At the base of the porcelain god...

I have not had a drop of alcohol in many years.  It holds no siren call to me.  I drink water and if I am feeling the need for libation of any kind, tea will do.  Occasionally I do crave a soda pop, but even that is very rarely.  So, that having been said, why did I wake up at 4:25 AM remembering the siren call of alcohol?  Why were my first thoughts this morning a memory of waking up in a dry bathtub, fully clothed and covered in vomit from the night before?  How many years ago was that?!?  Apparently, the fun I had transitioning from teenager to young adulthood is a memory I shall never live long enough to neither clearly remember or forget.  

When I was 16 I wanted to be a missionary and save the souls of naked natives in Africa, but by the time I reached 18 I had changed my goal from saving souls to drinking the brewery dry.  I had a friend whose dad made home brew and she and I relieved him of a lot of his product when he was not looking.  I think he blamed it on his wife, but it is a little late now to apologize for that little fiasco.

I remember very little of my Junior year in high school and even less of the Senior year.  I showed up for class pictures and ordered my class ring (which I promptly lost) and that was about it.

Now, there were boys who subscribed to the theory that "candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker."  Those little fellows never reckoned with me, did they?  Beer made me mean and hard liquor made me meaner.  Of course, either one was going to make me throw up!  Nothing turns a guy off like some broad barfing  which was the one thing that got me through my high school years with my virtue intact.  The last time I was drunk was when my brother came home from the Army and he bought a fifth of rot gut whiskey for three dollars and some change.  We washed that down with red Koolaid.  And the rest is history.  I threw up for 3 days and swore off liquor for the rest of my life.  Red Koolaid is never found in my house.  And I am pretty much  still abstinent.  Lips of wine will never touch mine!

So let's get back to the subject.  Why, all these years later, are the memories of booze so clear in my mind?  I can not remember what I got in the car and drove to the store to purchase, but I can remember how drunk and sick I was lo' those many years ago.  Now I suppose a psychologist would say I was secretly wanting a drink, but I am pretty sure that is not it, because I could drive to the liquor store which is one mile away and buy a bottle if I chose.  But, no, I drink tea.  And water.  Sometimes chocolate milk.  And of course, coffee.

So, it is now 5:30 AM and I am winding up this entry.  I will have another cup of coffee and get ready to start my day.  Not sure what today will bring, but I am sure I will be stone assed sober for whatever it is that happens.  There are things in my life that are "givens".  That means "it goes without saying."  I will not drink liquor today.  No red Koolaid either. No cooked apples.  For the most part, my life is good.  I miss my kids, but so be it.  Some day!

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus!

 

Cursive? What is that?

 I woke up this morning remembering the first grade at Nickerson Elementary School.  It was a big two story red brick building just one block down from where Main Street ended.  Why is it that 72 years later I can still remember the buildings in Nickerson, Kansas, but I can not remember what I needed from the grocery store? I think there were 3 or 4 sandstone steps that led up to the double doors that opened into the first floor.  The first floor held the first 4 grades as well as the kitchen where Mrs. Ritchie cooked the meat and potatoes that was the staple noon meal for the kids who could afford to pay for meals.  The little Bartholomew kids carried a sack lunch which was eaten at the other end of the long lunch table.  It was sort of like the lunch counters at Woolsworth where the "blacks" were not allowed to set at all back in the days of segregation.  Kind of funny how some things in life never really leave our psyche.  But I digress.

I was 5 years old when I walked into the hallowed halls of learning.  The first thing I learned was that my coat went on a hook on the wall and not just any hook.  We were assigned a hook in alphabetical order according to our last name.  Which brought us to our first lesson we would learn....the alphabet!  Across the front of the class room was a giant blackboard.  Above the blackboard was mounted the alphabet.  Directly below each letter was a picture that we should associate with that letter.  A a Apple apple.  Bb Boy boy.  Cc Cat cat.  You get the drift.

I can remember how my little mind hungered to learn all the letters.  All 26 of them.  At 5 years of age I somehow knew that if I could learn those letters and if I could learn to count, that the world would be my oyster!  It is funny how the young mind can grasp a concept when it wants to.  Learning was the most important thing I had to do at that age and I was going to do it right!  The fact that about as soon as I mastered those block letters, I would advance to second grade and on to third where the little block letters would fade into "cursive".  The letters I had worked so hard to learn were no longer in use and now I must learn "cursive."

Learning cursive also entailed practicing making loops and swirls until they were all even and my skill at printing now became "penmanship."  I was a natural!  Cursive was much faster than printing.  It looked better.  My mind was now free and unencumbered by the restraints of printing.  I loved to write and to me the greatest gift in the world was a blank tablet and a pencil.  I was enthralled and the love of writing never left me.  For many years it was buried under the guise of motherhood and the need to work to survive.  (Love of alcohol also interfered in that time period.)  But time marches on.

Penmanship became a thing of the past at some point.  I am not sure when that happened, but I was having coffee with my Republican friend in Kansas when he told me he would like me to come to Topeka and write thank you notes for him because I had beautiful handwriting!  While I was flattered at the compliment, I was stunned to learn that schools were no longer teaching "cursive".  I actually thought he was bullshitting me, but he wasn't.  

Since I was am longer in the loop of school age children I do not know what the status of cursive vs printing is.  Maybe someone out there can tell me.  We are in the day of computers and text messages and I think the only pen and paper stuff is the grocery list I make occasionally.  I have, however, become adept at asking the question, "Can you read cursive?" when asked for my address.  Usually I am met with a blank stare.  How sad is that!

I guess I will go google it!  I have a box of stuff from my mother in the closet.  Uncle Ray and mother corresponded regularly and it was always in cursive.  It is sad to think that I should actually throw that stuff on a fire, because no one will be able to read it.  

Bret just came up and I asked him if he can read cursive.  His answer was " I can, but it is confusing."  During our brief discourse  he made this statement:  "It is sad that cursive has been lost, because with the loss of cursive goes the loss of a language.  The Declaration of Independence and all the old documents are written in cursive, so they can not be read in the original form."  

So let me drink a cup of kindness now to the little red brick school house that no longer exists and to the teachers that taught me how to write my name and put my thoughts on paper.  They have faded into posterity, but never from my mind.

Mrs. Breece, Mrs. Wate, Miss Holmes, Mrs. Howe, Miss Swenson, Miss Lauver, Mr. Schrieber, and Mr. Bolinger.  You will live forever in the hallowed halls of my mind.

Who's gonna prime my pump?

I recall in Nickerson that running water was more than just turning on the faucet.  709 North Strong Street had no faucets.  Out by the horse tank was a field pump.  When the tank started getting low someone, usually Jake, had to pump the water into the tank to fill it back up so the horses could drink.  At the bottom of the pump hung a can.  That can was filled with water from the horse tank and poured into the top of the pump while pumping in short, fast strokes.  With luck, the pump would "catch it's prime quickly" and water would pump out through the mouth of the pump.  If you understand the workings of a pump you know that there is a leather inside that when pumped up and down draws the water up from deep in the well. Occasionally the leather becomes worn and needs replaced.

The pump at the horse tank was a big iron pump.  The handle was long and we used to like to pump because if we could keep a rhythm going the pump handle would sometimes jerk us up off the ground by the sheer force of the water.  We were also allowed to get in the horse tank and play sometimes.  Can you imagine how dirty that water was in that tank?  That coupled with the fact that the horses might want a drink while we were in there scared hell out of me!  Have you ever looked at horse teeth?  They are big and very yellow and I lived in mortal terror that one of them would eat me.  Life was hard back then.

All the house water for cooking, cleaning, bathing or whatever was carried from the pump outside into the house in buckets.  The tea kettle that set on the wood cook stove was kept full at all times and a cup of tea was just seconds away in case one of the fancy ladies from town came.  (This did not happen very often, and to my recollection, never.  Mother did clean houses and sometimes a lady would come to discuss her availability, but they were usually in a car and stopped in front of the house and honked.)

Ah. but fate smiled kindly us. I do not remember who, why or when, but at some point in time someone decided that mother needed a sink and a pump inside the house in the kitchen.  It was then that we were blessed with what was known as a "pitcher pump."  Now this was the cat's meow in pumps.  It did not need primed!  When we wanted water, we just started pumping and very soon it would "catch it's prime."  Talk about uptown!  It set of the end of a big oblong enamel sink.  The drain pipe ran through a hole in the wall that extended about 8 feet into the back yard.  There the drain water ran out onto the ground where the Muscovy ducks played in it.  Boy, that was one stinking mess, but it was sure handy.

I have to go into detail here about the Muscovy Ducks.  Those are about the nastiest things I have ever seen.  When I had my 17 geese and 37 ducks here I had 4 Muscovy's.  Now to the best of my knowledge, Muscovy's are the only domesticated ducks that can actually fly.  The 4 of them used to fly up to the house, across the fence and roost on the air conditioner.  Nasty.  The hens were little and delicate, but the drakes were twice as big and their necks were as big as my upper forearm.  They did not quack; they sort of quibbled.  I did not like them and I think they actually broke the neck of one of my geese.  They even looked evil.  All this has nothing to do with pumping water, does it?

I attended my first 3 years of high school in Nickerson.  It was during those years that I made 2 discoveries; home brew and boys, in that order.  I had a friend named LaVeta (no last name) whose dad made and bottled home brew.  He liked to go to the big city and gamble on Saturday nights and we liked to stay home and sample his home brew.  Her mother helped us.  She would take all us kids to Sterling and there were boys there!  There were dances there.  Sadly, I could not drink and dance, so the dancing went by the wayside and I learned to worhip at the feet of the porcelain God.  I have not had a bottle of homebrew in 60 years, but I can still taste it.  Once more I digress.

In due time mother graduated from Salt City Business College and we moved to the big city of Hutchinson.  The rest is history.  Louella Bartholomew grew up and not longer exists, or so we think.
Some where deep in my soul, she lives.  Her memories are as vivid today as they were when she was living them.  Homebrew and boys are a thing of the past, but the wants and the needs of that skinny little girl are as alive today as they were in that stick and mortar house at 709 Strong Street.

Peace to all.

Oh where have you gone, Martha Knoblock?

The older I get the more I remember when I was young and foolish, but mostly young and taken care of by some one other than myself.  I remember my classmates so clearly.  Now let me go on record right here as saying, I have my memories and thiers may be entirely different.  Like Martha Knobloch.  She played the piano and I recall her piano recital.  She lived near us, but up on the highway closer to the sand pit.  Her mother set up a recital in her home and several of us kids were there.  It seems like maybe only 4 or 5.  We set on a couch,  all us little girls in a row with our feet straight out in front of us.  I am sure her mom made some sort of refreshments, probably to entice us into setting still!  I recall being very proud that I knew someone who could play the piano.  I bragged about that for years, and look here, I still am!
Irene Reinke,  Beth McGonigle and Nancy Cuthbertson grew up to be cheerleaders.   They were the cool kids.  David Sjoberg,  Owen Lentz and  Gary Battey were the smart ones.  Kenny Fenton,  Jim Redford, and Larry Collee were the jocks.  Oh, and David Sjoberg was also a jock.  A smart jock, if you can imagine that.   Earl Kelley, Loren McQueen, Jay Moore, Joyce Pedersen, Barbara Hawk, Sherry Stires, Joan Moore, Eleanor Kirkpatrick, Eveline Piper, Barbara Massey, and Martha Knobloch.  I am drawing a blank on the rest of them.  I am sure when I hang up the blog, I will remember the rest of them.  But this was the core group.  Others came and went, but these were the ones I went to school with for 8 years and then into high school. 
I was not a very good girl in high school, so I lost track of them. The bus brought in kids from Hutch and the outlying areas and I just went to hell in a handcart mostly.  All through grade school Barbara had been my very best friend.  Mother cleaned house for them and I spent lots of nights at her house.  Remember the sleeping arrangements at my house made it impossible to squeeze in another kid.  She had her own room!  It had a bed in an alcove and a settee, a fireplace, a chair with a lamp to see by, a desk and everything I could ever dream of for comfort.  And her mother kept ice cream in the freezer and her day would make us a sundae with a cherry on top!  Her dad was the local dentist, so they had lots of money. She had a brother named Bert who always called me "mudpie" because making mudpies was always a pastime in my world.  One thing we always had was dirt and water.  Had I made bricks instead of pies I could have built a house.
I remember 3rd grade when hygiene became important.  The teacher's name was Miss Holmes.  The first thing every morning she would ask, "Did you brush your teeth this morning?"  We had to hold up our hand as a yes answer.  "Did you comb your hair?"  Another yes was expected.  "Did you wash your face?"  Yes.  Then she would walk around and physically inspect our hands to be sure they were clean.  I rarely passed.  I had answered yes to all the above questions, but only because everyone else did.  I am not sure I even owned a toothbrush back in those days.  I never had a cavity in my life until I married my first husband.  He gave me the cavity germ along with the nest full of babies! 
One of the really nice things about school was the bathrooms.  I never knew why they were called that because there was no where to take a bath, but they were nice.  All that tile and running water was more then I could ever dream for at home.  And hot water came out of the faucet!  In the 4th grade I went into the  bathroom one time at the same time as Beth McGonigle.  She had a popcorn ball tired up in a scarf.  It was uneventful until a few minutes later when Mrs. Howe grabbed me by the ear and took me to the office.  There the story was told by Beth that I had grabbed her popcorn ball and thrown it in the toilet!  I had not even touched her damn popcorn ball, but that was the story.  Mother had to come to school and hear what an evil child I was.  On the report card every nine weeks there was an area for teacher comments.  "Louella is mean to her classmates".  "Louella teases the other kids."  "Louella does not play well with others".  That continued until the last 9 weeks when there was no comment written because Mrs. Howe had been taken to hospital because she had a thorn in her lower intestine and needed surgery.  It was iffy whether she would make it or not.  Talk about Karma! 
In 5th grade I had Miss Swenson.  I loved that woman.  She found potential in me and entered one of my poems to a magazine and it was accepted.  Had I stayed in 5th grade forever, my life would have been so different.  But life went on and I am here today to tell you that Karma is good.  Well, Karma is good unless it is bad.  I like to stay on the good side of that bitch!  
I wonder where all the kids have gone.  I wonder if they had good lives.  One of the kids that wandered through my world in the 4th grade was a girl named Mavis Reed.  She had a brother named Jerry.  They lived outside of town and sometimes I would ride the bus to her house and then her brother would take me home on the handlebars of his bike.  Wonder what ever became of them?  Wonder why I thought of that?
Well, the world of church, geese, dog food, and all that calls to me, so I am out of here.  Just in case someone whose name of have mentioned above reads this, I would like to know.  Or if you know what became of the kids in the class of 1959 in Nickerson, Kansas, give me a shout out.  email is loumercer3@aol.com  Just copy and paste in your browser.  I try every day to be a better person just to make up for whatever I did back then.  I keep searching because if we do not learn from our history, we tend to repeat out mistakes and it is the same in the growing up world of skinny little girls!

Finishing up my grade school years.

I remember little about my grade school years and whether that is by choice or chance, I know not.  Every year we had a class picture made and every year I was on the end of the front row because we were grouped according to height and I was pretty much the runt of the litter, so to speak.  I remember we had to walk to a seperate building for music class.  Miss Barkiss was the teacher and she later married David Houston, who was the son of the Principal at Nickerson Grade School. I do know I could not hit a note if my life depended on it.  I still remember her making me stand in front of the class and how hard I tried to hit middle "c" what ever the hell that was.  I don't think I have hit it yet, though I do love to caterwaul the country music I grew up listening to on the radio.  When it was time for the annual music program, Miss Barkiss gave me the job of announcer since I could not sing, but my voice carried and she needed some one whose voice carried.  I loved that.  I could stay behind the curtain with my microphone and no one could see me.
Most of the school work I considered stupid and did not bother doing it.  Poor mother!  I remember  a few of the kids I went to school with, but really don't care what became of them, although I do wish them well.  Nancy Cuthberson who's dad was in constuction and they had 2 Great Pyrennes dogs that I was terrified would step over the fence and eat me.  Martha Knobloch was a pianist and we were taken to her recital which was held at her home and we had to dress up and we were most uncomfortable, but for years after I would point at her house and tell whoever I was with that I had been inside that home and it was beautiful!  Barbara Hawk was the daughter of the dentist and my best friend.  Mother cleaned house for Mrs. Hawk and sewed for them.  I remember once I was over there and Mr Hawk made us an ice cream with a cherry on top and mine fell off and I cried like a baby, so he gave me another one.  There was Joan Moore, Beth McGonigle, Linda Schlatter, Gary Battey, Earl Kelly, David Sjoborg who's older brother was at college and died in a car wreck.  Irene Rienke, Evelyn Piper, Loren McQueen, Kenny Fenton, Ronnie Beck, and names that completely elude me.
In 8th grade 2 new boys arrived on the scene.  Billy Newman and Steve Dorrell were from the big city of Hutchinson.  The were cousins.  I had no idea what cool was, but one look at Steve and I knew the definition of cool, super cool, and coolest thing in the world.
Remember Fonzie?   The Fonz?  Steve exuded cool and never let on that he even knew us little girls were batting our heads against a stone wall.  He wore blue jeans with the belt loops cut off so they rode down his hips just a tiny bit.  He wore a white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up exactly one and a half turns.  And the collar up in the back, but laying flat in the front.  His black hair was combed into a duck tail and every hair was held in place with axle grease.  Billy was just there, but when Steve walked in the room he arrived and when he left, he sucked the air out of the room.  He was skinny, giving him the lean and hungry look  He was my first honest to goodness crush, and bless his heart, he had eyes only for himself.
I do not remember graduating from grade school.  I don't think it was a big deal back then.  I just remember reading on my report card that Louella Bartholomew was promoted to grade 9.  That was it. Grade school was behind me.  Off to the big High School on the other end of Main Street.  But, alas, before that could happen my life took a bit of a turn and I was sent to Plevna, Kansas to take care of grandma Haas and Great Grandma Hatfield, thus seperating me from classmates I had gone to school with for 8 years.
Stay tuned.

709 North Strong, Nickerson, Kansas . Hot bed of the midwest?

Yep!  That is where I started second grade and where I lived until we moved to Hutchinson, Kansas.  Oh, there was that 6 months or so that I was with Grandma Haas and Great Grandma Hatfield, but for the most part, I learned all I needed to know about live there on Strong Street. 
It used to snow back in those days and we would sometimes need to walk home from school in the snow which was up over our knees, or so it seemed.  Of course, my knees were not as far up to as they are today.  Or maybe it just seemed that way to a little kid.  We walked every where we went and it seemed like the walk to and from school was so long, but as I look back now, it was a total of 8 or 9 blocks and it took forever.  I drove it last time I was there and it actually takes about 3 minutes and that is waiting at the highway for the hay wagon to pass.
First block was the school block.
Second block was the people I did not know.
Third block was Eldon Belote and Loren McQueen.
Fourth was Wells(?) and she had delivered her last baby in the bathroom (one of which we did not have inside the house).
Then Darrel Kalb on one side of the street and Jimmy Redford on the other.  (Both of these boys were objects of my 7th and 8th grade crushes.
Then the house where the guy had set it on fire to collect the insurance money, but wound up in jail for his efforts.
Block 7 was Whittlin' Joe and Johnny Carson who let the chickens roost in their house.
Block 8 was Howard Fein who made his lower plate jump out at me once and scared the livin' pee waddin' out of me because I did not know teeth were not attached.  (I did find out later how that worked when momma got her teeth pulled and got false ones which made her look like Tex Ritter, or so I thought.
Then home.  Home was always good.  It was a safe place and there were people there that I liked, or thought I did and then I left home because I did not like them, but then I found out I did, but by then there was no going back.
Behind our house was the cemetery where we liked to play because there was grass there.  And down the road was a sand pit where we were not allowed to go, but we did it anyway, because we were kids and kids do things they are not supposed to do.  We did have to be careful because sometimes a pack of wild dogs would roam the country side and we did not want to be killed and eaten.  Oh, and there was those Gypsy's that camped right outside of town and were known to grab young kids and take them God only knows where and do God only knows what with them.  Luckily I was never kidnapped.  No one in our family or anyone I ever knew was kidnapped.  I never actually seen the Gypsy's and I never knew anyone that did, but still, you could never be too careful!
The high school gymnasium burned down at some point during my high school years.  Now, I must go on record here as saying, I do not remember much about high school.    I do not know whether terrible things tend to be buried deep in our psychic, or the fact that I had a good friend who's dad made home brew might have tended to blur and distort some of my memories.
I do know I was not very interested in boys, not meaning that I was interested in girls.  I mostly liked to just day dream, I think.  I could see a very bright future for me as a writer, an actress, and entertained ideas of every kind, but never the role of wife or mother.  I did date a boy who later proved to be gay.  We had lots of fun and won all the dance contests.  Now I want you to know, that back in the day when we had the "sock hop" at convention hall, there was some dancing going on!  Remember American Bandstand with Dick Clark?  It was mine and Corky's dream to go there.  Course we never made it that far.  We did the over the shoulder, through the legs, toss in the air, stroll, chicken, bebop and anything else you could imagine, but we never made it to Band Stand! 
We did make it to Joyland in Wichita one afternoon.  Unfortuneatly that ended with me throwind up on the Round Up.  Nothing makes a date stand out in time immemorial like the girl hurling her cookies!
I have many memories of those years and I did not know until 55 years later that this was the ground work for Louella Bartholomew to become Lou Mercer.  My biggest regret in life  is probably that life can not be lived in the rear view mirror.  Ah, would I have done things different?  Hell yes!  But would I be the person I am today had I lived it different?  I doubt it.  There is a lot to be said for that song  The roots of my raisin' run deep.  I've come back for the strength that I need.  And help comes no matter how far down I sink.  The roots of my raisin' run deep.
For the record, I am happy with the person I am today.  Not real proud of some of the lessons I learned, but today I am a content woman with my mantra painted on a sign on the deck.  It reads

Love many, trust few.  Always paddle your own canoe! 

Nostalgia? Damn good thing!

I happened to think back on 1959 when Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and the Big Bopper were all killed in a plane crash.  I have to look up the date (February 3, 1959) but I know where I was when I heard the news.  Some things just work that way.  That was back in the day when Dick Clark held sway on the American Bandstand.  We had the sock hop every Saturday night at the Convention Hall and dreamed of going to to American Bandstand.  Talk about American Graffiti...we WERE American Graffiti!  I was "hanging out" with a guy named Johnny at the time.  See, I did not "date", but I loved to dance and for that I needed a regular partner and he filled the bill to a "t".  My kids would never believe some of the gyrations that went on at those dances, and most of them by their mother!

Johnny and I won more than one dance contest.  He occasionally dated and the girls were always jealous cause he always came back to me on dance nights.  They just could not understand that we were in sync and that was how that was.  I must pause here for a  moment to send Johnny on his way.  I do not know because I never saw him after high school, but I heard many years later that he was gay and had moved to California.  And then many years later, that he was one of the first to fall to the AIDS epidemic.  I think that info is accurate.  Course his name was not Johnny, but there are people out there who may remember.

But back to the three stars.  News was not instantaneous back then like it is now.  I was dating a kid from Medicine Lodge and when he picked me up that night he told me about the plane crash.  Of course it was several days before the news was confirmed to my satisfaction in a newspaper because the printed word (at that time) was gospel. Then the Three Stars song hit the charts.  Can you believe we used to actually stop by the record shop and pick up a list of the "Top Ten Songs"?  I think it was put out by Billboard?  Getting a little fuzzy here on some of the details.  I do remember Hayes Record Shop on Main Street. That was the place to go when the new 45's came out cause they had them!

When the kids were in band I rented instruments for them from Hayes.  45 RPM records were quickly becoming a thing of the past and 33 1/3 LP were the preferred product.  I had a little case of 45's that I left with my sister after I married and started my travels.  I never saw them again.  They were eventually swallowed up in her estate and probably wound up at the city dump.  Funny how that stuff happens.

Anyway, Elvis had hit the scene, but he went off to the service in 1958 leaving the stage clear for these three.  Besides, Elvis was different and these guys were "comfortable".  They were guys we could have gone to school with; and Elvis was a wiggle worm.

I guess what I am trying to say here is that I was out and about in one of the richest periods of Rock and Roll, Rhythm and Blues, Rockabilly, Gospel, Folk, Country and what ever went on at that time.  My daughter, Debbie, called the other day to express her surprise that I knew who Peter, Paul and Mary were!  Poor child!  The tales I could tell her.  One of the main reasons I married her dad was because he danced the same style I did, sort of a hip hop, stroll, exhibitionist dance to a different drummer.

So once more I will put the Big Bopper, Richie Valens, Buddy Holly, Gene Vincent, Fats Domino, Jerry Lee Lewis, and a plethora of names that I must stop here because I do not want to miss anyone to rest.  Sometimes when I can't sleep at night I walk the halls of Nickerson High and visit the Convention Center and I am young again.  That is the great part about Nostalgia, as long as I can remember I am young.  And when I begin to forget, well I guess I will cross that bridge when I get to it.  If I am really lucky when I lay my head down for that final nap the Big Bopper will sing me a rousing rendition of Chantilly Lace and Johnny will flip me across his back like in the good old days!