PICAYUNE —
A couple of us were standing on the creekbank one afternoon, watching the City crews electrify the Christmas Trees and Floats on the stream. It’s a gift that our small town has made to the rest of the world for nearly half a century, called “Christmas on Deer Creek.” If you haven’t been to Leland for this event during December and early January, please come over one evening and enjoy the beauty, peace, and tranquility of a ride up and down Deer Creek, one of the longest creeks in the country, but only a couple of miles of it get decorated like we do every year.
Anyhoo, one of the Deer Creek Drive residents walked over from putting the lights on his front porch (“I wanted to go hunting, but I got this Look!”) to greet me with, “Bob, I met someone in Iceland who knows you and asked me to tell you Hi from them.” Then, typically male, he declared, “But I can’t remember her name.”
Iceland? I had a limited number of acquaintances in that part of the world. Maybe it was Al Bjournson, from the Navy? Perhaps our personal Viking, the foreign exchange student Johan Fintland, and his family were sightseeing? He’s a doctor married to another doctor and they practice in Sweden with their two kids, a boy and a girl. We’re hoping they will visit us at Brownspur soon. It might have been Asa and Big Yawn, who came to B.C. & John’s wedding 15 years ago. Jan was quick to point out to us menfolks from his 6-foot, 5-inch height, that his name was spelt like a woman’s name in America, but he wanted no confusion on the matter. He must have endured some teasing somewhere. However, Adam and I assured him that we already knew him vicariously through a couple of other authors, Robert Ruark and Clair Huffaker, as Big Yawn in The Cowboy And The Cossack, and as inebriated Jan in The Old Man And The Boy: “Yump, Yawn, Yump!” To which the wobbly one eyed the pitching deck and equally-appearing-pitching dock, “Yump? How can I yump ven I got no place to stood?!”
Well, our greetings-sending friend was none of the above. “No, her husband was an ag pilot who lived with you for a couple of years, with his son. Seems like he’s passed away, but she was on a cruise with her sister.”
Aha! Sally Morgan, from Southern California! True enough, her husband John, a chopper pilot in Nam whom I knew, had called when son Matt (later to acquire with us the call sign “Napalm”) had been accepted to Commercial Aviation at Delta State, where he was roommates with my future son-in-law. “Bob, I have suddenly realized that my son is almost grown, and I haven’t spent the amount of time with him that I need to. If you will rent me The Store (our old plantation commissary store that we converted into a guesthouse), I’m going to give the Station a deal they cannot refuse on their ag spraying for the next two years.”
We enjoyed those next two years as much as any in our lives! John was not only pleasant, but he was a fix-it guy, like Big Dave was. By contrast, I have been declared by all who know me as a tear-it-up guy. It’s Momma’s fault, but true nonetheless. John “Clip” Morgan had the house in better shape than ever.
He acquired his nickname during those years when one afternoon late we were down at the bridge shooting, and his .22 shot dry. He had just started to reload a 30-shot clip when Adam drove up and announced that Betsy had said to come on to supper Now! John never broke stride: “Tell her we’ll be there right after I empty this clip,” he advised, inserting the cartridges into the spring.
John had only flown “Slick Ships” in Nam, so his first chance to initiate big explosions came with us, blowing beaver dams in the Mammy Grudge. He loved it! Matt even…well, I probably don’t need to chase that rabbit. We had a ball with the Morgan boys, but sadly, Matt called the next Memorial Day after he had graduated and gone to work flying. His dad had died in a flying accident in CA. Matt went on to be a Top Gun pilot in the Navy. Still drops by at times.
Now Sally was sending us greetings from Iceland! It’s a Small World!
Columns
It’s really a small, small world
- Columns
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Hood’s ‘open carry’ ruling strikes important balances
Attorney General Jim Hood’s office issued an opinion this week that went a long way toward establishing some order and applying some common sense to what has become a contentious and confusing debate both for proponents and opponents of free exercise of the Second Amendment.
House Bill 2, which becomes law July 1, was authored and led to passage by state Rep. Andy Gipson, R-Braxton. Gipson has told the press that he believed the legislation was necessary to clearly define what a concealed weapon is under the law and to distinguish between “concealed carry” and “open carry” rights. But many law enforcement officers charged with enforcing the state’s “concealed carry” law and other contradictory statutes, the bill created some confusion and Hood’s AG opinion brought some clarity to the ongoing debate. -
The Loss of Trust
Amid all the heated cross-currents of debate about the National Security Agency’s massive surveillance program, there is a growing distrust of the Obama administration that makes weighing the costs and benefits of the NSA program itself hard to assess. The belated recognition of this administration’s contempt for the truth, for the American people and for the Constitution of the United States, has been long overdue.
- Vocability Words can be both familiar and extremely confusing when taken from their usual context. Ask any wine enthusiast about legs, fat or bricks and they may assume you are speaking “Vinonese.” Ok — I made that word up; but the language of wine does indeed include legs, fat and brix which have entirely different meanings from what you might assume. Working with definitions from http://www.wineschool.com/vocabulary.html, try your basic knowledge of “Vinonese.”
- Vocability Words can set a tone for a situation, alter someone’s perception of an individual or group — in short, there is power in them. The Bible cautions, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue...” — Proverbs in 18:21, ASB. With that in mind, I will be focusing on words, some recently used and some obscure, to test the readers and build on what you already know. There will be theme weeks, for instance next week will focus on words involving wine — for no particular reason! So try your vocabulary skills with the following and see how you score. I’m always open to suggestions for material.
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A hard rain is gonna fall...
By Kathryn Jean Lopez/Syndicated columnist
After disappearing during his term in office and bringing scandal to his family and state, former South Carolina governor Mark Sanford is going to Washington, having won election to Congress. And that’s far from the worst story reflecting the current character of our nation.
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Not your mother’s Ladies’ Home Journal
By Rheta Grimsely Johnson/Syndicated columnist
I haven’t seen the Ladies’ Home Journal in about a million years, except maybe in the dentist’s office when I was trying to avoid a television permanently set on Fox News.
Somebody’s grandchild was selling magazines for a school project, and Ladies’ Home Journal was the only one on the list I recognized. Now it comes to the house.
Let’s just say: It’s not my mother’s Ladies’ Home Journal. This month, right behind a feature called “A Country of People Who Never Stop Eating” is one called “Nice Girls Do Get Tattoos.” -
Health care market needs oversight
By Gene Lyons/Syndicated columnist
Sometimes the best journalism explains what’s right under our noses. In Steven Brill’s exhaustive Time magazine cover article, “Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us,” it’s the staggeringly expensive, grotesquely inefficient and inhumane way Americans pay for medical care.
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VA’s appalling failures not recent
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist
While recent national press attention to ongoing problems at Mississippi’s G.V. (Sonny) Montgomery Veterans Administration Medical Center in Jackson is welcome and needed, the failures of the overall VA service apparatus in Mississippi are not recent problems.
In short, former U.S. Rep. Sonny Montgomery — Mississippi’s “Mr. Veteran” and author of the modern G.I. Bill that bears his name — must be spinning in his grave. There have been significant failures and poor service to veterans documented by state and local media since 2008. -
Dolley Madison politically savvy
By Cokie and Steven V. Roberts/Syndicated columnists
When Dolley Payne Madison became first lady in 1809, she instituted Wednesday evening gatherings at the White House where political rivals could meet and talk. They were called “squeezes” because so many people showed up and crowded the room. As Cokie wrote in her book “Ladies of Liberty": “All were welcome as long as they were appropriately dressed. And all went — skipping a Wednesday night might mean missing a vital piece of political information or being left out of a crucial deal.”
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Mississippi isn’t immune from national college tuition trends
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist
Higher education in Mississippi has not been immune from national trends cited in a recent Center on Budget and Policy Priorities report which concludes that over the last five years, the global economic downturn and a “no new taxes” political climate have increasingly shifted the burden of higher education finance to students and parents at a time when enrollment is increasing and the percentage of state support is decreasing. - More Columns Headlines
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Hood’s ‘open carry’ ruling strikes important balances
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