Carter Family Christmas Newsletter 2019

Homecoming 1959 by Phyllis Crane Wardlaw

Are you ready for some football? These words we hear often now that a new school year has begun and it’s October.  Football game nights at my alma mater are known for community spirit, students, parents, alumni, and just local folks that gather down in the “holler” to support the football team, renew friendships, make new friends, and to remember “ole times.”

Football in 1959, at Pontotoc High School, my senior year was exciting.  A school record was set; the team went undefeated and won the Little Ten Conference Championship.

Homecoming on Warrior Field in the 50’s and 60’s was a special night for everyone. Color, pageantry, music, participation from the student body, and, of course, football, all contributed to an evening of excitement and celebration.  Every detail was planned and coordinated by Mrs. Frances Furr and Mrs. Wayne Leech.

The Homecoming Court that year consisted of Freshman, Sophomore, Junior, and Senior Maids. These special students were Shirley Mask, Jennie Laura Witt, Jeanie Hardin, and Linda Ball.  The student body would choose the Homecoming Queen by secret ballot from three senior girls, Jane McCoy, Joan Tutor, and me.  Also, in the court were elementary students dressed in matching Indian costumes and feather headbands, outfits in keeping with our football team, the Warriors.  These students were Dianne Dallas, Carole Butler, Scott Stringer, and Jon David Naugher.

The faculty kept it a secret as to which one of the three senior girls had received the most votes.  We each had to have identical white dresses, write and memorize a speech, and practice each day as if we each had won.

The long awaited October night finally arrived.  The anticipation, suspense, and excitement was almost more than I could handle.  The plan was that Miss Ruth Thompson, our school principal, would go to the home of the one who had received the most votes and escort her to the stadium.

As time approached for my family to leave our house for the school, my dad said, “It’s time to go.”

Just at that moment, there was a knock on the door.  There stood Miss Thompson.  I had been chosen to be the Homecoming Queen! What a surprise and honor!

The ride in the back seat of Miss Thompson’s car with the long, hooped dress was quite memorable. 

As we drove out of the driveway she said to me, “Let me hear your speech.”

I quickly responded. 

When I finished she said, “Let me hear it again.”

She asked me to repeat it over and over all the way to town, which was a five-mile trip.  I lost count of how many times I quoted it to her.

The football teams were on the field doing their warm-up drills.  The stadium was filled with students, fans, and alumni for the Homecoming game.  As we drove down the hill to the edge of the field, all the lights were turned off.  Remember, it was still a secret as to who the Queen would be.

On the fifty yard line a seven-foot tall football had been constructed and erected by Mr. Don Mallard’s shop classes.  I made my way across the field (in the dark and between football players) to this football, where I was to be enclosed until the program started.

I still had time to say my speech a few more times while holding on to a metal pole and standing on a narrow platform.  At the appointed time the football was opened, I stepped out and Co-Captains of the team, Herbert Jenkins and Gene Turner, crowned the 1959-1960 Homecoming Queen, which was a very humbling experience for me.

Thanks to Miss Thompson and that five-mile ride, I still remember that speech today.  Here it is!

“Sometimes words fail to express our true feelings. I find that this is true with me tonight.  Anyway, I can say thanks, thanks again for this lovely honor.”

These words still express my feelings after fifty-nine years.

Know Thy Neighbor ~ The Pattersons

Tommy and Patsy Patterson 

Tommy and Patsy Patterson moved into Woodland Hills Subdivision in 1992 and are the second owner to enjoy the “house in the woods” in the first bend of Ridgewood Drive. Patsy says, when sitting on the deck, one has the sensation of actually being in a forest, due to the woods that surround almost three sides of their house. The variety of trees includes cypress, cedar, pine, oak, and dogwood, which are plenty to provide an array of beautiful autumnal foliage and staggering blossoms of springtime.

When asked what has kept the two living in Woodland Hills so long, Patsy was quick to respond, “The neighbors. We have great neighbors, and we can’t imagine living anywhere else.”

Tommy grew up in Ripley, Mississippi, and Patsy’s childhood hometown is Carrollton, Mississippi. Patsy is an Ole Miss grad, while Tommy smiles wistfully remembering his years at Mississippi College. I wondered how they found each other, having grown up one hundred thirty-five miles apart and having attended these separate colleges.

“We met as teachers in Aberdeen High School,” they chimed, almost simultaneously.

Tommy was one of the high school coaches there and also taught math in the junior high.  Patsy was perhaps the prettiest English teacher ever to grace the halls of Aberdeen High School. While neither of them said that, I imagine it’s true.

Working together and socializing, Patsy and Tommy soon began dating.  After deciding they were meant for each other, they married in August of the following year.

Patterson Place ~ pre spring

Patsy began teaching at Meridian Junior College in the fall after she and Tommy married.  Tommy found a coaching position at Meridian Junior High.

They had scarcely settled into their new roles as educators in Meridian, Mississippi, when Uncle Sam drafted Tommy into military service.

“Since I was a college graduate, I applied for Officer Candidate School in the Air Force, but it wasn’t long until they discovered I had a medical condition that prevented me from serving. I was given an honorable discharge,” Tommy recalled.

Patterson Place ~ summer

Both Tommy and Patsy returned to the Aberdeen School system, where they worked until Tommy accepted the position of Head Football Coach in Kossuth, Mississippi.

Tommy later accepted the head coaching job in Pontotoc, Mississippi, but after a couple of years left the ranks of coaching/ teaching and started a new career in the furniture industry, working first for Brookwood Industries, and later for Action Lane as their Human Resources Manager, a job that he was tailor-made for, or so it would seem.  He retired from Action Lane after having been there approximately 25 years.

Patsy continued to teach English in the Pontotoc City School system for a few more years, retiring in 2005. She found meaningful consulting work for several more years and still serves as North Mississippi Area Coordinator for the Mississippi Alternate Path to Quality Teachers.

The Pattersons are active members of First Baptist Church, Pontotoc, where Tommy is an deacon. They have two grown children, a daughter Sidra, and a son Hunter, both of whom are married and reside here in Pontotoc. Oh, there’s a cat in the house, which goes by the name Indigo…something to do with its eye color.

Tommy and Patsy enjoy numerous activities, one of which involves yard work, though Patsy is more into plant selection and planting than into maintenance and upkeep, with the latter being something at which Tommy excels.

Until recent years, Tommy refereed high school basketball and football games. He’s also served as alderman for the City of Pontotoc for the past twenty years and is a long-time member of the Pontotoc Rotary Club. Tommy’s interests include golfing and attending sports events at Ole Miss.

Patsy’s interests include exercising, reading, playing the piano, and playing bridge. Patsy is a member of the Open Gate Garden Club in Pontotoc. Like Tommy, she loves attending sporting events at Ole Miss. The Pattersons are season ticket holders for football, basketball, and baseball. A few years ago, Patsy travelled to Europe with friends to see Rome, Florence, Sicily, Monte Carlo, Nice, Cannes, Barcelona, and even Tunisia in Africa.

The Pattersons have enjoyed visiting numerous areas of our country. They’ve been on an Alaskan Cruise, toured the Northeastern States a couple of times to enjoy the foliage of autumn, been up and down the West Coast, and attended more home games in major league baseball stadiums than you can shake a stick at, which include: Red Sox, Yankees, Astros, Braves, Dodgers, Padres, Giants, Cardinals, Cubs, Rockies and the Oakland Athletics.

I have to share a Tommy story, courtesy of my niece, Felicia Brown Pollard. At the time, Felicia was still living at home with her mom on Highland Street. She would occasionally walk and/or jog into Woodland Hills, where her route always took her by the Pattersons’ home.

One summer day as she walking, she heard someone calling, “Help, help,” from some distance away. She looked and saw nobody, so she started to walk again, this time hearing, “Help, I’m over here. Help me.”

This time she saw who was calling for help. It was Tommy, perched on the rooftop of his house. He had climbed a ladder to clean out the gutters on the backside of his house and had climbed onto the roof. In so doing his ladder fell, leaving him stranded, alone on the roof, without a cell phone to call Patsy or anyone to help him. Apparently, he has learned from this mistakes and has not climbed onto his roof since.

Stop by sometime just to say Hi. It’ll make your day.

Know Thy Neighbor ~ The Montgomerys

Billy and Charlie Ruth Montgomery 

Billy and Charlie Ruth Montgomery own the second house built in Woodland Hills Subdivision. Constructed in 1987, it is the first house on the right as one enters Woodland Hills. They had, for many years, lived on Highland Street, just a few houses down from their present location, but according to Billy, “needed a bigger lot.” He got it, and even bought the adjacent lot, thinking one of his children might want to build there. That did not happen, but his son Steve would later buy an existing home in Woodland Hills.

Billy owned the drug store on Hwy. 15 N. that still bears his name, Montgomery Drugs. He retired as owner and lead pharmacist in 2003. He keeps his license current and, right now, works one or two days each week for Med Center, New Albany, MS.

The Montgomerys have been married sixty-two years. Both of them graduated Hurricane High School in Pontotoc County. Charlie Ruth recalls upon her finishing high school that Billy still had one year of college at Ole Miss before becoming a pharmacist. They had plans to marry after he finished college. Wondering what she could do in the interim, Charlie Ruth applied for work at a factory in New Albany and also enrolled in Junior College.

“My college years, lasted one day,” she explained, “I got a call to come to work at the factory, and I dropped out of school the same day.”

Life for the Montgomerys has been good. They have three remarkable children, all of whom chose careers in the medical profession. Their two sons are physicians, Steve lives and practices locally and Joseph lives in Madison and practices in Clinton, Mississippi. Their daughter Mitzi Russell is a school nurse for the Pontotoc School district. Of their six grandchildren, three have medical careers, and a fourth is studying to become a nurse.

Theirs is a close-knit family that enjoys spending time together. Many of the Montgomery Clan are members of First Baptist Church, Pontotoc. The cars you see parked in their driveway are most often those of their children or grandchildren. Additionally, they do family vacations right. As a family they have vacationed in Yellowstone National Park, toured sites in the West and the Northeastern United States, Alaska, Hawaii, and Canada.

Montgomerys on Ridgewood

Two of their three children have visited all fifty states with them, and the third has been to forty-nine states and will visit the fiftieth one, Washington, later this year when the Montgomery family flies there to board a cruise ship to Alaska.

This fall, the extended Montgomery Family will tour the Normandy region of France where American troops landed to launch a campaign to free Europe from the iron grip of the Nazi regime in World War II. They also plan to visit the concentration camps of Germany, where millions of Jews were slaughtered by the Third Reich.

Billy is the more enthusiastic sports fan of the couple, though Charlie Ruth enjoys watching basketball games locally, saying, “I don’t like sitting out in the weather to watch sports.”

Neither Billy nor Charlie Ruth are deep into a hobby, unless keeping an immaculate yard is a hobby, and in that case Billy’s hobby is working in his yard.

If you’ve lived in Woodland Hills
even a short time, surely you noticed how neatly trimmed the grounds are, and if you’ve passed by during the Christmas Season, you have no doubt enjoyed the Christmas decorations. Surely, they pride themselves in their home’s appearance, but they remain just plain good and humble folks.

Stop by sometime just to say Hi. It’ll make your day.

Erasing History

With regard to the removal of statues that some find racially insensitive in our modern times, because they remind them of the horrors of slavery, persons opposed to the removal of statues often claim, “You cannot erase history.”

In a sense that’s true, in that if one defines history as those things which happened in the past, then changing or erasing history cannot be accomplished.

On the other hand, if one wants to erase the historical record, then that can be done. Despots and terrorists groups have done so numerous times.

One Egyptian Pharaoh, Hatshepsut, had all mentions of her name chiseled off temple walls and statues of her were destroyed by her step-son who ruled after her.

Certain rulers of Russia had some accounts of Russia history removed from texts and/or rewritten. Stalin had 14.5 million of his countrymen literally erased.

The Taliban destroyed a centuries-old carving of Buddha on a rock wall to spite outsiders who wished to repair the damaged statue.

In our country, local governments have removed statues of Confederate generals from public view, moving them to a museum or a secure storage area, effectively hiding them from the public eye.

In so doing, all the aforementioned have destroyed or erased historical records.

All Americans should be about the business of studying our nation’s history and learning from our missteps to carve a better future for ourselves.

If Americans choose to “erase” history, we do so at our own peril and history will respect us no more than we respect those ancient Pharaohs, despotic rulers, and religion-motivated terrorists who also sought to rewrite and erase history.

Know Thy Neighbor ~ The Duffs

Cathy and George.Duff

The newest homeowners in Woodland Hills Subdivision are George and Kathy Duff. They purchased the Windham home on the corner of Dogwood Circle and Ridgewood Drive, and moved into it in January ’19, after making a few modifications to the interior.

Kathy said she and George had been helping their daughter and son-in-law shop for a home in Pontotoc, when a friend told her discreetly of a house that would soon be on the market. Without knowing the location or the owner of the house and only that it had a pool and a pool house and that it was in a subdivision, Kathy drove around various neighborhoods and concluded the house her friend had mentioned was the one in Woodland Hills. Soon George Duff and Wally Windham formed a gentleman’s agreement and sealed it with a handshake to begin the formal transition of ownership.

George describes his career as one in sales, “It’s easier to say, I’m in sales than explain the many businesses I’m involved with.”

George and Kathy are business partners with Tommy and Anita Wood and Anthony and Brenda Aaron in the company called BK Wireless and have several Select Retail Stores with Cspire, including the Pontotoc location. George also dabbles in furniture sales.

Kathy is co-owner of Martin Cardboard Co., Pontotoc, Mississippi, and is church pianist at Green Valley Baptist Church, Pontotoc.

George and Kathy are active members of Green Valley Baptist Church. Kathy is quick to let you know she loves Jesus, something one would easily pickup on in conversation without being told. Jesus may be in her heart, but He shines through her personality.

The Duffs have three children, Jarrod, Amanda, and Kasey, all by previous marriages, and a total of seven grandchildren with one more expected to arrive soon. As for pets, George and Kathy have beautiful white and gold tomcat they call Tigger. Tigger plans to keep his territory free of pests such as moles and raccoons, or the occasional stray feline.

Both Duffs enjoy healthy eating. George stills drinks a product by LIMU, daily, and Kathy, the more health-food conscious of the two, is extremely careful of what she eats and drinks. She avoids processed foods and sugars, eats only beef that is grass fed, and purifies her water with home filtration systems that remove all additives. Additionally, Kathy visits a nutritionist in Florence, Alabama.

Corner of Ridgewood and Dogwood Circle 

For fun, they enjoy games with friends; one in particular is called Dirty Marbles. Domino’s is also a favorite game that even their grandchildren enjoy.

George recalls the family vacations he went on as a child, which were basically Dental Conventions on the Gulf Coast that his father attended.

“So, once a year, we got to go the beach,” he remembered.

These days, George and Kathy enjoy occasional trips to the beach but have no plans to purchase any beachfront property. Their favorite beach is Santa Rosa, south of Destin, Florida.

They are thrilled to be a part of our homeowners association and hope, according to Kathy, this will be their forever home, at least on this side of Heaven.

Stop by sometime just to say Hi; it’ll make your day.

Smell The Roses

Old style utility pole

In my youth, poles of this style were commonplace. My friends and I may have known better, but we called them telephone poles, though they were technically utility poles for electric power or telegraph wire. Any telephone wire would have been attached to the pole well below the crosspiece containing glass insulators.

The last time I was walking in this area, railroad tracks were under my feet, snow was on the ground, and my wife, two children, and I were making our way from our house on 8th Street to First Baptist Church. We may have been on our way to sled the hills by the Church or those in nearby Happy Hollow.

Kudzu wrapped utility pole

Today, I was merely walking for the enjoyment of exercising. It’s amazing what one can see whenever he or she isn’t focused on a destination. That’s what I like about walking, now that I’m retired. I notice things

I live in a subdivision that prides itself in appearance. Even so, I’ve begun to notice a plastic bottle here,  an aluminum can there, and scraps of snack wrappers or containers in places I had not previously observed in simply driving by.

The photos shown here were taken along a section of the Tanglefoot Trail, formerly a railway and the one my little family used as a shortcut to downtown Pontotoc around 1980. The utility poles were no doubt there when we trekked the snowy rails, but I didn’t see or notice them.

Glass insulators, clear and blue-green

Today, vegetation has almost hidden them, and among the grays and browns of winter they stand as silent sentinels of a bygone era. They remind me of the importance of taking time to smell the roses, which is a paraphrase of a statement by golf great Walter Hagen, “You’re only here for a short visit. Don’t hurry, don’t worry. And be sure to smell the flowers along the way. ”

Something New for Christmas

I'm not sure who suggested it, but my daughter Rayanne and my niece Felicia thought it would be something our family might enjoy on Christmas afternoon. At least it sounded like a good idea to me, so I told them to "count me in."

Barbara, my wife, checked with Pontotoc Hospital Nursing Home staff on Christmas Eve to find out if anyone had asked about entertaining the residents the next day. No group had made a similar request, so we told them we would be there around 3:30 pm.

There are enough talented players and singers in my family that they could do without me, but what I didn't know was nobody wanted to put together a list of songs, let alone the words and/or music to the songs. I often fly by the seat of my pants, but with respect to music, I'm not comfortable doing so.

"We'll do some Christmas songs and hymns that you'll know," they said, "You don't need the music."

In my formative years, I learned a lot of hymns and popular songs about Christmas, but I only learned to sing the melody. I would be a full-fledged adult with two children, before I learned to sing the bass line of a hymn. There are people who can harmonize with the melody of a song, without sheet music, the fist time they hear the song. I can't.

There were eight adults that loaded into three vehicles along with two children to sing and play at the nursing home. You can see everyone in the picture above, except the pianist in the corner, who is my daughter, Rayanne.

Rayanne's husband Anson sang Mary Did You Know.  They are pictured at right.

We billed ourselves as the New Carter Family, so as not to confuse anyone familiar with the Carter Family of the pre-Great Depression era.

About halfway through our program, I decided to live-stream the music on Facebook. Had, I not done so, you wouldn't be viewing pictures along with this story.

The size of our group was as large as the number of residents in the Activity Room, but some residents had family members who accompanied them.

Some of the residents joined us in singing and later thanked us for coming to visit them. We certainly enjoyed our first public performance and will likely make entertaining the nursing home residents an integral part of Christmas 2019.