Chickasaw Chuckles, Pt. 2

Hang on folks, here comes a SECOND installment of Chickasaw Chuckles, the days of our lives as kids growing up in our 'hood, Chickasaw Gardens, in Memphis TN

I call this series Chickasaw Chuckles, because at least some of the time I will have a funny story to relate. Here's one from the late 1940's.

Seems there was a Memphis State All Star football player who had had been tapped to escort a young lady from out of town in the city's grand annual event, the Cotton Carnival. There was royalty, of course, showing off the up and ins in Memphis society. They also wanted to represent the high society from other cotton producing areas, so they got some maidens from these states to send their loveliest to be part of the royal court. One such maiden from out of town was escorted by the previously mentioned football player. Now to show how high and mighty he wanted to look, this player picked up his lady wearing athletic clothes for a big event with the carnival. Then he drove her over around to the back of the palace, and told her to wait in the car while he went and changed. He went around the corner and changed to his elegant evening duds behind a bush in the back of the house. Thus, he had her thinking he lived in this grand mansion. It was never determined if she ever figured out what was really going on, here, but it makes a good story, because it did happen. This was verified by an 80-something lawyer, who knew the guy who did it.

Across the street from my house lived a judge, as I mentioned earlier. As young kids we all played in his front yard, sitting on his deer statues, sledding down his yard in the snow, and generally having whatever fun we could have. One problem he had with me, in particular, was with a sandpile he had alongside his house while he was building an addition. He would often see me rolling off with a wagon full of sand to play with somewhere else. He usually caught me, but sometimes not. Not sure he ever had enough sand to brick out the addition or not. When it snowed, we all just slid down his hill, across Lombardy Road and up our driveway a distance. We usually got about halfway up toward the house and ran out of momentum. But one year, it snowed, melted and re-froze. I didn't know what this meant, until I stepped out the back porch one morning, and the guy from across the street stopped at our back door steps, a full 30 yards in from the street! This was a sign of serious sledding, because he had jumped on the sled and ridden it that far, all on his own. Imagine what you could do with someone else pushing! This meant if we didn't want to hit our fence at the end of our backyard, another 20 yards, we were going to have to get a longer sledding trail. So, we hit on an idea to go around the corner, uphill on another street, and come out of a driveway that lined up with a street across from it. That worked, as the ice had given us at least two lots distance down that street, after having ridden down a hilly driveway, across the street and further on.

One of my ministers, Rocky Anthony, executive pastor at Second Presbyterian Church, grew up in St. Louis. When they expected a few inches, he said they referred to it as a "light dusting". Not here! Weathercaster Dave Brown and the National Weather Service (and the insurance industry, no doubt) freak out at a couple of inches of snow, and call up a "winter storm warning". Back in the early 60's when all this was happening, it wasn't yet that extreme, but it did close the schools. What do a bunch of bored kids do with no school to tie up our days? You don't wanna know, really. A few of us wilder members of the Chickasaw Gardens group went and got 6-8 feet of rope and tied our sleds to the bumpers of cars of whatever drivers would tow us around the place. Some were fast, some were slow, none were aware of the serious liability they let themselves in for. Ignorance is bliss. A good film of this kind of stuff is Warren Miller's "The Christmas Story". A favorite story in there was of this kid who, on a dare, licked the school flagpole in below freezing weather, and got his tongue stuck to the pole! Check it out, it's a hoot.

One of the more adventuresome souls among us was a guy named Robert Burton. He was borderline crazy, actually, which made him a natural as a playfriend, because so was I. Hey, boredom takes you places. I stood and watched as he lit a firecracker with a magnifying glass. Actually it was mounted to a stick, so there was a way to use the initial stage of lighting to propel it into the sky a good piece, then explode. But he had this thing sitting sideways in his driveway, on a board. Once lit, it went down his driveway, across the street, and up the opposite driveway a good 50 yards before it finally exploded between a garage and a fence, magnifying the sound. We were both nowhere to be found by any investigators, of course.

One of his other tricks was putting an inch and a half long firecracker deep in a sandpile, with the breather hole and fuse end well away. Well, after THAT went off, so was the sand! No tellin HOW long it took to complete the construction project it was brought in for. Such was life in the early 60's. We made sure to enjoy it!