Ernie’s Earth Science Book

Ernie Chiles with Earth Science book 05-02-2014I’ve written many times about Earth Science Teacher Ernie Chiles and the friendship we developed outside of class. He interacted with students in a way that would be unthinkable today, but that’s what made him one of the most memorable teachers I had.

To keep from rehashing old stories, I’ll just post links:

When we met for lunch this trip, Ernie presented me the actual Earth Science book he used to teach the class. I told him to play Vanna White or pretend he was selling soap so I could take his picture with it. He may have a shot at making it in the late-night infomercial game.

He even inscribed it

Ernie Chiles' Earth Science book 05-04-2014Jim Stone, George Cauble and I set a goal of acing all of Ernie’s tests. We’d get together in my basement to review and practically memorize the book the night before a quiz. Ernie, for his part, took the challenge and decided to make tests so hard they couldn’t be aced. You can imagine what THAT did to the curve.

Jim Stone and I are still arguing with him over a couple of questions he marked wrong.

Who did all the underlining?

Ernie Chiles' Earth Science book 05-04-2014When I leafed through the book, I noted that almost every sentence was underlined.

“Geez, didn’t they give you a new book when you started teaching? Who did all the underlines?”

“I did,” he admitted. “You guys thought I was kidding when I said I was only about a chapter ahead of you when I was teaching the class.”

We couldn’t go flying

We couldn’t go flying the last time I was in town because Ernie’s plane had a broken perambulator or something.

It’s perambulating fine now, but there had been a lot of rain around Painton Airport where he hangars the plane. That made the grass runway a bit iffy. I had hoped to get in the air before the leaves came out, but since I had missed that, we decided to err on the side of caution and wait until summer to go up.

Stone is going to be SOOOOO jealous when he hears I have The Book.

 

Getting Ready for the Dance

Decorating CHS gym mid-1960sHere are a few photos I found later that go along with a post I did on Decorating the Gym back in 2012. I held back on them because they were pretty scratched up and nor particularly sharp. I needed some quick content today, though, because I’m planning to do a computer upgrade this evening and I needed to get everything shut down so I could do a backup.

(Thanks, by the way, for all you folks who click on the Click Here button to do your Amazon shopping. That helped made the upgrade possible. I was running low on disk space for all these photos.)

Sackman and Towse

Decorating CHS gym mid-1960sMiss Kathryn Sackman, left, American History teacher, and Miss Lucy Ellen Towse, physical education instructor, discuss what acts of tomfoolery the students are contemplating.

When I look at those ceramic tile walls, I can’t help but remember the way sounds reverberated off them. It was a curious mix of bouncing balls, yells, the squeak of rubber tennis shoe soles on slick floors, punctuated by bleats from the coaches’ whistles. I file it away with the unique sound of silverware hitting thick china plates and the buzz of milk shake mixers at the Woolworths’ lunch counter.

Other decorating photos

Click on any photo to make it larger, then use your left and right arrow keys to move through the gallery.

Dog Ate My Homework

1967-01 Miscl 27It was 12:49 a.m. I walked into the dining room and told Wife Lila, “OK, I finished the video I was working on and uploaded it, then I uploaded the photos that Curator Jessica needs to have printed in Athens; I’m going to pop a bowl of popcorn, then unwind with half an hour of TV.”

“I’ve been sitting here waiting for you to tell me you had blog content to proof.”

“Oh, Bleep! I KNEW there was something else. Do you think the readers would believe our dog ate my homework?”

“We don’t have a dog.”

“THEY don’t know that.

Who is that young woman?

1967-01 Miscl 28

So, now that the dog excuse is shot, the burden is on you. Who the heck is this young woman? I don’t have a clue, and neither did the four or five folks I showed the photo to. I’m sitting in the back seat, so it’s not my car. It looks like a small car, maybe even a VW, but I can’t think of a single person who drove a VW in Cape in the mid-1960s.

Pat Sommers and Jim Stone were about the only two guys I ran around with who had cars: Pat had a small Pinto or something; Jim drove cars that came from the dealership his dad worked at.

The gal has a certain cool air about her. She is neither concerned (nor impressed) that I am taking pictures of her.

Your homework assignment

You homework assignment is to name this young woman (with her REAL name. Points will be deducted if you are found to have made one up). Bonus points will be awarded for identifying the car and its owner.

“The dog ate my homework is NOT an acceptable excuse.”

Shooting to tear down my equipment and load the van for a Friday morning departure.

Kilroy Was Here

Jim Stone and others in Science class c 1964Jim Stone and a couple of his buddies are committing science at Central High School. There are all kinds of impressive computations and chemical formulas scrawled on the chalkboard. Jim appears to be singeing the hair on his arm with the flame of a Bunsen burner.

You can click on the photos to make them larger.

Working the slide rule

Jim Stone and others in Science class c 1964Jim uses his slide rule to calculate the number of hairs burned off his arm in the previous photo.

By the way I looked up “slide rule” to see if it was one word or two and discovered that slide rules (two words, by the way) were pretty much killed off by the electronic scientific calculator by 1974.

I love the Kilroy Was Here face on the bottom left of the board behind Jim.