Formerly ubiquitous

I want to apologize to my faithful readers for using that big word. In my tribute to botanist Ivan Kuster I made reference to the "ubiquitous jack-in-the-pulpit." It sent several of you scrambling to find a dictionary, which might be OK, except that I write for your entertainment, not edification.

It was too many years ago that I first saw the word in a phone company ad that referred to public telephones as "ubiquitous," with an asterisk and tiny footnote defining the word. It means something like, "Existing or being everywhere, or in all places, at the same time." I liked the word, so it entered our family lexicon to stay. We use it all the time, so it just naturally flowed into my column. But unless you saw that ad, you probably never heard of the word.

Indeed, public telephones were ubiquitous until the advent of cell phones.

Now everyone has a cell phone on their belt or in their purse; no, it is more likely pressed against the side of their head! Remember when we had to look for a phone booth if we needed to make a call?

The booth was a sanctuary that gave some relief from the noises of the street and allowed for private conversation. Then came the pedestal mounted phones with acoustic panels that were supposed to absorb the ambient noise but did not. Remember holding the phone to one ear and sticking your finger in the other while trying to hear, and shouting to be heard if a big truck went by?

My first public phone local calls cost a nickel, but soon went up to a dime. To call home from my Air Force base I had to have a stack of quarters handy. All "long distance" calls were handled by operators, and it was pay and then talk. More than three minutes required more quarters, and "person-to-person" still more. It was better to arrange to call "collect."

Remember how long it took to dial big numbers like 8 or 9, waiting for the dial to return? And if no answer, you had to dial the whole thing again later? But there were no "area codes" and the exchanges were identified by letters to make them easier to remember. Best of all, a real live person always answered your call, and the operators were always ready to help you get connected to your party.

Here is something else that was ubiquitous in days gone by and seldom seen today: a scale that would weigh you for a penny. Most of them proclaimed "No Springs, Honest Weight," and might also tell your fortune or answer a question. You stood on the platform, turned a knob to pull a tape by a window until an appropriate question appeared. When you dropped your penny into the slot, another window would open to reveal a clever answer to your question and the weight dial would be released to indicate your weight. Turning the knob closed the answer window, so you could get only one question answered for your penny.

I remember one scale that had twelve coin slots in a plate, each marked with a month, so that your fortune was supposedly keyed to your birth month. I was amused to discover that there was only one coin chute behind that plate.

With perhaps half the nation on special diets to lose weight, you'd think that public scales would make a comeback. On the other had, we probably don't really want to know, and certainly not in a public place! Personally, I like the numbers better when I am buck nekkid… hey, we could bring back all those scales and put them in phone booths, converted for visual privacy, of course. Well, Superman would approve.

Several years ago I asked my friend Bill Brock, regional manager of our phone company until he retired, if his company was preparing to be "not needed" in a world of wireless communication.
I was concerned about their investment in hard wiring running everywhere. He made a cheerful, optimistic reply, since borne out by the change of company name and great "bundles" of new services, generally not affected by weather and atmospheric disturbances.

New regulations allow the phone company to bring you not only your telephone service, but TV and high speed Internet as well. Think they could add a weight readout if you stand on the modem?

Remembering John Earl

Another friend of my youth has come to the end of his life here among us. To gage his importance in my scheme of things, consider that he is listed for five different pages in the index to my book (A Boy in the Amen Corner). Allow me to review why this is so.

I called the first column about John Earl Henson "Into the Den of Iniquity" to catch readers' eyes. John Earl and I were in Tryon with nothing to do, a rare circumstance, because I usually had a job in town and his father always had something for him to do. He led me into a dark alley under the stairs between buildings into the pool hall. There he showed me how to play Rotation, I think it was, and we had a great time until our money ran out. Applied geometry and physics-the stuff we were learning in school was actually useful in the real world!

Another day John Earl suggested that we get our lunch at the Rock Grill, nestled into the bank under the railroad tracks near where the clock tower is now. We enjoyed a great hamburger washed down with a big RC from a bottle that had been up to its neck in icy water just moments before. Another good and satisfying experience.

My mother was gravely disappointed by my going into those places, and strongly advised me not to do so again. Her problem was that beer was available at both locations. Mother stopped short of asking me not to associate with John Earl any more; she probably realized that would be like asking squirrels not to climb trees.

I am privileged to write for the Bulletin, but I am happy to say that John Earl was the better writer.

I try to get some humor into all my columns, but he was a natural-born humorist whose turns of phrase were often surprising and usually funny as well. We had to write a theme every week for High School English class. We discovered that the typing classroom was vacant during the period before English, so he and I went in there and typed up our themes. The keys of the typewriters had solid black metal caps on them, but we "hunt-and-pecked" nearly perfect papers right out of our heads, and turned them in hot off the typewriter on the day they were due!

The school cafeteria was run by Mrs. Taylor, so the food was plentiful and better than most people's home cooking. John Earl and I had the ravenous appetites of growing boys, and he would turn on the charm to get Mrs. Taylor to give us another ear of corn or hotdog.

He and I both wore glasses, so the teachers often got us mixed up. John Earl was more muscular than I, from loading sand into his dad's dump truck with a shovel down by the river bank. I will never forget the day the coach paired us for a boxing match in phys ed. They put the gloves on us and took away our glasses. I don't know what he could see, but as soon as I put up my gloves, I just saw a blur while taking two or three jarring blows. Fortunately for me, coach stopped the foolishness before any real damage was done.

When I retired here after some forty years away from Our Area, I looked up John Earl. He gave me a little tour of his enterprises based across the road from his brother Mack's road building works. He also showed me several houses that line the road as belonging to wife number one, wife number two, and so on. Always the humorist! He then invited my brother and me to dine at his house in the South Carolina wilderness identified at the entrance road as "Disisit." Its amenities include an outbuilding labeled the "Pout House."

It has been said that "a friend is someone who likes you even though he knows you." I always enjoyed time spent with John Earl. What more could one ask of a friend?

Tryon School gym is gone

When I attended the Tryon School on the hill above town, a sign proclaimed that the large brick gymnasium was built by the Works Progress Administration. It had names and a date sometime in the late 30s. I don't think the gym was there when I started in Mrs. Kittrell's First Grade in 1936, nor when I moved to Mooresville the following year. We little ones played on the seesaws and small swings in the side yard between the auditorium and School Street.

The gym was there when I returned in 1940 to complete the Fourth Grade in Miss Mills' class, but we played on the Giant Strides and the big playground, not in the gym. When I reached the Eighth Grade, a new coach, Mr. Beach, had us doing calisthenics every day, and we used the gym during bad weather. A solo quality tenor, Mr. Beach had us sing "Stout Hearted Men" as we built our muscles. Inside the gym, it was like singing in the shower as we made the rafters ring.

The late Robert Dedmondt told me that he played basketball for Tryon against "Shorty" MacDonald of Mill Spring in those early days, and therefore was able to tell me that "Shorty" was 6'-8" tall in response to my question. Robert also revealed that Principal Mark Caldwell was fit and trim enough to suit up with the boys and play for Tryon when they were short handed.

Miss Elmina Wages was my Phys Ed teacher, and she decided to teach her classes to Square Dance. She would turn up the old Victrola to the max in the gym and call the dances herself after teaching us the moves. I really liked the "swing your partner" part; that is when I learned that most girls were soft, but some were quite firm to hold. They were the ones who could and did outrun the boys.

Superintendent L. K. Singley decided to start a shop class for the boys, so he had us level the dirt and pour a concrete floor under the north end of the gym. We did it the way the Chinese coolies built runways for bombers in WWII… picks and shovels, wheelbarrows and hand-mixed concrete, floated and troweled as part of our "training." Then he hired a Mr. Foster to teach us woodworking, and our first project was work tables with storage underneath.

We had a Halloween Carnival in the gym each year. Each class had a booth, usually involving something to eat or scary. Local artist Stella Sassoon helped us decorate one year, arriving in a flowing long dress, with her red hair flowing as well, and brimming with ideas we never would have thought of. We were honored to have a "real French lady" working with us to transform the gym into fantasy land.

The community used the gym as well in those days. A charity basketball game between teams of local notables brought a good turnout, perhaps because the required uniform of the evening was long underwear. One team wore "drop seat" and the other "split back" BVDs. Even so, there was no shortage of players for a spirited game that all enjoyed.

Donkey Basketball also drew a large crowd to the gym. The little donkeys wore rubber shoes on the gym floor, and were trained to make the game difficult for their hapless riders. The players had to be mounted in order to play, but they had to dismount to pick up the ball. The ball changed sides a lot, and few baskets were scored, but everyone had a great time.

There is no visible remnant of the gym at its site today, and few there be to mind its passing. The building is gone, and all too soon those who enjoyed using it will be gone, too. I suppose that some day, like the gym, we will no longer be needed either.