edgar Killen's crime caught up with him, so did James Seale's who was convicted in August of 2007 for murdering two young boys, Charles Moore and Henry Dee, that same year in 1964. They were merely hitch-hiking and were in the wrong place at the wrong time. After murdering them he threw their bodies in the river.

Like an onion being peeled layer by layer sooner or later the truth will be revealed and men will answer for their misdeeds.

Malus qui vir agent secundum eos vivet.

(The evil that men do lives after them.)

If there can be a lighter side of this story, it was shared with me over forty years after the tragedy while visiting an old friend. When we were younger there was a door to door salesman who peddled Standard Tea. He would come by our home in his van selling tea and other Standard products.

In the search for the three civil rights workers during the summer of 1964 the federal government activated many Navy personnel stationed at the Naval Air Station at Meridian, Mississippi. Those may have been some of the "white shirts" I saw from my vantage point on our front porch.

When the Standard Tea salesman made his rounds through our community he had to travel down many gravel roads and his van was covered in dust. My friend told me as the van was driving away from his house that summer in 1964 he noticed written in the dust on the back of the van these words; JOIN THE NAVY AND SEE MISSISSIPPI. They were probably scribbled there by one of the young navy men searching for the missing trio.

SCHOOL DAZE

It was in the summer of 1958 my mother informed me I would have to start school that fall and ride the bus just like my brothers. I did not want to go to school because I knew I would have to wear shoes and I hated wearing shoes. It would, also, mean saying goodbye to Captain Kangaroo, Mr. Green Jeans, Grandfather Clock, Mr. Moose and Bunny Rabbit.

It was a chore for my parents to get me to wear shoes to town on Saturdays. I would wear them to church on Sundays, but they came off as soon as we were in the car and headed home.

As an added incentive before school started that fall my parents took me to Libby's shoe store on Main Street and let me pick out a new pair of shoes to wear to school. Well, I had shoes and like it or not I ended up going to school and I did adapt to wearing them all day long. I did not like it, but little by little I conformed.

That was the year Egypt and Syria merged into the United Arab Republic, Khrushchev became the Premier of the Soviet Union and Eisenhower was still our president. The Supreme Court ruled that the Little Rock, Arkansas schools had to integrate and NASA initiated Project Mercury which was aimed at putting a man in space within two years. Truman Capote released his book Breakfast at Tiffany's and Elvis was inducted into the U.S. Army. The movie The Bridge Over the River Kwai was on at the theatres while Billboard's Top 100 debuted with Ricky Nelson's Poor Little Fool in number one position. United States postage stamps were four cents and I was officially a first grader.

One of the first things I learned in the first grade was… do not bite. After I had that down pat I made it through the first and second grades fairly easy. I loved to color and we did a lot of that. Little did I know, they were setting me up for the next eleven years.

I was still in elementary school when a new vaccine for polio was given to us. One Sunday afternoon it seemed as if everyone in the county went to our school cafeteria to receive the new vaccine.

It was placed on a sugar cube and as we walked through the line one was handed to each of us. I was thankful it was not another shot. I hated shots. My parents took me to the county health department when I was little and it seemed the needles they gave the shots with were as big as pencils.

They hurt so bad I would fight, bite, kick and scream whenever I was taken there. One time I managed to wiggle around and bite the nurse giving me the shot. They were so surprised that I was able to hop off the table and make a run for it. I probably would have made it out of the building and up to Main Street, but my pants dangling around my ankles slowed me down.

After that little episode Nurse Drill-to-the-bone made certain two or three people were always on hand to hold me down when I went in for my shots. They hated to see me walk through the door as much as I hated being taken there. So, the sugar cube vaccine was a welcome sight.

It was not until I entered the third grade that it hit me. The fun was over. I was going to have to do more than color and learn to write my name at the top of a paper. I think that was about the time my Attention Deficit Disorder kicked in. I could not pay attention. School was boring, and I was constantly in trouble. The teacher would write my name on the board when I was bad. Each time I was bad after that she would put a mark by my name and when I had five marks by my name she paddled me.

I received a lot of paddlings, but I really did not mind. My teacher had broken her arm the year before paddling another boy and by the time I had her she was afraid to hit very hard. She did not want to break her arm again.

Eventually, she gave up on the paddlings. They were not working. She moved my desk to the front of the class by hers and there I sat for the remainder of the year. I was not alone. Charles Jones had to sit on the other side of her desk. I guess you could say we were at the head of our class!

I don't think my fourth grade teacher liked me any better. She probably had heard horror stories about me before I entered her class that year. That teacher was the school witch. Really, she was. Every year she decorated her home for Halloween and dressed up as an old witch. She sat on her front porch with a boiling caldron, (It was probably, dry ice and water) and she would reach into it and pull out candy that was hidden in a container and hand it to the children.

Occasionally, we were marched across the street to the junior high school for special programs and plays. There are a couple of programs that stick out in my memory. Once we went across the street to watch a dog act. The fellow that had the act had a little black dog and he claimed it was Toto, the little dog that was in The Wizard of Oz. Of course we were all excited. We watched The Wizard of Oz every year when it came on TV.

But, looking back, that had to be impossible. That dog would have been, like, 900 years old in dog years! It could not have been the same dog. I cannot believe we all fell for that one!

Another program I remember was one in which Carl Jackson stood on the stage and played the theme from the Beverly Hillbillies. Carl was one year behind us in school. All of his family was musically talented and he could play anything with strings on it! He was obviously scared and was staring at the back wall, but he was tearing that banjo up! He never looked down at his instrument or out into the audience. He just kept starring at the back wall.

Carl started touring with Jim and Jessie, a bluegrass group that was well known at the time. Every summer Carl hit the road. After he graduated high school he toured with Glen Campbell for several years and one time I even saw him on the Johnny Carson Show. Carl won multiple Grammy awards and has many top 40 recordings to his credit. The small town boy did very well!

One hot day we were marched across the street for an event after we had been out playing at recess. Most of the boys had been running and playing hard, so we were hot and sweaty.

At the time my girlfriend was Kaye Calvert and she wanted to sit by me during the program. Kaye, Guy Woodward and I were sitting together. There was a teacher sitting in the row directly behind us. Just before the program started Kaye had all the boy body odor she could handle and said, "EEEEWWWWW, Ricky, you smell bad. You are all hot and sweaty. I want to sit by Guy." Well, Guy and I swapped seats. Guy had not been seated very long before Kaye said, "EEEEWWWW! Guy, you smell worse than Ricky. I want to sit back by him."

Frustrated, Guy said, "Why don't you just tell the teacher she stinks, too!"

The teacher behind us only caught part of what Guy said. All she heard was that she stank, too. She told our teacher we said she stank and she chewed all three of us out. We lost our recess privileges for a long, long time.

That was not the only time I had a bad experience in that auditorium. When I was about five years old there was a charitable event held there one Sunday afternoon. I forget which organization held it, but it was a Womanless Wedding.

It was one of those events were men dressed as women in a mock wedding ceremony. I vaguely remember being part of it. It was a traumatic day for me. For some reason my mother volunteered me to be a flower girl. Of course, I was supposed to be one of the first to march down the aisle dropping rose petals as I made my way toward the stage.

That never happened. I made it half way down the aisle before the entire auditorium erupted in hysterical laughter. I froze for a moment, then turned and ran out of the room. That may be the reason I am terrified of crowds to this day.

However bad that grade was, I did learn an awful lot that year. I learned my first cuss word. One morning as I entered the class I saw a word written in the dust on the outside of the window. I was trying to figure it out. It was backwards. T-I-H-S. I looked at it again and then asked my buddy, Guy, what was shit. I mispronounced it. I pronounced it with a long "i".

He started laughing and said it was pronounced more like "She-It."

I was still confused. "What is she-it?"

"It is the same as doo-doo!"

"OOOh!"

"Yeah, and I know a lot of other good words like that, too," he said.

He taught me more words as the year progressed.

That was the year I saw breasts for the first time. We were at recess and everyone was out on the playground. Some of us were playing "Red Rover" and there was a pretty blonde headed girl wearing a loose fitting green dress playing in the sand.

I went over to her to ask her if she wanted to play Red Rover with us. I'll never forget it. She was leaning over pushing a car through the sand. While she was leaning over I saw them. There were two little pointy lumps there. I had heard boys talk about breasts, but I had never imagined they would be so fascinating. I was trying hard not to look, but it was as if my eyes were paralyzed.

She knew I had seen them and she just smiled up at me. "You want to play cars?"

"Yeah!"

I forgot all about Red Rover. I played with her the rest of the recess, but she never leaned over like that again.

The fifth grade was better. I had a wonderful teacher. The one thing I remember learning in the fifth grade was that girls can fart. There was a pretty little girl that had a desk next to mine and one day she was sitting in the floor cleaning out from underneath her desk when she let out a loud one.

It startled me. Until that day, I never knew girls could do that. The whole class started laughing and she was laughing and crying at the same time. The teacher came back to where we were and consoled her. She said it was ok, "We all do that once in a while." Wow! I learned something else new, teachers can fart, too.

It was during the fifth grade that my friend Douglas Harpole died. He was smaller than the rest of us and was sick a lot. I was young and I did not realize how sick he actually was. He missed a lot of school and by the time we were in fifth grade he was seldom there. We called him Douglas, but to his family, he was known as Jack.

One Halloween Guy and I went over to his house trick-or-treating. He was at home because he could not go out like the rest of us and I was sad for him. We stayed there and played with him until it was time to go home. He may have been small, but he had a large personality and in many ways Douglas seemed much older than those of us in the same grade.

Time was not on his side and my mother informed me one morning that Douglas had passed away. I could not believe it. It was hard to fathom I would never see him at school again.

I went to the funeral home to see him for the last time and he was lying there wearing a yellow sweater. He looked like he was asleep in that casket and I kept thinking he would wake up and everything would be alright. It was hard to grasp the fact that he was never going to be back with us at school and we would never play together again.

I had trouble going to sleep after that. I was afraid I would go to sleep and be dead like my friend. It took a long, long time for me to get over that fear and I have never forgotten him. I learned later that he had kidney problems and that is why he was so small. His kidneys had not developed properly and the older he got the weaker he became.

I have often wondered over the years, what if he had been born 20 or 30 years later. Would new medicines or a transplant have saved him? But, that was not the case and we will never know. Time has marched on, but he has not faded from my memory. In my mind he will be forever young, smiling and eleven years old.

My first year to be in junior high school was memorable. Our nation was in the cold war with the Soviet Union and the fear of a nuclear war was always in the back of our minds. It was suddenly brought to the forefront the first day I walked down the hall. Fall-Out Shelter signs were posted everywhere and I was reminded of the ads that I had seen on television warning us, "Do Not Look At The Flash" if a nuclear war broke out.

What were we suppose to do? We were just kids. We didn't know if we had seen the flash it was already too late! It was the same building my parents were in when they attended high school and the older part of the building was there when my grandfather had been in the 1911 City Band. I have a photograph of him standing in front of the school with his bass drum. …And that building was supposed to be a Fall-Out Shelter?

We had another interesting thing awaiting us when we arrived at junior high. Across the street from the school were two small stores. Everyone referred to them as "The Little Stores". They catered to the children during school hours.

One was operated by an older man. That store was on the corner of North Columbus Avenue and College Street. He lived in a house behind the store and it was very handy for him. He only had a few feet to travel on his commute to work.

The other little store was just up the hill from his store and it was run by two sisters. I liked that store the best.

Lunches at the school cafeteria cost 25 cents. My parents gave me an extra nickel for milk money. The sisters were aware of the price of the lunches at the cafeteria and they had priced their hot dogs, sandwiches and drinks to compete with the cafeteria.

Most of the kids grew tired of the cafeteria food and by the time we reached junior high school we were ready for a change. We could take our quarter over to the little store at lunch time and buy a hot dog and a soft drink for the same price. Then we could take our milk money and buy a candy bar. Life was great! Who needed a balanced meal from the cafeteria?

During those days many changes were taking place. In the summer of '63 there was a large gathering in Washington to protest social injustices. On the steps of the Lincoln Memorial Dr. Martin Luther King gave his "I Have a Dream" speech. Then on November 22, 1963 our principal came over the loud speaker and announced that President Kennedy had been shot in Dallas, Texas. I was in my sixth grade history class.

Some of us were in shock, some were sad, but others were excited about it. Some, actually, thought it was good. We were living in the early days of the Civil Rights Era and many thought with the death of President Kennedy, things would settle down and return to normal. We were too young to know what normal was.

Our schools at that time were segregated. They had a phrase that was thrown around a lot, "We are separate, but equal." It really wasn't. I can remember at the end of every school year we would box up our worn out, outdated school books and literature to send over to Camille Street. That was where the African American school was located. It was called Eiland School because it was named for Mr. L. C. Eiland. We were always instructed to take care of our books because the colored children would have to use them after us.

We were living on the threshold of change. Jim Crow's days were numbered. Lyndon Johnson was sworn into the presidency on Air Force One as it bore Kennedy's body back to Washington and the following year he saw to it that Kennedy's plan for a sweeping Civil Rights Bill was signed into law. Had it not been for the Vietnam War, Johnson may have been known more for his stance on Civil Rights than his failure to get us out of the war.

Although, the Civil Rights Bill had been passed it was not until 1967 that the first state was to pass its own Civil Rights Bill. Kentucky was the first and soon others were following with their own version of the bill.

Urban Renewal was taking place and bringing about changes to the landscapes of many small towns. "Quarters" where the impoverished lived were being torn down and new, affordable housing was being erected. Many experienced their first indoor plumbing and modern utilities.

By the time I finished school it was hard to tell where the old "Quarters" had been. There had been an old feed mill located by the tracks near the quarters and even it was replaced with a new tennis court.

After the sixth grade I promoted to the seventh grade and that was the year I learned about action verbs. Camille Fulton was my teacher. She was also my cousin. She kept order in her classroom. She carried a yard stick around with her and she was not afraid to use it. She had a paddle and she seemed to enjoy swinging that, too. She called all the boys Jay Birds and the girls were called Jenny Wrens.

Once, I was out on the playground and three bullies were after me. One was a fat little boy. The two others would catch me and hold me down while the fat one sat on me. I hated it. It was humiliating. I managed to get away that day and was running away when my cousin caught me.

She had told us not to run on the sidewalks and she did not want to hear my excuse. She took me inside and gave me a good paddling.

She was a good teacher, other than the yardstick and the paddle. When she was teaching us action verbs she would walk down the rows of desks and pick out a boy… whack him on the head and say, "I just whacked so and so. Whacked is an action verb." We caught on real quick as to what action verbs were.

That was in 1964 and it was the year the Beatles first appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show with their big hit, I Want to Hold Your Hand. Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for life in South Africa and Luther Terry, our Surgeon General, announced that cigarette smoking caused cancer. It was the year Nikita Khrushchev was removed from power, our country had no vice president and General Douglas McArthur passed away. The 24th amendment to remove the poll tax was passed and a United States postage stamp was five cents.

While Bob Dylan and The Grateful Dead were coming onto the scene, I was having classes in the older part of the school where the ceilings were very high and the lights were hung from them by long chains. Occasionally, the building would shake in a high wind and the lights would sway back and forth. The rooms were steam heated and the radiators would pop and hiss all winter long.

There were fire escapes on the upper floors where the windows were wide and tall making escape in the event of an emergency fairly easy. One year my cousin, Al Foster, had a class on the top floor. They had a substitute teacher that they did not like and they had planned to stage a fight as she came into the room.

As she entered the room Al's buddy screamed out, "I'm not taking this crap anymore!" Then he made a fake swing and acted like he punched Al in the jaw. Al was standing in front of the open window and fell backwards out onto the fire escape. The young teacher did not realize the fire escape was there and thought he had fallen three stories to the ground.

She fainted and fell to the floor, but when she came to her senses and realized it was all a prank they were sent to the principal's office and expelled for several days.

I was in the eighth grade when my father surprised us when he brought home a small monkey. Daddy knew a man in town who had a drinking problem. When he drank he would buy things he really had no use for. It happened that someone caught him on a drinking spree and sold him a chimpanzee and the small monkey. He needed money and talked my father into buying the monkey from him.

It was winter and the monkey had to be kept warm. My father put him inside his coat and was driving his truck back home when he saw someone he knew walking along the road, so he stopped to give the guy a ride.

When he got into the truck he pulled out a can of Prince Albert Tobacco and started to roll a cigarette. My father told him, "I don't mind if you smoke, but my little friend might not like it very much."

He looked around and asked, "What friend? I don't see anyone in here, but you and me, Mr. Harold."

About that time my father unzipped his coat and the monkey's head popped out. He looked over at the man sitting by the door. My father said the fellows eyes got big and he started trying to open the door to get out while they were traveling down the road.

Daddy was able to calm him down and let him know the monkey was not going to hurt him. Still… he never took his eyes off the monkey.

We named the monkey Pete and he had a distinct odor about him. I don't know why because he was constantly grooming himself, but Pete smelled bad! We had to keep him in the bathroom and the room began to smell like monkey.

He was a lot of fun to play with. I carried grapes in my pocket and he would sit on my shoulder and wait for me to feed them to him. Once, I was sitting at the kitchen table doing my homework and Pete came in hopped upon the table and grabbed my pencil. I thought for a moment he was going to start writing. Instead, he bit my pencil in half.

My brother came in and took a picture of Pete and me working on homework together. The photo ended up in our school yearbook.

My mother could not handle Pete's odor, and she told Daddy that Pete was going to have to go. He talked his friend into taking Pete back.

I was in the eighth grade when I got my first bicycle. I know that seems a little old, but it is true. There was a bicycle at our house. My parents had bought a small one for my older brothers when they were younger, but by the time I came along they had worn the tires off of it.

I tried to ride it a few times, but it was too small and it was hard to ride a bike that had bent up rims and no tires. My brothers did not mind not having a bike, after all we lived on a farm and we had horses.

I had a horse, too. Her name was Lady. She was a white mare with a pink nose and blue eyes. Some would say she was an albino. She was very gentle and I could ride her with or without a bridle and saddle. At one time six small kids were on her and she never flinched. Lady was that gentle.

My father gave her to me one year when I was struggling in math and by some miracle I managed to bring my grades up. Actually, he wanted her too. He used her as a brood mare because she had beautiful colts when bred to his black stallion. Getting to call Lady mine was just a formality. I knew who she really belonged to.

Even though I had her, it was not enough. My cousin, Craig, had a bicycle and I wanted one, too. Whenever I spent the night with him we would grab his bike and his sister, Margaret's bike, and ride all over town. I loved that. I could stop the bike, get off and not worry about it running away. Besides that, bikes did not spook when a covey of quail or a rabbit jumped up along the side of the road.

A bike did not have to be fed, washed, brushed or ridden every day. I wanted a bike of my own! Horses were part of the farm business and we used them while working the cattle. We, also, raised colts and sold them. A bike was a luxury we could not afford.

My father wanted me to have one as much as I wanted one. Finally, he came up with an idea. There was a wealthy man in town that loved to quail hunt. He let it be known that he would like to rent a horse to hunt off of during the next quail season.

Lady fit the bill. She was very gentle and we could shoot off of her. Daddy asked me if I would be willing to rent her to the man during quail season.

"How much is he willing to pay?" I asked.

"Enough to buy a new bicycle." was his reply.

That was all I needed to hear. I would not have to feed or water her for weeks and I would end up with a bike of my own! I thought that was a pretty good deal.

At the end of quail season my father took the $32.50 the man gave him and bought a new, red Sears bicycle. It was beautiful… and it was all mine!

I rode that bike everywhere I went. I took it to the ponds fishing. I rode it all over the farm. It opened up a new world to me. If my parents only knew where all I went on that bicycle, it would have scared them to death. It was not unusual for me to take off and ride 15 or 20 miles from home. I rode on every gravel road in our community and several times I went into town.

One of the first secret excursions on my bike was to locate the grave of a young girl I had played with when I was small. Her mom helped my mother with some of our household chores. She cleaned our house, and washed and ironed our clothes because with three boys there was plenty of laundry to do.

My friend would tag along and we would play together while her mother worked. She was a few years older than me, but I never noticed the age difference. I always looked forward to the days she came and we could play together.

Then late one evening her mother came to our house and told my father something was terribly wrong with her daughter. He quickly left and they took her into town to see a doctor. Little did I know that I would never see her again. She died that night.

When I awoke the next morning Mother told me my friend was gone. I had a hard time understanding that she would never come back again. I remember asking Mother, "Where is she? What are they going to do with her now?"

I was told that they would have a funeral for her and then they would take her body to an area known as "The Woods" between our house and town and bury her there. That was where a lot of poor people were buried.

That was my first realization that there was a difference between people economically. I had never thought of poor or rich or in-between before that. Children do not discriminate. They tend to meet everyone on face value and not by what color they are or how much money they have. All I understood was my friend was gone.

The next time we went to town I asked my parents to point out where "The Woods" were. As it turned out they were not far… only about two miles from our house. For some reason I knew not to ask to go there. I don't know why, but I just knew.

So, when I got that bike I knew where one of my first trips would be. I was going to the woods and search for the grave of my long lost friend. The day came when I was able to sneak away from the house and I peddled up the highway toward town.

I had a general idea where the cemetery was, but there was no fence around it like most cemeteries. There was no sign posted by the road. And there was no path to drive down to get there. I parked my bike on the side of the road and I began to walk through the trees. I finally stumbled upon some graves, very few had markers. The ones that did were small and basic… name and dates. A few still had the little funeral home markers, but most of those were missing the names that had been stuck to them. There were a few graves that had rocks for markers.

Standing there under the canopy of the trees in the undergrowth of vines and saplings I felt an overwhelming sense of despair. Many of the graves had nothing to mark them. There were only depressions in the earth where the wooden coffins had rotted away and collapsed.

I walked around kicking vines and leaves away trying to find a marker with my friend's name on it. There was no marker. I felt like I had lost her all over again. After all those years I was standing in the middle of the cemetery and I could not find her. So I did the only thing I knew to do.

I called out her name and whispered, "I still miss you. I'm sorry I didn't get to tell you goodbye when we were little, but I still miss you and I'll never forget you."

I stood there a while longer. The wind was whistling through the pines and I almost felt like I could hear her whispering back to me.

That was the only time I ever went there. Fifty years have passed since I last saw her smiling face and her pretty eyes, but I have not forgotten her. There are times, even now, when I am out in the woods and the wind is blowing through the trees… I can almost hear her whispering to me… "I remember you, too."

I cannot count the number of tires I replaced on that bike. One time I had a flat and I had just installed a new tube when I had a bad accident. Evidently, in my haste I did not get the front wheel on tight enough. When the new highway was built in the 50s our home ended up on a high hill and our driveway was very steep.

After I changed the flat I hopped on the bike and got up my speed up going down the driveway. I was making my turn onto the road when I hit a bump and the front wheel came off. It kept traveling down the road as the forks of the bike dug into the pavement and flipped me over the handle bars.

I hit the road with a thud and I was hurting badly. The fall knocked the wind out of me. I was in pain and seeing stars. Somehow I managed to see through the stars and watched as my wheel traveled down the road and rolled into a ditch. About that same time I heard something. The noise was getting louder. It was a semi truck coming down the road behind me.

I knew I was about to die. I could not get up. I was hurting too bad. The driver started blowing his horn and applying his brakes. I don't know how I did it, but I rolled to the side of the road, reached out for my bike and pulled it on top of me just before the truck went by.

He never stopped. He let off his brakes and sped back up. Yeah… Right!

I lay there a while until the pain subsided enough for me to get up and collect the parts to my bicycle. I was skinned up, but I was alive. After that I made certain my wheels were on tight.

There is an old saying. "You never forget your first love." I might add to that… or your first bicycle.

I entered high school in the fall of '66. I suppose entering high school is one of the rights of passage for every young person. For me it was no different. My brother, Tonny, was a senior that year and I discovered it was not good to hang around him while at school. I was just "a freshman" but, I always looked up to him and his classmates because I thought they were cool.

Tonny graduated in the spring of 1967 and that was the year the movie The Graduate staring Dustin Hoffman and Ann Bancroft was filmed. One of the scenes in the movie was shot in the lobby of the Ambassador Hotel in California. The next year Bobby Kennedy was shot and killed in that same hotel while campaigning for the democratic nomination.

It was not until my senior year that the movie was released. When it did, it broke a lot of box office records. Dustin Hoffman and Simon and Garfunkel became household names.

There were several teachers that stand out in my memory during high school. My math and geometry teacher was young and one of the prettiest teachers I had. Her name was Diane Carter and several of the guys had a crush on her.

Jean Sanders King taught me algebra. She was my cousin and if not for her I don't think I would have made it out of that class. I still cannot figure out what good proofs are.

Berlin Rogers was my biology teacher… another cousin. He was a great teacher and I learned a lot from him. He made learning fun and I always looked forward to his classes.

My neighbor, Howard Ryals, was my chemistry teacher. I would not have made it out of chemistry if he had not helped me. Later he became an insurance agent and I bought my first life insurance policy from him.

Mary Emily Majure was my Mississippi History teacher. She brought history to life and is probably the reason I am so interested in it today. She had to have the patience of a saint. I was bored one day and I removed the wire from an old electric clock I had. It had a very fine wire that was nearly invisible.

I took the wire, went to Mrs. Majure's class, and spread it all around her room. I tied it to the lights and down to the desks. I had it going from the windows to the blackboard. It was like a spider web and it was everywhere.

Then I waited for her to go to her room and I watched to see what happened. At first it was as if she was walking into a spider web. Then she was jumping and jerking and trying to make her way through the maze of wires. By the time she got to her desk she had little red lines all over her. Her nylons were cut and she had runs all in them. I cannot believe I got away with that one. That is one stunt I still feel bad about.

During my sophomore year I took Latin. The only reason I took Latin instead of Spanish was because of a girl. I had a crush on her and was hoping I would be in her class. I was in Beta Club that year only because I studied hard to impress her. I did not impress her at all. The next year I backed off on the studies and enjoyed myself more.

1968 proved to be a tragic year for our nation with the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. in April and later in the year, Bobby Kennedy. With each death I wondered why? Why can't people just get along and live in peace?

When I was 15 my father thought it was time for me to get my drivers license. In those days we could get a license at 14 if we were farm children, but most kids had to wait until they were 15. I was in no hurry. I was already driving around the farm. Why did I need a license?

We took a written test first and if we passed it we received our learner's permit for 30 days. Then we could take the driving test. I passed the written test and I had to wait for the trooper to come to our school to give the driving test.

The driving test was given in the school's Driver's Education car. I did not take Driver's Education because it cost extra and we did not have that kind of money. Besides that, I had been driving around the farm for years and was pretty good at it by the time I was old enough to take the test.

When the day came I went out, got into the car and waited for the trooper. It did not look anything like my father's vehicles. I got nervous and my leg started shaking. The Trooper got in, looked over at me and smiled. I knew I was going to fail, for sure. He told me to drive out of the school and take a right. I did.

Then he told me to go up the highway and turn left onto a dirt road. I did. He looked over at me and said, "Let's go back to the school young man."

That was when I knew I had failed the test. I backed out into the highway and started toward the school. He said, "You really should not back into a highway. It is not safe."

I got back to the school and was prepared for the bad news. He looked over at me and asked, "Aren't you Harold Algood's boy?"

I said, "Yes, sir."

"You drive tractors on the farm, don't you?"

"Yes, Sir."

"Well, if you can drive a tractor, you can drive a car." Then he wrote out my driver's license. I was shocked. I had heard all the horror stories about kids having to do all sorts of things during their driving test and still flunking it. I did not have to do anything, but drive up the road and back to get mine!

Having my driver's license turned out to be handier than I had imagined. I was asked (tapped) to be on our high school newspaper, The LHS Review. As a photographer I traveled a lot to take pictures at ball games and school events.

One time I even did a story about a haunted trailer house. The staff reporter and I drove to another county and ended up in a remote area where a fellow claimed his trailer house was haunted. She was to write the story and I was going to take a picture of the ghost.

According to the owner of the trailer house an image of a man would appear in his bathroom mirror from time to time. We went into his bathroom and waited for the image to appear. I guess it was the ghost's day off because we never saw him. We kinda stretched the story and I ended up drawing a picture of the image the fellow described to me.

In my junior year I decided to take typing. There were lots of pretty girls that took typing and I wanted to be there. The typing instructor, Mrs. Yvonne McNeil, ran a tight ship. She was training girls for the work force!

One day a fellow student came up with the bright idea to unhook the carriages from their housings on a few of the typewriters. There were a couple of girls that were excellent typists and they were throwing the curve for the entire class. He thought he would put a stop to that.

We came to class that day and the first thing on the teacher's agenda was to hit us with a timed event test. We all started typing and when the carriages reached their limit the little bell chimed that let us know it was time to push the carriage back to the left.

When the chimes went off the girls began to fling the carriages back and they flew off the typewriters and fell onto the floor.

The teacher was livid. She wanted to know who did it, but no one spoke up. She kept looking at me like I was going to own up to it. She watched me close the rest of the year, but that was the one time I was innocent.

My senior English teacher drilled the prologue to Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales into my head which she had us memorize. "When that Aprill with his shoures soote…" It is strange how things like that stick in our memories. I believe I can still recite most of that prologue to this very day.

Another of my favorite teachers was my art teacher, Hilda Simmons. We called her "Mother Art." She was just a wonderful person and made coming to class a lot of fun.

There was a girl in my art class who was pretty and skinny as a rail. She was, also, high strung and nervous. We had a paper cutter in another room we called the one armed bandit. Every time someone used it… It went "Scraaape… Whack!" She always jumped and said, "Someday, someone is going to get hurt with that old thing."

Well, one day she was in another room when I took some white clay and fashioned it into something that looked like a bone. Then I took red paint and poured around it to look like blood. I bent my finger and stuck it on the end. I went over to the paper cutter and it went… "Scraaape… Whack!"

I screamed out and went running into the room she was working in. She took one look at my finger and started backing up. She made it to the wall before she dropped to the floor. I thought I was going to the office over that one, but Mrs. Simmons let me off the hook.

I still feel bad about that one, too.

During the second semester that year our school paper was shut down. It was rumored that the school would be fully integrated the next year and the powers in charge wanted to stop things that year so no students could be involved in the paper or other clubs when full integration took place. Miss Nabors was our sponsor and she was in tears when she gave us the news.

That really hurt us all. We hated it for ourselves and for the students who would be coming to our high school in the years that followed. As much as things were changing, some things seemed to be written in stone. There was no persuading the school officials to change their decision.

My knowledge of driving a straight shift came in handy during my senior year when we had our homecoming parade. The theme that year was about space travel. Neil Armstrong had walked on the moon just a few months earlier and everything seemed to revolve around space.

We wanted to have a space rover in the parade and we were going to dress up as aliens and astronauts. One of the paper staff members located a dune buggy we could borrow. We were going to transform it into a space rover for the parade. The only problem we had was it had a standard transmission. I was the only one who knew how to drive a straight shift, so I became the chauffer.

The night before the paper staff was to decorate it. We went over to the man's house and picked it up. While we had it out we decided to take it for a spin. Louisville had a Mug-N-Cone on the north and south ends of the town. Most of us, back then, drove from one to the other on weekend nights. That was the extent of our cruising.

I was in the grocery parking lot across the street from the Mug-N-Cone on the north side of town playing with the dune buggy when several kids came over and wanted to ride on it. Before I knew it there were over a dozen guys and girls hanging off the thing. One girl even had her dog with her.

We drove through town to the Mug-N-Cone on the south end of town and then we made the trip back to the one on the north end. After a couple of trips, I guess we attracted a little attention. It was on a trip back to the north of town I noticed red flashing lights behind me. It was the police.

I pulled over and stopped. The policeman stepped out of his car and walked up to the dune buggy. He looked down at me and asked, "Son, can you possibly get another person on that thing?"

I looked up at him and as earnestly as I could I replied, "Well sir, if you want to ride we will certainly try to make room for you!"

He just shook his head and said, "No, I do not want to ride. And I don't want all you kids riding on that thing, either!" He looked at me and said, "I want you to start taking kids back to their cars now! And when this thing is unloaded, I want you to go home. Do I make myself clear?"

"Yes, Sir."

Most schools have musically talented students. Louisville was no different. When we were in junior high some girls formed a group called The Penstripers. Actually, they were very good. They sang folk music while strumming on their Ukuleles. I remember the song 500 Miles was big back then. They performed songs we sang in our youth groups at church, too. Years afterward I learned the name of their instrument, the Ukulele, was Hawaiian for "Jumping Flea".

One of the early boy bands was called The Staggs. Another band was Little John and his Merry Men. By the time we were in high school we had another band called CSR. I have no idea what it stood for. They let me hang around and I helped set up equipment for them. They were very good. On weekends they played for dances in several counties around the area. I don't know if they ever made a lot of money, but they were able to pay for their own equipment. One band member had an old house near his home they practiced in.

I had study hall in a room that was used for science classes. At the front of the class was an aquarium full of gold fish and guppies. Someone had placed a coffee creamer glass in the bottom of the aquarium and students would drop coins into the water to see it they could land them in the creamer glass at the bottom.

There were several dollars in coins at the bottom of the aquarium and one day the study hall teacher was asked what they were going to do with all that money in the aquarium. He said, "I really don't know."

Then he had an idea. He said, "I'll tell you what. We need to clean the aquarium and I'll give all the money to whoever is brave enough to eat one of the guppies."

I took a look at the nasty aquarium and then I looked at the money in the bottom. There was more money there than I made in a whole day of selling clothes at the clothing store in town. I figured if I got sick it would not last more than a day. I walked up to the front of the room and grabbed the dip net.

I scooped out a guppy and threw it in my mouth and swallowed it quickly. I did not want to take time to think about it. I was afraid if I thought about it I would not be able to do it.

The teacher and the class all went, "EEEEEWWWWW!"

I received over six bucks in change the next time they cleaned the aquarium.

It was that same study hall that brought me misfortune, too. One day I had a pencil in my hand and I was twirling it through my fingers while I was studying. I should have known better. It was a freshly sharpened pencil and it had a good point.

As I was sitting there studying a boy got up and walked to the front of the class to sharpen his pencil. I did not pay him much attention. He sharpened his pencil and for some reason as he walked back to his seat he reached out and slapped my hand upwards.

The pencil stuck in my face just below my eye. It really hurt. I jumped up and just stood there. The pencil was dangling from my face. I was not sure if it had hit my eye or not and I was afraid to pull it out. When I blinked the pencil would wiggle.

The teacher went crazy. He did not know what to do either. He sent me to the office and my father was called to take me to the doctor. The pencil was still stuck in my face and each time I moved the pencil would jiggle and it stung like the dickens.

The doctor saw me immediately and reached up and pulled the pencil out. He said, "Young man, you are extremely fortunate. You could have put your eye out! Just a little higher up and you would have been blinded for life."

He gave me a tetanus shot and told me I would be fine. However, I carried the little pencil mark tattoo with me for years. I would often think of the boy and wonder what possessed him to do that. I kept the pencil tattoo with me until I was in my 50s before I had the nerve to get it removed.

Prior to beginning my senior year not only did we put a man on the moon, several thousand people landed on a dairy farm in the state of New York. It was the birth of a counterculture and hippie era when over 30 of the most prominent musicians of the day settled on the farm for several days of concerts, love-ins and who knows what else. Woodstock soon became a household word, but in Louisville we were focused primarily on the moon landing.

With everything revolving around the recent moon landing and expectations of space travel that year, it was a miracle our senior play did not involve space travel… unless a house flying through the air during the tornado counts. Our senior play was The Wizard of Oz.

My cousin, Cathy Bennett, was Dorothy and she did a great job. Cathy had a beautiful voice and she sounded just as good as Judy Garland. The entire cast was fantastic. The Scarecrow was played by Happy Hickman. Wayne Cockrell was the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion was portrayed by Keith Giffin. Our Good Witch of the North was Linda Jayroe and Wicked Witch of the West was Belinda Wright.

Larry Woodward was, Verdo, the gatekeeper to Emerald City. When Dorothy, the Lion, the Scarecrow and the Tin Man knocked on the door Larry's line was, "Who stands without?" The Wizard's maiden was played by Kaye Calvert who said, "Without what?"

Pepper Calloway played the Wizard and created his own special effects that helped make the play a success.

I was asked to be Mayor Munchkin and I had two lines. One of which was, "Follow the Yellow Brick Road!" It was a tough job, but somebody had to do it.

In the years following high school I was tempted several times to put "former mayor" on a few of my résumés, but I always got cold feet and decided it was better to leave that previous job out. I did not want to appear over qualified.

There was a science fair at the school my senior year. I wanted to enter it, but I had a hard time deciding what to do for my project. Finally, I decided I would do it on the harmful effects of smoking.

There were a few kids in our class who smoked and I thought that showing them how smoke affects the lungs might be a good idea. My plan was to build a smoking machine. It encompassed tubes, funnels and filters with a vacuum system to draw the smoke through it.

It was going along pretty well until I hooked Mother's vacuum cleaner to it and sucked up the filters and the cigarette. I had to work quickly before I burned up her vacuum cleaner! As things turned out, I ended up being the vacuum system. As I was working on the project I happened to glance over at the mirror that was in my room and noticed the smoke coming out my nose. Then I began to practice blowing smoke rings. I was beginning to get the hang of it when I heard footsteps coming down the hall toward my room.

I can still see my mother coming into my room and waving her hands through a fog of smoke. She asked me, "Ricky, you aren't smoking those things are you?"

"No, Ma'm." I tried not to inhale the smoke, but I was never a good politician. I ended up liking it and I was hooked. I won a ribbon for my project. The filters were all yellow and brown. It even smelled bad.

The other thing I won was a bad habit. It took years before I was able to quit smoking. When my father found out he had lung cancer, it was a wake up call. Even though he never smoked, he died because of lung cancer. I knew smoking would increase my odds of getting it, too. Watching what he went through was enough to make me want to quit.

During my high school years kids hung out at the local parking lot. Gentry's was a local grocery store that had a huge parking lot. On weekend nights kids flocked to it. If we did not have a date or if we did not have anything to do we went to the parking lot. It was the hub of the universe for most of us that did not have a life!

Another place where we hung out during the summer was Lake Tiak-O'khata. It was a local resort and swimming hole. There was an enormous pine tree on the east side of the lake that was always dripping with Wisteria in the springtime. Summers always included time at the lake. There was a Juke Box on the porch and it bellowed out all the Beach Boy tunes as well as whatever was hot at the time.

The lake had two different diving boards and a couple of slides. On the beach was a trampoline that was constantly in use. Trampolines were rare in those days and there was a long wait to get a turn on the trampoline.

At the end of my senior year we began to prepare for our graduation program. In charge of organizing everyone for their places on the stage was none other than one of my former teachers.

We all met in the auditorium and she told us all not to speak. She did not want to hear one word from anyone until she had gone over everything and had everyone in their places. She said if we had any questions we could ask them later.

One by one she called the students up to the stage and had them sit in the prearranged seats. The Valedictorian and honor students were seated first on the front row. Following that we were called up in alphabetical order… A through Z.

She started calling names out and she skipped me. Kids began to look around and it was obvious they were wondering what was happening. I got scared. Maybe I was not going to graduate! I started to ask, but I knew better. I just sat there.

When she finished she turned and looked out into the auditorium. That was when she saw me sitting there all alone. "Mr. Algood, why didn't you go to the stage when I called your name?"

"You didn't call my name."

"I most certainly did!"

"No, Ma'm, you skipped me."

About that time someone on stage spoke up, "You skipped Ricky. We were all wondering about it, too. But, you said for us not to say anything until you finished."

I knew better than to argue with her. I knew what this was about. She still thought I was the one that rigged the typewriter carriages to fall in the floor.

Then she turned toward me and said, "Mr. Algood, just for being so smart you will be seated last!"

I just sat there. Arguing would do no good. She had her mind made up.

"Go sit on the back row with the W's and Y's!"

It suddenly hit me… W's and Y's… W's and Y's… W's and Y's… WOW!

She had no idea how happy she made me. I was elated. I did not want to sit on the front row to begin with! I was terrified of crowds and I had dreaded sitting there on the front row graduation night.

The last row! I was thinking, "This is great. Janet Young was on the last row." Janet was not just the prettiest girl on my school bus, she was our Homecoming Queen. She was just about the most beautiful girl I had ever seen! I was going to the back row with Janet Young. I was thinking, "Thank you, thank you, thank you!"

As it happened, Guy Woodward was on the back row, too. Remember Guy? He was the one the teacher thought said, "Tell the teacher she stinks, too" back in the fourth grade. Guy was the class cut up. He knew how to have fun and I knew sitting back there would not be dull. He did not let me down.

On graduation night we all marched into the auditorium. One fellow had started celebrating graduation early and some of his fellow classmates had to help point him down the aisle. He stumbled as he walked up on the stage, but other than that he did pretty well.

When we were all seated someone made a little talk. Then the school song director had us stand to sing the school anthem. It began, "Hail to our high school, hats off to thee…." Well, the person playing the piano missed a few keys and had to start over after we sang the first word. It sounded like we all said "HELL." We started over and tried to make it through the song without laughing.

As we sat down for the Valedictorian's speech Guy brought out a deck of cards. Guy, Janet and I played Black Jack on the back row while the speeches were being made.

Then came the moment we were to stand row by row and go forth to receive our diplomas. Guy put the cards up. We watched as the first row stood and marched single file to the principal and received their diplomas.

Guy was getting bored and I could sense something was about to happen. When the row two rows in front of us stood up to march forward, Guy nudged a boy in front of him and whispered something in his ear. The fellow eased out of his chair and sat on the floor. He slid his chair back toward Guy, who had slid his chair behind the curtain at the back of the stage. They removed three chairs from that row and hid them behind the curtain. Then they took their seats again.

When the row of students returned they had three chairs missing. The principal motioned with his hands for them to be seated. Three of them had to sit on the floor! Guy was smiling.

As it turned out, while we were up getting our diplomas they took our chairs and we returned to find out we had to sit on the floor. Since we were the last row, we did not remain there long. We were all asked to stand and we were pronounced graduates!

Our class motto was, "Give them hell and let them know, we're the class of seven-oh!" I have often wished we could have come up with something a little more profound than that. But, it rhymed and I guess it will be with us forever.

Thinking back, if that teacher had not done what she did I would not have experienced any of those moments. Memories are made from moments like that. We tend not to remember ordinary things, but we do remember extraordinary moments in time.

Our class was certainly that… Extra-Ordinary!

Meus canis meum laborem voravit.

(My dog ate my homework.)

Reflecting back, I realize I lived in an age of change and an age of innocence. 1970 was the last year schools in our county were segregated. Shortly after that private schools began to appear around the state. In the beginning it was the more affluent children who attended the private schools.

Among the worse things that occurred at our school were kids' chewing gum in class and sneaking out to the parking lot for a cigarette. Occasionally, a fight would take place, but nothing more serious than a bloody nose ever happened.

Our days always began with the pledge of allegiance and a devotional. As I watched my daughters grow up I noticed that little by little some of those traditions fell by the wayside.

But, a time came when my children and their classmates joined together before school started and had prayer around the flag pole. They called it… "Meet me at the flag pole." When the weather turned cool, their prayer group was allowed to move into the lobby of the high school before their day began.

My wife and daughters rushed home on the morning of December 1, 1997 and informed me there had been a shooting at the high school. A young student began shooting at my daughter's group as they stood in prayer. Fortunately, my daughter was not there at the time of the shooting. She had gone to turn in some work for extra credit that day and missed the shooting by minutes or she may have been one of the fatalities.

As she returned to join the group she heard gunfire and saw her best friend lying on the floor. Three girls died that day. Her best friend was one of them. Several more were wounded. In an instant many lives were changed forever. Those that were not physically wounded were emotionally scarred.

After my wife and daughters rushed back out of the house to check on the injured at the hospital, I was left standing there in shock. It was as if a dam burst inside of me. I remember holding on to the wall to keep from collapsing to the floor.

For weeks I could not read a newspaper article about the tragedy or watch the television when something came on the news about the shooting. When my friends at work brought up the subject, I often had to get up and leave the room.

The shooting opened up emotions inside me I thought I had walled off many years before. Not only did it affect the children it affected a lot of us adults and changed how we had previously thought of school as being a safe haven for our children. The world I had known as a child had changed.

I did grow up during an extraordinary time. It was an age of innocence that is gone forever.

THE SENIOR DANCE

When I was in high school I did not date much. Actually, I was very shy… painfully shy and I had no idea what to do on a date. I was like a dog chasing a car. He knew to chase it, but did not know what to do when he caught it.

I was a senior when I finally got up the nerve to ask a girl out that I liked. Her name was Kim Waage. The first night we had a date I was very nervous. I drove by her home on Pinedale Drive several times before I got up the nerve to go to the front door. When I did she invited me in and I just knew I was going to have to meet her parents right away.

Instead, she asked me if I wanted to see her puppies. I said, "Sure." I was sitting on the couch when she walked over to a door and called for the "puppies". All of a sudden two Great Danes came bounding into the room and were all over me! I had owned Shetland ponies that were not that big! But, it was a great ice breaker and I was a little more relaxed by the time her parents walked into the room to meet me.

We started dating on a weekly basis. I would pick her up and we would go to see the movie of the week at the Strand Theatre. Then I would take her back to her house and we would sit on the couch and talk.

When Christmas drew near I wanted to get her something special. I found a locket at Minneola's Jewelry Store on Main Street and I knew that was what I wanted to get for her. I did not have enough money saved up to buy it, so I took my Mercury Head dime collection to the store and bought it. The sales clerk looked at all those silver dimes and said, "She must really be a special girl! Are you sure you want to get rid of these?"

She was special. She gave me a plastic key chain with my astrological sign on it. To me it was more valuable than gold. I loved it.

I thought everything was going pretty well until one of her friends approached me in the hall at school. "When are you going to kiss Kim good night? You guys have been dating for weeks and she wants to know if you are ever going to kiss her good night."

I did not know what to say, so I said, "I'm working up to it." That seemed to satisfy them and I thought I was in the clear.

I was terrified. I had never kissed a girl before and did not know how to do it! One night I made a feeble attempt to try and kiss her. I stopped the car and was trying to get up the nerve, when she asked, "What are we doing sitting here?" I panicked. I started the car and took her home. I was so embarrassed I quit calling her and we broke up. I don't think she ever knew why.

Kim's brother was in my grade at school. She, also, had a twin sister that I thought a lot of. I loved her family and missed our times together. I thought I would try to impress her to get her back. I asked her to go to the Senior Dance with me and she accepted. Our senior dance was like today's version of the Prom, without the tuxes and gowns.

I had it all planned out. I would drive to the next county that was wet, buy a cooler and some beer. That night, before we went to the dance, we would have a couple of beers and I would be more relaxed and might be able to kiss her without shaking, sweating or passing out.

I drove to the next county and bought the beer. I hid it out in the woods along the road so I would be able to pick it up later that night. I thought the plan was perfect. Duuhhh!

That night after the graduation ceremony I stopped by the woods, picked up the cooler of beer and put it on the back floor by the seat. Then I went to Kim's house and picked her up.

As we were driving out to the dance, I worked up the nerve to say, "I have some beer in the back if you would like one."

She never flinched, she just said, "Take me home."

This was not what I had planned on. I said, "We don't have to drink it. I thought you might like one because this is graduation night."

"Take me home… NOW!" She never looked at me.

I knew she was serious. I had blown it. I turned around and drove her back to her house. Kim never said another word. She just got out of the car and went inside. I was so embarrassed. I could not believe I had blown it again.

Well, it was my graduation night and I was going back to the dance even if I was alone. On the way I thought I would try one of those beers. I retrieved one from the cooler and opened it. I took my first taste of beer. It was awful. I could not believe people actually drank that stuff.

I had blown the last chance I had to date her again. It was over. I ditched the beer before going to the dance. The beer was gone and so was my girlfriend. I learned courage can't be found in a six pack… life's lessons can be cruel.

When my daughters were older I prayed that if they were in a circumstance like the one I put Kim in, they would do the same thing. She certainly made an impression on me and changed my life.

Bardus est sicut bardes aget.

(Stupid is as stupid does.)

JESUS LOVES ME, THIS I KNOW

My parents were members of First Methodist Church in Louisville. My father had been a member of Camp Ground Methodist Church out in the country when he was younger and my mother was a Baptist. I am guessing they must have joined First Methodist Church about the time they married after World War II.

Camp Ground Methodist Church is located several miles south of Calvary Baptist Church which is located on Old Robinson Road. It began as a brush arbor camp meeting about 1844. In the early years it was a Cumberland Presbyterian Church, but in March of 1864 it was deeded to John Clark and Thomas and Sam Curtis, who were church trustees. Shortly there-after it became a Methodist Church.

The original name of the church was Mount Pleasant, but it was eventually changed to Camp Ground because people would come and camp there during some of the extended church meetings. Around 1887 the old log church burned. Later, after it was rebuilt a storm came through and destroyed the building again. The building that is there today was built about 1921.

In the sanctuary is a bible that was presented to the church in 1942 by my great-uncle, Albert Bennett, in memory of his father… my great-grandfather, D. C. Bennett. The Bennetts traveled to the church from their home on Calvary Road in their wagon.

When our Clark cousins moved into the community in the early 1900s they also became members of Camp Ground. Wilma Clark Sanders met her future husband, Olyn Sanders, when they were returning home after church in their wagon one Sunday and happened upon his car that had become stuck in a ditch.

Olyn asked her father, John Clark, to pull him out with his team and that was the beginning of a lifetime together for Wilma and Olyn.

It may have been at Camp Ground that one of my elderly cousins unintentionally dismissed the church service one Sunday morning. It was his "calling" to get up early on Sundays, go to the church and start a fire in the old pot bellied stove in the sanctuary so the worshipers would be warm upon their arrival.

During the service he always fell asleep, but nobody minded. They appreciated the fact that he made certain the building was warm during the cooler months. At the end of the service the pastor always called out his name and he would rise and say the benediction.

One Sunday morning he had performed his duty, taken his seat and as usual fell fast asleep. For reasons unknown, the pastor was unusually appreciative of the warm building that morning and thanked him before beginning the service for building the fire.

When he heard his name mentioned he woke up, stood up and led the church with his customary benediction, thus dismissing the church before the service had begun.

My first recollection of First Methodist Church in Louisville was when I sitting in the old sanctuary. The wooden floor sloped from the west down to the pulpit that was on the east end of the building by North Church Street.

I realize that would seem trivial to most people, especially to a small child, but has been forever imprinted on my mind because of the marble incident. I was a rowdy little boy and my parents tried to keep me occupied during the service so the worshipers around me could hear the word of God.

For reasons only they know, one Sunday they gave me a few marbles to play with during the service. The marbles did manage to keep me busy for a short while until I noticed the floor sloped toward the front where Brother Lewis and the choir were located. I don't know what possessed me to do it, but I dropped the marbles onto the hardwood floor to watch them roll. It would have been bad enough for everyone hearing the marbles roll from the back of the church where my parents kept me, but the hardwood flooring did not run lengthwise with the sanctuary. The boards ran in a cross direction and the marbles had an added "bump, bump" sound as they all rolled forward on their trip to the altar.

The entire congregation turned and looked at us. My father and mother felt like melting into the pew. There were no more marbles after that day. After that I was given a pencil and a bulletin to keep me quiet. That was probably where my love of the art world began… in church to keep me quiet. I would sit there and draw all during the service. Hey…it worked for them.

In warm weather the stained glass windows were tilted inward to allow a breeze to flow through the old sanctuary. Those were the years before central air-conditioning. It was not unusual to see a bird or two fly into the building and those times were special for me. I would sit there and watch the birds fly around the sanctuary and hope they did not find their way back out.

Occasionally, a wasp or two would make it in through the windows. They were even more fun to watch. It was intriguing to watch the people jump and jerk as the wasps buzzed around them. One night a wasp was buzzing around visiting evangelist and it was beginning to get the best of him. He kept trying to preach as if nothing was happening, but the whole congregation was on edge as the wasp kept it up.

Finally, the man backed away from the pulpit and said, as he waved his large bible in the air, "I do believe I am going to have to lay the word of God upon this wasp!"

One Sunday there were no birds and my bulletin art work was not enough to keep me quiet. I was having a bad day. My father leaned over and asked me if I would like to leave. Until then I did not realize I had an option, so I replied with a hardy, "Yes!"

He got up, took me by the hand and we walked down the aisle and out the back of the church. I was smiling and thinking, "This is great. I get to leave and my mother and brothers are going to have to stay and listen to that boring old preacher." I thought my father was the greatest man alive.

We went out and got into our `48 Plymouth parked in front of the church. I was still excited as my father cranked up the car and we headed westward toward the farm. About the time I was wondering how my mother and brothers were going to get home Daddy turned down a gravel road on the edge of town.

I knew that was different. I was about to ask where we were going when he stopped the car and got out. He walked over to the ditch and found a switch. I began to get a bad feeling about that place. Suddenly, he opened the car door and jerked me out. He never said a word. He wore me out.

Then he explained it was not necessarily a good thing when he had to ask me if I would like to leave church. He got my attention and he never had to ask me to behave in church again.

I guess the building committee remembered the marble incident when the new sanctuary was built. There was no slope in the new building and the entire floor was covered with a thick carpet. They also installed air-conditioning to eliminate the wasp and the bird watching.

During the renovation of the church our services were held in The Strand Theatre. After Sunday School everyone marched across Main Street and walked to the theatre.

As I entered the lobby I often wished someone had fired up the popcorn machine so we could have a Coke and some popcorn during the service, but that never happened.

Not only was I born in the Strand Theatre building, it was the place that initiated my first hair cut, the place where I took my first date and it served as a house of worship for our congregation for many months in the early 1960s. I learned to shoot pool there, too.

A bell tower was added to the church and my father was one of the first members to ring the bell between Sunday School and the morning services. I always wanted to go up there with him and ring that bell, but my reputation preceded me and he never let me enter the bell tower. My father was a smart man.

Both my father and mother were Sunday School teachers. My mother was drafted into service when I was in kindergarten. I was so bad they made her stay in class with me to keep me under control. When I promoted up to the next class she stayed behind. She warned me that if I was bad they would promote her, too. I did not want that, so I tried hard to be good.

Mother and Miss Nona Majure taught the kindergarten class for many years after that. During those years Mr. Print Woodward, my buddy Guy's father, was the Sunday School Superintendent. Mr. Woodward was very tall, very large and very, very bald. Each Sunday it was his ritual to come by each class and take up the roll and the collection.

Mother made a special point to emphasize to the children that the money they collected each Sunday was for God. She wanted them to learn about tithing and giving to the Lord's work.

Sometime during the Sunday School hour Mr. Woodward would quietly come in, pick up the roll and the collection… then slip back out.

She often had rowdy little boys in her class. Among them one year was a fellow who would later go on to play football for Ole Miss. She noticed how quiet everyone became when Mr. Woodward came in, but passed it off as a small distraction.

Then one Sunday after one of Mr. Woodward's appearances the future ball player seriously remarked. "You know, God comes in here every Sunday, gets his money, leaves and never even says thank you!"

My father taught the fourth grade children's class. The kids loved him. He may not have been the best teacher in the world, but he had the best cook-outs, bon fires and hayrides. The kids all loved it.

One year he borrowed some mules from the county farm to pull the wagon on the hayride. That was the longest hayride I have ever been on. My parents continued to teach the Sunday School classes until they were in their 50s and their health began to fail.

When I was in about the third or fourth grade we went through the John Wesley classes that explained what Methodism was about. When we completed the classes it was time for all of us to officially join the church. One Sunday morning around Easter my class sat down front and we all became members at the same time.

I thought that was odd. But, that was how it was done and that was how I became a Methodist.

Our church was blessed with good preachers. In those days the Methodist churches rotated the pastors every few years. It kept the churches from getting in a rut and I guess it gave the preachers a chance to "promote up". God never seemed to "call" them to a smaller church that paid them less.

The preacher that stands out the most in my memory was Prentiss Gordon who came to our church when I was in about the fourth grade. His wife was Mary Lee and his oldest son was Bud who was the same age as my oldest brother, Terry. Sandra and Peggy were his older sisters.

His son, Steve, was my age and we were big buddies. Occasionally, he would come out to my house after church on Sunday morning and we would play on the farm until it was time to go back to church that evening.

There were times I stayed at his house and we would play in town. He had a "real" basketball goal in his backyard and lots of kids would come over to play. Guy lived across the street from the church and we would often go over there for a game of football.

The parsonage was just a few feet away from the church. I guess that was handy for his father. His father was "called" to another church after a short stay in Louisville. I really hated to see him go. I loved him and his family. He was a good Shepherd and his heart was in the right place. The 60s were difficult years filled with challenges we had not faced before.

My brothers and I were active in the church choirs growing up. We were involved in MYF (Methodist Youth Fellowship) too. We went on choir tours and visited other churches in the area. It was a wonderful time in my life.

Every year the churches in our area held some sort of revival. Some denominations held winter revivals when there was no farming going on, while others would hold spring, summer or fall revivals.

Normally, an out-of-town music director or singing group would accompany the traveling evangelist that came to the churches to spice things up a bit. There were a few years an evangelist from New Orleans came into town and set up a huge tent on West Main Street near the local Ford Dealership.

He was called the Chaplain of Bourbon Street and he was the talk of the town for many weeks prior to his arrival. People looked forward to going to the big tent to hear him preach.

I remember the first time I saw the huge tent standing by the street when we were going into town. I was ecstatic. I just knew the circus had come to town. I had never been to a circus and as soon as I saw the tent I was hoping my father would take us. I was thinking elephants, tigers, trapeze artist and the like... not a pulpit pounding man threatening my soul with hell fire.

One can only imagine my disappointment when my father told me the tent was for another revival. I had been to so many I did not think I could possibly sit through another one or be any more revived than I already was. Needless to say, we skipped that one. My father had the same sentiments I did. He would rather have seen a circus, too.

Farm life was depressing enough at times without being threatened with eternal damnation from some man standing on a platform under the big top with his speakers turned up so loud the people in the next county could hear him.

In Junior High boys took turns being Acolytes in the services. At the beginning of the morning services two of us would put on our robes and walk from the back of the church to the front with the long apparatuses we used to light the candles. We always hoped the flames would not flicker out before we made it down to the front of the church.

When my oldest brother was married he asked me to be an usher in his wedding and I was honored. At the last minute I was informed I was to light the candles, just as I had done when I was an Acolyte back in Junior High.

They did not know how much I hated walking down the aisle in front of all of those people. Years before at church there were only two candles to light, but at his wedding there were lots and lots of candles! I was so nervous the apparatus we used to light the candles was shaking violently. I was dying up there! Then I did the unthinkable. I bumped one of the candles and it began to wobble. I was afraid it was going to fall, but it did not. However, it did have a little tilt to it. I managed to get my candles lit and the other usher and I proceeded to exit to the rear of the church.

About the time I was at the back I heard a commotion at the front of the church. I turned and saw the candle had fallen into the dried Magnolia leaves they had used for decoration. The pianist leapt from behind the piano with his sheet music and began beating out the flames. I was never asked to light candles again… thankfully.

In 1963 we had a youth minister, Russell Ray, join our church staff. Under his direction the youth group grew and many young people made professions of faith. He had that special touch that appealed to the kids.

While at our church Russell married and had two children, Gwen and David. Russell and Zandra stayed until 1969 when he was led to another church in Union City, Tennessee.

Our church had activities for the youth after the football games in the fall. We had hayrides, dances in the fellowship hall, and scavenger hunts. The dances became a hot topic among some of the other denominations in town. It was said another minister in town just knew everyone at the Methodist church was going to go to hell.

Russell was, also, our minister of music and it was during his tenure the youth began to lead the first portion of our evening worship. He was trying to build up our self-confidence by giving us a more active part in the service.

One Sunday evening a young man was asked to lead the congregation with the opening prayer. It was evident that he was a little nervous as he made his way from the choir loft toward the pulpit. I can only imagine how he had probably gone over and over in his mind what he wanted to say in his prayer that evening.

As normal we had a couple of live wires in our youth group that kept us in stitches. That particular night the youth had been in a jovial mood before they entered the choir loft and took their seats.

We watched with trepidation as the boy stumbled through the pew tripping over feet as he made his way to the pulpit. When he made it up there he began his prayer, "Now let us bow our words for a head of prayer."

That was all it took to tip the scales that night. First the snickers and giggles began as the entire choir loft tried to stifle their laughter. He continued to pray not realizing what he had said. The harder the kids tried to contain their laughter the more difficult it became.

I looked over at the pastor who was, also, trying not to laugh. Then I saw the minister of music with tears rolling down his face and biting his lip trying hard to contain himself.

Finally, the young man finished his prayer and looked up as the entire church began to laugh. It was like a wave rolling toward the shore building more and more momentum. The boy had that deer in the head lights look. He had no idea what all the laughing was about.

Then he did what any self-conscious young man would do in that situation. He looked down to make sure he was zipped up. That was when the congregation exploded. By that time the entire choir and youth minister were gasping for air and people were feeling faint from either too much oxygen or the lack there-of.

It was then our pastor calmly walked to the pulpit and was able to gain control of the situation by joking that he often had difficulty finding the right words to say sometimes, too. That deflected the attention away from the poor lad and the sanctuary began to come to order.

I do not remember that young fellow leading us in prayer again after that.

There was a place the young people loved to hang out on weekends after going to the movies. It was called The Rex. The Rex was located a few doors down from the Strand Theatre which made it very accessible for the kids that were dropped off at the movies by their parents.

On the wall of The Rex was a painting of the Beatles and that was the music that was often heard on the Juke Box standing in the back of the place. It was also located half way between the Methodist and Baptist churches. After Sunday school kids from both churches would slip out and go down to The Rex and hang out.

Those who were really brave would skip church and play the pin-ball machine for an hour. They would have to watch the clock and make it back to church before their parents walked out or there would be another sermon to hear on the way home.

We had a close knit group. We thought we would always stay close and never grow apart like the classes before us.

After the Gordon's moved to another church the Methodist conference sent us another minister, J.W. Chatham. As luck would have it, he also had a son who was my age and we hit it off right away. It did not take him long to fit in. I guess when you are a preacher's kid you have to learn to adapt to new surroundings quickly.

Little did I know that time had a way of marching on and things would change. After graduation kids went off to different colleges, jobs and military careers. We began to see less of each other. We all grew up and went our separate ways just like the classes before us.

After I graduated from high school I went through a period of indecision, I suppose. I did not attend church like I had in the past, but I was active in a bible study group at Southern and I was exposed to more than just the Methodist denomination. I did not like some of the things that were taking place in my church back home, but I did not know why.

Thinking back, I guess I was old enough to see there was a business side of the church and I could not deal with it. Perhaps it was immaturity on my part. When we were children those things were hidden from us or we were too innocent to realize it was taking place.

I had to find God on my own, and thankfully I did. Just as my father led me out of the church that Sunday when he asked me if I wanted to leave, I watched how he lived his life and he led me back to God and church during the last few months of his life.

Even though I had grown up in the Methodist Church and I loved it dearly, I changed denominations shortly after I married. Tina was 17 when we married. Being so young and so far from her family in Kentucky, I felt she should not have had to make all the changes in our early life together. I was comfortable worshiping in the Baptist Church with her and together we sought out a church we felt led to join.

South Louisville was a wonderful church with several couples about our age. Onan Gardner was our pastor and we soon grew to be good friends.

Within a month following my father's death I made a profession of faith and was baptized at South Louisville Baptist Church. It was another life changing event on which the foundation of a new beginning was built. My eyes had been opened like never before and I began to look at things around me in a completely different way.

Extolle adulescens in vias Domini.

(Raise up a child in the ways of the Lord.)

SITT'N UP WITH THE DEAD

Recently, an acquaintance of our family passed away. My wife and I went to the funeral home to pay our respects and offer our condolences. When we arrived there was a very long line of people who were there to do the same. While we were standing in line it gave me the opportunity to pause and reflect on the customs of funerals and how visitation had changed and varied in different areas of the country.

I am not certain if it was just a regional difference or if it was the era in which I grew up. When I was growing up in Mississippi there were times we would go to the funeral home for visitation, but for the most part we visited in the homes of the deceased. Most people felt the dearly departed should not be left at a funeral home. They brought them home for their last hours on earth prior to the funeral and burial.

Normally, someone in the family chose a room that would accommodate a lot of people. The furniture was moved around, the casket brought in and the funeral lights placed on each end of the casket for that "don't he look natural" look. Flowers were scattered around the room to brighten the place up a bit.

It was similar to an Irish wake. Folks would pay their respects, visit and most importantly… eat. Food was a very big part of the mourning process. People would bring enough food to feed an army. If someone was sick… we took food. If someone died… we took food. If there was a reunion… we took food. Food was the great balm that soothed all our southern wounds.

We never worried about the fat content of the food we consumed. If someone was a little plump they were "healthy." And we had never heard of cholesterol. If we had known about it back then, I am sure somebody would have figured out some way to kill it, skin it and fry it. We loved our food.

Times of death and weddings were more of a celebration and a reunion, unless the death was unexpected or tragic. Death brought folks together like nothing else. We may not have been able to see relatives because of distance, work or hardship, but in times of need, we took time to be there. All the "remember when's", "what happened to so and so", and "what ifs" were hashed out.

There was never a moment when the dearly departed was left alone until placed in the ground. It would have been an offense to leave a body in a room by itself. Thus, the custom of sitting up with the dead evolved.

Someone would stay with the body all night while the family tried to get some rest and prepare for the funeral. Normally, more than one person sat up with the body. That way they would have someone to visit with and it, also, kept them from falling asleep on the job. That would have been a horrendous error.

As time went on homes were built smaller so there was seldom room enough to accommodate the large gatherings. People began to leave their loved ones at the funeral home until the service. Even then, it was rare to have a service at the funeral home. The deceased was carried to the church for the funeral service, then to the cemetery for the graveside service and burial.

When I was a teenager, my friend's father passed away as a result of a heart attack. It was quite a shock to his family. He had heart problems, but seemed to be doing well. Then we heard the news that he had passed away.

By that time more and more people were being kept at the funeral home. And as it turned out his family chose to have him stay at a local funeral home, too. They asked me and another classmate to stay with him after the funeral home closed that night. We were honored that they would even consider us worthy for such a task. We accepted, graciously.

About 9:30 the night of the visitation everyone had sauntered out. The funeral director, my buddy and I were the only ones left in the building. The funeral director winked at us and said, "I guess I'll have to leave things in your hands tonight boys. There is a fresh pot of coffee in the office if you need something to help keep you awake. And there are cakes and cookies over there on the table if you get hungry. I am going to lock you in and I'll be back in the morning to open up. Good night."

Then he left. We could hear the key turning and locking us in for the night. Of course we acted like we had done this many times before. No big deal. "See you in the morning."

But, it was a big deal. A few minutes after he left we looked at each other and asked, "What are we going to do now?" Of course the funeral director knew neither of us had ever sat up with a body before and was probably laughing all the way home.

At first we decided we should go down by the casket and make sure all was well. It was. We stood there looking at him to make sure he was okay. He was. But, the funny thing is, if you look at something long enough it appears to move. You know, like watching a star in the sky at night… stare at it long enough and you will swear it is moving. The same goes for someone who is deceased.

I asked my buddy, "Does it look like he is breathing to you?"

He said, "I was thinking the same thing. Surely, he is not breathing. You can't do that if you are… you know… dead… can you?"

"I don't think so, but, I've never looked at a body this close. Why don't you lean over and get a better look… just to make sure."

"I don't think so!"

"Maybe, we are just imagining things," I said. I was really hoping we were. We stood there quite a while and finally decided he was not breathing. We sat on the front pew for a while. We drank coffee and ate cake for a while. We sat back up by the casket a while. Time was standing still. Very, very, very still.

It was somewhat awkward being there that night, but fortunately we were both in the same boat. It was unlike the time I was asked to be a pallbearer at my great-aunt's funeral and there were a lot of eyes on me.

I had never been a pallbearer before and I was trying to act grown-up and blend in with the other bearers who were older than me. I made it fine until we marched out of the little country church's front doors and made our way to the adjoining cemetery.

It had been raining for days and the ground was saturated. We were following the lead of the funeral director as we walked across the parking lot and entered the cemetery through the gate. The man leading us was taking the shortest route toward the gravesite hoping to beat the impending thunder storm that was about to drop on us.

In his haste he walked across some of the graves and we followed his lead. As I was walking along carrying my share of the weight my foot sank into a soft spot of a grave as we passed over it. My foot did not just get a little stuck in the mud. I buried my leg half way up to my knee.

I had to ask everyone to hold up while I pulled my shoeless foot up from the bowels of the grave. Then I had to reach down and feel around for my shoe in the muddy hole. I, finally, managed to grab it and pull it out… mud and all. It was not one of my finest moments as I stood there trying to put my muddy foot back into the shoe as my relatives waited behind me.

I was glad it was just the two of us in the building that night.

After a while we decided we would take a look around the funeral home. The doors were locked so nobody was going to get in. Anyhow, who ever heard of someone breaking into a funeral home?

We opened a door we had noticed near the hall. Inside were rows and rows of caskets. Caskets of every shape and color. Caskets of metal, wood and some looked like cardboard. Some had the lids open and some were shut. My friend asked, "You think there is anyone in any of these?"

"I don't know. Why don't you open one and find out?"

He did. Nothing was there. They were all empty. We did not know it at the time, but that was the display room. Not many kids see the display room. We left that room and went further down the hall to another door.

"Wonder what's in there?"

"Open it and find out."

He did. It was very dark. We felt along the wall until we reached a light switch. When the lights came on we were standing in the embalming room. There was a table and lots of bottles and jugs and tubing and there was something that looked like a shower or a sink. We decided to leave.

We went back to the front pew and were thinking this is gonna be a long night. We both wished we had not opened that last door. The night finally passed. We saw daylight and we were hoping the funeral director would get there early. About 7 a.m. he came and unlocked the doors. "You men make it alright last night?" he asked.

"Yes, sir. We made it just fine."

"Well, you boys can go home now. I'll take it from here."

He did not need to say that twice. We were out that door and in our cars so fast he probably wondered if we had actually been there at all. That was the first and last time I ever sat up with the dead.

I have not heard of anyone doing that since I moved to Kentucky. It may or may not be done today. Back then it was an act of respect. Respect for the deceased and the family.

My wife and I slowly made our way down the aisle toward our friend's casket. I remember thinking, "I wonder if they have someone to sit up with her tonight."

Probably not. People pass away and so do customs.

Tenes coppertorium on id.

(Keep a lid on it.)

LORD, SEND ME A SIGN…OR NOT!

As I write, campaign ads are filling every available break on the television and radio stations. I am amazed how different campaigning is now compared to when I was growing up in Mississippi.

It seems like all but a few politicians are finding anything they can muster up to sling mud at their opponents. I am thankful we have cable and can pick up channels that do not air all their campaign ads.

Another thing that amazes me is how different people have become about letting others know who they are voting for. When I was a kid it was considered impolite to tell who we were going to vote for in a local election. Only twice can I remember my father publicly endorsing a candidate.

When Barry Goldwater ran for president he put a bumper sticker on our car. It was then I learned it was possible to vote for either party, because I am pretty sure he was a registered Democrat. The other time he endorsed a candidate was when Jim Buck Ross, an old college buddy, ran for Commissioner of Agriculture in Mississippi. Other than that, I never heard him say who he was going to vote for.

Someone may have liked one candidate more than another, but almost everyone in the county was related to someone who was running for office or knew someone who was related to a candidate. So, discretion was the order of the day. We kept our choice of candidate private to keep from offending someone.

It certainly is not that way now. There are signs plastered in most every yard and along all the highways letting people know who supports who. It is almost gaudy the way the signs are put up around the towns and counties. There are so many they begin to hide each other.

When I was growing up the candidates would get out and canvas the counties and towns, shaking hands and handing out cards. If we had a question about their qualifications we could look them in the eye, ask a direct question and get a direct answer.

I remember the day a certain candidate came to our house. It was shortly after the legal voting age had been changed from 21 to 18 and I had become old enough to vote. We were not going to vote for that man, but we did let him come onto our front porch and have a seat. My mother brought him something to drink and a piece of cake.

She was a little like Aunt Bea on the Andy Griffith Show. It was her calling to put food in front of people... even him.

My father was there along with my mother and myself. The man began to make small talk and oooooh and aaahhh about this and that. Then he looked over at me and realized I was old enough to vote. That's when he made a fatal error.

He smiled at me and as he held out his hand to mark and imaginary height, he said, "Boy, I have known you since you were this high." And he began to go on and on about how much he knew about me and how he needed my support in the election.

I sorta' rolled my eyes and looked over at my father who was smiling. He knew I was getting ready to do something absurd. Then I nailed the guy.

I looked at the man and said, "I'll vote for you under one condition."

He said, "Great, great. I am sure I can meet any condition you might have!"

I said, "Tell me on your first guess what my name is."

That was when he went pale. He began to stammer and stutter.

I said, "You just sat there and went on and on about how well you knew me and everything about me. Tell me what my name is."

He hesitated, and then he said, "You know for the life of me… I have gone blank. I just cannot think of your name at the moment. You have really put me on the spot."

I said, "I know and now I can't vote for you."

He turned all shades of red and looked over at my folks sitting in the swing for some support against the young upstart.

My father just shook his head and waited for him to say something else.

He jumped up and said, "My goodness, look at the time! I am sorry, but I must be going." He did not bother leaving us a card.

As he was getting in his car my father looked at me and said, "That was low, son. But, it was good… very, very good."

My mother said I should not have done him that way. He might win the election and I might need his help some day.

He did not win.

After all the campaigning was over and Election Day arrived things became more celebratory. We voted at the old Calvary school house. It was the one room school building where my Grandmother Algood had taught. It was, also, where my father and uncle went to school until they were able to go to the high school in town.

There was a pot-bellied wood stove in the center of the room near the front. It was probably the stove that replaced the one my cousin and her friend had blown apart when they threw a large bullet in the old one many years before. There was a small stage the teacher stood on and behind the stage was the old blackboard. Some of the window panes were missing and the missing glass had been replaced with cardboard.

It had not been used as a school in many, many years. All the desks had been replaced with pews. Occasionally, community meetings were held in the old building, thus the pews.

When the fall election took place it was normally cool weather. There was a fire burning in the old stove to knock the chill off the room. A table was set up near the front and the election officials (some of our neighbors) sat behind it. Everyone knew everyone else in our community, so there was little chance of election fraud.

They handed us a piece of paper with the candidates and each office on it. We would walk over to a shelf on the side of the room, pick up a pencil and check who we wanted to vote for. Then we would fold it in half and drop it in a locked box on the table.

There were no computer failures or 'dangling chads" to be concerned about.

People sat in the pews and visited or if the weather was nice they would congregate out on the porch for a smoke and visit there. It was like a little reunion with people coming and going all throughout the day.

The worst thing that I remember happening was one year it was cool and the wood stove warmed up the room enough to thaw out some wasps that had taken winter refuge in the cracks of the ceiling. Wasps were flying all around the room and someone was trying to chase them down and swat them before they stung anyone.

The first presidential election I was old enough to vote in was the year Richard Nixon ran for president. The Vietnam War was still raging and we watched the death toll rise on the news every night. Nixon was running for reelection and I remember him getting on television and saying, "If I am reelected I will get us out of Vietnam." That was all I needed to hear. He got my vote.

The big event came as the polls were closing. It was customary for Main Street and North and South Court Streets to close down on election night. Main Street was closed off from Church Street to the Soldiers Monument at Columbus Avenue. The monument honored the soldiers of the Confederacy, the Spanish American War and World War I. It still stands in the center of the intersection of Main and Columbus Streets. I remember two times when it was not there because it had been damaged.

The Monument was probably twenty or twenty five feet high. On the top was a solider standing at attention with a rifle at his side. Some said the soldier was modeled after a colorful politician from Winston County's past. There was no good way to get to it to read the inscriptions on it except to stand in the street.

Election Day was one of the few opportunities people had to walk safely in the street and read the inscriptions engraved on its sides. It was, also, a challenge for large vehicles to avoid hitting it when making the turn at the intersection where it was located. I can remember our school bus running up on the little curb that guarded its base.

I believe another school bus knocked it over once. I do know of at least twice it was hit and had to be repaired or replaced. One time a log truck was making the turn onto Main Street and it was broken up pretty bad. A replacement had to be made in France and shipped over.

I often thought it would have been nice to relocate it to the court house lawn so people could walk around it and read the inscriptions on its sides. However, Main Street would not look the same without it.

When people came to town on election night they brought lawn chairs and coolers full of soft drinks and sandwiches with them so they could sit in the streets and wait for the final results of the election. Inside the front door of the Courthouse a large chalk board was set up with the races and candidates posted on it.

Periodically, someone would walk over and erase a number and update it with a new tally. People would either moan and grown or cheer. The kids would run around and play games. Someone always had a hot dog stand set up and someone was there to sell cold soft drinks if anyone ran out. There were a couple of cafes, The Dixie Café and Accocks Café, and they stayed open late for the people who were in town. The Dixie Café was also the bus terminal. It was located on South Church Street. Accocks was on Main Street.

The street party went on until all the precincts were counted and a candidate was elected. I remember falling asleep in my fathers lap and when it was time to go home he draped me over his shoulder and carried me to the car. That was the latest we ever stayed up during the year. It was a big event.

It would be nice if we could all return to the traditions of those days gone by. There would be no signs plastered everywhere and it would be nice if they could stop by and look you in the eye and ask for your vote rather than have a prerecorded message call your house and start slamming their opponent.

Those days are gone, but gosh they were nice.

Promissi, promissi… meum labia leges.

(Promises, promises… read my lips.)

WHAT I LEARNED IN COLLEGE

Our farm was six miles west of town. We were in the heart of the Bible Belt and for the most part I led a very sheltered life growing up on the edge of the cotton fields.

My hobby was drawing. I was not especially good at it, but for some reason people thought I was and encouraged me to continue working at it. Had I really known how little I knew about it I would have tried to do something else. I soon learned there was a great difference between drawing on church bulletins and working on projects at college.

I had heard The University of Southern Mississippi had a good art school and that was how I ended up there. I had never seen the college campus, nor did I know anything about college except that my brothers went off to college and I was supposed to do the same thing. I could have really used some counseling before I made that decision, but no one ever said anything to me. I guess they thought I knew what I was doing. I did not.

The Vietnam War was raging during those years. I felt somewhat distanced from the war where I lived, but watching the evening news every day brought a new awareness of the world events. Each night on the evening news the death toll was announced. It seemed to increase every day and I watched as our country appeared to be falling apart.

Our nation had fought the Germans and Japanese during World War II with determination and victory, but it seemed we were not as committed to this "Conflict". I was afraid… not just about going to war and dying, but the lack of backing from the American people. There was something amiss and I could not put my finger on it. It was another reason I wanted go to college, so I filled out all the paperwork and I was ready to start college in the fall.

That summer after high school I got a job at one of the local factories. With high school behind me I was feeling older than I actually was. I was going to town almost every night and I was definitely there every weekend. The lake was the place where a lot of us hung out and on weekend nights. It was not unusual to see cars parked all along the lake with kids sitting on the hoods talking about their future.

It was 1970 and we were looking forward to the rest of our lives. That was the year The United States invaded Cambodia and four students at Kent State were killed by the National Guard while protesting the invasion.

Anwar El-Sadat became president of Egypt and the Beatles broke up. The record of the year was Bridge Over Trouble Waters by Simon and Garfunkel, but Aquarius / Let The Sun Shine In by The Fifth Dimension was popular, too. Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin both died that year at the tender age of 27. Maya Angelou's book I know Why The Caged Bird Sings hit the stores and Love Story was the movie to see at the theatres.

Little did we know it at that time, but our president, Richard Nixon, and his vice president, Spiro Agnew, would both resign from office in the coming years. Even though I had no idea what computers were, IBM introduced the first floppy disk that year. The legal voting age was changed from 21 to 18. United States postage stamps were six cents and gas was 36 cents a gallon.

Finally, the day came when I was to go to Hattiesburg. My father and mother drove me 165 miles to the campus. Somehow, we found the school and located the dorm I was to stay in. My father helped me take my bags and locate my room. He gave me a little money to help me get started and asked if I was going to be alright. I assured him I would be fine.

When they pulled away from the curb in our `64 Impala, Mother was crying and Daddy was trying to figure out if he needed to turn left or right. I was thinking, "Well, what am I going to do now?" I was clueless. Somehow, I made it through orientation and started classes. I was definitely walking blindly into the future.

I had a roommate. He was a tall guy and much bigger than I was. He was majoring in tuba. Southern was also known as a music school. I had never heard of anyone majoring in tuba, and I was starting to figure out there was a whole lot I did not know.

We got along pretty well except for the wet towel he threw on my bed every time he got out of the shower. I don't know why he did it, but whenever he finished taking a shower he threw his towel on my bed. I asked him several times not to do it, but he just kept it up.

One day I had had enough. He got out of the shower, walked into the room and dropped the wet towel on my bed. I did not say a word. He got dressed and left the room. I found some of his dirty underwear, a bath cloth, and the wet towel. I stuffed them into the opening of his tuba… in that order. Later that day he ran into the room, grabbed the tuba and hurried off to band practice.

A few hours later he came back and glared at me. "You got me Algood, you got me." I thought for a minute he was going to tear me apart. Then he started laughing. He said he was out on the marching field and started to play his tuba when nothing happened. He took his mouth piece out and checked it. Nothing was wrong there. He pressed all the buttons and blew out the spit valve. Still nothing happened.

He had begun to attract everyone's attention when he reached into the opening of the horn. He pulled out the wet towel. Then he pulled out the bath cloth. Next came the underwear. Everyone was laughing. He said he would have gotten mad, but he had to admit it was funny and he knew he deserved it. That was the end of the wet towels on my bed.

Later that semester I met some guys on my floor that were unique to say the least. I had never met anyone quite like them and really did not know what to make of them.

One day one of them saw me in the hall and said that his roommate had just received a new credit card and wanted to try it out. They were all going to New Orleans and wanted to know if I wanted to go along. At that time I had never been to New Orleans and really wanted to see the big city. I told him I would love to, but I did not have any money. I could not go. He said not to worry about money. His buddy was going to put everything on his credit card. How could I refuse?

As the situation unfolded there were four of us guys and one of their girlfriends that crawled into a Volkswagen bug and set out for New Orleans 90 miles away. These folks seemed to know how to have fun. It seemed like no time before we arrived in New Orleans. We had traveled over the long bridge that spanned Lake Pontchartrain and were looking down on the lights of the city.

The leader of the pack directed us to the French Quarter and a hotel called The Royal Orleans. I had never seen a hotel like that one. The front doors were tall and the foyer had marble columns and arches. We went to our room and it was a huge suite overlooking an inner courtyard. I was amazed. There were two bedrooms and a kitchenette. We threw our luggage in and went down to the restaurant.

Our host ordered for us. There was champagne, pressed duck and a lot of other things I was unfamiliar with. We ate and then went out on the town. We rambled around Bourbon Street until the wee hours of the morning. One of the last places we went into was very dark. We made our way to the bar and I took a seat. I was sitting at the bar sipping on a drink when I decided to turn around and check the place out.

My eyes had begun to adjust to the darkness and I saw people dancing. That would not have been unusual, except there were guys dancing with guys and girls dancing with girls. None of that looked normal to me. There was certainly something different about those folks. Then I saw a guy kiss another guy. That did it. I started heading for the door as some guy was approaching me and asked me if I wanted to dance.

I said, "No!" and I kept walking.

The others followed me out. I just thought we had stumbled into the wrong place by mistake. Nobody said anything. It was late and we headed back to our hotel. When we got back one of the guys and his girlfriend went back to the far room. That surprised me. Until that moment I had not thought about sleeping arrangements. I began to get a bad feeling about the situation.

There was only one bed left and three guys. I looked at it and thought, "This is not going to work." There was no way I was going to sleep in a bed with two other guys. The carpet was the thickest carpet I had ever seen. I knew I could sleep on it, so I grabbed a blanket, a pillow and looked around. There was a closet with sliding mirrored doors. I crawled into the closet and slid the doors shut. It was not long before I was out.

I had not been sleeping long when I heard the doors rattling. I remember thinking, "What the heck is going on?" It was Mr. Cardholder. I thought he had partied a little too hard and was lost. Then he got down and began crawling in the foot of the closet. When his hands landed where they should not have been, I immediately figured out what was going on. It was time to come out of the closet and that is exactly what I did.

I almost tore the rollers off the doors as I was busting loose, but I wasn't going to be like Toto in THE Wizard of Oz and hang around there until all the flying monkeys showed up. I quickly dressed, grabbed my gear and headed for the lobby. As soon it was daylight I walked to Canal Street, made my way to the interstate and hitch-hiked back to Hattiesburg, Mississippi.

I ran into them in the hall from time to time, but nothing was ever mentioned about my trip to New Orleans or my quick departure. Later in the year I learned that the guy with the girlfriend had broken up with her. As it turned out he got along better with his roommate than he did with the girl. I was getting an education at college, alright. It was not the one my parents or I had envisioned, but an education, no less.

A few weeks after my trip to New Orleans with the closet people, I was talking to a buddy of mine down the hall. He seemed to be a young man of means. He had a motorcycle and a Corvette and there was something else he had that caught my attention more than his big toys. He had a key to the Playboy Club in New Orleans.

I could not imagine what it would be like to be a member of a club like that. For a shy farm boy it would be a dream come true to see something like that. He knew I was fascinated by his good fortune and he said he would take me down there one weekend. I held him to his word.

The weekend finally arrived and I was very excited. I asked him, "What do I wear to a place like that."

He said, "Just dress nice. It's a classy place."

I put on my best dress shirt, my nicest bell-bottom pants and a belt with the biggest buckle I could find. I thought I was dressed for success.

Little did I know he had invited another guy to go along with us. I was the smallest, so I had to ride on the console of the Corvette all the way to New Orleans. By the time we arrived I felt like I had three cracks up my butt.

There was a doorman that greeted us when we entered the club. It was a really nice place. I had not known what to expect, and my friend failed to tell me what took place in the Playboy Club. I never thought to ask. I was just thinking… girls.

I was right. There were beautiful girls walking around in bunny suits. They were dressed just like the ones in the magazine. The only nudity was on a wall that was covered with center folds, and of course, it was tastefully done. It was a young man's paradise!

There was a bar and there were several pool tables. Another door led to some place further back, but we did not go there. We stayed in the area of the pool tables. I was busy watching the bunnies walking around and I remember thinking, "Why couldn't we have had rabbits like that on the farm!"

The girls played pool with the patrons and I wanted to play a game of bumper pool with one I saw. I thought I was pretty good at pool, but she beat me every game. Every time she leaned over to make a shot I completely lost my concentration and was unable to hold the stick still long enough to make a good shot… Note to self; young testosterone can be a toxic brew.

After we were there a while I noticed I was out of cigarettes and when a bunny came by with her little tray of cigarettes and cigars I flagged her down.

"I need a pack of cigarettes, please."

"Sure." And she handed me a pack. "That will be 65 cents, please."

"SIXTY FIVE CENTS! I can get a pack at the dorm for 35 cents!" I exclaimed.

She calmly looked at me and said, "Honey, you are paying for more than just the cigarettes here. Aren't you enjoying the view?"

I had to agree the view was not that bad and I handed over 65 cents. We did not stay there much longer after that. My buddy was bored, believe it or not, and we went to see other places along Bourbon Street. None were nearly as nice as the Playboy Club.

One night during my freshman year I was awakened after midnight by the sounds of sirens. About the same time I heard someone running down the hall screaming, "Light Bulb!" He was knocking on all the doors and kept screaming, "Light Bulb!"

I got up to see what was going on. I went over to my window and looked out. There was a ladder truck below me with a fireman riding the ladder up toward me. He was waving at me to get back. At that moment I happened to look up and then I saw the flames rolling out of the floor above me.

It was time to go. I grabbed all the important things… my sandals, my radio, a coat, some cigarettes and then I ran out of the room. The hall was full of people running for the stairs. We all made it out safely while the entire fifth floor was going up in smoke.

Everyone made it outside and we discovered the Red Cross was already there handing out blankets, coffee and doughnuts. We sat there on the lawn eating doughnuts and drinking coffee while the firemen put out the fire and saved the rest of the building. Our floor had a lot of water damage, so I had to move to another room for awhile.

As it turned out, a Latin American exchange student had received a letter from home and stuck it in a lamp over his bed. The letter caught on fire and then the bed caught on fire. In the excitement of the moment he forgot the English word for fire, but he remembered light bulbs were bright and hot. So, he ran throughout the dorm screaming "Light Bulb!"

I guess if he had not done that we may have all burned up. Mr. Cardholder and his roommate made good use of the mirrors on the damaged floor. They confiscated them all and had them covering their walls and floor. They had turned their room into a fantasy room with the mirrors, plants and music. Occasionally, I would pass their room and I could smell incense drifting into the hallway. Barbra Streisand was always blaring on their stereo… The Way We Were, my foot!

After I was at college a few months I decided to go home one weekend. There was no way to get there other than to hitch-hike, so I did the only thing I knew to do. Someone took me out to the interstate and dropped me off at a good spot where I thought I could catch a ride. Then I stuck out my thumb and waited. It worked pretty well.

I never had to wait long for a ride. Back then it was not unusual to see students thumbing rides back and forth to college. I caught rides with a wide variety of people. I was picked up by truckers, families, drunks and gypsies traveling with carnivals… if you can imagine it, I rode with it. Once, I even caught a ride with the president of the National Cash Register Company.

The most memorable ride I had was in the spring of 1971. A friend had just dropped me off on the interstate north of Hattiesburg when a big white muscle car came roaring up the road. It was a new 1971 Dodge Charger with a big black scoop on the hood and a jacked up rear end.

When the fellow saw me he started putting on his brakes and finally came to a stop about 50 yards down the road. I grabbed my bag and ran to catch up with him.

He asked me, "Where you headed?"

"Louisville."

"I'm not going that far, but I can take you as far as Meridian. That okay?"

I told him that would be great. I threw my bag in the back seat and hopped in. It was as unusual on the inside as it was on the outside. It had a fuzzy pink dash, and there was a large pair of dice hanging from the rear view mirror.

He shoved his foot into the gas pedal and smoked the tires as we headed north. I was thinking to myself, "I'm gonna get home in record time this trip."

We had not spoken much. After we had gone about five miles he looked over at me and asked, "You drive?"

"Yeah, I can drive. I just don't have a car."

Then he told me he had just been discharged from the Coast Guard the day before and he had partied all night long. He was headed home to Meridian and did not think he could make it. He wanted to know if I would mind driving him the rest of the way home.

I said, "Sure!"

I was really excited. I could not imagine driving a car like that. He pulled off the road and we switched places. His only instructions were, "You will not get caught speeding in this car unless you want to. I don't care how fast you drive… just don't get caught."

I assured him I wouldn't get caught. Then he made a pillow out of an old jacket, curled up on the passenger side and passed out.

I did not go over 70 all the way to Meridian. I could not afford a ticket. But, I would like to have seen how fast that car would have gone. When we approached Meridian I woke him up and told him where we were.

He said, "Just drive to the north side of town and find yourself a good place to catch a ride from there."

I did and when we were on the other side of town I woke him up again. I got out and thanked him for the ride. He thanked me for the ride, too. Then he peeled out in a cloud of smoke and headed back into town.

Out of all the crazy people that picked me up that was undoubtedly the most fun I ever had. I can still feel the power of that car in my hands as I held on to the steering wheel.

At the end of my first year at Southern I returned home to work in the same factory I had worked in the summer before. With a year of college under my belt I felt a little more distanced from the kids I had grown up with. There were few of them around anymore and we had begun to grow apart as life was taking us in different directions.

A few of the ones that returned home that summer gathered at Gentry's parking lot or at the lake in the evenings. American Pie had been recorded in May of that year and it was the hottest play on the radio. As we sat on the hoods of our cars we would listen to it and come up with various scenarios as to what we thought the lyrics meant. Before we knew it, summer was over and we went our separate ways once more.

For a while during my second year of college I roomed with a different guy. He was a nice looking young man who never stayed in the dorm room much. I assumed he was in classes or at the library studying.

He did not have many clothes. He had one change of clothes and a pair of short pants. When he was in the room he wore the short pants and a tee shirt. I felt sorry for him. I knew the guy was poor and I did not let on about it.

One weekend he wanted to go home to Natchez. He asked me if I would like to go, too. I had never been to Natchez and I thought it would be a good chance to see it, so I told him I would like to. I was not sure what to expect since he was "poor".

Someone took us to the outskirts of Hattiesburg where we could catch a ride to Natchez. It was harder hitch hiking when there were two of us. People would pick up one hitch-hiker quicker than two. So, it took us longer to catch a ride.

We managed to get to Natchez Friday evening. The last ride we caught dropped us off at a little store in a rough area of town. He told me to wait outside and he would go in and call his mother to come pick us up.

When he returned I asked him what kind of car we would be looking for. He replied, "It's an old black car."

I did not think anything of it. I was watching for an old car to come along. After a while a shiny new Cadillac pulled into the parking lot. My buddy grabbed his bag and hollered, "Mom's here. Let's go."

I was taken back by the new car, but then I thought to myself that a lot of people that had very little spent most of their money on fancy cars. I hopped in and we took off. I introduced myself and we made small talk as we wound our way through Natchez.

We came to a very old historic area of the city and his mother turned into a driveway that was long and winding. There was an old Antebellum home at the top of a hill in the distance. It was surrounded by huge old oak trees. It was one of those homes that have a "name".

I asked him, "Where are we going?"

"Home."

I could not believe my eyes. We pulled around behind the mansion and there was a garage full of nice new cars. There were even two motorcycles there. The guy I had been rooming with was rich! I just looked over at him and he smiled at me. He knew what I had been thinking all along.

We walked up some stairs to the main level. We entered the kitchen first and their cook had prepared a snack of some sort for us. We sat down and ate while his mother picked his brain. After we finished the snack he said, "Let's go up to my room."

As we walked through the home he gave me the nickel tour. He took me into the ball room. There were chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. Along the walls were huge windows with gold trimmed mirrors spaced between them. The furniture was all period furniture. Everything was beautiful. The carpet was royal red and there was a double winding stair case that lead to the upper floors.

I saw something that puzzled me. I had noticed as I walked through the home there were boxes, newspapers and magazines stacked all along each wall. Some were labeled and some were not. Every available space had these items along the wall.

He showed me an antique intercom system that was in each room. It was an ornate brass pipe with a cap on the end. To use it, the cap had to be removed and we would then blow into the pipe. The pipe would whistle throughout the home and someone in another room would remove the cap in their room and speak into the pipe. They could talk from room to room that way.

We walked up the stairs to the next level. His parents and sister had bedrooms on that floor. Each bedroom had a foyer. His sister's foyer had a little couch and sitting area. There was a large aquarium in the wall with several tropical fish in it.

The third level was where his large room was. It was one huge room. There was a fooz ball table, a ping pong table and a pinball machine in his room. I could not believe it. The view from his windows was unbelievable. We could look out over the entire estate.

We played ping pong until his mother called and asked him to pick up his father at work. We drove through Natchez and he pointed out a store along the street. It was theirs. They owned more than one. Then we went to pick his father up.

After asking a few questions I learned his father had escaped the Nazis during World War II and fled to America. He had started a small business and had managed to do very well. That was why they had all that stuff. He was fun to listen to. He spoke with a very heavy accent.

When we returned to their house we sat in the "television" room. His grandmother was there. She lived with them. I was watching the TV when I noticed out of the corner of my eye his father had gone over to one of the many boxes stacked around the room and took out some clothes.

He proceeded to undress. He folded his clothes up and placed them in another box. Then he put on the clothes he had removed from the first box. I guess he noticed I was perplexed. He looked at me and said, "I just hate to walk up all those stairs to change clothes."

I began to understand the boxes then. He did not waste anything. He had worked hard all his life and did not take anything for granted… not even time.

I enjoyed the weekend at his place and when it was over he managed to catch us a ride with someone he knew who was going back to Hattiesburg. It was one of those experiences I will never forget.

I was tempted to ask him to go home with me once, but I was embarrassed and I was sure he would not have been as impressed with my home as I was with his, so I never did. Many years later I learned that his home was built in 1855 for Col. Henry Basil Shaw. It was named Melmont, a name derived from the initials of his wife's name. Mary Elizabeth Lallimore. Thus, the Mel. Mont is French for mountain. Melmont was on a hill. The architect was James McClure and the old home was of the Greek revival style. Melmont was put on historic register years after I visited there, fell into disrepair after his parents passed away and began to collapse before the local historical society stepped in and tried to save it.

After that quarter I moved to another dorm on the north part of campus. As it turned out I had a room by myself. There was a time I had a brain lapse and thought alcohol would help me out. At that time in my life I thought I wanted to be a commercial artist.

I was working on a project at the end of my sophomore year and I needed help. I thought some wine would give me the inspiration I needed. I did not have much money when I went to the liquor store and the only thing I could afford was a gallon of very cheap wine. It was in a cooler and so I grabbed it and took it to the counter. I remember it cost nearly three dollars… the good stuff.

I went back to my dorm room and started working. Luckily, I had a room by myself. I would paint a while and sip wine a while. A few hours went by and the wine and inspiration were nearly gone. There was just a little wine left in the dark green bottle and I really did not want anymore of it.

I had to go to the restroom. The restroom was way down the hall and I did not want anyone to see me in that shape. I thought to myself, I would just pee in the wine jug. So I did. After a while I had to go again. And again I used the wine jug. After several "pees" the jug was getting nearly full.

I thought I needed to get rid of the bottle before I tipped it over or broke it on the hard floor. So, I opened up my door and looked up and down the hall. It was very late and no one was around. I set the wine jug down and slid it down the hall. Then I went back inside and went to bed.

Later that night someone was pounding on my door.

"Algood… Algood…. WAKE UP!"

I went to the door and opened it a little. It was this huge guy that roomed across the hall. He asked me, "You got any ice?"

"No, man, I don't have any ice. It's 2:30 in the morning. What do you need ice for?"

"Man, we found a whole bottle of wine sitting in the hall and we're havin' to drink it hot. It tastes like piss when it's hot."

I knew I could not tell him what he was drinking. If I had, he would have killed me there on the spot. I just told him no and shut my door as quick as I could… Another note to self; inspiration that pours from a dark green bottle can be hazardous to your health.

That was my last year at The University of Southern Mississippi. My father was ill. I felt I was needed at home, so I transferred to Mississippi State. It was close enough I could help out at home and commute.

I was at Mississippi State one year. There was not an art program there, so I changed my major to communications. I did pretty well at State. My grades improved and I thought I might actually graduate some day.

I was preparing to leave home for the 35 mile drive to State one morning when my mother walked into the room. I could sense something was amiss. She was shaking violently and wringing her hands.

She said, "I don't know what to do. I know I am supposed to do something, but I can't remember what I am supposed to do."

I looked at her and asked, "What do you mean, Mother? What did you forget?"

There was a far away look in her eyes. It was as if she were a child lost in the woods. I knew something terrible was happening, but I did not know what it was or what I was going to do to resolve it.

"I know I am supposed to cook Harold's breakfast, but I can't remember how. I can't remember what he likes to eat… I can't remember how to cook. I can't remember anything! What's wrong with me?"

I knew this was not one of her usual pranks that she loved to pull on me. She was crying and shaking. I realized that my father's illness and had taken a toll on her, but until that morning I had no idea to what extent.

That morning was the beginning of a long, long journey of learning about the Manic Depression Disorder that was in my mother's family tree. Today it is more commonly referred to as Bi-Polar Disorder.

Little did I know it would rear its ugly head several times in the coming years. But, it was a learning experience. I learned it was an illness that could be treated. I soon realized it was the answer to a lot of things I wondered about that had occurred over the years. It explained why my mother was such a perfectionist. It was one of the reasons why she was so organized. Everything had to be done in a certain way at a certain time.

It was her way of maintaining control over situations she found herself in. In a way it was frightening. I could see some of the same traits in myself and other family members. It was a lot to take in for a young guy. I knew I had to step up to the plate and be the adult I had never been before. My parents needed me.

There is an old saying; Once a man… twice a child. It was time for me and my brothers to be our parents' caregivers. My father was beginning a long battle with cancer and my mother was beginning a journey with depression she would fight for the remainder of her life. If someone could feel old when they were in their early twenties, I certainly did.

The last semester I was at State I took a speech course. I did pretty well I guess. I had an A in the class. But, I began to have panic attacks. I was terrified when it came time to stand before the class and give my speeches. After each class I got sick. I would throw up and shake for hours. I knew I could not continue like that.

I approached the professor and told her what was happening. I told her I had to drop the class. She wanted me to get through it. She said I was doing well and nobody in the class could tell I was having problems. I just could not handle it anymore. I dropped the class.

I did not realize how much pressure I was under while I was trying to work my way through college. For a while I thought I could do it all.

While I was at State that year I was working several jobs. I worked in the John C. Stennis Collection on campus between classes. On Saturdays I worked in a clothing store in Louisville. I helped run the Rural Water Association my parents worked for, I was trying to take care of things on the farm and I was taking care of two ill parents.

I was at my wits end. Something had to give. When the semester ended I left school to work full time.

Continued in Beyond the Cotton Fields, Part 5

_______________
Rick Algood
December 15, 2017