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Of Halloween Things That Go Bump In The Night and In Your Pocketbook
It seems like more and more these days all seasons have just started to run together into one big lump.
I was in a big chain store this week when I happened down the candy aisle and noticed they not only selling Halloween candy out, but they selling Christmas candy out too.
And while I didn’t notice any of the accoutrements of Thanksgiving shoved in there amongst them, I feel confident they had them somewhere.
Of course I’m sure they don’t make much money off Thanksgiving stuff since all folks need for that is food and paper pilgrims, paper turkeys and such and once you buy most of that stuff it lasts forever. Most of the Thanksgiving decorations we set out every year were actually passed down to us from Laurie’s Grandmother Rhodes.
So I guess that just leaves them the need to squeeze more out of us on Halloween and Christmas. And the Halloween squeezing is fast gaining on the Christmas squeezing we’re already used to. If you’ve seen the price of Halloween costumes, rubber daggers and pitchforks, fake tombstones and the like you know what I’m talking about. The cost of the candy is minuscule.
I was a store this Halloween season that actually had an entire rack dedicated to just selling rubber bats. Bats in all sizes and poses, some hanging, some flapping, all made in China and all yours for $10 dollars a throw. Now what anybody would need with a rubber bat to start with is the first great Halloween mystery and the second is why any American who weasels about at paying $3.00 a gallon of gasoline would even consider paying $10.00 for a hunk of Chinese plastic shaped like a bat.
But even if you leave that high dollar bat rack alone, if you have children you’ll still get to finger through more than a few costumes and ultimately you'll have to buy one for each child in your brood before your done.
And brother they sure are proud of their costumes this year, such that they have.
It seems the costume selection was a better and a bit more child friendly way back when I was kid. The first store bought costume I ever had was the year I was in Mrs. Betty Black’s four-year old kindergarten at the First United Methodist Church Mt. Holly. Back then all the costumes came in flat boxes with cellophane tops that let you see the mask inside, which was nothing more than half a face with a rubber band stapled to the back to hold it on your head and folded up neatly under the mask was a polyester pajama like suit that went along with whatever character the mask was supposed to be.
That year I could’ve been Caspar the Friendly Ghost, Fred Flintstone, or any of the Super Friends, but instead I chose to be a robot mainly because it had a flashlight bulb in the forehead you could turn on by mashing the button on the battery pack you carried in the pocket of the polyester robot suit.
I guess you’d have just had to have been there in 1970 to get the full effect of that costume. And I’ll guarantee you the whole thing battery and all didn’t cost 2 dollars.
Nowadays most of the costumes I’ve seen are just plain silly or just plain gross and all just plain expensive.
A friend of mine told this year of how he had to argue his son out of a store bought costume called a “Redneck Suit” that consisted of a fake rubber belly and fake redneck clothes. And all for only 50 bucks.
I guess I should consider myself lucky since I dress up in that same costume every day, belly and all, for free.
And after Laurie took Jacob and Kathleen costume shopping all she came up with for Kathleen that didn’t make her look like a hoochie mama was hippie costume that looks like a Laugh In nightmare.
And poor Jacob, bless his heart, hasn’t found anything he likes yet except for the orange jumpsuit with the word inmate on the back like the ones they make all the hooligans at the jailhouse wear. They wanted $22 dollars for it.
I had to break it to him that you don’t pay money for those kinds of suits. You just screw up big enough and the Sheriff will give you one for free.
It ain’t no trick and it sure ain’t no treat.
It Was A Hot Time Up North In Meadville That Night
I’m happy to report to y’all today that I’m back from the north and won’t have to go back for another year.
I do actually love visiting with Laurie’s kin people and the folks in that part of the country and it ain't that I don't like it up there strictly speaking. Other than the climate, which for my money is all bad, my main problems with the north is that they ain’t got around to getting cultured enough have a lot of luxuries we southerners now just take for granted. And southerners use some of these things more often than we breath air and up north we can't find any of them.
Like iced tea. One of the first lessons I learned traveling up north is that if you make the mistake of ordering tea at a restaurant, what you’ll wind up getting is a little cup, a saucer, a little pot of hot water, and tea bag. That's just unheard of down south.
And of course if you go north you’ll find they don’t have grits up there either. Most northerners are just plain confused about the whole concept of grits and this is best expressed by the old joke about the Yankee who was visiting the south and went in to a restaurant for breakfast. The waitress asked him if he’d like grits and the fellow said, “You know, I’ve heard of grits and believe I’ll try them. But I’m not too hungry though. Just bring me two.”
But even I, as southern as I am, can survive for a few days without iced tea and grits. But the fact they don't have air conditioning up north yet can make it extremely hard for even the most open minded southerner to navigate in the north in this modern day and age.
Truth of the matter is they don’t have air conditioning up north because most of the time they don’t need it. What they usually need most is heat. But during those rare occasions when it turns off hot, most northern homes have few ways to moderate the heat.
And of course when I was in Meadville it was during one of those rare occasions. When we arrived it was cool but then the temperature started to climb a little higher on each of the subsequent days we stayed and we like to of suffocated. That night, up in the bedroom of the Hunter diary farm I fixed the ceiling fan so it sucked air up instead of blowing air down so it would draw in the cool outside air. That worked just fine that night.
The next night that trick didn’t work because it had got hotter outside and there weren’t no cool air out there to suck inside so we laid there all night and tried to keep from sweating up our ghosts.
But I guess of all the miracles southern society air conditioning is the one that has most ruined us to the point we can't do without. You’d think we always had it and we ain't.
Time was you sat on the front porch and fanned yourself to get cool. Later on we quit putting porches on our houses so we installed a big exhaust fan in the middle of our houses that for the most part just kept the hot air moving.
Then along came window air conditioners and we got to where we could cool down one or two rooms down at a time. But it was central air conditioning that finally did us in. It’s now standard equipment in all new southern homes and some even have one system for the upstairs and one for the down.
I was six years old when we got central air in our house. My daddy put it in himself I can still remember listening as he worked in the tight crawl space trying to put in the sheet metal ductwork all by himself. You’ve never heard the like of the screaming and banging and crying that came from underneath that house that day.
At one point, daddy had worked himself up to a feverished pitch while wrestling with the cold air return duct that was as wide as the crawl space and longer than he was and he started calling on the Lord for help. In between the banging and screaming daddy would holler, “Oh Lord help me! Please, Jesus help me! Oh, Lord, help me! And this went on for quite some time.
Directly my brother Tommy who was 3, looked up at mom and said, “Momma, why doesn’t Jesus go down there and help him?”
I guess the good Lord just figured it was miracle enough to let folks invent air conditioning and He’d let daddy put it in all by himself.
It's Been A Tough Spring In TV- Land
The last few months have been rather tough on the 1960’s television sitcom actors of my youth. We’ve lost three over the last couple of months that I know of.
The first was Eddie Albert, of Green Acres fame, who died at the age of 99. Truth be told as much as I watch and keep up with these old shows I thought he’d died years ago. I guess like Mark Twain, rumors of his death were greatly exaggerated, at least until now anyway.
Then most recently we lost Leon Askin who is best known to the world in his role on Hogan’s Heroes as General Burkhalter, the Luftwaffe General who routinely showed up to threaten to send Col. Klink to the Russian front for something stupid he had done.
But to my mind, the most notable actor to leave us these days has to be Howard Morris. Y’all might not be familiar with Brother Morris by his given name even though he’s appeared in numerous roles in movies and television shows, and directed even more than that, but y’all all do know him.
You just know him for his role as Ernest T. Bass.
Now it has often been the joke in this part of the country made by Yankees and other uneducated people that we southerners think the greatest actor who ever lived is Andy Griffith and that he is followed closely by Don Knotts. And for my money that’s mostly true. But I also think Howard Morris should rank right up there with them, if not for anything else other than the fact his character is just as well known as theirs is and his character of Ernest T. Bass only appeared in five episodes.
I’d almost be willing to bet you an orange aide at Charlie’s Drug Store that if you were to walk up to any northern Yankee person in downtown New York City they’d know who Ernest T. Bass is. Of course if they didn’t it wouldn’t really matter unless they planned on moving down here like so many of them do.
They just don’t make shows or develop the characters in them like they used to and difference seems to be as much in the detail as in the plot.
The old shows had casts of well-defined, well created, and well played characters that each in turn had some characteristic or trait that not only described the character to the audience, but allowed the audience to use the character to describe people they knew in real life.
Don Knotts role as Barney Fife is the classic example. Deputy Fife is still the most regularly used term to describe a bumbling a lawman.
The characters in today’s shows just aren’t as well constructed. And the plot has changed too it just hasn’t thickened.
Modern prime time today seems to boil down to two popular groups- reality shows and the old standard sitcom. The trouble is the reality shows have about as much to do with reality as G. Gordon Liddy has to do with honest government and the sitcoms have become could more appropriately be better described as sexcoms, since that’s all they talk about and they don’t involve any reality either.
Then for good measure they through in the commercials about all the pills and such we need help us keep up with all his unreality and its gotten so bad that between the shows and the commercials folks that don’t need such think they do.
I was even sitting in a doctor’s office recently and saw this little device provided by one of those pill companies that let you take a test to see if you needed their pill or not. For each question you answered you were given a numeric value and when you added up the number it told you whether you needed their pill or not.
Laurie was with me at the time and she dared me to touch it. And I’m glad I she did too, now they think some of these pills will make you go blind.
Now ain’t that a heck of a note? I remember as kid being told by adults about certain things that would make you go blind but I always thought they were lying.
I guess now maybe they weren’t.
But there is good news in the midst of all this bad though. They might not make ‘em like they used to, but at least they rerun ‘em. And as long as they do that, we’ll be all right.
Billy Buys Bees and Gets Stung By His Wife
If you missed last weeks column, let me bring you up to speed. We talked about bees.
And we talked about how my brothers and I kept bees when we were teenagers.
Now, in this weeks edition, youre fixing to learn that my latest adventure is trying to get back in the bee business to sort of relive my youth. Laurie says I have never left it so there is no need to try to relive it yet.
But despite her, I began this maneuver last year when I asked my mom and dad to get me a beehive, or bee box as some folks call it, for my birthday which is near the end of April. And they did.
The thing about bee boxes is that you build them from a kit. That part hasnt changed and I had a ball building it. The smell of white pine and foundation wax made me feel sixteen years old again. Aside from that, a lot of other things have changed.
Like finding bees to put in it.
In my day, if you wanted bees for your bee box, all you did was take it to some old man you knew who kept bees. And there used to be a lot of them. There arent now. Then, since every bee hive swarms in late spring and half the hive leaves for a new home, the old man you gave your bee box too would be more than obliged to catch a leaving swarm and "hive it" for you.
In my case I was lucky enough to have a great uncle named Fred Lyons. Uncle Fred was born in Boone and he and my Aunt Pearl came off the mountain to live and raise a family in west Charlotte.
And Uncle Fred spent many an hour teaching me how to keep bees. Uncle Fred knew all about bees. He didnt care much for bee hats, or bee gloves, or any of the other protective clothing items some beekeepers like to wear to keep from getting stung. Uncle Fred knew full well if you worked your bees and were around them often, they got to know you and left you alone. He could open up a hive, take the honey out, and never get stung once. He could even pick his bees up and handle them and never get stung.
And if I needed a swarm, all I had to do was take my bee box over to his place and leave it and Uncle Fred would be more than happy to fill when any one of his 22 hives swarmed.
But I have found it doesnt work that way much anymore. Several bee parasites have pretty much taken their toll on honeybees and most modern folks could really care less about keeping bees. So it seems bees and beekeepers can often times be pretty hard to find.
So if a fellow wants bees for his bee box, most likely hell have to order them from a bee farm, which I did this year.
I ordered them in fact on the first day of February, which was ordering day and the bees are due to arrive on May 7. I ordered to two 4lb boxes of bees and two queens for me, and I also placed the same order for a friend of mine who is taking up beekeeping as well, since its first come first serve and they run out quick.
And thats when I got in trouble.
Laurie called me at work a couple of weeks ago rather upset. She said, "I just opened an invoice from the bee farm and please tell me they made a mistake. Please tell me you didnt order $300.00 worth of bees.
"Oh, no, honey", I said, "half of the order belongs to a buddy of mine so I only owe them $150.00."
Laurie then replied in her mater of fact schoolteacher tone, "Then let me rephrase the question. You mean to tell me youre going to pay somebody $150.00 for insects?"
I told her yes, she could look at that way.
And she did. She also said that with $150.00 she could buy an awful lot of those little bear bottles full of honey.
And for once in her life she just might be right!
A Man, A Barn, A Bee, And An Arm
A Man ran around behind the barn,
He had a bee up under his arm,
And the bee went BZZZZZZZZZZ!!!!
That’s the little rhyme my daddy used to use to torment my two brothers and me when we were little. It’s the only poem I’ve ever heard him recite other than his all time favorite,
Once upon a time,
A Goose drank wine,
And a monkey spit tobacco
On a streetcar line.
Whether or not he made these up himself or found them in a book, I have no idea. That first one ain’t so bad, but that second one is Lulu. I’ve always been scared to ask him where he got it as the only possibilities include some horrible book, the wall of a public toilet, or being created in his own mind, though where one could get the inspiration for such a thing is anybody’s best guess. I can only suppose they must have had problems in his day with drunk geese and monkey’s spitting on trains and such.
But it’s that first rhyme dad had the most fun with. He liked to repeat it to small children and then when he got to that BZZZZZ part, he’d reach down and stick his finger under the child’s arm and gooch him good. This always made the kid scream which is why he did it in the first place. Dad did this rather frequently, to the extent that I not only remember it, I’ve done it to both my children.
I still use it to wake Kathleen up some mornings, which she hates, and I’d use it on Jacob too, but he usually gets up before I do.
But I’ll have to say here that in all told in my some 39 years on this planet, I’ve yet to see a man actually run around behind a barn with any bees up under his arms. I did, however, once see a man run through my yard with a bee stuck up under his hat.
It was back when I was 17 years old. Most teenagers in those days chased girls, but not me. I joined the volunteer fire department and chased fires. In between all this excitement I raised bees. My brother Tommy who is 3 years younger than me joined me in this endeavor and all told we ended up with six beehives all together.
On this particular day Tommy decided to go up and check our bees ahead of me and I was to join him a later. And let me interject here what checking on one’s bee’s entailed. This process included prying the lid off the top of the bee hive, peeping down into the hive, and then prying loose and pulling out the racks the bees and their honey were on. Bear in mind here that most of the time; the bees don’t cotton much to being peeped in at, and for their part they’d just as soon be left alone. They will also take this opportunity to sting folks who peep at them if given an opportunity. The secret is knowing what you’re doing and wearing the proper clothing.
And Tommy knew what he was doing and was appropriately adorned. He had on his jumpsuit and his long bee gloves that covered his arms way up past his elbows. And he had on his bee hat too, which was actually a Frank Buck hat with a bee veil pulled over it that had a drawstring at bottom you tied to keep the bees from getting in.
But even with all this knowledge and equipment every now and then a bee or bees will still get you. And as I approached the side yard I saw Tommy with the top off a hive, hard at work, with the bees swirling all around him. Then, all of a sudden, Tommy started screaming and took off running through the yard, cutting flips, and trying to pull his bee hat off all at the same time.
When I got to him, I found out what had happened. A bee had found it’s way into Tommy’s hat, had stung him in the forehead, and even though it could only sting him once, kept popping him in the face trying to sting him again. And poor ol’ Tommy, thinking it was another bee, died a thousand deaths every time it did.
And the poor fool couldn’t get his hat off because he’d tied the drawstring in a double knot!
Stayed to tuned for next week’s adventure when, “Billy Buys Bees, And Gets Stung By His Wife”.
Cut Too Close For Comfort
I was sitting around a local barbershop recently visiting with my old friend the Rev. Deacon Doctor C.B. Barr, Jr. While we visited, the barber stepped out for a few minutes and while he was gone a fellow came in for a haircut we didn’t know. The man stood by patiently for a few minutes until finally the Rev. Barr looked over at me and said in his most professional barber tone, “Do you want to get him or do you want me to?”
It liked to scared the poor man to death. I quickly reassured him we were only kidding and that the real barber had just stepped out to take a drink of liquor. I’m sure by the time the Rev. Barr and I finished with him the man really did want to take a drink of liquor.
But this little episode reminded of several true to life nightmare experiences I’ve personally had in a barber shops I wasn’t familiar with and went in for haircut only to come out looking like the Rev. Barr had cut it himself.
The first time this ever happened to me was I was in a local pastors school in Winston Salem. In those days I still wore my hair in a Ronald Reagan pompadour and it had gotten kind of shaggy so I decided to go over to the Haynes mall and get a haircut. Inside the mall I found a barber shop that was more of a beauty shop but the woman running was real pretty and smelled real good so I naturally decided to let her have a whack at my hair. And that’s exactly she did all right. Whack.
She never turned on a clipper or nothing, just used her scissors. And that darn woman sure scissored me good. I came out of that place with this funky modern hair do with my pompadour and both my sideburns gone.
Right after that I heard that old Ray Stevens song about how you never get a haircut when you’re out of town. And I never have since.
But getting a haircut at strange barbershop close to home when you’re regular barber is out of town can get you ruined just as bad.
I have found this to be true especially if you wear a flattop like I do now. I don’t know how many times I’ve gone into a shop and asked the man or woman inside if they can cut a flattop only get a yes when the answer should have been no. More than one time I’ve discovered to late to flee that the scissor bill doing the cutting has never actually seen a flattop haircut up close, much less ever tried to cut one.
Jack Warren tells a good one about when he owned a shop in Mt. Holly that involved a barber he had working for him that ruined flattops so bad that Jack barred him from cutting them. One day while Jack was busy some poor fool came in the shop and asked the other barber if he could cut a flattop. Naturally the barber said yes.
Jack knew there was there was something wrong when he heard the customer say very calmly to the other barber, “Mister, you can stop now.” A few minutes later the fellow was more forceful when he again said, “Mister, I said you can stop now.” Jack was in route to intervene when the fellow yelled at the barber in a commanding tone, “Mister, I said you can stop! Now!”
Jack tried to make things right but he quickly realized there wasn’t enough hair left on the man’s head to fix. As a consolation, Jack told the man he’d give him a free haircut the next time he came in. Jack said he almost had the customer calmed down when his lying partner said, “You know, I really can’t cut a flattop”, to which the customer blasted out in a voice that trailed off into exasperation, “Well you picked a fine time to tell me that now!”
Jack said it so funny the way the fellow said it he accidentally busted out laughing and the fellow yelled at him he didn’t think it was too darn funny.
It’s just a good thing the man wasn’t a prizefighter or he might have beaten those two clowns to death.
Oh, and by the way, Jack says the man never did come back for his free cut .
was in my late teens. For the crew, Halloween was big doing’s.
The standing tradition was for all members to gather at the crew hall on Halloween for a big meal that always included Ray Massey and his wife Louise’ country ham biscuits. These alone were reason enough to stop by. Right after supper we’d all saddle up in the ambulances and ride around town just in case pandemonium was to bust loose.
But it never did. That is until the year they let my friend the Phantom and his best buddy join. For several years thereafter pandemonium was assured most every night, especially Halloween.
The first year the Phantom was on the lifesaving crew, somebody remembered he had a cannon and told the chief of police about it. Let me point out here that this was no ordinary cannon. It was a homemade thing the Phantom used to take down to the high school and set off at baseball games. Every time he did, folks in a two-mile radius of the schoolhouse thought a thunderstorm was coming. It was awful.
Naturally the chief asked the Phantom to go get it and these two clowns then conspired a plan that literally shook the whole town. The plan was simple and centered on scaring one policeman in general near about to death. The chief told the Phantom to take his cannon and climb up under the Dutchman Creek Bridge and stand by until he gave the signal.
The Phantom took his place under the bridge and the chief called the officer and told him to meet him on the bridge to help him look for a bomb. Every member of the Lifesaving Crew, the fire department, all the other police in town, and at least one elected official all hid in the Crew Hall peeping out the windows.
A few minutes later the police car crossed onto the bridge wide open, the chief gave the signal, and all heck busted loose. It sounded like a ton of dynamite went off and a huge ball of fire and smoke rolled out from under the bridge. We almost lost police car, policeman, and the chief of police himself in Dutchman’s Creek that night.
The best one the Phantom ever pulled, though, was the year he and his best buddy put on their dress uniforms, tie and all, and dressed another dummy up to look like a corpse. They then put the dead guy on the stretcher in the back of a station wagon ambulance that had windows all around. They’d pull up to a group of trick or treaters and the Phantom would yell, “Hey, y’all want to see a dead man? Of course the kids did. The parents didn’t, but they all gathered around anyhow. The Phantom would go on to explain how they’d found the dead man in a ditch and were taking him to the morgue and since it was Halloween, they thought they’d show him off to folks along the way. The Phantom would have them all on edge by the time he tapped the dead guy who would jump up and scream. Then everybody screamed.
It scared the parents worse than it did the kids. That was some more fun I’ll tell you.
The year the Phantom pulled this stunt, Halloween fell on a Wednesday. And seeing as how the Phantom was a Methodist, he still swears to this day he had no idea they were having prayer meeting at that Baptist Church who’s parking lot he flew into, siren wailing, to show off his dead man.
That Phantom sure could bust up a prayer meeting. Later on that night the captain of Lifesaving Crew caught up with him and they had a prayer meeting of they’re own.
The Long Road Home
Well, the Griswald’s of High Grass Manor have safely made it back from their winter solstice to that cold Yankee nether world of Laurie’s birth.
We even saw it snow a bit while out spotlighting the deer. And before I here from all y’all, you can actually do that in the State of Pennsylvania. That is as long as you don’t have a gun with you when you do it, you don’t spotlight houses, you don’t light up any livestock in the pastures, and you don’t do it after 11:00pm.
I have to hand it to Laurie’s redneck kin. We took two four-wheel drive pickup trucks and had some more fun driving around in the cold looking for deer. We saw 43 in all in just over an hour. Our last act of the evening was to take to Uncle Jim’s cornfield where we actually drove up in amongst a herd of about 10 deer grazing on his corn. Uncle Jim frowns on deer grazing on his cow’s corn.
Meanwhile, the next morning out in the barn, there was plenty of action going on, what with all the milking, feeding and shoveling they do in there. Uncle Jim milks near to a hundred cows four times a day. The shoveling goes on in the morning and the evening to clean up after a total of some 200 cows and the feeding and cleaning of these big dumb beasts never stops.
On Sunday evening long about sundown, young Jacob heard somebody say that somebody out in the barn was having a cow. Back home when Jacob hears this, he knows somebody is referring to his mother having a fit about something that he’s usually responsible for. Dutiful child that he is, Jacob went on out to the barn to take his medicine, only to find it wasn’t Laurie having the cow. A real cow was.
Oh, the things young Jacob learned on this trip. And if you ask him, he’ll vividly tell you all about it if his momma ain’t standing close by. Laurie has given him specific instructions as to exactly what he can and cannot tell, especially to Ms. Baxter’s 5th grade class at Lowell elementary of which he is a proud member.
I figure it won’t be long before I’ll have to have a long talk with that boy. That stork story won’t hold much water now.
The trip home took longer than usual since we went to see some Laurie’s kin in the eastern part of her miserable Yankee state. I didn’t mind too much since the car was heading south most of the time. I do all right as long as I’m in the south or heading south.
And finally, I have this to tell on Jacob. For most of the entire trip, he stayed in the milking barn where as I have noted, the cows eat, get milked, and do a whole of lot of another very nasty thing. Needles to say they did some of it on Jacob. He had to change clothes at least twice a day, since you couldn’t stand to be around him if he didn’t.
On Tuesday when Laurie was getting our two yodels ready for school, she told Jacob to get a new pair of pants out of a bag she had in the trunk of the car. It was the same trunk where three garbage bags full of dirty clothes were since we got home so late. Jacob did as he was told. Almost.
When they got in the car, Laurie smelled a familiar foul odor and quickly figured it was coming off of him. Jacob had gotten his pants out of the wrong bag.
The next night we all went to the fish camp since we had missed the week before and my system will lock up if I don’t go at least once a week. We had gotten about half way there when I, too, smelled a familiar foul odor that had wafted its way up to the front of my truck. Jacob was wearing the shoes he’d worn for 4 days in the barn. It was to late to go back, and since they won’t let you in the fish camp barefooted, we went in stinky feet and all.
If any of y’all want to buy a 10 year old boy who’s as hard headed as his momma, is comfortable living in a cow barn, and smells like a goat, I’m fixing to sell him cheap.
I Wish I Were 18 Again. Mostly
Bill Melton
Well, y’all, I’m happy to report that as a member of the East Gaston High School Class of 1984 I’ve just attended our 20-year high school reunion And we had such a fine time. I saw folks I hadn’t seen in 20 years. Some of them hadn’t changed one bit, and some…. well some looked like Father Time himself had beaten them with a stick.
I myself haven’t changed one bit except for where I’ve improved.
Our class president Susie Spears Wilson and a few others outdid themselves putting this thing together. The first event we had was gather at the East Gaston South Point football game under two funeral home tents provided by our class undertaker, Eddie “The Pigg of Death” Pigg.
Let me put in an editorial comment here to say that all of us in the Class of '84 are real proud of the Pigg. He worked part time for the same funeral parlor back when we were in high school and we always knew when the Pigg came to school in his black suit and pulling a long face, somebody had had a bad week.
We were just happy he didn’t wear his undertaking suit this particular night. Folks our age start getting nervous around undertakers especially if they're wearing there work clothes and we’re standing around under funeral home tent with them.
As for the East Gaston/ South Point game, if you are from anywhere near these parts you know the pitched battle this match up has always been. It was big 20 years ago, but we didn’t hold a patch to what it is now. The best estimates I heard were that over 5,000 people attended this game, which I’m sure is good news for the principal since every man woman and child paid $5.00 a head to be there.
And it was a great game even though my side lost. Both teams played a great game and that’s all that matters. Mostly.
Of course my favorite part of the evening was when my old friend Charlie Martin who was announcing the game for WCGC Radio invited me to join him on the air at half time. Y’all know me, I’d rather talk than eat and since it was Friday night and I’d already been to the fish camp, I was ready to go. We talked about Yankees, fish camps, Belmont Abbey, Sacred Heart, and especially about how I was convinced East Gaston was going to whup South Point. Well, I can’t be right all the time.
All I can say is, I sure hope Charlie had half as much fun as I did. I couldn’t have been happier if I’d been carrying on during half time when the Panthers played the Super Bowl this year.
The rest of reunion social events went great as well. We picnicked Saturday afternoon and had one more heck of a hootenanny that night. Folks were 10 years older than the last time we met so everybody behaved. Last time one of our brethren drank so much demon rum that by the end of the evening he'd taken to dancing on the tables and waving his britches in the air.
I will say I'm a bit amazed at some of the things people wore. I was impressed at what a few of these near 40 year old women had squeezed themselves into for the occasion. All night all I could I think of was George Burns singing, “I wish I were 18 Again”.
As for us guys, one of my best buddies in the world came dressed in black from head to toe, and I’d call his name here except for the fact he’s still bigger than me and can still beat me half to death. But y’all all know anytime a middle age man comes to the dance dressed in black he’s ready for action. That boy got out there shimmied and shook his big self all over the dance floor right there between them two disco balls brought for the occasion. I was worried he might throw a hip out until I remembered our classmate Dr. Lawrence Wallace, MD was there. Larry’s an orthopedic surgeon now and could’ve easily popped anything back place he might've knocked loose.
As for me, I wore my bib overalls, as is my custom. And lest y’all think I’m some sort of uncouth redneck hillbilly from Gaston County, you'll kindly note in the attached picture that I wore a dress shirt and tie, too. |
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Father John And The Fear Of Public Speaking
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All over the countryside this time of year, folks are graduating. Graduating from schools of all kinds. High schools and colleges top the list, but everybody likes to get in on a good RSVP wingding. Even day cares have them.
As for me, Ive had a few graduations myself. As I get older, every time I see or hear of folks graduating, I tend to reflect on the schools and graduations of my youth.
I can still vividly remember all the pomp and circumstance the year I graduated from the eighth grade. I was attending Sacred Heart Grade School in Belmont at the time. We only went to the eighth grade, and my class was their first one.
The Sisters sure threw us one heck of a graduation hoedown that year. They even presented each one of us with an officially bound and embossed eighth-grade diploma that rivals the one I got when I finished high school.
This graduation was not only impressive, but it also led to more than one joke at my expense over the next few years. My family loved to brag about how they now had a son who was even smarter than Jethro Bodine, since Jethro had only a "sixth-grade edgy-cation" and their son had made it clean through the eighth.
But unlike Brother Bodine, I went on up the educational ladder. And each school and graduation has its own fond memories.
When I graduated from East Gaston High School in 1984, I was the vice president of the senior class. My wife Laurie says they elected me only because they wanted a representative from all the nerds in the high school and I made it since I was the biggest one they had.
Being vice president also meant I got to give a speech at the graduation, which I enjoyed, since I liked to talk then as much as I do now. The only thing I remember about that speech was the warning I gave at the end of it. It being the custom for all graduates to head off to Myrtle Beach directly after, I reminded them all of the sign Id heard hung in the jailhouse down there. It allegedly read, "Welcome, Gaston County."
Then I attended Belmont Abbey College, where I started out majoring in pre-med. Like Jethro the would-be brain surgeon, I too wanted to try my hand at the healing arts, but this notion quickly faded.
It seems that doctoring requires a good working knowledge of mathematics, and since I didnt have one I had to find something else I could do. This decision was aided by my chemistry professor, who called me into his office just before Spring Break my freshman year. The good doctor said, "Mr. Melton, if youd like to withdraw from my class now, Ill indicate for the record that you withdrew with a passing grade, even though you arent."
I went on to major in history. But I learned other things as well. Like how to speak in public without fear of crowds.
In those days, the Abbey required students in all majors to complete a course in public speaking. I figured I had this one licked, what with my wellconditioned mouth and all. But brother, was I in for a surprise.
I enrolled in the class in the first semester and found it much different than I expected. The professor who taught it was a great big, tough, formidable-looking Benedictine monk by the name of Father John Oetgen. Father John stands well over 6 feet tall, and to this day he still has the command presence of Patton. Father John also has a deep, booming Southern drawl that can shake the windows when he wants it to.
And it could shake me, too. I found out in a hurry that if you opened your mouth in Father Johns class, it had better be discussing the subject at hand. If it wasnt, Father John would chew you up and spit you out right there on the classroom floor.
So every year when I hear Belmont Abbey is graduating another class, I give thanks for Father John. Thanks to him and him alone, any time I step onto a stage or in front an audience of five or 5,000, Im not one bit afraid.
I studied at the foot of the master.
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Mothers Day 2004
I have pondered long and hard about what to get my mother for Mothers Day. It's kind of hard for a grown up son to come up with a Mothers Day gift for his mom. When you're little, its easy. You always knew that every year just before Mothers Day that some schoolteacher, Sunday schoolteacher, or den mother would have you make your mom some crafty thing out of wood and water colors.
When you got to be a teenager you were allowed to graduate up to being instructed in the fine art of macrame when you would then be forced to spend countless hours weaving potholders, plant hangers and the like.
But it ain't so dad gum easy now. Macrame just doesn't have the same effect on a mother when the child making it is beating up on 40.
And if that isn't bad enough, throw in the fact that most of us men are also married to at least one of the mothers of our children and that in itself can thrust us upon the horns of a whole new dilemma.
But it's only a dilemma the first time.
The first Mothers Day I was married to Laurie that she was a mother, I came to the conclusion after thoughtful reflection that since Laurie wasn't MY mother, I didn't have to buy her anything. And seeing as how Jacob was only 9 months old at the time, he naturally hadn't macramed anything so Laurie went without that year.
And I went without too. I went without supper, went without sleeping in the bed, and went without being spoken to for a month.
Most fellows only have to be gored by the horns of this dilemma once.
This year was easy. I put the kids in my shop under the house and they've been macrameing up a storm for the last month. They're so good at weaving by now that the spiders up under there are even taking notes and that potholder will be ready any day now.
So with Laurie taken care of, that just leaves my mother. I was pretty well lost up until recently. I can't buy her clothes since I dont know her size and have better since than to ask and since she has two china closets slap full of shiny little do-dads and gegaws I was beside myself trying to figure out what to do.
Then it hit me. I would write about her in a special Mothers Day newspaper column. What more could a mother ask for, right?
Well, mine found out about it and asked that I not. Shes never quite gotten over the time I put her age in the newspaper and shes three older than that now.
But since I've always liked that Jimmy Dean song they always play on Mothers Day where Jimmy lists all the things he wants to thank his mom for, I figured I would write about her anyhow. I have a whole list of things to thank my mother for too, which include all of the things on Jimmy's list and then some. I will include a few of mine as follows.
Thanks, mom, for giving birth. I am sure it must have been a pain lugging me around for 9 months and I appreciate the effort. I also want to thank you for birthing my two little brothers so I would have someone to beat on and fight with while I grew up.
Thanks, mom, for service as a child restraint system. We didn't use seat belts way back then and my brothers and I wouldn't have survived childhood if your right arm hadn't been perfectly synchronized with your brake foot. To this day your right arm is still faster than any modern airbag deployment system and you never lost one single child out the front window. You did, however, almost knock us out the back on several good occasions.
Thanks, mom, for medical treatments rendered. Who knew turpentine and Camphophenic cured all that stuff. And if hadnt been for you and a Vaporizor full of Vick's Vapor Rub, I would've never made it.
And finally, mom, thanks for looking happy each and every time we gave you all that macrame and homemade crap on Mothers Day for all those many years. You never went without something to hang a fern in or put a pot on and I noticed recently you still use that recipe holder we made you out of Popsicle sticks.
Thanks again, Mom, and happy Mothers Day.
The Mt. Holly PHD Society
In days of old it was the custom in towns and villages for the elders to gather at the gates of the city so that they could dispense wisdom, knowledge, and justice to folks who came to seek their wise counsel.
Times have changed. Today our elders don't assemble at the gates of town anymore. Our towns don't have gates.
But here in the South our stalwart elders have not let the changing of times keep them from their duties of gathering and dispensing wisdom and knowledge.
We did stop them from dispensing justice some time back because most of their judicial remedies tended to involve a short rope and long tree.
These days, our modern elders have left their fences and gates behind to gather mostly at places where biscuits and coffee are sold.
In my hometown of Mt. Holly, one of our chief gathering spots for the wise is Charlie's Drug Store.
Charlie's Drugs offers a welcoming atmosphere and a group of ladies known as Charlies Angels who cook hot dogs and hamburgers for lunch. They also sell coffee for a quarter a cup which draws in elder sages like an outhouse draws flies.
Charlies Drug Store is one of my favorite places on earth. It is a place stuck in time-a pretty good time.
I spent a great deal of my childhood going down there with my Mom while she bought medicine to treat every kind of illness and rash my two little brothers and I could find to catch.
I used to sit around hoping and praying one my brothers would break out with something so we could go to Charlies because Mom never took us that she didn't buy us all a Cherry Smash- a drink made only in Heaven and only sold in Mt. Holly at Charlies Drugs.
If we were exceptionally lucky she might even let us get a comic book or a toy from a little metal rack that had balsa wood airplanes, cap guns, plastic jewelry, and those paddles with a rubber band stapled to a rubber ball.
Today Charlies still has Cherry Smash's and that toy rack. They also still sell medicine, both the modern and old-fashioned kind.
Charlies still carries Castor Oil, Black Draught, Red Oil, and Bag Balm, not to mention Father Johns Cough Syrup and Sloans Linament. All of these were important remedies long before the days of the co-pay prescription card.
Saturday morning a week ago I happened to be passing through town when I observed a called meeting of the group of wise guys who roost at Charlies. A quorum was present and consisted of Dwight Dellinger, Al Norton, and Jack Warren. Gene Painter, the biggest pill pusher in town, dropped in as well.
Gene, not Charlie, owns the drug store.
This group of old gomers is part of an official sect known up until recently as the Sanhedrin. The name was changed in part due to negative Biblical connotations given it by the first group to have that name. It was also changed due to the fact that the vast knowledge and wisdom of this auspicious group dictated a name more befitting its stature be devised.
It is now known as the Mt. Holly PHD society.
PHD in this case stands for Piled High and Deep, an understatement given this groups membership.
The Mt. Holly PHD Society, which has several other members, meets each morning either inside or standing out front of the store. They can be found each day embarking on their never ending quest to solve all of the worlds problems.
People of all ages come from far and wide to visit these wise old devils to find the answers to age old questions like who is buried in Grants Tomb and what time do the monks at Belmont Abbey really hold midnight Mass.
On this particular morning I was allowed to sit on the group while it dispensed with its official business. I have to say my brief visit amongst such an august and noble band was worth every minute. I left happy, enlightened, and full of Cherry Smash.
I plan on stopping in on one of their regular meetings this week to follow up on a research project Dwight Dellinger has been involved with for sometime now.
Dwight claims he is finally going to get to the bottom of the age-old mystery of just how many licks it takes to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop.
If I know Dwight, he will too.
A Case of Enlightenment
As I needed some divine spiritual guidance this week, I headed out Friday morning in search of some wise old sage to enlighten me. Wise old sages are getting harder and harder to come by these days. In the old days they used to hang out on the tops of steep mountains waiting for some lost soul to climb up, but now days the ones that can be found usually prefer hanging out at places that serve decaffeinated coffee.
After an exhaustive search, the best I could do for enlightenment was to attend the regular morning session of the Mt. Holly PHD Society, which was already in session upon my arrival. You will remember the Mt. Holly PHD Society – in this case PHD stands for “piled high and deep” -- that world famous group of august and ripe old men who meet each morning, Monday through Saturday, at Charlie’s Drug Store in Mt. Holly. It is here at a table located in the back of this wonderful old-fashioned drug store known as much for its unique liquid confections and square scoops of ice cream as it is for medication that these old devils gather to shovel and dispense the things they are famous for shoveling and dispensing.
On this particular morning, Jack Warren, Dwight Dellinger, and Aaron Goforth were already busy about the day’s work of shoveling and dispensing when I arrived, so I just jumped in and hung on.
Many things were being discussed this morning, including barber stories. Since Jack Warren, our retired town barber, is older than time itself, he has plenty of them to tell. Nobody around here really knows exactly how old Jack (a naval veteran) is, but if it tells you anything, most of us believe he served in the Confederate Navy. Jack claims his longevity and good health are the result of breathing the fumes of all those hair tonics he poured on peoples’ heads.
And Jack does tell a mean barber story too. One of my favorites involves the time many years ago when a man came in for a haircut and a barber other than Jack waited on the man. When the barber finished, the man asked the barber to tonic him up real good and the barber was more than happy to oblige. When the barber finished, the man then decided he wanted to have a singe, which was the old practice of having the barber singe the ends of your hair with a burning taper. The barber, forgetting that the hair tonic he had just used was made almost entirely of 100 percent pure grain alcohol, lit the taper and stuck it to the man’s head, which was immediately consumed by a ball of fire. The barber had to beat the fire out with a towel, and even though the customer wasn’t hurt, oddly enough he never did ask for another singe.
After a few more such tales, talk shifted to more serious matters. Like plumbing.
Several weeks ago I’d come through town and noticed three vans belonging to a plumbing contractor parked out front of the drug store, so I dropped in to see what was going on. When you see three vanloads of plumbers parked in front of the place where the Piled High and Deep Society meets, your first thought is that one of those manure filled old dudes has finally exploded in the back of the room.
I was relieved to find that no one had busted, but I did find that a rather a severe problem had developed in the drainage system. The old terra cotta pipes they used way back then had finally given up the ghost trying to exhaust all that PHD from the building and needed to be completely replaced.
The advanced age of the building, which some believe is older than Jack Warren himself, proved to be a daunting task for the army of plumbers that descended upon it and resulted in a monumental undertaking that even involved remolding the restrooms.
The project also required some other modern conveniences to be added as well, after Dwight Dellinger, the scientific and analytical member of the group, went in the bathroom and conducted an experiment to prove whether or not manure will run uphill. Dwight has now proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that it will not.
This week we will dedicate the Dwight Dellinger Lift Station after a brief ceremony.
The Devil Made Him Do It
The Devil made him do it. At least that's what he said.
It happened back when Jacob was in the first grade. I came home from work one night to find him in bed a little earlier than usual. His mother said, "Go ask your son what he did at school today." Ain't it funny how ownership of children shifts from one parent to the other in such situations?
Not one for cloak and dagger routines at home, I inquired as to what he had done. His mother said, "He cut holes in his new pants with a pair of safety scissors and his teacher caught him."
So I eased into his bedroom, turned on the lights, and found Jacob with the covers pulled up over his head. I pulled them down and found he wasnt really asleep, just playing possum.
"Son how was your day at school?"
"Just fine, daddy."
"Is there anything that happened today youd like to share with me?
"No, daddy."
"Then," I asked, my voice rising and demeanor turning to that of R. Lee Ermey in his role as the drill instructor in the movie Full Metal Jacket, "Who cut your pants!"
And the crying started. And no, I didnt make him get down on his knees and choke himself like R. Lee wouldve done. I told him to get out of bed and stand by for a spanking.
As I began the usual line of questioning common to most parents who are preparing to give a beating, I continued in a mann that would make Gunnery Sergeant Ermey proud.
"Why did you cut your pants?"
"Sir, I dont know, sir!"
"You knew I would spank you, right?"
"Sir, yes, sir!"
"Then you wanted a spanking, didnt you?"
"Sir, No, sir!"
"Then tell me why you cut your pants!"
And with that Jacob stuck his bottom lip out, looked up at me and then pointed at the floor and said, "The devil."
And I had to leave the room. Parents and drill instructors can't laugh in front their children or privates. Jacob also didnt get a spanking either. This time he got points for creativity.
But nobody blames the devil anymore. Not directly anyway. Folks always blame their evilness on somebody or something other than themselves, but nobody gives the devil his due anymore. To even speak of devil isnt politically correct these days. Most preachers dont even mention him and some dont even think hes real. This is funny, too, since I've been a Christian all my life and learned early on that while most Christians dont make it to church every Sunday, the Devil doesn't miss a one.
And the Devil is real. Just keep turning the pages of this newspaper and you'll see. He stays busy too. Right now hes having a ball in Iraq stirring up stinks on both sides of the track.
But if you are still a skeptic about the reality of the Devil, here are a few real life examples, direct from modern society, that prove beyond a shadow of a doubt the Devil is real.
Cell phones are of the Devil. I actually carry two. There is nothing like never being able to get to a place where you can be left alone. There is also nothing like being in the middle of church or other function just to have some fool's phone go off loudly to the tune of Popeye the Sailorman or some other obnoxious sound.
Computers are of the Devil. It's amazing that a thing I didn't own or possess ten years ago is the thing I now spend most of my life staring at. The Devil also appears to have controlling interest in the Internet.
Bonus cards are of the Devil. There is nothing more aggravating being asked by some cashier for a card I dont have or want. They always point out how it will save me money, but that's a crock. All I know is, if I had a store I wouldnt have a card but Id dang sure take everybody elses.
And finally, store bought tomatoes are a sure sign of the Devil. If you havent planted at least one tomato plant by now you should. I find it hard to believe that a nation that put a man on the moon over 30 years ago still can't produce one measly store bought tomato thats fit to eat.
It could only be the work of the devil.
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Father Knows Best. Mostly.
To say that my old pappy, W.S. "Bill" Melton Sr., is a character is about like saying Niagara Falls is a waterfall and leave it at that. It is a true statement right enough, but it doesn't tell you very much.
Over the years in this column, I've shed some light on my Dad but I really haven't painted y'all a picture that does him justice so this week with it being Father's Day and all, I figure now would be a good time to start.
To begin with, my Dad was born in Charlotte on February 13, 1931. Granny said he was born on Friday the 13th and it was windy and storming, which may account for why he is scared of storms and tornadoes to this day.
Dad grew up in West Charlotte. He married mom in 1951 the year after they graduated from Harding High School and he did a variety of jobs, from running a filling station with his brother to working for Duke Power. Dad finally wound up working for Eastern Airlines, where he stayed for 34 years as a ramp supervisor. For some unknown reason, the guys who worked for him gave him a nickname. They called him "Old Marble Head". Today Old Marble Head is still going strong working at the Nevins Center in Charlotte.
To physically describe Dad, let me just say that even to this day if you're out somewhere in Mt. Holly or over in west Charlotte and run across an old dude that makes you think you may have just seen Elvis, then you've seen Dad. Actually if look at him real close, you'll see that he really looks like a combination of Elvis Presley, Roy Orbison, and Johnny Cash (when Johnny had hair).
Personality-wise, Dad is a cross between Archie Bunker and Fred Sanford. He thinks like Archie and drags stuff up to the yard like Fred. To give you an idea of Dad's philosophical bent, I'll share one of his most recent observations with you.
Last week a conversation came up about alligators and how they hide in ponds and creeks waiting to jump up and eat unsuspecting people and wildebeests that get too close.
Dad said, "You know, those things were almost extinct not that long ago and then they made them an endangered species. Now they're everywhere. Why in the world would anybody care if something like that was extinct or not? Dinosaurs have been extinct for years and you don't see anybody missing them."
As for his nocturnal need to drag stuff up in the yard, it's just amazing that one old man can drag up so much mess. And he saves everything. Dad even has an entire outbuilding packed full of every kind of thing you can imagine. I call it Melton's Spider Factory and I try to avoid it at all costs. On one recent adventure inside it I actually found a box that had all of his Eastern pay stubs from 1980 through 1986. One can just never be sure when those will come in handy.
The good news is that Dad can drag up anything he wants to in his yard because nobody will ever see it unless they fly over in a helicopter. Dad's entire one acre yard is hidden from view. 160 holly bushes surround the place and inside this ring of bushes he has also planted what appears to be one of every kind of tree and plant known to Creation. Folks in the area have long referred to the place as The Jungle.
The funny thing here is that when Dad built the house in 1961 there wasn't one single tree on the entire place. Now after all these many years Dad has more forms of plant life growing on that one acre than Daniel Stowe has in his whole Botanical Garden.
And Dad loves the privacy all these bushes afford him. Truth be told, Dad hasn't taken advantage of the indoor plumbing since 1975.
As I look back on growing up in the bushes of our own Jungle with Dad and the rest of our happy menagerie, I've determined that like Tarzan the Ape-man, I was shielded from the real world. My childhood would have actually made a really good 1970's sitcom.
It would've been about a family that made the Griswalds look like the Waltons.
Happy Fathers, Dad and many more.
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