PICAYUNE —
We went to an important LHS Class Reunion recently; one of those that has a Big 0 in it, you know? For the record, it was one of those Mass Class Reunions, although I was there because of the Class with the Big 0 coming up, but there were probably 200 people who attended, and though I might have been acquainted with 15 of them, I’d bet I had almost as much fun as anyone there.
See, one of the top LHS beauties is very, very close to me, and she was there to meet old friends and remember wonderful LHS times together. I was there to provide transportation and wait upon her every need, as a good husband should. She parked her purse at a table, said. “Watch that,” and headed for the dance floor, where the crowd was congregating, not to dance (yet) but to greet one another. I leaned against the wall, propped my foot on a chair, and watched. This was fun!
Most of the ladies, former beauty queens or not, were decked out in their finest – and it was NOT to try to show off; it was just to look good, to regain that time when all the girls were pretty and all the guys were nice-looking, if not really handsome. I’d already been at my own Class Reunion with the Big 0, so I quickly realized that I was watching what me & Pat & Little John & Gus probably did then. A couple would enter the hall, stop to register and make name tags, then head out to the floor like my Bride had, unless one of the couple was not an LHS graduate, in which case they drifted over to the tables, like me, and watched.
The men were the funniest: most have a LOT less hair on their heads now, and what is still there is mostly white; almost all had gained quite a few pounds around the waist since LHS days; yet the standard behavior was for the man to scan the crowd, spot one of those former LHS beauty queens, unconsciously reach up to spruce up their hair, suck in their tummies, and approach their old girl friend with arms open wide, who would spot the approaching former halfback, open their arms wide, and hug ferociously. And the refrains were always the same: “Betsy Harper (or Bubba Hugh Johnson), you haven’t changed a lick in all these years!” If I heard that phrase once, I heard it a hundred times, always said sincerely.
Because these LHS grads were not seeing the expanded waistlines, nor the balding or graying heads. They were seeing “The Way We Were” once again, so that not only was David slim and supple again, he was again a class leader, married to his LHS sweetheart, who was a strutting majorette, and looked thataway, for the night. Oh, we all knew the clock would strike midnight again, and the coach would turn back into a pumpkin before morning, yet for this night, they were all young — and being married to the most beautiful one of them, I was young too.
There were three hours of non-stop talking and catching up, before supper was over, and the band started limbering up. I will reiterate my philosophic wisdom on that subject: “if you’re going to dance with a beautiful girl, there ain’t no sense in dancing six feet away from her!” I believed that 50 years ago.
Of the fifteen or so folks whom I knew, most had been in our wedding, and during a break, I eased up to one of those girls, having seen her maiden name in the program, to ask, “Jean: was your mother the Mrs. Tingle who sewed my pant legs together while we were at the church and she was guarding the house?”
She burst out laughing, and replied, “That was Momma! And you know, I never heard that story for thirty years, until I ran into Betsy at Sam’s one day. My Momma was in a nursing home by then, so the next day I visited her with the news, ‘Momma, I sure heard a bad story about you!’
“It broke her up — we laughed and laughed as she admitted it, then seeing you hopping around the room in your underwear, trying to get away for your honeymoon! What a blessing it was for me to finally find out about that trick!”
What a blessing for me to hear, after 48 years, that the story had finally made it back to Betsy’s classmate, then brightened up her jokester Mom’s day!
Opinion
Reunions bring on memories
- Opinion
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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. -
Right to vote not ‘racial entitlement
By Donna Brazile/Syndicated columnist
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case of Shelby County v. Holder — a challenge to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, specifically Section 5, which requires states and localities with a history of voting discrimination against racial and language minorities to get “pre-approved” by the federal government before changing how elections are conducted or voters are registered. -
1st day of spring brings memories
By Wyatt Emmerich/Southside Sun
The first day of spring! My favorite month, April, is just around the corner. Now we just need one big gullywasher to get rid of the pine pollen.
Normally, spring gives me a strong sense of rebirth and renewal, but this spring I seem surrounded by moments crystallizing the passage of time.
It was a year ago, I walked up the porch to my mother’s home to box up her possessions following her funeral. -
Soaking up in tiger paw-shaped hot tub
By Rheta Grimsely Johnson/Syndicated columnist
No springtime ritual was better at Auburn than sitting on hard rocks at a nearby state park to let cold water rush over your feet. You wore cut-off blue jeans and Dr. Scholl’s sandals, the unofficial uniform for coeds in the 1970s, and when you left, you felt ready to tackle tests, term papers and blind dates.
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Medicaid or not, costs will be paid
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist
While the battle continues between state Republicans and other fiscal conservatives intent on focusing on the long-terms costs of Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act and Democrats, health care advocates and state hospitals intent on focusing on the short-term benefits, the fact remains that one way or another, the costs of providing health care for the poor, the blind, the aged and the disabled will be paid by the taxpayers one way or another.
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Multiculturalism is not rational
By Thomas Sowell/Syndicated columnist
Among the many irrational ideas about racial and ethnic groups that have polarized societies over the centuries and around the world, few have been more irrational and counterproductive than the current dogmas of multiculturalism.
Intellectuals who imagine that they are helping racial or ethnic groups that lag behind by redefining their lags out of existence with multicultural rhetoric are in fact leading them into a blind alley. - More Opinion Headlines
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