The Rock Wall

I jus found a letter in my basket telling us that Bud Olinger passed away last week. The was quite a guy.

I just worked the obituary for my 8th grade Science teacher, Miss Barritt. Her name in the obituary is Jennie Barritt but I never called her by her first name. It was a pleasure every time I ran into Miss Barritt in town.

I can tell you that she never had any discipline problems in class. I don’t have perfect recall after more than 50 years, but I don’t remember her sending anybody to the office. It would have been a case of sending survivors to the office.

She taught Science. It was the first time in grade school I had switched teachers between classes. Mrs. Maurine Moss was my home room teacher. Mrs. Vickers was my English teacher. Miss Barritt was my Sctnce teacher. I liked them all. I liked school.

I know that Jack Tough would call my fifth grade teacher Hazel after he got out of school and married her daughter. I just kept it at Miss Baumgarner even when I was here at the paper. I saw her writing a check at Chicken Fixins and told her I didn’t know she was left-handed. She said, “Everybody is born left-handed and stays that way until they sin.” I surely didn’t disagree with her. Jackson Tough will know what I’m talking about since that was his grandma.

I guess I’m the only left-handed one in the family unless one of my grandbabies is.

At the fish fry at Fair Haven the other night, I noticed that the guy sitting across from Kimball and me was left-handed. We commented on it and he said his friend sitting my him was also left-handed. We started listing people we had heard were left-handed: Julius Cesear, Leonardo DaVinci, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Kimball’s brother, Ross, El Doradoite Kenny Burchett, who greets me as “Lefty” every time he sees me. I can’t remember them all.

The guy across the table and I are sometimes left-handed. We eat left, write left, throw right, bat right, shoot a bow right, shoot a rifle or a shotgun left. I shoot a pistol right and sight with my  left eye. Once Kendall Vickers and I went squirrel hunting in the tall timber down on the creek. When we came back with six squirrels all shot in the head, Dad commented that he knew we had done it with a pistol because that is all I was carrying.

Once in Birmingham I went target shooting with FBI Agent Ladell Farley, who was a young single guy that was friends with one of my co-workets who had several of us over for Thanksgiving. While he was loading his service revolver, I set up several tin cans from around the city dump then proceeded to put a .22 hole in each of them.

Ladell had finished loaded his gun and observed, “You hit everyone of those.” I said. “I was shooting at them.”  He said, “I don’t want anybody shooting at me with a .22.” I told him I’ve never shot at anybody. Still haven’t.

I saw Ladell on Forensic Files the other night as a retired FBI agent, so he made it.

The .22 Colt Huntsman that was so accurate, someone broke into my Shreveport apartment and stole every gun I had so I don’t have a .22 pistol anymore. Wish I had that gun back and the Centennial Winchester Model 30-30 and Franchi .22 rifle that went with it. That Franchi fit me like a shotgun. When I got it out of the box and loaded it at the Birmingham city dump, the guy half of the couple that was with us, picked up a pop bottle and threw it in the air. I caught it at its peak and squeezed the trigger busting it into a thousand pieces (more or less). He picked up another one and tossed it. Same result. I’m glad he quit because I’m not much of a wing shot with a shotgun. I think it was the 50-year model and I’ve never seen another one.

I got the rifles dirt cheap because Progressive Farmer and Southern Living had a reward plan for kids selling subscriptions and let employees buy guns that had scratches and dings. Someone used a pipe wrench to open my apartment door to get the guns and my TV. Easy come. Easy go. KL