A Slightly New Look

I made a few changes if you look close enough. I fooled around with the colors a little bit. I thought the red contrasted better against the blue background., at least for the headings.

I added a poll that I'm going to try to keep updated a couple of times a month. Any suggestions for poll questions would be appreciated. As of now I don't expect I'll post any Hillary/Obama/Thompson/Giuliani polls. :)

Somewhere in my update I've lost the coding that shows who added posts. I'll look around and see if I kept my notes on how I did that.

Also, at the bottom of the screen are links to help you move around the blog. On the first page there is a link to older posts, and on any other page there are links to both older and newer posts, plus a home link which will bring back to the main page.

Along with those links is another link to let you subscribe to the posts using Atom (there's also a subscription link on any comment page). Atom is a "feed" from the blog for those who use newsreaders. If you don't use newsreaders, then don't worry about, and if you do happen to click on it, don't worry about that either. It will simply download an innocuous little file to your PC that is a text version of the posts on the blog.

Anyway, those are the changes. Hope you like them.

Well, What'll It Be?

Come on in and have a seat.

It's good to see you again.

What'll you have? We can talk about all kinds of stuff, just open up and tell us what's on your mind.

Is there anything we haven't covered yet that you want to know? Anybody you'd really like to see?

C'mon... give us a topic!

The Alumni Site Has Been Updated

I have updated the alumni site. For all those who have added their information and agreed to have their email addresses known, I have hyperlinked their email address to their names. If someone holds the mouse over a name, the email address will show in the status bar at the bottom of the browser, or may show in a pop up, depending on how your browser is configured. If you have your email program attached to the browser and you click on the name, it will open a blank email addressed to that person.

Also, once again I would like to ask those of you who have not added your information to the alumni site to please consider doing so. There are currently 4 people listed on the 70 page.

The Top Ten Lists

The Ten Things I Enjoyed the Most

10. Dodgeball - c'mon, it was fun
9. Irritating Miss Goode, or was it Mrs. Goode? Either way it was fun.
8. Study Hall - a mid day social hour
7. Fair Day - there was only 4 of them, but they were good ones
6. The time between classes - the hustle and bustle and racing to keep from being late
5. Going for walks at lunchtime - with different people at different times. It's a way to really get to know someone.
4. Walking to/from school - it was a pain in bad weather, but it was also very social and you could keep up with a lot of the gossip.
3. Senior year - As I've said before... they cut us a lot of slack as seniors.
2. Football games - No explanation needed.
1. People - You guys and most of the others


The Ten Things I Enjoyed the Least

10. Working after school. It was necessary but it cut into some fun things, especially Senior year.
9. No car - the only reason this isn't higher (lower?) on the list, is that walking had it's good points... see the other list.
8. Exams - 'Nuff said.
7. Hall passes - or, more specifically, not having them when you're asked for one.
6. Dress Code - but only in retrospect. I would have preferred to wear jeans.
5. Sitting in the office - being made to sit where everyone in the hall could see you and know you were in trouble.
4. People - the few people who irritated me, or I didn't get along with. I'm sure I made more than a few of other people's lists in this category.
3. Getting caught - doing anything. I was caught a lot more than my share.
2. Being turned down for dates - ego bruising.
1. Leaving - for the longest time I couldn't wait to graduate, and then I did. Why did I miss it so much when it was over when there were times while I was there that I couldn't wait to get out?

Fashions

Along about this time each summer we started making plans for school. Most of us had been working a couple of months and the money was burning a hole in our pockets. What to wear, what to wear?

You made it a point to drop in the 5 to 5 or Family Fashions, and a couple of stores in Lenoir City I don't remember the name of, and you looked over the clothes racks. Which pants and which shirt? Oh, and you couldn't buy a shirt without socks to match. And how many of each? You knew what you had left over from last year, but you couldn't wear that again. So you had to pick enough new stuff to look like you were keeping up with everyone else.

I remember right before Senior year I even bought a suit. Me, in a suit! I only wore it to church. :)

I will never forget the eye sore outfit I wore to the banquet Senior year. Brown checked pants, burnt orange shirt (with socks to match), orange and white stripped tie, and a Tennessee orange blazer. If I had bothered to look at myself in the mirror that night I would have probably laughed my butt off, but at the time I thought it looked alright. Thankfully, nobody had a camera. :)

Song Time Again

For the past 20 years I've identified with this song. Parts of it remind me of things all the way back to high school. Okay... so I changed it a little. Just be glad I'm not singing it :)

Old Hippy
With apologies to the Bellamy Brothers

He turned fifty-five last Sunday
And his hair is almost gray
But he still ain't changed his lifestyle
He likes it better the old way
So he grows a little garden in the back yard by the fence
He's consuming what he's growing nowadays in self defense
He get's out there in the twilight zone sometimes
When it just don't make no sense

He gets off on country music
Cause disco left him cold
He's got young friends into new wave
But he's just too damned old
And he dreams at night of Woodstock and the day John Lennon died
How the music made him happy and the silence made him cry
Yeah he thinks of John sometimes
And he has to wonder why

(Chorus)
He's an old hippie and he don't know what to do
Should he hang on to the old
Should he grab on to the new
He's an old hippie, new life is just a bust
He ain't trying to change nobody
He's just trying real hard to adjust

He was sure back in the sixties that everyone was hip
Then they sent him off to Vietnam on his senior trip
And they forced him to become a man while he was still a boy
And in each wave of tragedy he waited for the joy
Now this world may change around him
But he just can't change no more

(Chorus)

Well he stays away a lot now from the parties and the clubs
And he's thinking while he's joggin' 'round
Sure is glad he quit the hard drugs
Cause him and his kind get more endangered everyday
And pretty soon the species will just up and fade away
Like the smoke from that torpedo...just up and fade away

(Chorus)

Feeder Schools

I know the old grammer school burned several years ago, and the old junior high school building is there, but not a school anymore -- in fact, I'm not sure what it is now, but I've been thinking about all the schools that fed students to the high school. Are the others still around?

Is Jackson, Davis, Steekee, and Philadelphia schools still active? Are any of them new schools? Did I miss any other feeder schools?

I know there is at least one newer school not far from the high school, but I don't know if it's a grammar school or middle school or both.

Are there any plans to build a new high school? If so, where are they going to build it? Where do you think it should be?