RRN Is Ten Who'd
A Thought It
Today, Saturday, June 3, 2006, marks
the tenth anniversary of
Ridge Rider
News. It is a day to celebrate, in the present, the successes
of the past, while acknowledging our failures and contemplating challenges
which the future holds. For the present, celebration will be in the form
of a party in the editor’s backyard, where upwards of one hundred guests
are expected to enjoy Blues music by Jason Carter and a small band mustered
especially for the occasion and to feast upon southern fried catfish and
hushpuppies with all the trimmings and all of the desserts a body could want.
In reflecting on the successes of the past, we would note that, ten years
ago today, the first issue of this newsletter was mailed to three households.
At the time, no thought was given to the possibility that the fledgling
newsletter would survive for ten years. We did not anticipate the role the
Internet would play in the expansion of this newsletter, because ten years
ago America Online and CompuServe were still vying for consumers interested
in emerging technologies. E-mail existed but was not widely used as home
computers and Internet access was limited by connection speeds considered
slothful by today's standards.
Ten years ago, Ridge
Rider News sprouted from the seeds of a desire to leave a written
accounting of the life and times of the family of Wayne and Barbara Carter
for their offspring and to help revive the dying art of letter writing. Wayne's
early efforts were encouraged as individuals sought to be added to the weekly
mailings. As the readership grew, the financial burden of mailing sixty-odd
copies each week precipitated the decision to appeal for support. Once
subscription fees to cover postage were initiated, requests for mailed copies
experienced a sharp decline. Presently, several readers are indebted to the
generosity of others which has enabled us to continue mailings when no
remuneration from the reader was received. This year, as a result of subscription
fees, Ridge Rider News, experienced, for the first time in its history, a
drop in readership from the prior year.
Looking to the future, the challenges confronting us include how to bring
this newsletter to a break-even endeavor, where the financial costs of
publishing, mailing, and maintaining a presence on the Internet are offset
by the readership. Realistically, that may never happen, but break-even remains
our goal. Likewise, we envision increased communications with readers, and
whether that takes the form of email, personal letters, or visitation, it
matters not to us. Perhaps we cannot revive letter writing, as once we hoped,
but we recommit ourselves to doing our part and will encourage our readership
to do the same.
In recent years, it's become customary to report on the appeal of this newsletter
by listing the number of known households that enjoy
Ridge Rider
News by geographic location. The following is a breakdown of
eighty-nine households with parentheses used wherever the number of households
for a given area is greater than one:
Foreign Countries - 1: Germany
Out of State -26: Tennessee (7), Georgia (3), Alabama (2), Arkansas
(2), California (2), Indiana (2) Louisiana (2), Colorado, Florida, Kentucky,
Minnesota, New Mexico and South Carolina - A total of twenty-six households
across thirteen states.
In State - 63: Pontotoc (41), Tupelo (3), Thaxton (2), Belmont, Caledonia,
Ellisville, Florence, Forest, Gulfport, Hattiesburg, Leland, Olive Branch,
Oxford, Pearl, Ripley, Saltillo, Southaven, Starkville, Vicksburg, and West
Point - A total of sixty-three households in twenty cities.
We recognize that the prior accounting of our readership does not accurately
reflect the entire readership for certain individuals share their personal
copy with others, and while we know how often our newsletter is opened on
the Internet, we do not know with any degree of certainty how many individuals
regularly read this newsletter online. However, we have confirmation that
at least nine individuals scattered over five states use the Internet weekly
to access Ridge Rider
News Online. Additionally,
Ridge Rider
News is emailed to fifty-eight households and is either hand-delivered
or sent via U.S. Mail to thirty-one others.
The staff of Ridge
Rider News are unable to predict the future and cannot pretend
to know how long the editor will strive to continue his favorite hobby. But,
we have it on good authority that this newsletter, which is certainly not
your average newsletter, will continue for as long as the editor enjoys his
craft and God grants him the ability to continue doing that which he loves
to do.
Anna Graduates
PHS Class Of 2006
Times were simpler when I graduated from Pontotoc High School in 1960. Back
then a single Baccalaureate Service was all it took for all students. We
didn’t have to have one wherever we went to church, and our graduating
class was so small everyone that wanted to see us blessed or graduated could
attend in the auditorium of the school.
This year, Anna Butler, our oldest granddaughter graduated with honors from
Pontotoc High School, and there was nothing simple about it. Barbara and
I attended the Baccalaureate Service held at West Heights Baptist Church,
Pontotoc for it’s graduating seniors on the Sunday prior to graduation
the following Friday night. Anna sang a solo that sounded more like a popular
selection than a religious one, but nobody there seemed to mind.
Compared to the Baccalaureate Services of fifty years ago, those of today
have morphed into a form unrecognizable to most of us. My classmates may
have better recall than I do, but I don’t remember any of us having
anything to do other than show up and sit in a section reserved for us. The
service was religious in nature and usually a long-winded local preacher
charged the graduates to lead moral lives as each found his or her respective
place in life beyond the classroom.
With respect to honoring graduates, West Heights is no different than FBC,
and both use a similar format.
Today, any church with a big screen and a projector is apt to plaster photos
of the graduates, from the cradle to the present, all set to popular music,
in hopes of eliciting a tearful memory or two from the audience. Thus, Barbara
and I sat through a lengthy video presentation and listened to the same artist
perform the same song a full three times before the video had cycled through
all the graduates.
At West Heights, following the video, each graduate stepped onto the podium
and stated his or her name, parent’s names, and plans for the future.
Before walking back to his or her seat, each graduate presented his or her
mom with a long stemmed rose.
I’m not sure what it is that ministers and parents will dream up next
for a Baccalaureate Service, but at some point I hope a decision will be
made to plan such a service as an afternoon or evening program, as it surely
doesn’t enhance the atmosphere of worship on a Sunday morning.
I mentioned there was nothing simple about Anna’s graduation, but recalling
the rest will have to wait until next week. Still to come are the Graduation
exercise itself, another Baccalaureate Service and a Graduation Party at
my house.
Fishing Update
Continued From Last Week
Tony Austin had suggested we try our luck fishing in the lake where we had
spent many hours of our youth, namely the one we know as Miss Eaton Lake
on Coffee Street. And, because Sunday afternoon was the only time we could
fit it into our schedules, I agreed to abandon family tradition and go fishing
on a Sunday.
At about one thirty on Sunday afternoon, Tony phoned to say he was at his
mom’s house waiting on me.
"Come on over, when you’re ready. We can drive to the lake in my car,"
he insisted.
I gathered up all of the fly fishing gear Tony had supplied plus an old pair
of insulated rubber boots and put it all in the backseat of my car. I knew
Tony would be wearing waders, but having neither hip boots nor waders, I
figured my boots would keep my feet dry as long as I didn’t sink deeper
than ten inches in the muck near the shore.
There was an air of excitement about us as we drove to the lake that once
drew us there when walking was our sole means of transportation. Billy
Todd’s sawmill no longer stands vigil over the north end of the lake,
but since a flower shop located near the site of the sawmill, it’s easy
to conjure up images of the past. Likewise, the small house where Mr. Bishop
lived is missing from the opposite end of the lake. Mr. Bishop was a bream
fisherman. Using only red worms and split-shot, Mr. Bishop, in his latter
years, caught a lot of bream sitting in his own backyard.
Tony parked between the fence and Woodland Street directly across the street
from where Kenneth Todd once lived. Curious eyes of a couple of children
watched as we slipped on boots and waders before trekking to the shallows
of the north end of the lake.
Tony stepped a few feet into the water and began working his fly toward a
log at the edge of the lake.
"I caught ‘em about ten feet out from that log," Tony recounted, speaking
of his catch of bream the day before.
A stiff breeze from the west northwest made for difficult casting, but whenever
a fly landed in the area Tony described, a feisty bream soon had it in its
mouth, not wanting to let go of it.
"Do you want to keep these?" Tony asked.
"No, I’ve got fish in the freezer."
Tony, I knew, was eager to assess my fishing technique, particularly my ability
to work a fly rod. From time to time he offered a suggestion.
"Don’t take the line in front of your hand. Strip it from behind your
right hand, while controlling the line with your forefinger on your right
hand…like this," he cautioned while demonstrating the correct method.
Seeing my awkwardness in netting my first few bream, Tony shared, "Don’t
pull the leader inside the rod-tip. Instead, for the last few feet, hold
your rod behind you and work the fish toward you."
Fly fishing involves manipulating a lot of loose line, line that often piles
up at ones feet, especially when a fish is retrieved. While fly fishermen
do have a reel, I don’t think it gets much use unless the fish being
caught is large enough that the reel’s drag is needed to prevent the
line from breaking.
"Here’s a quick way to work your line back out after a retrieve," Tony
demonstrated, by rapidly shaking the tip of his fly rod.
Almost magically, several feet of fly line squiggled through the end of the
rod, where it could be easily worked again, without a lot of back-casting.
I’m sure I could have learned a lot of fishing techniques from Tony,
had time permitted and the fishing not been so active, but with fish biting,
worrying about technique took a backseat to pure fun.
We tried our luck at the south end before leaving, but the bream were not
as cooperative. I don’t think Tony’s convinced I can fling a fly
as far as he can, but I earned his praise for my back-cast.
"I’ll say this for you," Tony mused, as he knelt nearby and studied
my casting ability, "your back-cast is better than ninety-five percent of
the warm-water fishermen I see."
Unlike the cold water flowing in mountain streams, the water in ponds and
lakes is immobile, warming and cooling as the seasons and the sun permit.
Thus to anglers, the rest of us are warm-water fishermen.
Returning to the car after an afternoon of fun, I asked Tony if he realized
we were trespassing. He was not and had not seen the "No Trespassing" signs
posted around the lake.
"I thought the City of Pontotoc took over this lake," he stated.
"They did. It’s my understanding that Miss Eaton didn’t want to
be responsible for the upkeep and talked the City into taking it. It’s
my guess the City fathers don’t really care if we fish here, but they
want to protect themselves from any liability if we get hurt or drown."
"So, I guess, I won’t be able to plead ignorance, if someone comes to
arrest me the next time I’m fishing down here," Tony reasoned.
"I reckon not," I responded.
Back at the car, I attempted to separate the upper and lower sections of
the bamboo fly rod Tony had given me.
"Wait!" he yelled. "You’ll break the tip, if you jam it in the ground.
Let me help you."
"Remember," he said, "hands close together when joining together, hands far
apart when taking apart."
Tony struggled to disjoin the sections for a few minutes, before thrusting
one end of the fly rod at me and stating, "Hold that."
With me holding and Tony pulling, the fly rod finally came apart. Unfortunately,
the bamboo section Tony was holding had pulled out of the metal ferrule.
I think we were both stunned by what had just happened.
"Carl’s not ‘gonna like this," Tony stated. "He’s a perfectionist
and the machinist I use to put the ferrules on for me. It looks like the
epoxy didn’t hold on this one. I’ve made about sixty-five of these
rods, and this is the third one to pull loose."
"If it’ll make him feel any better, tell him it took two of us to pull
it apart." I joked.
Returning to Tony’s mom’s house on Columbia St., Tony shared that
he wanted Barbara and me to find a time to visit his cabin on the White River.
"We can fish, and there are plenty of places for Barbara to shop nearby,"
Tony coaxed.
As of this writing, no date has been set, but I’m thinking the mountains
and their cold streams will feel pretty good in mid-September, at least for
this warm-water fisherman.
Bodock Beau
Errant Essayists
Every year, English teachers from across the country can submit their collections
of actual analogies and metaphors found in high school essays. Here are some
last year's winners:
-
Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently
compressed by a Thigh Master.
-
His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants
in a dryer without Cling Free.
-
She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just
before it throws up.
-
Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
-
He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree.
-
The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of
his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly
surcharge-free ATM machine.
-
The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling
ball wouldn't.
-
McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with
vegetable soup.
-
Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.
-
The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them
in hot grease.
-
Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy
field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland
at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a
speed of 35 mph.
-
John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also
never met.
-
He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant, and she was the East
River.
-
Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.
-
The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan
just might work.
-
The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for
a while.
-
The ballerina rose gracefully en Pointe and extended one slender leg behind
her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.
-
It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power
tools.
-
He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she
were a garbage truck backing up.
Contributed by H.P. Prewett, Jr.
Copyright © 2000 - 2006 RRN
Online.
