Month: October 2013

I’ve known sidewalks

I’ve always liked the Langston Hughes poem that begins “I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.” The words are mildly shiver-invoking. Hughes understands memory.

I don’t really know rivers–unless  you count zipping across the Sabine into Longview a few times a month–but I’ve realized lately that I have known sidewalks for a long time. That’s been my pleasure the last few weeks: becoming reacquainted with the sidewalks I once knew.

The first sidewalk in my world still edges North High. I played there with my cousin. We rode tricycles and pulled red wagons and sometimes aggravated an even smaller boy named Murray who lived next door. Passing now, I can close my eyes and picture Aunt Modine pulling curbside in her brown and white car, elegantly dressed and ready for her afternoon kaffeeklatsch with Aunt Wilma.

Farther along, I remember a spot across from the old library that once had an incredibly nasty word dried into the cement, pruriently delighting fourth-grade boys. That word is no longer there. I looked for it the other day.

Downtown, there’s a chunk of purgatorial pavement in front of the building that was once Sears & Roebuck. I hit the curb wrong with my bicycle late on a Sunday afternoon and slid along on elbows and knees. I didn’t think my wounds were serious, but my mother had a conniption when I limped into the house. I had to get a tetanus shot. The shot was more traumatic than the crash.

Most intriguing, though, is the sidewalk that hovers above the street near the joining of North High and North Marshall. That intersection is no longer on my beaten path, but I pass by occasionally. I almost always think Halloween when I do.
nhigh
We finished up the usual trick or treat trek in that neighborhood one year.  As best I can calculate, it was 1965 and I was a first grader. Time was late—probably not yet seven o’clock, but it seemed late—and dark and chilly. I remember standing high on that embankment that night. A souped-up car roared by on the street below. The shutter clicked somewhere in my mind, and the moment has been with me for nearly fifty years. That’s my frozen-in-time Halloween memory: that sidewalk and that cool, October darkness and that sputtering car. Some people have special songs that conjure up potent memories. For me, the roar of a distant engine on an autumn night is still slightly spooky and always means Halloween on the sidewalk above North High Street.

I’ve known sidewalks for a long time.

Six drops of the essence of terror

HHS Band prepares to take the field, October 19, 2013
HHS Band prepares to take the field

I suppose that I learned the phrase essence of terror while watching Milton the Monster on Saturday mornings in the 60s. (Remember the theme song? “Six drops of the essence of terror, five drops of sinister sauce…”) I felt the essence of terror a few years later. We called it UIL Marching Contest.

I well and fully admit that I was a pretty inept band member—especially during marching season. March and play? Not hardly (I can now confess), unless it was during a straight march toward the pressbox for the finale. The rest of the time, I was too worried about my feet to think about my fingers. Friday nights during football season—at least until the magic third quarter—were fraught with fear. I was sure that I was going to be That Guy who countermarched in the wrong place and took out my whole end of the company front. And it may have happened, sort of, a time or two. Blessed memory has a way of blocking full recollection of some rather unpleasant missteps.

If Friday nights were fearsome, marching contest was truly the very essence of terror. I knew that I was going to be That Guy who countermarched in the wrong place and took out my whole end of the company front. In front of judges. On film. That never happened (unless blessed memory is truly working overtime and I’ve done some powerful forgetting), but I was mighty afraid that it would. I’ve lived through some shaky moments in my half-century-plus, but few have been as essentially terrifying as those hour-long minutes, standing on the sideline, waiting to hear “Drum major, you may take the field when ready.”

I went to marching contest a few days ago. I’ve gone many times in the last three decades. I say I go because I enjoy watching bands march. And I do. I say I go because it’s a good way to support my students. And I firmly believe that it is. Noble and orthodox reasons, both, but I really go for that final maneuver when the band on the field flanks stand-ward and opens up, striding home with confidence and playing, well, to beat the band. I can always sense the moment when That Guy who, for the last ten minutes, has been blind with the fear of countermarching in the wrong place and taking out his end of the company front breathes again. When the audience stands to applaud, That Guy is the one I’m cheering. He’s swallowed all six drops of the essence of terror and survived. I know the feeling.

On the trail of the Junior High ghost

HISD Administration Buildling
Random lights still burn in the old Junior High

When I was a kindergartener contemplating first grade, older kids used scare my buddies and me sockless by warning that Real School teachers were mean ol’ ladies who, if we talked or smiled or even breathed wrong, would whip us with an Electric Paddle. That was enough to strike fear and trembling in the heart of a six year old.

As an elementary school-er, dread of the jump to Junior High was more intense: They’ve got three floors and a block-long building. How will I manage to change classes in five minutes? Will they really make us take showers after PE? Does the principal have an electric paddle?

Even more ominous was the whispered rumor, “You know that school’s haunted, don’t you?” I remember the first time I heard the story of the Junior High ghost. The version passed along to me by a friend on my grandmother’s front porch went like this [cue ghostly voice]:

Before the school was built, there was an old lady who lived in a run-down house on that block. She loved to read. At night she would stay up late reading, and people passing would see a light in her window.

After she died they tore down her house and built the school. Now she roams the halls of the Junior High. Every night, she gets a book from the library, turns on a light in one of the rooms, and spends the night reading. If you pass by the school late at night, you’ll always see a light somewhere in the building. That’s the ghost reading.

I freely admit that the notion of a ghost who passes her night curled up with a good book instead of rattling chains and spinning her head is pretty tame (and perhaps a little lame), but it was true that random lights did burn all night in the Junior High. There was always a light somewhere in that building, and those days were long before high-stakes testing kept the midnight oil burning on the desks of data-disaggregating teachers.

Since a rainy October evening is a good time to contemplate the nether world (and since the ghostly beyond is more pleasant fodder for thought than either electric paddles or communal showers after PE), I decided to do a little research.  Just where might that ghost have lived while she was still corporeal? This is what I found:

A 1906 map of Henderson shows the location of a high school at the corner of North High and Van Sickle.  That would be the northwest corner of the current campus.  Judging from the building’s footprint, it is clearly not the Junior High/Admin Building we know and love today.  That’s not surprising, since the big red building was constructed in (I believe) at least two parts in the 20s and 30s.

1906 map 1

Source:  Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin

Another map from the same year shows a slightly different angle. The high school is there, but it’s not labeled.  I flipped the snippet to make it fit on this page, so the directions are a little askew.  The view here is as if we were standing in front of the contemporary building, making ghost-warding novenas to the back of the Methodist Church (or to the back of Henderson Savings, for those who put their trust in Mammon) across the street.  East Main would be about a block to our left.

1906 map 2

Source:  Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin

Unfortunately for Tracy-the-Ghost-Hunter, most of the school block was apparently vacant in 1906.  This is not what I wanted to find.  I wanted to see a map with a great big red X saying “This is a run-down house inhabited by an elderly woman who is famous for reading far, far into the night.”  No such luck.  Research can be frustrating.

So for now the trail of the Junior High ghost goes cold.  Without the hard evidence of X marking the spot over her earthly dwelling, we must assume that her spirit is still as urban-legendary as an electric paddle.  Although I’ve spent most of my life in various schoolhouses, I’ve never seen an electric paddle.  I’ve never seen a ghost, either, but I have often seen those lights gleaming late into the night in the deserted school on North High Street.

Faux noir

figureI slink along darkened city streets lit only by the soft glare from closed-down antiques-and-collectibles joints. The burg is shut down tighter than a miser’s wallet at an orphanage bake sale. The deserted sidewalks should be rain-slicked, but that’s too much to hope for in the Age of Drought. Around here, we take our weather as it comes.

I’m alone with my thoughts when I spy a shadowy figure near the corner ahead. “That ain’t no dame out for a Sunday stroll on a Thursday night on North Marshall Street,” I say to myself. “This could spell trouble.” I slow my step. The figure doesn’t move. I stop. No reaction.

I slide my hand to my pocket and grope for my trusty 5S. I fumble. Why do they insist on lighter and thinner every year? I find my piece and caress its home button with my trigger thumb. Is there an app for this?

I’ve got to get 10,000 steps done before midnight. Strider007 and WindWalker3695 and not_john_t and the rest of the gang on my FitBit friends list are expecting it. I can’t disappoint. Hecky-darn. I especially can’t let them best me on the 7-day step total.

I nudge forward. The loner on the corner doesn’t budge. I feel my heart beating in my chest. Now this is cardio. I’m about to give way and make a hard-boiled U-turn when lights from a passing jalopy catch the face of Shadow Man. He’s just one of those scarecrow-hay-bale-pumpkin jobbies set up around town to celebrate the end of the Long Summer in Texas. Whew.

I walk on.

Surviving

Old Post Office, Henderson, Texas
Old Post Office, Henderson, Texas

I always wait until the very end of the designated month to renew my vehicle registration. “Always wait until the end of the month,” my grandfather said, “in case you total your car during the month.” I follow his advice. That means my annual trek to the former post office building is usually rushed and occasionally a little late.

When I enter, I always glance up to left and right, hoping that the old WPA murals that once hugged the ceiling have magically reappeared. I see the whitewash. I sigh. I return to my truck for my forgotten proof of insurance, mumbling something slightly unedifying under my breath. I write my check for dozens of dollars and get the little plastic sticker in return. I sigh.

No matter how hurried, I always exit that building with care. The steps to the sidewalk are steep and treacherous. I know. I’ve been skittish of them for years. I hold fast to the rail, remembering the unplanned roll I took from top to bottom when I was a lad.

I don’t know what caused me to stumble.  I suspect it was running or jumping or doing something I shouldn’t have been doing. I was bruised and bloody when I hit bottom, but I survived. Nothing broke. My only broken bone (yet; knocking firmly on my wood-composition desktop) came a few years later as a result of my Absolute Last–I vowed a vow–attempt to climb a tree.

Family lore was once chock-full of stories of my mishaps. There was the time I wiggled out of the highchair at Wyatt’s Cafeteria in Longview (no memory), and the time I dove headfirst-diaper-and-all into one of those old-fashioned deep bathtubs (no memory) and the time I busted my lip by falling against a glass display case at Fedway in, yet again, Longview (vague memory, but just what did now-defunct Longview establishments have against me?). I never hear those stories any more. The grown-ups who used to embarrass me by hashing and rehashing the stories of my childhood indiscretions–the list is much more extensive than I’ve confessed here–are no longer around to tell the tales. What would I give to blush one more time?

If nothing else, evidence indicates that my head is indeed hard. Or maybe a little cracked. Or perhaps both at the same time.

Creeping decrepitude, pulling teeth, and the Junior High ghost: A perfect storm

jrhighMy love/hate relationship with writing dates at least to Mrs. Webb’s 11th grade composition class. I like to write when the words flow, but I’ve learned that, pen in my hand, they usually move like peanut butter. Most of the time, getting ink on paper (or pixels on screen in this Brave New World) is like pulling teeth. It hurts.

I read an article a few months ago that suggested that older minds could be kept in good working order by tapping out five hundred words a day. I don’t have five hundred teeth to expend on a daily basis, but like others in my birthday bracket (surely I’m not the only one) I worry occasionally about creeping decrepitude. I forget things. I call the dogs by the wrong name. I don’t remember seeing a fountain in downtown Henderson until it tinkles in my ear. I decided that if I couldn’t string five hundred words every day, I could possibly manage 250ish on a semi-regular basis and perhaps slow the creep. Like all self-respecting personal resolutions, that one has mostly languished. It’s easier not to write. And it’s darned hard to come up with decent topics for personal reflection.

While rounding the square a few nights ago, I snapped a picture of a lighted window in the old Junior High. Every Henderson Native of a certain age (but who’s still on the right side of decrepitude) remembers the story of ghostly lights that appeared in the building from time to time–a story, I’ve always suspected, cultivated by school administrators to stem the tide of vandalism. I posted the pic to FaceBook. Likes and comments kept my notifications button steadily red for a couple of days. I realized that Old Henderson posts are the ones that often seem to generate the most interest. They’re certainly ones that intrigue me. Voilà! I found a topic. Maybe. Sort of. Almost. We’ll see.

And speaking of something new…

fountainA few nights ago, I was bucketing along the block that runs from the old Citizens Bank building to the TXU building (or maybe it’s Luminant now; I mostly remember it as a dress shop often window-shopped by my grandmother). I was jamming to my latest download from audible.com, a longish novel about the wartime Church of England, when I heard the tinkle of water. There’s precious little reason for tinkling in novels about the C of E in wartime, so I glanced around. Then I saw it. The fountain on the square. I was taken aback.

Now, I’ve covered that block on foot at least a couple of times a week for several months. I’ve driven past the spot regularly (although, admittedly, when driving I’m more worried about remembering to move into the recently-added left turn lane for South Main–something I still forget sometimes). I’ve never noticed that fountain. Or, maybe I’ve seen it and the thought “Hey, there’s a new fountain on the square” hasn’t registered. How long has that thing been there? I probably need to renew my subscription to the Henderson Daily News.

It’s a nice traditional-sort of fountain. It looks good and tinkles well enough to make itself known over dense English novel narration. I wonder how much I see every day without really noticing? How many things/people/situations flit under my radar without second glance or first thought? I definitely need to pay more attention.