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OBSERVATIONS
February 27, 2020 |
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Is roadside littering making a comeback?
Seems to me that litter tossed along our highways is showing up more often these days. A big public push years ago sought to reduce if not eliminate this nuisance --- the state's Adopt-A-Highway program, for one thing; Johnston County's trash "convenience centers," for another. Is litter's persistence an indicator of rising disrespect among some folks for their environment, and for one another?
 Wingate Lassiter |
Reflections on renewing a driver's
license half a century after the first
Other than moving up to high school as a ninth grader, getting one's first driver's license was one of the biggest events of growing up "back in the day" (as they say).
All I remember about that first one, upon turning 16, was the road test culminating with the successful execution of parallel parking. Thanks to Coach Roy Brown for that. He had a simple yet effective formula for easing a vehicle into a tight parking place --- and it still works, although it's a rare situation that requires such skill nowadays.
<Here's a great
picture from the 1962 Smithfield High School yearbook
of a 16-year-old taking the parallel-parking test at
the Holt Lake Highway Patrol station.Coach Brown (perhaps best known as a successful football coach who brought our school its one and only state championship, in 1959) taught us youngsters some important basics of living as we were growing up in Smithfield. I'm pretty sure he gave me my first swimming lesson --- at Holt Lake in the 1950s. And, as a teacher of health and "phys-ed" at Smithfield High School, he not only walked us through the classroom work required to earn a driver's license; he also came by our homes and picked us up --- early on summer mornings, I recall --- to teach us how to operate that little Studebaker with a foot clutch and "three on the column" without running into a ditch.
So here I am a half century later, getting my license renewed. No road test. Not even that test through the viewer to see if we could identify various road signs. Just an eye test and an affidavit that I am who I am and live where I do.
License renewals used to come up every four years. Last time I got one it was good for eight. This time, for five. Perhaps it would be a wise safety precaution for DMV to test us seniors more often than that!
Oh, if you'd really like to learn Coach Brown's parallel-parking trick, I'll be glad to demonstrate. On second thought, let me do a practice run first. It has been a while.
A NOTE FROM A READER
More Holt Lake reminiscing from an SHS grad of 1950
JINNY HONEYCUTT MITCHELL sent this note to the editor after reading the latest installment of "Memories of Holt Lake" in last week's Sun:
May I
introduce myself as one of your most avid readers.
Thanks to two of my Smithfield
High School classmates in the 1950 graduating
class (Fred Mattox and Rose Holland Brown), I now
receive the weekly edition of the Smithfield Sun.
I eagerly await each Thursday to catch up on my
hometown news.
The most recent issue of February 20 prompted this
response. Rose Brown's
memories of Holt Lake in the 1940s and '50s was read with laughter and
tears. Her memories are mine. I, too, jumped into that
lake with my friends from the bridge, never realizing
the danger of submerged stumps that lurked below. I,
too, spent so many happy hours swimming with friends
in those waters.
The tears fell when she recalled so
accurately the drowning incident in January 1940. That was my Uncle
Sam, youngest son of my grandparents, Samuel T. and
May Young Honeycutt. Rose and I were in the third-grade class of Mina (Young)
Sanders that year. I have a photo taken of Sam and
Ruth (Rose) Wellons on the ice, apparently just
moments before the tragedy. I plan to bring the photo
with me in May when our class will hold its
reunion.
I am so blessed to call Smithfield my hometown --- and more blessed to have many close friends from those days still living there.
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