Howl-O Hounds!
I am reminded of the scene from "101 Dalmatians" where all the dogs are barking and howling from one to another throughout the town to notify their kindred spirit of the disappearance of the Dalmatian puppies stolen by Cruella DeVille. So it is with this email "howling chain" we have developed through the Miles' Files innocently started just over a year ago as a vehicle to encourage members of the Class of 1970 to attend a reunion last summer celebrating our Escape from Remmel Park 30 years before. It worked! (Note: It worked due to a tremendous effort by the Scheming Committee led by Mistress of Mischief, the Wizard of Wonder - Cherry Lou Smith Simmons.) It worked so well that we can't wait another five or ten years to "Get Together" (as the Youngbloods sang to us in the fall of 1969). So ... we are having a 30 year Encore Reunion the weekend of June 22-23, 2001 back in Newport. On Friday evening, June 22 at 517 Walnut, a place many of you know as Mama Hurley's House (now Aunt Sissy's House), Mama Hurley's grandchildren, David Sibley and Ann Gardner Hearn, along with "yours truly," will be hosting a fish fry from 6:00pm til ??? Certainly all members of the Class of '70 are invited. All other "Dogs of Yore" receiving this message are welcome to join in the fun. If you think you can attend, please reply to this email so we can plan to have enough food for all. Plan B is this - if we run out of fish, we'll find SOMETHING to DRINK! I know several liquor stores remain in crawling distance. We have no definite plans for Saturday, June 23 of this reunion/party weekend. We may just treat it as a "normal" weekend when we were kids and meet up with each other by happenstance as we circle the Jack's Dairy Cup or the Dog 'N Suds or Shelby's Drive-In. Oh, those places aren't there anymore? OK, maybe we'll meet at the Strand Theatre or Headlee's Drug Store. They're gone too you say. Well, I know Remmel Park is still there. Maybe there will be a dance at the Legion Hut. And I know the White River still runs through town. Some of us may be able to find Budweiser Beach. Anyway there will be much fun to be had in one another's company throughout the weekend. I know for a fact that it was not the places we visited that created the memories we now have, it was the friends who were present at those places when we were there together. Hope to see you all on June 22. Encore! Encore!
Since the "Walk Down Walnut" fell from my fingers onto the keyboard a week ago, I have heard from several "Dogs of Yore" about their memories of Newport when growing up there. I want to thank my 1970 littermates Kathy Spann, Betsy McCall, Jan Grimes, Gail Thaxton, Mary Wynne Parker, Margaret Ann Gillihan, and Rick Wiggins as well as Jimmy Toler ('68), Mary Lou Phillips ('72), Alannette Hare ('67), Andy Gray ('67), George Rogers ('67), Melissa Magness ('56), Homer May ('56), Ron Broadaway ('56), Jerry Bullard ('71), Kip Welch ('79), Molly Graham ('55), Edna Stone ('58) and Lana Miles ('72) for their kind words and supporting comments.
For newer recipients of the Miles' Files I use the maiden names (girls, women, ladies) of former NHS students when I know them so that all readers (listeners) can relate. With that being said I want to welcome all new subscribers to the Miles' Files especially littermate Pauletta Heard who recently registered on the NHS website, my cousin Artemis Fallert and my sister, Lana, who has finally left the Dark Ages and found access to email out in Las Vegas.
Another newcomer to the Miles' Files is Jeannie Hall, a '72 classmate of my sister to whom I was reintroduced on a recent flight from Little Rock to Atlanta when we found ourselves as seatmates on the plane. Small world - yes indeed! Jeannie is an attorney and Director of Human Relations and Chief Information Officer for the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. She was a Hound majorette and the daughter of one of my favorite math teachers, Willard Hall. I also want to welcome recent subscribers Molly Graham, Edna Stone, Melissa Magness, Ron Broadaway, Patsy Broadaway, and Homer May who all roamed the halls of NHS in the '50s. I appreciate your memories so much! As subscribers, simply remember that you get what you pay for. I now have 62 littermates from the Class of '70 and 90 other "old" Hound dogs on the receiving end of these missives for a total mailing list of 152. Our NHS website which can be found at its new address (www.nhsalumni.net) is the brain child of the previously mentioned Edna Stone Williams ('58) and Peggy Gardner Watson ('57) and it is ably maintained by that Webmaster Hound, Harriet Brantley Lane ('64). Everyone owes them a Hound Call! Visit the site and leave your mark so that others may find any "stray" friends they are missing. Encourage friends and classmates to register on the site. Contact me if you need any help. I will be happy to sit down for a visit either in person or in cyberspace with a bottle of fine single malt scotch nearby to spark the conversation.
The juices flow better if there is a little background music jumpin' off the guitars of Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, B. B. King or from the vocal chords of Sam Cooke, Bob Dylan, Bonnie Raitt or your music maker of choice. Today is the birthday of classmates David Sibley and Kristine Artymowski. In unison - HAPPY BIRTHDAY! Kathy Spann's was May 29. Later this year and into 2002 the Hounds of 1970 will be turning 50 years YOUNG. After writing a recent Miles' Files on my birthday and mentioning it (I appreciate the well wishers out there), Victor Proffitt asked if we could pull a birthday list for the Class of '70. I have quite a few already, but if my classmates will let me know the date of your birth, I will do what I can to pull together a calendar. Next year's reunion will be a 50th Birthday Party! The memories of graduation are close at hand. Tonight my middle daughter, Emily, graduates from high school (Pulaski Academy in LR) and will joining her sister, Evelyn, at the U of A, Fayetteville in the fall.
Wow!!! Tomorrow morning Kathi and I leave for ten days on a business/pleasure trip to the Seattle, Washington area and Vancouver Island, Canada. While there we will go to Safeco Field for a Mariners baseball game (of course) and I intend to visit the final resting place of Jimi Hendrix, an icon for music in our era, to my respects. His first single "Hey Joe" was released in late 1966 with his first album "Are You Experienced?" following in early 1967. I saw him in concert in Memphis in the summer of 1970 and he died in September of that year just as we were entering college or stepping out on our own following our high school days in Newport. "Are We Experienced?" Today, you bethcha! Thirty-one years ago, we thought so. "Hey Joe, where you gonna run to now, where ya gonna go?" I'm gonna run back home to Newport on June 22 to hug some Hounds who have been running free for the past thirty-one years. I'll see you at Mama Hurley's house!
Until then, I'm just Miles from Nowhere, guess I'll take my time ...
joe
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