Brewer Should Have Given The Speech!

Pam Collins straightened my tie, “Remember when I beat the living stew out of you in Miss Belle’s class?” No, I didn’t remember! Miss Belle was way back in the third grade for goodness sakes!

“Hey, you remember kicking your shoe into the soap in elementary school?” Ricky Hale had been reminding me about that infamous kick for ten years now.

Charlotte Melton squeezed my hand and whispered, “Do you still remember the kiss out by the monkey bars?” I didn’t answer but my neck might have given me away.

The music saved me. And the hush that fell over the audience brought us abruptly to the moment. We had laughed and joked through this thing as Miss Polly tried to line us up for practice. This wasn’t practice!

We marched in as Billy Rutledge banged out “March From Aida” on the school’s old upright piano. Buddy Wiggleton had suggested “The Ubangi Stomp” but Miss Polly had the vote that counted. 

Now that it was here I’m not sure we were ready. Oh, we’d been talking about getting out of school for a while. We felt we’d served “our time” in Mr. Berry’s chemistry lab. We bored our way through study hall up on the third floor. We had done the math graphs, the Canterbury Tales thing and we’d been on the front lines in every war from Hannibal’s elephant march across the Pyrenees to the “police action” in Korea.

We’d about studied out. We wanted to see how people lived outside the boundaries of our little town. Enough with this learning, it was time to live it!

Mr. W. O. Warren gave us that talk about “how we had laid the foundation” and this “was only the beginning” and we “could do and be whatever we set our minds to”. He threw in “future leaders” two or three times. I was thinking how long does graduation last—              

An English pea or something like it hit me behind the left ear. I didn’t have to look around. That would be Brewer. Graduation wasn’t gong to keep him from having a good time. Those spit balls in Latin were his doing; although, I will admit to chunking a couple back at him when Miss Bouldin turned to write on the board. The paint on the water tower….that was also Brewer. The only reason I climbed up there was to haul a second bucket for him. He was right in the middle of the school food strike that might have gotten a little out of hand. And listen, I would have never “jumped” that train to Milan if he hadn’t a dared me.

We might not be as ready for the world as Mr. Warren was making it sound.

Folks had been asking me for weeks about my post graduation plans. I said college because I didn’t know what else to offer. And Viet Nam seemed to be the only other option. We just barely knew where it was in that May of 1965. But Walter Cronkite was bringing it into our living rooms nightly on his CBS broadcast.

I had a girl friend who was talking marriage. Brewer hit me with another pea. It was an exclamation point that marriage might ought to wait for a year or two. I thought we were ready to shake the high school dust off our Bass Weejuns but I wasn’t absolutely positive on it.

The best thing about high school was it was safe! We knew what to expect. It had a routine that was structured and familiar. Diana Morris was going to make a hundred on every test. John Ingram was going to out run all of us. Jerry Lewis was going to say something funny. Earl Lowe was quiet as a mouse. Billie Ruth Kirksey had the greatest smile….. But you couldn’t live your life stuck in second gear!

I loved Jane Hill, Paul Long, Graylene Lemonds, Reggie Lawrence….all of them! But there’s a world of people out there that we all needed to meet. They might be smarter than Diana, faster than John or funnier than Jerry! I would miss these guys. Even in the immaturity of my youth, I realized the specialness of this particular group. They had been my world for the past eighteen years. But none of us could afford to miss what was out there! We needed to try it.

As Mr. Warren’s talk wound down he repeatedly gave the school system credit for preparing us for life. My mind was off in another direction. O. K., Pam did beat the living daylights out of me in the third grade. But I got up! Bobby King would fake right and then shoot that left handed hook shot over me all day long. But I didn’t stop trying! Jimmy Carter was a math whiz. I studied a little harder to show him I could figure it out also. Kenny Butler, Don Melton, Vicki Fields, Bobby Jackson and I would choose up sides for a baseball game out in the back yard. We argued about the teams, the rules, who got to bat first……but we worked it out. None of us got our way all the time. Charlotte was the first girl to break my heart. Brewer taught me how to add a little extra fuse to the cherry bomb so you’d be a long ways away when it went off. He also showed me how to look innocent. Mr. Warren could be right, but I know in my heart I got a lot of help from some very special friends.

The village and the school system are important…..but you’d better get you a host of classmates that will push, pull, kick, harangue or drag you to the finish line. I don’t attend a graduation or see a mortar board or hear someone talk about “the leaders of tomorrow” that I don’t think of the 71 best friends that pulled me through.

Respectfully,

Kes