From The Arbor God Bless America
We will be celebrating Independence Day on the fourth day of this month with parades, fireworks, and all sorts of festivities. Folks will sit around in red, white, and blue blouses, shirts, hats, anything that has the patriotic flare. Grandmothers will prepare their favorite recipe, moms will cook an abundance of foodstuff, and cousins will be cleaning out the "White Mountain" ice cream freezer for a special treat of homemade ice cream. Marching bands are practicing and checking out uniforms and seeing if they still fit. Choirs, orchestras and all sorts of musicians are probably already practicing music for that most momentous concert featuring "Stars and Stripes Forever," "The Eighteen Twelve Overture," "The Star Spangled Banner," and around our town some deep bass singer is limbering up his vocal cords for a run at "Old Man River." As old time pallets are being "aired" out, husbands will be hunting through the storage room for picnic baskets and barbecue grills. Convenience stores will stock up on ice, snacks, charcoal and cold drinks for this special day. What a truly wonderful "American" day we celebrate, a true red, white, and blue holiday. Many years ago when just a lad of four, I was visiting with my grandparents in Randolph as the fourth of July arrived. My granddad had work to do in the field that day, but my grandmother decided that she and I should celebrate, just the two of us. We had none of the usual paraphernalia, no fancy food, nor brass bands to heist a tune, or fireworks to set a’ crackin’; just the two of us. She tied our picnic lunch up in an old tablecloth and we were off to the creek over in the pasture. Under several large sweet gum trees we spread our meager fare and were thankful for our great country’s independence and our freedom. The food was good, the company great, but my recollection is not of that, it is of the love that she had for this little red head. Thank you Ma! Because of the many years that separate us from the war that won our independence, we do not always take into consideration the cost in lives and suffering of those brave fathers, sons, and families during that war. The hunters, farmers, seamen, and others who fought the well trained armies and battle-toughened solders, sometimes outnumbered, and often with inferior weapons and few provisions, fought so bravely, and won. On September 23, 1779, only a handful heard John Paul Jones say to the British captain, when asked if he was ready to surrender, "I have not yet begun to fight." Most fought and died in obscure places, and sometimes alone, without a proper burial, and never knowing the outcome of their sacrifice. But, they gave their lives for us, just the same. On this celebration day let us remember those who fell, who lost family, home, and wealth so that you and I could stand free. Freedom, however, is not won and then forgotten about; it is an ongoing struggle. Just recently, many of our finest young men departed from Pontotoc County for additional training before being sent to Iraq. May we be vigilant in holding them up in our prayers as they protect us just as our forefathers did so long ago in that initial struggle for freedom. Also, we as individual citizens and voters must strive to protect our freedom from both foreign and domestic foes, who would weaken and destroy that freedom. As we celebrate this anniversary of our Independence, let us stop long enough to thank these dear people who are defending our freedom now and also be thankful for those who fought, bled, and died so many years ago that we might have freedom. Let us thank our Lord that He has allowed us to be free and remain free for over two hundred years. ~ By Ralph Jones, Managing Editor Note: From The Arbor is a regular feature of our newsletter from which our "Editor of the Month" introduces each issue, season, or theme, as the case may be.
Saturday Supper Homegrown Food A couple of months ago it was tater planting time. Now the harvest is in, and we are enjoying the fruits of our labors. My father in law is a truck-patch farmer in a big way. He grows taters, maters, corn, peas, watermelons, cantaloupes, a few other vegetables, and sorghum. Miss Janet has always loved new taters. Long before taters are ready to be dug, she’ll get a fork and go out and scratch around the edge of the taters and scratch out some new taters. The green beans are never ready at this time, so we just have to settle for the store-bought ones unless there happens to be a jar left from the year before. Taters have been dug by now, and they are safely in the barn where we go and get them as we need them. Last Saturday Miss Janet and my grandson, J.T., picked a double mess of green beans that were growing in a 4’ x 8’ raised bed that we have in our back yard.
The meal was garnished with fresh cut cantaloupe (from somewhere in south Mississippi). Are you hungry yet? Well, if you’re not, you’re not from around here. We also had plenty of home brewed Mississippi wine to drink (better known as sweet tea). This was followed up with a pot of brewed coffee, freshly ground. We didn’t have any dessert ‘cause we decided that the cornbread that was bathed in real butter was tough to beat. Folks, I believe it’s nap time, ‘cause after a meal like that, my eyes just won’t stay open. This was a good meal and a lesson for my grandson. He now has an idea where the food on the table comes from and how much better it tastes when you watch a seed grow into something that you can eat. I didn’t know that most kids think that food comes from Wal-Mart. Stanley Wise and I did a presentation with a group of fifth graders on Earth Day. We did this in the form of a game, where we asked the kids questions and gave them four possible answers. Ninety-five percent of them thought that milk came from Wal-Mart instead of a cow. By the way, one of the possible answers was a cow. I recommend that you take your children and your grandchildren and plant a little patch somewhere in your yard. You don’t need a big garden to teach them a big lesson. It’ll be fun for them and rewarding for all when it hits the table. The quality time and memories will last forever, and I’ll bet they tell their kids and make their own memories too. ~ By Tim Burress, Regular Contributor Biographical Sketch: Tim Burress lives in New Albany, Mississippi. Tim writes "Gardening with Tim" which appears in the local paper.
National Anthem Revival Needed Oh say, can you…can you see? Can you hear? Can you sing? Do you sing our national anthem, The Star Spangled Banner? Chances are you don’t sing it, because someone else sings it at whatever event you might have sung it in the recent past. And, no you don’t get any credit for singing the national anthem in your shower. How we’ve lapsed into a national state of mind wherein we find greater pleasure in hearing a soloist or even a small group belting out the national anthem, rather than our doing so with hundreds of others, I am unable to explain. But, I believe it may have something to do with a dwindling sense of community, or of the lack of desire to be a part of something bigger than ourselves. I really have the feeling the "Me" generation is largely responsible for establishing what is now the norm, with respect to the singing of the national anthem. But, the "Greatest" generation bears some responsibility for letting it happen. Ever since moving pictures came on the American scene, people have been fascinated with entertainment. Oh, there was entertainment prior to movies, that’s for certain, but the motion picture industry has played a major role in the entertainment addiction that plagues Americans in this the third millennium, A.D. And, the same might be said of the recording industry or the television industry, which has reached near universal proliferation of a TV in every American home.
Wouldn’t it be grand to hear the tens of thousands who attend any of the college football games every autumn lift their voices in singing the national anthem before the kickoff, or to hear baseball fans singing the national anthem prior to the issuance of "play ball?" It’s time for Americans to reclaim or "take back" our national anthem, much like citizens of crime-riddled neighborhoods of the seventies sought to reclaim the serenity of their once gang-free, drug-free, violence-free neighborhoods. We have heard the national anthem abused by the artistic expression of this or that soloist who sang notes its musical author neither wrote nor dreamt might one day pass for his work. We should collectively say, "We’re mad as heck, and we’re not going to take it anymore." We need to experience again the pride we once felt in our collective singing of the national anthem, but let us not find consolation until the last stanza is sung:
Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand While it’s not likely we can muster enough support to delay a sports event long enough to sing the fourth stanza, it would be nice if we petitioned our respective school boards to include memorization of the first and last stanza of our National Anthem as part of the core curriculum. In fact, school boards are a good place to start in getting The Star Spangled Banner sung by those in attendance of sports events rather than by a soloist. I leave the reader with this charge, Go forth and help rekindle the patriotism of our youth, for our cause it is just! ~ By Wayne Carter, Associate Editor & Publisher
Ralph’s Tomato Box Container Experimentation High-tech tomatoes, mysterious milk, super squash, are we supposed to eat this stuff? Or is it going to eat us? ~ Annita Manning To the serious gardener, all gardening is an experiment. One is always trying to raise the loveliest rose, the sweetest smelling gardenia, the tallest okra stalk, or the biggest and best tasting tomato. As Einstein said: "The important thing is not to stop questioning." And so it is with Ralph Graham, Mimi’s daddy, of Pontotoc County, MS. He has experimented raising tomatoes in containers the last few years, and has had better than average success. In fact, he has had bragging rights level of success. But the lady down the road is beginning to catch up. Francis grew a passel of big Michigan and German Queen tomatoes last year. And others have adopted his container garden ways. So now is the time to raise the bar a notch.
Recently good old American ingenuity (some latter day politicians call it greed) has attempted to perfect the container system. You can purchase for $70 an Earthbox tomato growing system. Or you can make your own for about $15. It’s simply a plastic or rubber tub with a false floor full of holes over a water reservoir supported with four 4" PVC pipes standing on end. It has an overflow hole and a fill pipe. Ralph and I are trying that system this year. He has two Better Boys in his. I have a Marglobe and a Rutgers in mine. The race is on. In addition to the one tomato box, he wants to go back to the old ways, so we dug ten big holes in various rich spots, including in the wet soil underneath their air conditioner. We filled each hole with last years’ container contents, which had turned to humus. The humus is piled up deeply above ground level. We will see. These tomato plants will get the same TLC as last year’s container plants with the extra benefit of micronutrients and microorganisms in the soil. I predict he will have the best crop in North Mississippi again this year. Due to my limited space and the cable company lines running across my backyard, I am once again raising tomatoes in containers, in addition to my tomato box. My experiment this year is the planting mix. It is a mixture of expensive pre-fertilized, water retaining planting mix, cheap top soil, humus from last year’s containers, twenty percent rotted horse manure, bone meal, blood meal, and lime. I may not make many tomatoes, but I might be able to climb the plants to get on the roof. ~ By Carl Wayne Hardeman, Editor
Summertime Kids Life In Happy Hollow Summer was a wonderful time when we kids were out of school and had plenty of time to pursue whatever tickled our fancy. Shirts, shoes and socks had been shucked and short pants substituted for long ones. Lying on the creek bank with a willow pole and a safety pin for a hook, we’d pass the time waiting for a bite from minnows that were hardly bigger than our hooks. We had no bait; I suppose we just figured one of those ignorant minnows would decide to swim up and bite the sharp end of our pin. When the fishing got boring we usually just waded in the water, chasing the minnows or catching a crawfish now and again. We did marvel at how fast those crawfish could travel in reverse. The creek ran about five feet below a bridge in our hollow. In summer time there was not much water running in the creek, and it left a sandy "beach" on one side just for our enjoyment. It was shady, cool, and close to home. The girls would make play houses with whatever had drifted ashore, or those treasures they chose to bring from home. We boys played with our toy cars in the sand, making roads, bridges, and tunnels. Sometimes we played together with the girls, but you know how girls are, and if you are around them long enough they will have you dressed up in a silly costume of some kind. When we boys found discarded car tires, we would roll them and pretend we were cars. I’m sure my chassis has a half million miles on it from following a rolling car tire. Our mothers cringed when they saw us coming with tires, for they knew our clothes would not only be dirty, but black from the rubber. Rather than discard the tires, we would stash them, for later use, in some secure place, like under the honeysuckle vines that grew on the fence of the "town pasture." Exploring was one of our favorite things to do. If an old house or barn were discovered we would rummage through it looking for all sorts of treasures. Anything of "value" would be brought home to the chagrin of our mothers. Once we found the "motor" of an automobile windshield wiper. It was more or less a half circle in shape, about an inch or more thick, with a couple of holes and a stem to which the wiper attached. Inside was a baffle that swung from side to side that made the wiper move back and forth from vacuum created by the engine.
We were all "Pore as Job’s Turkey," but we did not know it. The Big War was going on and everything was either rationed or out of production, or both. We simply made do with what we had and improvised often. There was one kid in our neighborhood for whom we all felt sorry. He played with us sometimes, and we liked him, but his mother forbad him to get dirty. His parents took care of him and bought him all sorts of toys that we could not afford. However, he was so protected that he could scarcely have any fun with us. My best buddy, Howard Huey, and I wore short pants, no shirt, no shoes, no hat, nothing but short pants. When our friend came around he had on a starched and ironed shirt, short plants with creases, polished shoes with clean socks, and sometimes a hat or cap. While playing cars, Howard and I sat, kneeled, lay and often rolled in the red clay dirt. On these occasions our friend would very carefully squat, so that he would not get dirty or rumple his clothes. We often climbed trees, and once he climbed with us. Only his mother saw him and called him home immediately. What happened after he got home we can only guess, but he never climbed with us again. Not far from the school was a "wading pool," as the community called it. To us kids it was our swimming pool. It was only about three feet deep at the deepest end. Mrs. Willie Moreland was the keeper of the pool. About all she did was to keep us from killing one another and to give comfort when someone skinned a knee or bumped their head. We Happy Hollow kids would go several days a week and most of us learned to swim in that little tad of water. In the early spring, Mrs. Moreland would secure two boxes in which refrigerators had been shipped. They became our dressing rooms for the season. The pool had no filtration system and my dad would add chlorine to the water as needed to keep it useable, then he would drain and refill with fresh water from time to time. By the time school was ready to start again in September, we would all have tough and tanned bodies and callused feet. We were accused of wearing our shoes out from the inside. I remember starched shirts being so very scratchy on a back that had hardly felt one all summer. Ah! Those were the days of growing up in the summertime. ~ By Ralph Jones, Managing Editor
The Matchstick Splint By Clarene Evans
My grandmother "Den" wanted me to wear shoes (with socks even) when I thought going barefoot was still the only way to travel in the summer. Growing up was going to be harder than I thought and it looked like I had no choice but to go ahead and comply. Despite wanting to remain a kid, my body began betraying me and I started shooting straight up. My arms and legs took on the persona of a pine tree and propelled me further into adulthood. I still thought it best to hide my long skinny legs in a pair of faded blue jeans but Den, had other ideas. (Personally I didn’t see how on earth I was gonna climb trees or coax doodlebugs from their holes in the ground in a dress, but I guess I’d learn. Den was holding her ground.) Mama finally stepped in, thank goodness, and ‘peddle pushers’ became the norm in my closet that summer. Of course Sundays still offered Den the opportunity to get me into a dress, but I was very reluctant. I think that whole summer I was mad about one thing or the other. Mama tried explaining the dreaded chore of growing up to me but instead decided maybe I just needed a pet to take my mind off of growing up that long hot summer. Since we didn’t have a car, Mama got Uncle Basil (her brother) to drive us down to Saltillo on Old Hwy 45 S. where a lady raised parakeets. We picked one out and brought him home. Something else to feed and water! Wasn’t a little brother enough for a young girl to endure? I quickly added that parakeet to my list of things to hate for that summer! ‘Budgie’ took up with Mama right off, however, and she even taught the little fine feathered terror to sit on her shoulder and eat from her hand at the breakfast table. So? Evidently she’d picked the smartest bird in the entire cage. That bird hated me and the feeling was mutual. Budgie immediately became Mama’s pet, instead of mine. He pecked my hand each time I tried to put food or water in his cage so I quit trying. How this tiny bird knew the difference in the hand of a girl who didn’t like him and the hand of a woman, who adored him, beat the life out of me... After about a month of him sitting on her shoulder and eating from Mama’s hand at the breakfast table, I’d had it. Early one morning, after Mama left for work, while I was still trying to sleep, Budgie woke me up squawking and fluttering his wings. I decided I’d do this obnoxious bird a real big favor and let him fly around the house freely for a spell. I ran into the kitchen, opened his cage door and went back to bed. Budgie made a few dive bomber tactics at my covers then quickly disappeared and I went back to sleep. When I awoke a couple of hours later, the house was quiet. Too quiet! I threw the covers back and ran to Budgie’s cage. He wasn’t there. "Budgie?" I called out. There was dead silence. "Oh Budgie boy?" I called out again. I panicked. Mama’s precious bird must have flown the coop. I wondered how her precious, little fine feathered baby had opened that big ol’ cage door all by himself. He was even smarter than we thought. (Of course I knew I was in trouble; I’d let him out.) I started my search and discovered the very thing a guilty little girl hopes she’ll never find; Budgie lying in wait behind the sugar canister in a very weird position. His left leg was grotesquely stuck in a mouse trap that had been sprung. I went to pick him up and the ungrateful little thing pecked me and flapped his wings ‘til there were yellow feathers drifting all over Mama’s kitchen. Holy cow was I ever in trouble now!!! It was very evident that Budgie had a broken leg. Pictures of Mama taking out her little pistol and shooting her pet bird began flooding through my mind. After all, that’s what they do to a horse with a broken leg in the movies don’t they? I sat on the front porch and held Budgie in my lap for the next hour or so until Mama came home for lunch. I had never prayed harder in my life for a tiny creature to go on to be with the Lord than I did that morning for Budgie. I sure hated to hear the sound of Mama’s gun going off again. I’d heard it only once before when she shot a snake and I didn’t want to hear that sound again…ever! 11:00 rolled around and Mama walked up to the doorsteps and kissed me on the top of my bowed head. She raised my chin and asked why I was sitting there all alone looking so forlorn. I moved my hands and there lay Budgie, still stuck in the mousetrap, lying quietly on a towel. She tenderly scooped him up, towel and all, and went inside and laid him on the table, opened the mousetrap and eased him out. Budgie never flinched. She pulled down a box of matches from the top of the cabinet and reached for a knife. "Mama, wait…..please don’t kill him." I screamed as she quickly looked at me and raised her infamous left eyebrow, but I should’ve known Mama better than that. She cut off the head of the match and split it lengthways then crossways measuring it against Budgie’s leg. She reached back into the drawer and grabbed some adhesive tape and split that as well. Before I knew it Budgie was back in his cage hopping around with a splint on his broken leg and in a few weeks was sitting on Mama’s shoulder again eating toast from her hand. Mama never once asked me how Budgie got out of his cage… she seemed to just somehow know. Ya’ think it could have been my instant ‘change of heart’ regarding Budgie? Bless his feathered little heart. The rest of the summer just flew by after that and I finally decided growing up wasn’t going to be so bad after all. Biographical Sketch: Clarene is a 63 year old grandmother who lives in her RV near the river in Savannah, Tennessee. Her love for telling stories came at an early age. While her girlfriends were listening to Elvis on the radio, Clarene pecked away on her typewriter. She wrote her first short story at age 13 and never stopped. Her books of Civil War poetry are at Brices Crossroads Museum, Baldwyn, Ms. Her novel, LILLIAN, is the story of a young girl from a Virginia tobacco plantation whose adventures take her to the Lakota Nation where she finds why God put her on this earth. www.clarenevans.com clareneevans@gmail.com.
Age Of Innocence Okolona Childhood While Pontotoc is my birthplace, I only lived there for slightly more than two years before my family began a nine-year sojourn of hopping from town to town as the Kroger Company transferred Dad first to Corinth, then to Iuka, followed by Starkville and Okolona before we returned to Pontotoc when I was eleven. In the late 1940s, Kroger had a retail presence in most county-seat towns throughout northeast Mississippi but by the early fifties had begun to close these small, downtown stores as the age of the supermarket was being birthed. Dad had the opportunity to purchase a downtown grocery store in Pontotoc in 1953, but without a crystal ball, couldn’t foresee that the small grocery store was on its way to extinction. In less than two decades, the five downtown grocery stores in Pontotoc would disappear and supermarkets with large parking lots would offer consumers more variety and more convenient parking than the often metered, parking spaces of a then congested downtown. Being continually uprooted from the familiar and tossed into often unfriendly environments was something of a traumatic experience for this writer. Imagine forming neighborhood friendships only to see them dissolved after a year or so when the family relocated. Mom kept a mental accounting of our moves and could recite how long we stayed where, even in the nine moves she tallied in a single year. I started grade 3 in the public school system of Okolona, Mississippi. Though Mom longed to return to Iuka and the network of neighborhood friends she had there, I found, in retrospect, my childhood years in Okolona to be the best years of my youth. In my mind, no community will ever unseat Pontotoc from the throne of my heart, but Okolona sits at Pontotoc’s right hand. For generations, Okolona has struggled with race relations, and its community leaders have been unsuccessful in "growing" the city. The Okolona residences of my childhood remain pretty much as I knew them, but with few exceptions the grand old houses I walked past on my way to school are now in ruins. Still, Okolona is an idyllic realm, if only in my memory. In the innocence of my childhood, my Okolona years helped form me into the person I am today. In the pews of First Baptist Church, Okolona, I first experienced the promptings of the Holy Spirit. Those stirrings bore fruit a few years later when, at age twelve, I professed my faith publicly and joined the membership of FBC, Pontotoc. Of the handful of playmates in my neighborhood, Tommy Moore, a lad one year older than me, grew to be my best friend. We roamed throughout our neighborhood, probably never straying more than a mile from home, to find adventure in sifting through discarded materials outside of an electric motor repair shop, throwing rocks up and down the graveled streets, climbing trees, exploring creeks, fighting pretend battles with cowboys and Indians, and making treks to Wilson Park for games of unsupervised, sandlot baseball. Our moms never gave a thought to our safety, but if they did, they never let us know their concerns. My first exposure to being "on stage" before a live audience happened in Iuka when, as a first-grader, I appeared as a groomsman in a Tom Thumb wedding held in the school’s auditorium. Every year thereafter, including my years in Okolona, I was thrust into the spotlight by a classroom teacher whose class was required to put on some sort of show or entertainment extravaganza for the rest of the student body. I never warmed up to the limelight, but the experiences helped prepare me for speaking before groups later in life. I discovered girls during my Okolona years. As Fourth and Fifth graders, we were far too young for dating, but that didn’t preclude us having girlfriends and boyfriends. We were not allowed to "court" in parlors, and as far as I can recall, girls and boys of our age didn’t visit the homes of friends of the opposite sex except perhaps for a birthday occasion. However, the movie theater provided the perfect place for puppy love to blossom.
Those years of innocence in Okolona worked to instill a high degree of self confidence in who I was and brought me esteem in the eyes of my peers. That summer, my family moved back to Pontotoc. The ruffians in my new school were a far cry from the more civilized playmates of mine in Okolona. It didn’t take long for them to knock me off my perch and to show me that my place in the new pecking order was a lot closer to the bottom than the top. I spent the remainder of my years in the Pontotoc School system trying to recover from "paradise lost." Though, my Age of Innocence ended when I left Okolona, I still have the memories. In Pontotoc, I learned that starting over isn’t easy, but that no obstacle or hurdle can repress one’s personal will and that an individual’s accomplishments are limited only by his or her desire and imagination. ~By Wayne Carter, Associate Editor & Publisher
A Balm In Gilead A Natural Experience There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole; There is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin-sick soul." ~ African American Spiritual The Good Book speaks of the Balm in Gilead. "Baal shelem" : the Lord of Oils. It is an aromatic gum made from the resin of a shrub which grows in the Middle East. It is used to soothe and promote healing, and finally to preserve the remains of those able to afford it. That's where we get the word embalm. On Mother's Day (2008) we went with Mimi's Mother and Daddy, Ralph and Opal Graham of the Hurricane Community, to New Albany for Sunday lunch. Mimi and Opal wanted a steak. Ralph and I got the buffet. We decided to return via Highway 30 and see the damage done by the Friday night storm west of New Albany in Poolville and Enterprise. The damage was awful. Massive oaks were uprooted. Large trees were just snapped off. Cars, trucks, homes, and businesses were destroyed. Tin was hanging in trees. Mattresses were lying in fields. Amazingly, there were no deaths, and several homes with uprooted trees all around them amazingly, or providentially, escaped any damage. The hard working, self reliant people of Mississippi were and had been hard at work. No complaining and waiting for the government to do something. They were thankful to all be alive and had begun to clean up and rebuild on their own. The song "There is a Balm in Gilead" came to mind. We know the Good Lord is with us, and not only will help us through this, but will make good come from it. I suspect some of the Good Lord's people were in church that Sunday who had not been there in a long time, and were thankful their lives had been spared. As a gardener will do, I noted how the wind pruned dead and weak limbs and weakened trees. Formerly shaded yards were now opened to the sunlight. Soon new flower beds and vegetable gardens will be growing where once shade was. Perhaps children will play kickball or baseball in now open lawns. Soon there will be new homes and businesses. Life will go on. The sun and rich Mississippi soil will grow new shrubs and trees. I saw my first live scarlet tanager on that trip. It was perched on a fallen oak tree. I also saw several Eastern kingbirds perched on barbwire fences whence they swoop to catch insects. I had seen them rarely before. The birds were most likely there all the time. What changed was my perspective. When you see the results of the storm, you can see only the damage or you can see the power of Mother Nature and the Good Lord's healing which has already begun. There is a balm in Gilead. ~ By Carl Wayne Hardeman, Editor
Makin’ Music Strings, Horns, Bells As a youngster, I was always surrounded by music. Mom and Dad sang and whistled, our ole "Silvertone" (Sears) radio played music when we were inside and neighbors could be heard singing and whistling from across the fields. About once a month our neighbors, the Hadaways, across the road would get all their grown kids together and sit out on their big porch and play fiddles, guitars, mandolins, etc. As we sat out in the cool of the day their music drifted across the way. Sometimes I would go over to watch and listen as they played. The next night I’d get my ukulele out and practice my "hot licks" and singing "When my Blue Moon Turns to Gold Again," "Red River Valley," "When I was a Lad and Ol’ Shep was a Pup," and others. My uncle, Frank Tallant, could always whistle better’n anyone. He had a way of double-tonguing the notes and my, my, how he could whistle "Arkansas Traveler". While doing chores, or going to the field that tune was such a happy sound. Church choirs from the Primary Department to the Adult Choir, could count on a red headed kid in the midst somewhere. Our college had an all men’s chorus, of which I was a part. In the fifth grade my folks let me join the band at school and the trombone was my choice of torture. Learning and practicing was a drag. It took too much time and was boring, boring, boring. But after I became good enough to play in the regular band it got much better. We marched in parades, had concerts, and did all sorts of fun things. We even went to the "Cotton Carnival" in Memphis a few times. How well I played is still in debate. After the good trombone players like Clell Miller and Billie Jean Thomas had graduated, I finally made it to first horn, first chair in the high school band. Some of us boys in town took up the ukulele and had lots of fun with it. Steve Hester, Bozy Austin, Fred Lyon, and I would sit out on Fred’s porch and strum and sing away. It’s a wonder Mrs. Lyon did not run the lot of us away. Mr. Fesmire, our band director was also our church music director. He selected a handful of us to be in an ensemble to play for various church functions. As best I can remember we had John Beddingfield on clarinet, Tim Fur on trumpet, Lowry Simmons on sax, I pumped the trombone, Richard Ball played drums, and others I can not recall. We played at church meetings, homecomings, summer "singing schools" and the like. As we improved and gained confidence we began to expand our borders; after learning some popular music we played for different types of meetings, basketball games, town meetings, community gatherings, etc. We played a variety of "New Orleans" type tunes and we called ourselves a "Dixie Land Band". We had found our niche. We may not have been too good but we were loud and we enjoyed it. We played tunes like, "Muscat Ramble", "That’s a Plenty", "South Rampart Street", and others. Although the ‘bone is a thing of the past, music is still a real part of my life. Our church has an Adult Handbell Choir of which I was a part for many years and am a longtime member of our Church Adult Choir.
I had never thought of what we were doing as "Making Music" until one day
at a handbell competition. The clinician called up a piece of music that
we were supposed to have rehearsed before arriving at the competition. All
the handbell choirs that were in attendance would perform it. Our director
decided it was simple enough that we could ‘sight read’ it. We
had spent most of our rehearsal time on our "special numbers" on which we
would be judged, but none on this group
music. The piece was a new arrangement of a well-known church hymn. As we opened up the sheets of music, along with the other thirty or forty handbell choirs, it was indeed simple compared to what our director usually required of us. Hurriedly scanning the pages, looking at key signatures, timing, incidentals and other special markings, I took a deep and questioning breath. Our group looked at each other and smiled as if to say, "Well here we come, ready or not." About half way through we had relaxed enough to hear the melody and harmony loud and clear. For the first time I realized that from those white pieces of paper with black lines and little black dots we were playing a beautiful harmonious melody, a tune that we all knew. Hundreds of bells simultaneously chimed out to the glory of God. It was during this number that I realized for the first time that I was indeed making music. What a joy to realize that. Having sung and played for years and years before, this was a fresh new discovery for me, a discovery that still exhilarates me even today. How God has given us the ability and intelligence to look at a musical score and sing or play what’s written and it become music to our ear is still a blessing to me. I still love to sing and make music whenever and wherever possible and remember the many happy times of "Makin’ Music." ~ By Ralph Jones, Managing Editor
A Fish Story Lake Near Rena Laura I have heard and told many fishing stories in my life, but the one that stands out from all of the rest is a story that a relative told to me over fifty years ago. This relative will remain un-named since he was one of the three fishermen mentioned in this story. The story begins with a trip to the Mississippi Delta, where it was said that the crappie were really biting. The three fishermen loaded up and drove to Desoto Lake near the little Delta town of Rena Laura, Mississippi. Desoto Lake is one of the some one hundred oxbow lakes between Cairo, Illinois, and New Orleans, that were created when the Mississippi River changed courses. The one main necessity for catching crappie in the large lakes was a very large and long cane pole. The relative said that they reached the lake, and headed out for a day of crappie fishing. He said, as he put it, we took a little something to drink. It seems that one of the fishermen was a gentleman that had no hair on his head. After they had been fishing a while, and nipping from the little something to drink, one of the men in the boat made a big swing to get his line way out into the water, and accidentally hooked the man with no hair right in the top of the head. The story teller said that even though by this time they had more than enough something to drink, they knew they had to get the injured man to the doctor. He said that he was bleeding something terrible. They made it back to the bank and loaded the injured man in the back of the pick-up truck and headed for Clarksdale, which was the nearest town with a doctor. The man with the hook in his head and the man who had hooked him rode in the back while the third man, my relative, drove the truck at breakneck speed toward Clarksdale. Once they reached the doctor’s office it took all three to get him in the door. Why did it take all three, and why did they make him ride in the back of the truck all the way to town when there was only one person in the cab of the truck? Because there is no way you can get a fourteen foot cane crappie pole in the cab of a truck. Also, once they reached the doctor’s office, it took one man to hold the door open while the man who had hooked him walked behind. You see, they never thought to cut the fishing line. The man that had hooked him was still holding the cane pole over his head and following when they entered the doctor’s office. This is one time, as we say in the South, "He had him hook, line, and sinker!" ~ By M.G. "Russ" Russell, Guest Contributor Biographical sketch: M. G. Russell is a Pontotoc County native. But, Memphis has been home for him and wife, Jan, for over fifty years. Russell retired in 2004, after 47 years in the transportation industry. Apart from writing, Russell enjoys running.
---------------------------------------------------------------- This just in: What’s the difference between bird flu and swine flu? For bird flu you need tweetment and for swine flu you need oinkment. If you receive an email from the Department of Health telling you not to eat tinned pork because of swine flu - ignore it. It's just spam!
Our Mission Purpose - The Bodock Post It is our desire to provide a monthly newsletter about rural living with photographs of yesterday and today, including timely articles about conservative politics, religion, food, restaurant reviews, gardening, humor, history, and non-fiction columns by folks steeped in our Southern lifestyle. Copyright © 2008 - 2009 The Bodock Post. Return to home page. Open This Issue with MS Word
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Well folks, here it is July already, "Summertime and the livin’
is easy," as the song says. It’s time for vacations, cookouts, baseball
games, picnics, and many trips to the ole swimming hole. Fishermen will clean
out their boats, ready their motors, and brush off their stories of the ones
that got away. Mosquito spray and sunscreen lotion will be sold by the gallons
as we go out to enjoy nature. Don’t forget to set aside time for the
Bodock Festival in August. What a wonderful time is summer.
Miss Janet snapped them and grabbed us some new taters out of
the bucket, scraped them, and put them on to cook. Later that day the feast
began; we had a grand meal consisting of green beans and new taters, fresh
cucumbers from the back yard also, boiled fresh cabbage donated by my next
door neighbor from his garden, hominy, fried bacon, and a pone of cornbread
bathed in real butter. This cornbread was made from fresh cornmeal that my
father-in-law makes up every year.
We find entertainment wherever we look
and wherever we turn. We listen to the radio when we are driving our car;
we watch TV excessively in our home; we carry iPods to play iTunes, because
we can play the songs we want to hear, anytime, anywhere. We’re so addicted
to the Internet, we have iPhones and Blackberry devices to keep us tethered
to cyberspace. We pack sports stadiums to be entertained by athletes, great
and small. We pack concert halls to hear symphonic music, and we jam into
arenas and civic centers across the lands to hear all forms of music, as
well as that which for lack of a better word is called music. We watch
contestants vie for titles such as Miss America, Miss USA, Miss Universe,
even American Idol. Some of us are the entertainers, but even entertainers
love to be entertained.
The idea of container gardening is to
have a controlled environment, similar to a bale of hay, where the water
and fertilizer are controlled and the plants are not exposed to our humid
Southern soil and fungus among us. Ralph put a plastic milk jug with pinholes
in each container for an inexpensive drip irrigation system.
What a marvelous toy we had found. It was used
for healing the injured in battle, a mighty laser gun in our intergalactic
battles against alien worlds, a secret weapon for zapping bad guys on the
prairie, and on occasions it even brought people back to life. Oh my, only
the imagination limited its use. It was loaned, swapped, and traded to every
kid in Happy Hollow for years. Who knows, one of us may still have that grand
toy in the bottom of a storage box somewhere.
The summer between my sixth and seventh grade
at BHS was as boring as it could be. It was awful not being a little
girl anymore and yet not quite being a young lady yet either. I hated
that summer! My grandmother insisted that I act like a young lady but I still
wanted to be a tomboy and play outside with my little brother and his friends
in the neighborhood and get dirty and sweaty and stinky.
In the fifth grade, the love of my life
was Merry, and if it’s possible for a fifth grader to love a classmate,
I loved Merry. Many a Saturday afternoon found us together for the matinee
at the local theater. Kissing wasn’t socially acceptable, but holding
hands was. It doesn’t take a lot of reminiscing on my part for my tired,
old brain to conjure up a memory of the two of us sitting in the dimly lit
theater with clasped hands on the armrest between us. On good days, I still
remember a quickening heartbeat when we joined hands and how our interlocked
palms became moist as body heat wicked moisture one from the other. It was
a sad day for me when Merry’s family moved from Okolona during our second
semester of fifth grade.
