At my age and stage, high school years seem so long ago. I can barely remember those once clear moments, until I get an email, or sometimes receive a phone call from a fellow classmate, Hank Terry. When someone who is no longer living here in Mississippi has slipped away, Hank has been so thoughtful in letting those of us who are left know. And here at home, from time to time I read obituaries in the Northside Sun, that one of my Central High classmates has gone on to heaven; that person, who at one point in my life was important to me and to many others who grew up in this once close community. It can be easy to skim over what I read and think with some twinge of guilt, "I should go to his or her funeral.” (But, I sometimes don’t.)
I often pause though, take a breath, sink back into my lounge chair and look back across the span of years. When I do, my eyes fill, tears run down the sides of my face as I try to remember those once clear moments and people, memories that are now as elusive as a soft whisper across a high-ceilinged room. You get up and run to hear, but they, like the whisper have slipped through window cracks.
You wonder what happened to shining boys and girls who grew up in Jackson, and the men and women who taught here so many years ago.
When I came along, schools were not yet integrated, there was only Central High for whites, so boys and girls from each part of the city met there. You had no choice of schools, you couldn't pick one to fit your personality or needs, and we sprawled like cut flowers in a clear, wide vase, all of us touching at some point. Because of that, I think, we mixed into not north and south, but one culture, Jackson.
Turning back the hands of time to my first year at Central, I remember everyone standing outside the building, a mixture of the sublime and silly.
A few of the smarter girls wore off the shoulder-white organdy blouses, but even though it was still Mississippi hot, most of us smothered in corduroy and wool clothes we had bought at Kennington's, Lerner’s, The Emporium, Evans, the Vogue, Frances Pepper’s, or Sudie’s.
White dickey collars or silk scarves covered the neck of wool, short-sleeved sweaters and pancake makeup slid in clay streaks onto the dickies and scarves. High-sitting pompadours slipped loose from bobby pins. Limp ponytails flipped as we turned and twisted to try to make our skirts twirl a little in front of the boys who wore short-sleeved white cotton shirts and baggy khaki or gray pants.
When school began right after Labor Day, there were old friends to greet and new ones to make. We tenth graders looked for cheerleaders in dipping, flared skirts to wave to, or the ROTC company sponsors, a squadron of militant angels who—on Monday, Wednesday and Friday—wore their drab, shapeless uniforms. All the girls lowered their eyes, but closely watched the battalion sponsor as she stroked her sweet honey hair and talked to the football players.
But most of all everyone in front of the school watched the Central High Tigers, the Big 8 Conference football champions, as they stood talking and perspiring in last year's gray wool jackets.
Some of the boys were dull, others wild as a turkey's eyes. Some of our heroes were Houston Oakes, Tommy Lee, John Crechale, Bulldog Burton, Billy Greenlee, Billy Kinnard, Bill Lynch, Henry Mounger, Bennie Kirkland, Julius Ridgeway, Kenard Wellons, Jack Bass, Billy Yelverton, Skeeter Hart, Ed McCool, Johnny Awad, and Harry Geotis.
Us hot-cheeked, skirt-swinging girls posed near them and took pictures of each other. And they did seem to like being noticed.
Each morning when the 8:15 bell rang and the doors opened, girls hurried past boys lining the front where they loudly whistled, laughed, and called out to us and to each other. Our hearts beating fast, spreading our wings, we self-consciously lifted our chins and walked on by. Once we passed this noisy, welcoming gauntlet, then everyone slowed and scuffled down the marbled-floored halls, heavy books perched on smooth, swaying hips.
Though there was no awareness of it, the secure and familiar were changing, even as we moved on through the school. Those noisy, young voices which echoed against plastered walls have vanished, as have so many other secrets whispered on those long-ago nights.
