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Memories...
Pressed between the pages of my mind.
On May 29th, 1975, 168 young men and women of Carthage, TX walked across a stage at Q.M. Martin Stadium to receive their diplomas for completing 12 years of education. The 1975 commencement exercise marked the end of an era for us as well as the beginning of a new one. When we began first grade in 1963, 12 years seemed like an eternity to us as we looked ahead to graduation day. Below are my thoughts and recollections of those 12 years.
On Tuesday, September 3, 1963, the future class of CHS 1975 officially became students as we entered our first day of school. Official figures for Carthage showed that overall student enrollment was down compared to the previous school year. Figures released showed that the "white" schools in Carthage listed 1726 students, down from a previous 1769. Figures for the "black" schools in Carthage reflected a decrease as well, with starting enrollment at 1038 students, down from a previous 1066 in 1962. However, the first grade class of 1963 at Libby numbered 130. This was an increase of 30 students over the previous year's 1st grade enrollment of 100. I myself was enrolled in Pine Tree Elementary in Longview. I don't remember too much about my first few days at school other than some homesick students crying and an occasional barf from some kid who drank too much chocolate milk!
Every generation has their own period in time in which I call "Where Were You When.. Day" referring to a time in their life that they will always remember what they were doing when a historic event occured. For my parents, it was the bombing of Pearl Harbor. For the future class of 1975 it would have to be November 22, 1963 with the assassination of President Kennedy. That is the one day in first grade that I have vivid memories of. I distinctly remember teachers and parents crying that fateful Friday. Sadly, I also remember some people stupidly cheering. As a student in Pine Tree Elementary, I remember gathering around the flag pole as it was lowered to half staff...a prayer was said...we could do that back then. School was dismissed early. Though we didn't really understand what had happened, we knew it was horrible. Sadly, we would be subjected to this tragic and hateful deed twice more in 1968 with the assassination of two great leaders, Dr. Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy. The following Monday on Nov. 25, I transferred to Stephen F. Austin Elementary in Marshall, TX due to my Dad being relocated on his job. It seemed like a new beginning to me as I entered a new school in a new town and home.
After Christmas vacation, 1964 started on a happier note. I watched a black & white TV set in the living room with my parents and brothers. Yes, people did that back then with only ONE TV set too! Four young musicians from Liverpool, England appeared on "The Ed Sullivan Show" in February 1964. Little did we know that those four young men would shape the music that we would grow up listening to on future dates and at proms even to this very day. Our parents had sock hops & Elvis...we had The Beatles. "Beatlemania" took the country by storm. Had we saved all the memorabilia that was being marketed to us at the time, we could all be retired now after we made our fortunes selling the stuff on E-bay to other nostalgic baby-boomers. First grade ended in May and we enjoyed our first "official" Summer vacation as students.
During this summer, Congress dealt a much-needed knockout blow to the laws and practices that had long kept black Americans living apart, divided from the jobs, education and social activities open to whites. On July 2, 1964 in a nationally televised event, President Johnson signed the long overdue Civil Rights Act Of 1964. With the stroke of a pen, America was changed for the better, setting the country on a new course. Unknown to me at the time, this pen stroke meant I would meet some great new black classmates & friends later on after integration of CISD.
Our second year of school started at the first of September 1964. I was enrolled in Davy Crockett Elementary in Marshall, TX. Elementary school in East Texas was pretty much the same in every neighboring town. I enjoyed the morning "milk break"--always opting for chocolate milk instead of the "good for you" white milk. Eye tests and hearing tests from the school nurse made up the extent of our medical exams in grade school. Thank gooodness we didn't have to take any more of those painful & scarring vaccinations like we did the year before! NASA was beginning its "Gemini Program" which was the pre-cursor to the future Apollo moon landings. When NASA would launch a rocket, this was the ONLY time that we were allowed to have a "real" television set in the classroom. TV in school...we thought that was so cool, but the teacher had strict warnings not to let us watch anything but the NASA launch. Heaven forbid if we happened to see a portion of a risque soap opera that our Mom was at home watching in between her housework. Dad was at his job. Very few mothers worked back then--they had full time jobs at home taking care of the family & home. We were an "atomic family". Life was good. And speaking of TV, color TVs were a luxury back in 1965 and not too many shows were even shown in color. Remember those pieces of clear plastic sheeting that had 4 or 5 color bars on them that you could tape over your TV screen to turn your TV in to a "real color TV"? Millions of those were sold for .99 cents at "five & dime" stores like Perry Bros. & Ben Franklin. I think ours stayed taped on the TV set for about one day before being trashed...another dollar wasted!
By the time we started our 3rd year of school, we were "smart"--we could read and write "real" cursive writing! I started 3rd grade at Sam Houston Elementary in Marshall, TX. "The Pink Prison" as we called it. The school still stands today, though dilapidated and falling in. (Update: January 13, 2010: Sam Houston Elementary School in Marshall burned. The fire began approximately 2:00 PM. The building is a total loss. The school was opened in 1905 & used by MISD until 1981. A Texas historical marker stands in front of the school grounds.) Unknown to me at the time, my future wife was changing buses on my campus to be bussed to another campus in Marshall. I would meet her for the first time 11 years later at Panola College. Sam Houston Elementary was a stereotypical grade school--we all walked to school in the neighborhood, 25 cent lunch tickets, air raid/bomb drills, Bobo The Magician shows, Luden's Wild Cherry "Cough" Drops in the candy machine (can anyone truthfully say these things cured a cough?)...U.S. Savings Bonds were being sold in school. Since we were able to read, we began to read reports of a guerilla war going on in a country called Vietnam. Much like today, a war dominated the evening newscast that Dad would sit down to watch while Mom prepared dinner. On December 9, 1965 I was with my family in the now defunct "Magic Mart" store doing a little early Christmas shopping. We had to hurry home that evening because there was a new Christmas TV special airing for the first time ever entitled "A Charlie Brown Christmas". During the Christmas vacation we anxiously awaited the start of another new TV show in January 1966 entitled "Batman". Once again we missed an opportunity to be future E-Bay millionaires by not saving the Batman memorabilia when "Batmania" struck the country.
Fourth grade at "The Pink Prison" was much like the previous year. As students, we were becoming a little more aware of world events. My Mom went to work at a "real job" working for Thiokol--a.k.a Longhorn Army Ammunition Plant in Karnack, TX. Thiokol was a major employer for Harrison & Panola County residents. The war was in full swing. What was happening in the world around us? We were told this thing in Vietnam was not a "war" but a "conflict". Regardless of what it was, we were finding out that some people in America did NOT like it. We could watch our new color TV and see that protests were being staged and there was social unrest all over the country. That's OK, we didn't have to worry too much about that. We were 4th graders and we had more important things on our minds. We worried about whether or not the teacher would choose us to thread or rewind the film projector when we had a "Public Service" film to watch in school. Would we be chosen to pass out the test papers in class--freshly run off on a mimeograph machine? Who can forget the smell of those things? Maybe that's what warped some of our brains--being exposed to those mimeograph paper fumes! In the fall of 1966, another TV show (in color!) debuted called "The Monkees". Back then, we'd all look through the "TV Guide" just to see what TV shows were being broadcast in color as so many shows were still in B&W. TV Guide would print a small "C" in parentheses beside the name of the show to denote it being shown in color. It didn't matter sometimes whether we really liked the show or not, it was just the fact that it was broadcast in "living color". Dad wanted to get his money's worth of that new expensive color TV set! Just before Christmas vacation that year, my Dad cut a huge cedar tree and placed it in the Sam Houston School auditorium/cafeteria. This was a tradition at the school as the entire school would help decorate the huge tree. We had Christmas parties as well as a school Christmas play, much like the "Charlie Brown Christmas" special. Back then we could still celebrate Christmas and not be forced to use generic terms such as "Happy Holidays". When fourth grade ended, the hippie movement during the "Summer Of Love 1967" was born on a street corner in San Francisco in Haight-Ashbury district. Events that summer would unknowingly shape our future music tastes, school fashions, political beliefs, and even our religious beliefs.
I began my fifth grade once again at Marshall's "Pink Prison", this would be my last time as a student of Marshall ISD. School was just a block away and all of us neighborhood kids could quickly walk to school each morning. We would hurry home after school to catch the latest episode of "Dark Shadows"--a grown-up TV soap opera that had a vampire in it named Barnabas Collins. Next in the TV line-up was the kids show "The Laff-A-Lot Club" on KTBS 3. I believe it was Channel 6 that had "Captain Talltower". Channel 12 had "Bob & His Buddies" with Bob Griffin on Sunday mornings. We could only get 3 channels in East Texas back then, and channel 6 was always fuzzy unless you had a good antenna. Shortly into my 5th grade school year, my father passed away on Sept. 22. During Christmas vacation I moved to Carthage to live with my aunt & uncle. I was now an official student of the Carthage ISD and would remain so until graduation. Baker School was sure a lot better than the "Pink Prison". In the spring of 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated. In June Robert F. Kennedy was gunned down. Hate was running rampant in country. Why all this senseless killing? What happened to the "Summer Of Love" a year earlier?
The only big event of 6th grade would have to be when we were on the playground one October day. We heard an explosion followed by the fire alarm. Smoke was visible. We knew something was on fire in the downtown area. Myself and a couple of friends were in the back corner of the playground. A passing motorist heading down College Street yelled to us out of his window that the town square had exploded and was burning. A butane truck leaking its cargo had ignited and exploded. Several buildings burned on the area that is now First State Bank. If such an event were to happen today, mandatory evacuation for a half square mile would be enforced. During the summer of '69, we kids played with cool toys made by companies such as Mattel, Kenner, Whamo, & Hasbro. We also watched the moon landing in July--why couldn't they have done that while we were in school instead of the summer? We could have had the TV set in class for several days! That same summer, a large rock festival was held in upstate New York called Woodstock.
Finally we were junior high students as we entered Koonce Jr. School in the fall of 1969. Time to throw away all those cool grade school toys. Once again we lost another chance of being future E-Bay millionaires if we had only kept all those items! As we rode our bicycles home from school each day, we could stop off at Vick's Malt Shop and grab a cherry Coke--freshly mixed by Mr. Victor Fite himself. Every now & then, we could glance over at Howell's Recreation Club (a pool hall) and watch (from a safe distance) a couple of high school boys fighting in the parking lot. Bell bottom jeans were starting to show up in the local stores. Boys hair was getting longer. The 1960's was ending and the world welcomed a new decade. Social unrest was happening on college campuses such as Kent State. Our parents along with Merle Haggard blamed it on "...the hippies out in San Francisco". Our music, like everything else, was changing rapidly. The Beatles announced their breakup. We were looking forward to being junior high "upper classmen" at Koonce the next year.
Our 8th grade year was the first year of integration in Carthage ISD and we entered Turner Junior High in the fall of 1970. For the first time, all black & white students were in the same school together in the CISD. We met new black friends and teachers. I'll always respect Mr. Ernest Brewster, Mr. P.L. Berry, Mr. C.G. Bowie, Mrs. Ruth Chimney, "Bird Dog" and Mrs. Betty Scott to name a few. We adorned our clothes with peace sign patches....our Dad's old Army jacket became the cool thing to wear. Flower Power...Black Power...Make Love Not War..these slogans became the buzz words. We could walk off campus for lunch over to the Turner High Malt Shop or walk all the way down to the end of Spring St, (now MLK Blvd.) to Sholmire's store. The only bad thing about 8th grade was that once again we were underclassmen as Turner Junior High housed the 8th & 9th grades of CISD.
We started our 2nd year at Turner Junior High as 9th graders. We were finally upper classmen. In 1971, the 26th Amendment gave 18 year olds the right to vote. Our teachers were shaping us into young adults and we became more aware of world wide political and social events. It would be 1976 before we would be able to vote in our first presidential election. Some of us purchased & wore "POW/MIA Bracelets". As we were approaching our teen years, we thought we were invincible. Reality shocked the entire class as we lost one of our classmates, James Gentry in an auto accident. As the 9th grade school year drew to a close, we began to dream about high school, getting a job after school, and most of all--owning our first car.
Our first year at Carthage High School finally arrived. Even though we were underclassmen again, we were glad to be there. Campus was not "closed" and we could walk to Brownie's Drive In, Buddies, or The Chick-Inn to eat lunch. Many of us started our first jobs in the community under school work programs. We worked to earn money to buy our first cars, and no, they were not "brand new cars" like the kids today think they must have. We took what we could get...gasoline was cheap and we wasted many a gallon just cruising around the Sonic. You did not even think of parking in the Senior parking lot at school...if you did you only did it once! A cease-fire in Vietnam was signed on January 23, 1973. Except for a small contingent to protect American interests, American troops went home.
Our Junior year at CHS started out pretty much like the previous one...we thought it would be just another stereotypical high school year. Sadly, we lost a second classmate, Melody Davis, due to an auto accident. We had some great teachers at CHS. Some of my favorites were Mrs. Betty Bounds, Mr. Rod Davis, Mrs. Martha Hopkins, Mrs. Leila Belle Lagrone and others. Those cute young student teachers that were present in our class during our tenure at CHS are now mostly retired. Nationally, the Watergate scandal broke wide open. During the summer of 1974, we lost a 2nd U.S. President since we had started first grade. This time it was not at the hands of an assassin. President Richard Nixon resigned his office because of his involvement in the Watergate scandal. Events of that summer were not worrying us as we were looking forward to our 12th and final year as students of CHS.
Finally..we made it! We were CHS Seniors! We had come a long way since that September morning way back in 1963 when we started first grade. For 12 years, a great staff of teachers and other faculty members were given the chance to orchestrate us into being responsible adults...preparing us for that final act of a "real" Senior play. This was no dress rehearsal, this was the real thing. Our guest speaker that evening was J. Clayton Lagrone. It was time for us to show all the hundreds of people responsible for getting us to this point the fruits of their labor as they shaped our lives and educated us. We each had our place at center stage on graduation night. We entered one end of the stage as a CHS Senior student. With diplomas in hand we exited the other end as young adults on that hot evening of May 29th, 1975. As we threw our caps in the air, many of us had "party plans" on our minds as we headed to Shreveport, LA to the then bustling downtown Shreve Square area. (The "Casino Mafia" takeover of downtown Shreveport was still years away.) We were friends and classmates for twelve long years. We were all ready to take on the world. Now it was our turn to make a difference in the world. Oh how I wish I knew then what I know now. Some of my classmates I have not seen since that night. Others I see on an almost daily basis here in Carthage. Looking back over the 12 years of public school life, they seemed so long back then, but in reality it was just a brief moment in all our lives. Those moments remind me of a few lines of my favorite poem by the great poet Robert Frost. "But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep." Thanks for the memories... Dean Jones, October 2009