If you're up right now, go look at the moon in the eastern sky. It's the remnants of a "blue moon" (two full moons within a 30-day period). The moon is "waning" a bit at about the "seven o'clock" area, and just off the moon, about 23 degrees toward "seven o'clock" is Mars.
You don't know me, so let me introduce myself. Merri Havelock-Johnson - Billy Johnson's wife!
During the last few weeks Bill has been pretty distraught that he may have offended some of you. And I'm here on the site to tell y'all a little about the "Billy" I know and love.
Yes, Bill can be a bit overbearing, extra charming, outspoken, and maybe too fun-loving. But let me share with everyone that he is one of the most passionate, kind, loving persons you'll ever encounter in the Cosmos.
If ever a family member or friend were threatened, needed a lending hand, support or love - Bill's the man who will step up to the plate without hesitation. He's a wonderful humanitarian and believes in we human beings!
He means no harm to anybody - only wishes the very best to those he loves and cares about. Forgive ole' Bill if he's been a little over-zealous. He has one HUGE fault (if you want to call it that) - he loves EVERYone and wants to be EVERYbody's buddy. These are only a few of the reasons I fell in love with "Billy," and why I will continue to love him "till death do us part!"
Looking forward to meeting those who will be attending the DHS reunion. In the meantime, do take care and Happy New Year - much love, peace and blessings are being sent your way from the Johnson Household for 2010.
Hi Merri Lee, it's nice to meet you and I too look forward to meeting you at our reunion. Let me start by saying I wish you and Billy a very happy and blessed Happy New Year. I guess you know Billy and I post several days a week and I can't tell you once that I have been offended by his sense of humor, encouragemnet and support that he offers to this website. I do know that he has uplifted my spirits and made me laugh on days that I was feeling a little down. In his field of work I just can't imagine what he deals with on a daily basis, sometimes people just hear things and try to analyze for something it's not. My goodness the Man can't be after every woman in the world, he is already sleep deprived. LOL.. I say that with no ill feelings toward anyone that may have had their feelings hurt. I can only speak for myself. Life has not been so kind to me but I love each day that God has given me, I have been truly blessed. How can someone complain that has survived twenty-six major surgeries, cancer survivor of thirty years that they thought would be five. Three Carotid Bypass surgeries within a two year period. The odds were against me but I say God has a different plan for me! Each day my health is a struggle but I'm not giving up! I have the love of my family and friends that give me courage to move forward. Now I can say that Billy has added to that list and I'm thankful for his friendship. 2010 is going to be a good year, I have a reunion to attend and I have some thoughts stirring in my brain that will help me be a blessing to others. God is my Pilot and he has not let me down yet, he has plans for me.
Merri Lee, you hang in there with Billy he needs you and I thank you for sharing him so others can have a better day! I wish you both much love, peace and happiness!
Hugs Always,
Carolyn
Thanks Billy, felt a little better today but did see the doc for some blood work. Made some comfort food for dinner; big pot homemade vegetable soup with skillet of cornbread. Nothing better to make you feel good inside. Hoping tonight will be a restfull one. Hope your work week will be good, stay warm! Hello to Merri Lee. :)Did I mention I hate cold weather!!!
Hugs :)
Carolyn
This message is in response to the disaster in Haiti. My wife and I have been members of the American Red Cross Disaster Team for several years. I wanted all of you to be aware that if you choose to make donations to the Red Cross, you can specify where you want your donations to go. All you need to do is specify on your check that you want your donation to go to the Nashville Chapter, or National, or Haiti, or Intrernational. You can make donations to any specific sub-group of the Red Cross...Blood Drive, Food, Ect. Many people make donations and specify that the money be used locally. So, wether you choose the Red Cross or some other charity, I hope you will consider helping these unfortunate people in some way.
I am always talking to students, trying to get them to understand that none of us are safe from disasters, and we must stay prepared. A little first aid and emergency preparedness knowledge can save your life or the life of a loved one.
So, please consider supporting your local emergency groups, Red Cross, Rescue Services, Volunteer Fire Depts. etc.
Oh, my! I didn't think about it back in 1970, but when I looked at our senior Crest in later years, I thought Mike was making a joke with the watermelon picture. So much for my perspicacity.
From time to time I observe a few conflicts between classmates about certain issues. I would like to remind everyone that we are all brothers and sisters. In a sense, will have been through battle together over the last 50 years and survived. That counts for something.
Even though we might not be close to one another, or even like one another, we have a common bond. It is the years and memories that will last forever. Like family we cannot make everyone and everything just the way we like it. But foremost, we can continue to love and respect each other and just be thankful we are still out there. I strongly encourage everyone to be heard; softly, loud, it dosn't matter. Lets just take advantage of our bond and not let the SKIN get too THIN. IMAGINE, Love, Peace.....
My Mom was always organizing these group trips to Europe.
Beth and I went on the first one right after we graduated in '70... big mistake! Anyway... after Beth and I broke up, I went along on another one... I think it was about '73...
Dr. Bill Doak's son, Arthur, a neighborhood buddy, went along, too. It was one of these "This is Thursday, it must be Belgium" things, you know?
Anyway... we were in Copenhagen. We had a "free day," when everyone could go off shopping or sight-seeing, or whatever, on their own. My baby brother Alan, Arthur, and I, went off walking around Copenhagen. We were broke so we couldn't take the bus or taxi or anything.
So we were walking all over Copenhagen, you know. And even though it was "summer" (late June, early July), in Copenhagen it was about 50 degrees. This big black cloud blew over and it started to rain. Then it REALLY started to rain! We took cover in a doorway (there's these doorways off the street there that go back about 3 or 4 feet from the sidewalk).
Suddenly this little British guy shows up, and says, "Can I join ya' mates?" He looked a little like "Aqualung" on the the Jethro Tull album. We said, "Sure." He crowded in amongst us and said, "Bloody hell, this is pissing, mates!" We said, "Yeah, we noticed, too." He said, "Let me roll you a joint." (Now this is Denmark, OK? It's legal there, so I'm not confessing to a "crime.")
He rolled up some kind of mixture of hashish, tobacco, and pot or something... opium?... something!" We passed that "joint" around and, buddy, let me tell you... the rain stopped... the sun came out... children were laughing and playing in the puddles on the street.. tulips were blooming... there was music in the streets... horse-drawn carts were clopping by... it was "magic."
Arthur, Alan and I were looking around for John, Paul and Ringo, but we never spotted them.
It took us all day to find our way back to the hotel. We crashed and nearly missed dinner. Someone came and woke us up. When we got down to the dinner table, we ate everything in sight! Yum. Food never tasted so good!
I'm pretty sure this happened AFTER we all graduated from DHS. It was FOURTH OF JULY.
Wendell Smith and I cooked up some giant fire crackers in his Mom's kitchen..... (his parents were gone to some party or something... so was my Mom).
Anyway.... we made up a couple of dozen of these bombs to celebrate the FOURTH.... OK?
Well, when it got dark, we had a whole bunch of Donelson favorites over... you know, Susan Stockell, her little brother "Cooper," my little brother "Alan," his girlfriend (who knows?), my girlfriend (who knows?), Dan Stewart (and his girlfriend, who knows?), and a WHOLE bunch of other DHS crazies....
We lit one of the giant firecrackers off.... and some of us got hit with "shrapnell." So we decided to put a piece of "barn tin" over the next one to keep the "shrapnell" down.
I had a piece of roofing tin that had once been my tree house roof. It said, "Come see Horn Springs."
Do any of y'all remembmer "Horn Springs?"
It was way out on Lebanon Road almost to Lebanon. It was a commercial swimming hole with diving boards and junk.
Anyay, we put this piece of roofing tin over the next giant firecracker.....
It blew it about a hundred feet into the sky. We all went running like rabbits. The tin fell about a minute later. If it had hit any of us, it would have cut our heads off.
What did we do next, you may ask?
We did it again!
We were laughing our butts off. (LOBO).
Do you remember "clothes lines?" Well, my Momma still had a "clothes line" up. I think it was Susan's little brother, Cooper, who hit the clothes line one time when we were running like rabbits to avoid being blown up.
He hit that line, his feet flew up, and he went DOWN.... LIKE JAMES BROWN! He was OK... but we laughed our butts off (LOBO).
Hey! I've got an idea! Let's get the WHO to do the music for the DHS reunion. It might be a little too loud for indoors, and the fireworks might catch the stage curtain on fire in the Donelson Elementary cafeteria. So, we'll have to set up outside on the kickball court.
I'm sure Larry can get them to cut us a deal. I mean, we can throw in free beer for the band, and junk.
Oh,Yes! I remember cloths-lines. Jimmy Turner, Me, David Ferguson, and another unknown, were all skulking around a hedge row along McCampbell Ave. just up from the Seven Eleven. It's about 10:30pm on a Saturday night, and Jimmy had made a dummy and dressed it up in old cloths. We were all hiding behind the hedge waiting for and unsuspecting car to torment. Suddenly, Jimmy raises up, throws the dummy over the hedge and out into the street.
Tires screetch, and all of us take off in a dead run across the back yards. Just happens that Jimmy is just short enough to duck the cloths lines that he knew were there, but being the pal he was, he failed to tell the rest of us about it. Ferguson breaks right and barely misses the pole, but he looks back just in time to see me doing a double back flip and land on my back side. It had caught me right at the chin line. Ferguson doubles back and grabs me by the arm and drags me to my feet. He's laughing histarically as I hobble off. All the while we're hearing some man cursing, and then he sped off into the night. I had a red mark all along the bottom of my chin and I had a difficult time explaining it to my mom, but dad just laughted and said, "forgot to duck didn't you?"
Indeed, I do remember Horn Springs, going there with my Burroughs cousins (no-account Overton graduates), the pavillion with a juke box, and playing 'Palisades Park' over & over.
Once, I got a bee sting on the back of my head. When my cousins arrived to go swimming, I was left at home with a headache and a compress that--if I recall--contained tobacco to draw the venom out.
I'd like to know who HASN'T been found. Would y'all look at the Classmate Profiles list, noting specifically anyone who doesn't appear to have found us yet?
If you'll let me know who you've contacted already among the not-yet-posted, that would be so great! I can eliminate them from my sporadic searches. (And you can nudge them to post a profile!)
another Billy story...back by popular demand, I might add.
Well, once upon a time... let's see... Joe Roberts and I were in 9th grade.... anyway, I made miniature slingshots out of Y-shaped little branches and I used rubber bands and a little pieces of leather for the "pouch." They shot BB's, and they had a range of about 20 or 30 yards. They hit about like a Red Rider BB gun, and in the right hands (or wrong hands), they were deadly accurate.
One chilly fall Friday night at a football "home game" Joe and I had our little sling shots in the pockets of our "letter sweaters," and yes, a good supply of BB's. We were on the very top row of the bleachers, where if we looked behind us we could see Don's Den right there.
When the other team's marching band was playing at half-time, Joe and I were pinging BB's off the tubas. you could here them go, "tink." And the poor tuba players couldn't do anything but just keep marching and playing.
Then this girl came walking up the bleachers toward us carrying a big coke in a paper cup from the concession stand. When she turned sideways to try to make it back to her seat, Joe popped a BB right in the lower part of the cup. It didn't go all the way through, but it made a nice little hole at the bottom of one side.
Coke started streaming out of the cup. She had no clue what was going on. She kept moving the cup around and looking at it trying to figure out what to do. Her movements directed the ice cold stream of Co-Cola right in the faces, and hair, and clothes of all the people sitting nearby. Then the girl looked into her empty coke cup and made this face like, "What the ... ?"
Then I said, I better go buy her another Coke. So I went down to the concession stand and stood in line and finally got another coke. So, I gave the girl the coke and told her I was sorry her first one mysteriously squirted out all over people. And she was happy.
When I made my way back up to top of the bleachers to rejoin Joe, he was gone! So I went on up and stood there and leaned against the railing.
While I was gone, little did I know that there were these punk little kids playing behind the bleachers throwing rocks, and one of the rocks hit Joe. So he pulls out his trusty slingshot and fires a BB down on the kid and it hit him right in the neck. Well, the little brat goes screaming and crying to his daddy, who happened to be one of the renta-cops at the game.
Then I saw this cop making his way up through the bleachers. At first I thought, "Ha ha, someone's getting busted!" Well, he kept right on a comin' straight toward me! That someone turned out to be me! He said, "Son, come with me, so I followed him down the bleachers and around back and he asked his punk kid, "Is this the boy who shot you in the neck?" And the brat said, "Yeah, that's him." Joe and I were just about exactly the same size and we both wore the exact same letter sweaters, so I guess it was a case of mistaken identity. What wrapped it up, however, was when the cop made me empty my pockets and there was my deadly accurate, hand crafted, Red Rider slingshot and a pocket full of BBs. The circumstantial evidence proved overwhelming.
But after Joe shot the kid and he went squalling for daddy, did Joe make any effort to go find me and warn me? He knew I'd gone to the concession stand, but he let me go back up there and catch his heat. Kick his a__!
In his rush to justice, the cop takes me to Mr. Edwards who was up in the press box and asks him what he wants done with me. Mr. Edwards said, "Billy, go home, right now. And I want to see you in my office first thing Monday morning. You heah?" I said, "Yessir."
Well, I walked home, and while I was walking on the sidewalk along Lebanon Road, when I was just abuot across the street from "The Spot" restaurant, a Volks Waggon came zooming past me, tossed out an egg, and it hit me right in the friggin crotch. It hit "The Spot" alright. That smarted, and I tried to catch the VW but he saw me coming after him and took off.
Bottom line, it wasn't my Friday night! Later I found out it was Henry Benagh who "egged me," because I heard him bragging at school about hitting "some guy with an egg last Friday night on Lebanon Road." I said, "Dang ye' Henry, That was me!" Then I wrestled him down on the ground and got him all muddy and he ran like a muddy rabbit.
Next I found Joe Roberts. I couldn't whup him like I could whup scrawny little Henry Benagh, but I gave him "severe verbal abuse" for setting me up like that. You think it bothered him for one second? Hell no!!!
Mr. Edwards made me write a 1000 word theme on "Ethical Behavior." I did, and he said he really liked it. (I could write stories back then, too) I didn't even get paddled!!! That time!
Listen, given the difficulties we’ve had communicating with the staff at “Fifties Forward” (ole’ Donelson Elem), maybe we should give ourselves some more time to get scheduled for holding our planning meeting there. Since I live the closest, I’ll start going by more frequently and trying to grab a real person (Jane Schnelle?) to actually talk to about our plans, schedule, etc.
Are we going to have a meeting at Jane Hall Greene’s tomorrow night (what time?), or is there something set up for us to meet at Fifties Forward (what time?), or what?
I’ve talked to Tim Jones (our Music Man) and he lives quite a distance from Donelson. He tells me he doesn’t care if he drives here this weekend, or next weekend, or whenever.
His enthusiasm for the reunion and all his time and energy he’s invested in preparing our music for the evening remains undying. All he needs to know, is “when, where, what time, what can he bring.”
To me it feels like we’re a little “off balance” to try to do anything tomorrow.
I say let’s give Jane Hall Greene and Tim Jones a break this weekend, and schedule a get together NEXT weekend (or whenever).
I’ve got my own complications this weekend. I do classroom time ONE weekend a month, and for March, the weekend begins tonight at 6:00 p.m. and ends Sunday at 3:00 p.m.
I’m available for a get together after 5:00 p.m. tomorrow (Sat., March 13th). Me, be damned, but for Tim Jones, let’s please let him know whether to come tomorrow so he can meet me at 5:00 p.m. and follow me to Jane’s, or just what.
