Jessica Cyders Archives

March 23, 2014

I’m a Year Younger!

March 24th is my birthday. Like I wrote last year, since I thought I wouldn’t make it past 60, I haven’t paid much attention to birthdays.

Sunday afternoon, the Florida Clan (note “clan” is spelled with a “c,” not a “K”) descended on the house. In addition to Matt, Sarah, Adam, Carly, Malcolm, Graham and Elliot, Neighbor Bill and Friend Anne showed up for ribs, turkey burgers and birthday cake.

Miz Anne, bike partner and Road Warrior, had the temerity to ask me how old I was going to be. I suspect she was flaunting her youth.

“Sixty-eight,” I replied without hesitation, “if I make past midnight.”

“You’re not going to be 68”

“You’re not going to be 68,” Wife Lila responded. “You are only 66. You were born in 1947. You’re going to be 67.”

I didn’t bother to pull out a calculator because it was a given if I wanted to make it past midnight to whatever my new age was going to be, the right answer was, “Yes, Dear.”

(When I got back to my office, though, I pulled out my calculator and did the math. Not unexpectedly, she was right.)

So, I just got a year younger instead of a year older. (I wonder how many forms I filled out over the past 12 months where I claimed to be 67?)

I hate to break the news to Curator Jessica. She checks the obits every morning to see if she can lay claim to my Ohio photo collection for the Athens County Historical Society’s museum, and she’s going to be sorely disappointed to find out I’m not as old as she thought.. (Although, in her case, she has to stand on a stepladder to see 30, so I don’t know if she can tell the distinction between pretty old and REALLY old.)

By the way, you can click on the photo at the top of the page to see me celebrate my birthday with my Grandmother in Advance before my cute wore off.

March 19, 2014March 19, 2014

Dr. Hayes and Hayti’s History

Mother has some serious eagle eyes. She can spot a tiny cemetery on the side of the road faster than Curator Jessica. On the way back from interviewing Bishop Armour in Hayti for my New Madrid baptism project, Mother pointed out some tombstones alongside the road mixed in with some strip malls and commercial buildings. It was worth a U-turn.

Dr. Granville M. Hayes 1827 – 1899

A tall stone dominates the tiny Hayes Cemetery. It says, Through the foresight and generosity of this early settler from Kentucky, the Hayes family farm was transformed into what is now the City of Hayti. Dr. Hayes generously donated all the land now designated as our streets. He gave one city block to Pemiscot County for a Courthouse and another block was given to the people of Hayti for a school. Portions of two other blocks were given for a jail and a calaboose. It is estimated that Dr. Hayes donated 75% of his original farm to the people of Hayti. It was his dream to have a town with a city square with “Lights and squirrels just like Memphis.” Dr. Hayes died at a medical convention in Chicago and was brought back home by train and buried in this cemetery, but there was no monument erected at his grave. This monument is erected to honor Dr. Granville Hayes, Hayti’s namesake and founder and to commemorate the centennial of Hayti. Erected 1995.

History is like a bumper sticker

I was talking with Dr. Lily Santoro about doing a presentation for her SEMO historical preservation class. I hope I can get across to the students that historical markers are like bumper stickers: they are a quick read, but they may not tell the whole story.

When I searched for Dr. Hayes, not a lot popped up, but what did was fascinating.

At the time the Hayes and their daughters donated the land, the Pemiscot county seat was located at Gayso, several miles to the east. Louis Houck (remember him) and J.E. Franklin were promoting a railroad from Caruthersville to Kennett. They reached an agreement that they would run this road through the Hayes land if they would lay out a town on it and deed every alternate lot to Houck and Franklin. Block 29 was dedicated to be used for a courthouse and the other stuff mentioned on the memorial.

Then, partially because of a conflict between the “wets” and the “drys, Caruthersville, not Gayso City / Hayti was made the county seat. The June 9, 1910, Hayti Herald bannered a headline, “Likened Unto An Octopus – Caruthersville Has Waxed Fat at the Expense of the County Which Like a Lamb, Lies Dumb Before Its Sharers.” [Editor’s note: I wonder if the paper meant “shearers?”] Anyway, you don’t get to read many stories today where the word “Judas” is used twice on the front page. They, obviously, weren’t happy at the way things worked out. If you like the days when newspapers had real fire in them, check out this link.

Now it gets REALLY confusing

Here’s where it REALLY got confusing. Since Block 29 wasn’t used for a courthouse, there was a bunch of wrangling over who should get the land. The matter hadn’t been decided when The Hayti Herald weighed in again on January 26, 1911. It did a pretty good job of summarizing the issues, but this nice turn of phrase jumped out: “So the county has itself no power to act in the matter, even in a thousand years or a million years or when Gabriel blows his horn, except to use the property for courthouse purposes, for the reason that every lot that has ever been sold in the City of Hayti have been sold with reference to this plat.”

Supreme Court Judgement

I’m not even going to try to interpret the twists and turns of Williams et al. v. City of Hayti (No. 17705) as reported in the Southwestern Reporter, Volume 184. You can read the Missouri Supreme Court Rehearing Denied March 30, 1916, report for yourself. I made a wise decision to go into photography and not law way back in high school. Taking pictures doesn’t make my head hurt.

Dr. Granville didn’t get Hayti made into the county seat and he didn’t get his courthouse. Now that I know what to look for, I’ll have to see if he got “a city square with ‘Lights and squirrels just like Memphis.’”

March 7, 2014March 9, 2014

How Do You Answer the Phone?

I’ve touched on my negative love for cell phones in the past. I carried two-way radios on my belt for 25+ years and never minded that because they were designed as communication devices to be used only when you wanted to exchange important information.

When I became telecommunications manger and had to ride herd on hundreds of wireless devices, I was convinced they were the spawn of the devil.

When I was working, I carried two cell phones, each on a different carrier, because I was the Fone Guy. After I retired, I put all my eggs in one Verizon HTC Droid Incredible basket. The model served me well until just recently when it started misbehaving. Today it locked up, requiring me to pull the battery to do a cold boot. It flashed some debug code on the screen, popped up a couple icons, one shaped like a tombstone with RIP engraved on it, and died. It eventually rose from the dead, but I decided 2008 to 2014 was a pretty good run and maybe it was time to get a new phone.

If you wonder what the photo has to do with the story, it’s something I noticed when I was at Ohio University’s Alden Library last fall. It was striking how many students passed by with a glowing screen cradled in their hands.

I now own a Motorola Droid Ultra

Here are more students with their electronic nooses. The guy on the down escalator at Baker Center looks like he’s holding a tablet, but he’s actually a dinosaur: he’s holding – Egads! – an actual sheet of paper. I showed in another post how more folks were interesting in texting and taking selfies than watching the OU football game they were attending.

The folks at the Verizon store on North Lake Blvd. in Lake Park have been a pleasure to deal with. Michael Valerio patiently showed me what devices were available. He actually listened when I told him I didn’t really care about taking photos, playing music, texting or putting something on my belt that was the size of a TV tray, and pointed me to the Motorola Droid Ultra. The price was right – Free, except for a $30 upgrade fee and the need to buy an Otterbox Defender Series case to protect it.

Getting all my old aps back was a lot simpler than the first time I went through the drill. It’ll take some time to get stuff where I’m used to seeing it, but I’m pleased with how many things things come built into the phone that I used third-party aps for in the past.

There was one problem, though. I had the phone charging behind me when I heard a strange noise. I hadn’t set up the ringtones yet, so I didn’t recognize that a call was coming in. When I picked up the phone, I could see it was Curator Jessica calling, but I couldn’t, for the life of me, figure out how to ANSWER the bleeping phone.

That was never a problem with my old Motorola MX340 two-way radio.

March 1, 2014

Glenn Yarbrough 1968

You may have noticed I had a varied group of road warriors traveling with me last year. One of the things that makes for a successful trip (meaning that the same number of people arrive at the destination as left) is working out the Rules of the Road before you take off.

Friends Jan and Anne were bike riding partners, so we had plenty of time to work out the kinks of our relationships while pedaling down the road. Friend Shari was my first high school girlfriend (which didn’t end well), and we hadn’t spoken in close to four decades, so I had to learn that she doesn’t become close to human until after her first cup of Starbucks coffee, she needs frequent smoke breaks and she gets up about the time I’m normally going to bed. We were stopping often for her to check out antique shops, so the smoke breaks weren’t an issue, and I’d leave her my car keys so she could get her Starbucks fix before I even thought about waking up.

Curator Jessica from Athens, Ohio, was a going to be a challenge. She was half my age (OK, more than half my age, but who is counting) to start off, so I was afraid we would have generational issues. We managed to compromise on a waking and sleeping schedule, types of eating establishments (she wasn’t picky) and where we would stay (no place that rented by the hour or where bodies had been found in a room recently). The only place where we hit a speed bump was when we got to talking about music play lists.

“No Glenn Yarbrough,” she insisted

I’m not really a Yarbrough fan – in fact, I get Glenn Yarbrough and Gordon Lightfoot mixed up, probably because of the G-names – but I wasn’t going to concede all that easy. “Miz Jessica, Ma’am, you’ve read my blog. You know that Baby the Rain Must Fall, Glenn’s biggest hit, was how I met Wife Lila. Surely you wouldn’t make me cut that from the playlist, would you?”

She would. Yarbrough was a non-negotiable with her. She also wasn’t big on C.W. McCall, but she WOULD let me play the home brew Cars & Trucks mix tape that was a Steinhoff family trip staple.

So, when I was editing some of my Ohio film, I was surprised to run into Glenn Yarbrough in concert at Ohio University on March 2, 1968.

Jessica, this are for you.

He is as bland as his music

While I was editing the film, I cranked up some Yarbrough music. Sorry, Glenn, I had to dump you after about the third song. You make Gordon Lightfoot sound exciting. On top of that, the photos are dull, too. I’m only including a bunch of them in case some reader was one of the folks who bought some of his nearly four dozen solo albums. He also sang on almost two dozen albums with the Limeliters. SOMEBODY must have liked him.