Thursday, July 11, 2013
Constitution Avenue
The summer of 1983. That is what I was trying to recall. I was trying to recall the timeframe of when I wrecked that red 1967 Ford pickup I used to own.
That was my first vehicle. I often wish I had kept that pickup. Bobby Walraven told me every time I saw him about how the guy who bought it from me was still driving it around Ashdown after he fixed the minor damage to the front end.
I have often thought of that 1967 Ford as the Ford Mustang of the American domestic pickup truck. The Ford pickup truck had been around for a long time but the 1967 was when they were finally cool.
Now Ford is just a sissy truck line, a company led by sissies, the effiminate Ford in the United States.
So anyway, I was trying to recall precisely when I had that accident and I did not apparently try very hard to remember because the answer was obvious.
I do not of course recall now the precise date but that was obviously the summer of 1983. That must have been it because I drove that Ford over to pick up Lesa Jewell when we went to the prom together during our 11th grade year at Ashdown.
So then that was later that I had the accident. I recall that was summer time. I then bought that 1967 blue Chevrolet pickup truck from the son of Denzil's friend. Roger Chauncy, that was his name. His brother, Donald Gene, was in that Ford with me when I had the accident.
So I am thinking more about that now.
My 11th grade year was my 3rd year at Ashdown. I was awarded the American Legion award that year for my class. I was elected class president that year. I can still visualize to a certain degree sitting in class when the teacher, whom I do not now recall, was handing out the ballots to vote for class president and my name was the only person listed for class president and the teacher commented to me that was how they did things in Russia, having only one person to vote for. Is that how they do things in De Queen I would have asked if my puny brain had been capable of forming such a relevant question.
Recently I have been thinking of the circumstances that led to me and Lesa Jewell going to the prom together. We weren't dating or anything. I had an after-school job at Mills Store, Lynette, were I was often tasked with such lovely activities as sweeping the floor and sometimes assembling furniture and often bagging groceries and many many other activities I was glad to get a paycheck for during the three years I worked there, and I didn't have much of a social life.
So I wasn't dating Lesa but I had known her since I moved to Ashdown and we had some classes together and I talked to her often. The way I remember it now we went to the prom together because Tammie Hood asked me who I was going to ask to the prom, her precise words I do not now recall. I am also vague on whether she is the person who I am thinking of because she and I talked probably the most our 11th grade year. I recall she and I had every class together and I thought of her later as somebody the closest to a best friend I had that year. So the way I remember it now she was asking me who I wanted to take to the prom that 11th grade year and I recall now specifically my first response was Shalie Wylie. She was very cute. Tammie, the way I remember it now, said she thought of that too but that Shaylie had already been asked by someone else and so that wasn't an option for me then. So I think Tammie is who suggested to me that I ask Lesa to go to the prom with me.
Whether I asked Lesa or she asked me is something lost now from my mind. I could ask her what she remembers but all you dullards out there know how that story ends.
I always did like Lesa very much. She was a person I always thought of as a good friend.
I don't recall precisely when we first met but I do recall she is one of the first people I met when I moved to Ashdown. The way I remember it now she asked me to meet her at the skating rink one Friday night in Ashdown and so I had my mother drive me over there to that popular hangout for kids in Ashdown. I remember very well that Lesa surprised me that first night and she came around from behind Thedia's car and I was standing there and Lesa kissed me and I was surprised. I don't recall if that was the first night I went there but could have been.
Recently I was thinking more of who all I had met early on after moving to Ashdown and I remember clearly sitting in English class with Michelle Center to my left and then I remember what I think is the first time I met people from the Class of 1984 in Ashdown.
The Shurtleff twins. As best I recall they are the first people I met in Ashdown outside the circle of the people I lived with. I remember clearly they came over to that place we moved into where Denzil lived on the north side of Ashdown. I remember I was nervous to meet them. They were coming over specifically to meet me. Someone assured they were cute. I remember they came over and I was sitting on the floor of my bedroom playing with my "Star Wars" action figures, soon abandoned for the pursuit of more mature activity, and I didn't want to come out and finally Thedia coaxed me out to meet them and yep, they're twins all right.
And they are real twins. They are not the wishful-thinking-political twins of George Bush. Sure, that one girl is George Bush's biological daughter but that was what you might call a team effort. That other girl is the biological daughter of Laura Bush and some Mexican guy. Only in America. Your perverts rule you.
So that was the summer of 1981 when I met the Shurtleff sisters. That must have been later in 1981 during the school year when Lesa invited me to the skating rink but I don't now recall precisely. I was only 14 years old at the time so I doubt those memories even exist physically in my brain. If anything those are copies of copies of copies of the original memory.
Oh yeah, that blue Chevrolet. I remember well I was annoyed that Denzil purchased a blue Chevrolet for his son Micheal sometime during my 12th grade year when I was driving that 1967 blue Chevrolet pickup truck. Micheal's pickup was slightly newer, a 1971 maybe, but the color scheme was very similar and while my truck was bigger than his, they looked very similar. We were often out driving around the county in our similar pickup trucks.
The 11th grade for the Class of 1984 began in 1983 and ended in the summer of 1983.
See, they told me that as class president I was in charge of the senior prom. At Ashdown Arkansas, the prom dance was open to attendance by the senior class and the junior class.
The 11th grade class decorates the gymnasium and conducts the prom for the senior class. They told me that as the class president I was in charge of producing that prom dance.
I do not now recall whose idea it was the decorate the dance in the Occidental theme. I really doubt, with strong certainty, that I came up with that idea, there sometime during 1982 or 1983. I probably simply agreed to go along with someone else suggestion, which is to say I don't even recall if there was even a discussion, if there was even a choice to be made about the theme for that dance.
I have not in the past decade or two or more seen the class yearbook for our 11th grade class but I sit here now at my desk and I recall clearly there is a photo in there of me during that 11th grade year when several of us were working on producing that dance. The photo I am thinking of now is of me and some other classmates that were working with me on that project. We had just opened the shipping boxes of the material that we would use to the decorate the gym. In the photo, I am wearing a typical conical Asian hat that Wikipedia describes as a sedge hat, rice hat and paddy hat and the Vietnam leaf hat. I remember that day, something just seemed unusual about all that.
http://www.script-o-rama.com/movie_scripts/u/untouchables-script-transcript-david-mamet.html
The Untouchables
- Mr Ness!
- Sorry, let him through here.
Let him through here.
You want to take your picture,
take it now.
- You ready?.
- Ready.
JOURNAL ARCHIVE: Posted by H.V.O.M at 3:29 AM Thursday, March 08, 2012
"What's really important"
Having just now decided to start watching the DVD for the 1971 film "The Omega Man" I find myself thinking, for really I think the first time, about how his crash at the beginning for the film reminds me of a similar experience, which is where I have now paused the DVD in the first few minutes of that 1971 film. He is now in the theatre watching a film from three years earlier and I find myself thinking about how the dead world would be with that eight-track music he was listening to in his convertible.
The part that seems familiar is that after the crash, when I dragged myself out of my overturned driver's side seat, and my step-father and my occupant's father drove up soon after in my step-father's pickup, and I asked someone, Ambrus, I think, or maybe my step-father, if we should call the police. I cannot recall now the precise words, or maybe I do recall the precise words, but I remember something similar to "Only if you want to get a ticket."
When did that happen? 1983? Maybe. I feel certain that was after 1981 and the summer camp at Camp Couchdale. I don't think I even bought the Ford pickup truck until 1982. I think I had it in the tenth grade. I know for certain that the pickup truck I bought next was the blue Chevrolet 1967 pickup truck and I drove that, I am fairly certain, for all of my senior year at Ashdown High School Ashdown Arkansas.
[JOURNAL ARCHIVE 08 March 2012 excerpt ends]
JOURNAL ARCHIVE: July 16, 2006
Was I with the Blue Angels ????
http://www.blueangels.navy.mil/index.htm
The Blue Angels’ mission is to enhance Navy and Marine Corps recruiting efforts and to represent the naval service to the United States, its elected leadership and foreign nations. The Blue Angels serve as positive role models and goodwill ambassadors for the U. S. Navy and Marine Corps.
[JOURNAL ARCHIVE 16 July 2006 excerpt ends]
JOURNAL ARCHIVE: July 16, 2006
I guess, based on photos I've seen recently, the Blue Angels were still flying A-4 Skyhawks back in the day I would have been there, but that doesn't seem familiar.
[JOURNAL ARCHIVE 16 July 2006 excerpt ends]
JOURNAL ARCHIVE: July 31, 2006
That is consistent with that memory of running out of gas short of AHS that night we were building the Junior Class float when I was class president. Someone came along and gave me some gas for my red Ford. That red Ford seems to be consistent with the F-16. After refueling, I took off from the desert floor and flew back to the Israeli air base.
[JOURNAL ARCHIVE 31 July 2006 excerpt ends]
JOURNAL ARCHIVE: 10/1/2006 3:17 PM
June 8th must mean something to Thomas Ray, but I cannot remember what it is. I was writing, and still believe, that I did not make it back with the strike group on 6/7/81 and 6/8/81 was the day I made it back to the base. Or it was the day they determined where I was and launched a rescue effort, such as to fly in a helo to get me out or to bring me fuel to fly out from the desert. I keep thinking of that memory of me running out of gas in my red Ford when I was on my way into school one evening to supervise the construction of the class float for a parade. That was towards the end of my Junior year at Ashdown. I remember Jennifer Jones used to kid me about it for a while afterwards.
[JOURNAL ARCHIVE 01 October 2006 excerpt ends]
JOURNAL ARCHIVE: From: Kerry Burgess
To: Kerry Burgess
Sent: Thu, May 25, 2006 10:01:46 PM
Subject: Re: Journal May 25, 2006, Supplemental
Kerry Burgess wrote:
I crashed my '67 red Ford one day during an activity we called a fox hunt, which isn't very much like the British activity, or so I guess, I've never seen the British version. My passenger in the truck, whom I don't believe is a real person, was Donald Gene Chauncy, a family friend. I was a field judge in the exercise, working to get to the location where the dogs crossed a road so I could write down their numbers and score them on various attributes of the chase. I was driving too fast down a gravel road, the truck started fish-tailing, and I hit a stump that flipped the truck upside down. I can still remember seeing Donald Gene flopping around as the truck flipped. I had a box of shotgun shells on the dashboard although we didn't actually shot at the foxes. Then I'm trying to get out and there is gasoline pouring out next to me, I had an almost full tank having filled up not much earlier.
[JOURNAL ARCHIVE 25 May 2006 excerpt ends]
JOURNAL ARCHIVE: From: Kerry Burgess
To: Kerry Burgess
Sent: Thu, May 25, 2006 10:01:46 PM
Subject: Re: Journal May 25, 2006, Supplemental
Kerry Burgess wrote:
I was driving too fast down a gravel road, the truck started fish-tailing, and I hit a stump that flipped the truck upside down.
[JOURNAL ARCHIVE 25 May 2006 excerpt ends]
JOURNAL ARCHIVE: 01/13/07 10:18 PM
I have also written about how the shifting rod would lock up sometimes and there was that memorable day in particular when I was on my way to pick up Lesa Jewell for our date to the Senior prom, when we were Juniors, and I had to get out in my white tuxedo in the busiest intersection in Ashdown and un-stick the shifting rods under the hood so I could continue driving. I wonder what all that means in reality.
JOURNAL ARCHIVE: 01/13/07 10:56 PM
I have been thinking for a while that one of the scars on my abdomen is from a bullet that hit the bullet-proof vest I was wearing. If left an imprint on the vest which broke my skin.
[JOURNAL ARCHIVE 13 January 2007 excerpt ends]
JOURNAL ARCHIVE: Posted by H.V.O.M at 10:40 PM Friday, July 08, 2011
The scar on my left hand is a bullet scar. I had to dig out the bullet with a small screwdriver I had in my pocket. Somebody, I think often was my brother, asked me why I did that with the screwdriver because that screwdriver probably caused more problems, since it was non-sterile, than just leaving the bullet in my hand and waiting for proper medical treatment.
[JOURNAL ARCHIVE 08 July 2011 excerpt ends]
JOURNAL ARCHIVE: From: Kerry Burgess
Sent: Friday, May 26, 2006 4:42 PM
To: Kerry Burgess
Subject: Re: Journal May 26, 2006
Kerry Burgess wrote:
I remember one time, with my red Ford, driving to the junior prom. I had a problem with the shifting rods that I never got fixed. It was a 3-speed manual with the shifter on the column. Sometimes the shifting rod linkage under the hood got stuck and I couldn't shift gears. This one day, I was standing there in the middle of town at a busy intersection in my white tux with the hood up to get the linkage unstuck.
[JOURNAL ARCHIVE 26 May 2006 excerpt ends]
JOURNAL ARCHIVE: 9/17/2006 7:31 PM
I think it is humorous to compare my memory of Lesa Jewell kissing me the first and only time outside the skating rink one time when we were in high school.
[JOURNAL ARCHIVE 17 September 2006 excerpt ends]
http://www.divxmoviesenglishsubtitles.com/O/Officer_and_a_Gentleman_An%20.html
Officer and a Gentleman An
Where are you from, Mayo the wop?
Everywhere, nowhere...
Paula the Polack.
Seriously.
Seriously. Seriously...
My father's a rear admiral,|seventh fleet.
You're kidding.
We lived in ports|all over the world...
- Kathmandu...Moscow, Nairobi.|- Really?
I've never been out of Washington.
Wait a minute.|You're kidding me, right?
We don't have any|naval bases in Moscow.
- No.|- No. I didn't think so.
So...you got a girl, Mayo the wop?
No.
I ain't looking for one either.
What are you looking for?
I've heard about these girls who|come here looking for a husband.
- Not me.|- Yeah? Why are you here?
To meet interesting people,|improve myself.
What do you do, go to school?
No, I got a job.
I work over at National Paper.|It's a real good job.
I'm going to save|enough money, travel.
Think I'd like to go to Moscow.
You been through|the Dilbert Dunker yet?
No, but my father and brother|made it through.
I guess I can, too.
Is your brother a flier?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067525/trivia
IMDb
The Omega Man (1971)
Quotes
[first lines]
[the last man on earth wrecks his car]
Robert Neville: There's never a cop around when you need one.
- posted by H.V.O.M - Kerry Wayne Burgess 11:33 AM Pacific Time Seattle USA Thursday 11 July 2013
