Remembering Freshman Year 1958

Freshmen Green
Do you remember your first day in high school? I do, and I was only slightly less frightened than I was the first day of elementary school. We had all gone to seventh and eighth grade in “the old building” which sat where the wings of Smith County High School are now. :”The old building” had been the elementary school (or grade school) prior to building the new Carthage Elementary School which sat to the east of the High School and underneath the big old town water tower which has since been torn down. “The old building” housed Mr. MacDonald and Mr. Homer Lewis’ eighth grade classes and Mr. Hackett’s seventh grade class. The band room occupied a large portion of the building and we practiced in an odd shaped room that had no acoustic aptitude for this purpose. Now that I think of it, it probably had as much aptitude as we did though. There must have been some other functions in the building but I no longer remember what they were, if you do let me know.
The baby boom had hit Carthage with a resounding smack and by the time the new elementary school was finished, it had already been outgrown. Since a number of the lower grades had to be separated into two classes the big kids had been pushed out into the old building which was still heated room by room and had big stoves in the classrooms. Occasionally Mr. Hackett had been known to chuck a small lump of coal at a student that was not paying attention. I remember that while we were in the old building, phones were installed in the class room and some of the boys learned how to insert a pin through the wire and make the phone ring incessantly. Another major pastime was flushing Mr. Mack’s ever present hat, down the toilet. This usually brought an ongoing investigation and inquisition which put several students on the spot but allowed the rest of us to goof off for the balance of the day. Oh me, I don’t know why those kids acted like that.
Having been that close to the high school, it would seem we would have already been used to the routine there, but high school was another world. In the first place, all of us who had been together since first grade, were about to be joined by students from Cox Davis, Forks of the River, South Carthage, Pleasant Shade, Defeated, and Union Heights. I am sure I missed some but can’t remember what they are right now. We only knew these kids from the grade school basketball tournaments and that was minimal.
I spent the entire summer dreading high school. I had heard from Don Taylor, George Lankford, Walter Booker, Danny Williams and others about the “Teddilo Fee” which upper classmen exacted from freshmen, a kind of protection money that was collected at the door to the school in order to get inside. The other source of concern was the “Belt Lines” you were sometimes required to run through to get inside the building. I had seen the belt lines from the windows of our eighth grade room where timid looking freshmen were forced to run through at breakneck speed while upper classmen poured on the pepper, and the rumor system was filled with stories of boys who used the buckle end of the belt and did considerable damage to delicate parts of freshmen boys.
When I arrived, there were in fact a few upperclassmen hanging around who asked for the Teddilo Fee. I just told them I didn’t have any money, which was basically absolutely true, and pushed my way through. “Well, we’ll take it out of you hide in the belt line then,” was the sarcastic reply.
The first thing I learned was that somewhere someone was responsible for making sure your class schedule required you to run from one end of the building to the other at each class period break, and since our school had two stories, one class would be upstairs and the next down. I never understood by what formula they were able to work that out - must have been a mathmatical formula.
There were very definite rules about how you were to go up the stairs and how you were to go down, and which stairs were to be used for ascending and which were to be used for descending. These were not written down however, and every freshman got it wrong for about the first two weeks. But the survival instinct soon kicked in and you learned when to go up and where to go down. Then there was the great challenge of opening the combination on your locker without getting stuffed inside by a couple of senior boys.
During my first year of high school (1959) “the old building” was torn down and the new wings were finished which included the Band Room on the end closest to the football field and a new Cafeteria in the other wing. While that construction was being finished we had the band room in Mr. Bastion’s Ag Room, underneath the auditorium. Our acoustics had gone from awful to worse.
Well, as often is the case, most of my fears turned out to be unfounded. The Belt Line had been abolished, I never paid a fee to anyone, and the kids from the county schools turned out to be super nice. As I look through the years it has become difficult to remember who came from which school. To this day they remain cherished friends.
We are always a little apprehensive about something new, but one day we will be called by a New Name, we will sing a New Song, and we will walk in a New Body if daily we live with the New King and in the New Kingdom. I think we have no reason to be apprehensive of that which is new. 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. 2 Corinthians 5:17

Have a blessed day, Bob