Jim Stone Archives

October 10, 2013

Dog Ate My Homework

It 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?

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.

September 26, 2013

Kilroy Was Here

Jim 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 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.

August 22, 2013February 18, 2017

Flashback to the Rialto

While I was in Cape, I picked up some cans of Shasta Black Cherry soda at Schnucks. The taste took me back to the soda dispenser at the Rialto Theater on Broadway.

Buddy Jim Stone, in town chasing a big magnet, reminisced about Carol Klarsfeld, whose mother owned the theater. Carol got to keep the money from the weight machine and the soda dispenser, he said.

Carol used to joke that the two profit centers in the lobby were the soda machine and the popcorn machine. “The most expensive parts of each were the containers they were sold in.”

The soda machine sat over on the left side of the lobby, near the popcorn popper (which produced oceans of fresh-popped corn, drowned in real butter). When you put in your dime, a thin cup would plop down with a satisfying “SMACK!” followed by a smattering of thinly crushed ice and your choice of flavored soda. I don’t remember the other flavors because I always picked Black Cherry.

Rialto and other theater stories

I’ve done a number of stories about Cape’s theaters. Here are some links in case you missed them.

July 19, 2013

Downtown Jackson

Buddy Jim Stone, still vibrating from excitement after chasing a huge magnet up the Mississippi River yesterday rousted me out of bed to go to breakfast Thursday morning. I took him to the Pie Bird in Fruitland.

I got some work done in the afternoon and hooked up with him for dinner. He was in a dead cow mood, but didn’t want to go to the chain steak joints around the I-55 / mall area.

We headed to Tractors Classic American Grill in downtown Jackson. Not a lot of stores were open, but the street had plenty of cars and trucks parked on it. (Watch out when you open your passenger side door: the curb is high enough that Jim smashed my car door into it. Twice. Once in, and once on the way out. I think it was the scientist in him. He wanted to prove the event was reproducible.)

Good service, decent food

I was pleasantly surprised to find they have a non-smoking area that was more smoke-free than my last visit several years ago. Our waitress was friendly, helpful and attentive. My medium steak was a little overcooked, but not enough to send back. Everything else, including a fresh strawberry pie, was excellent.

After a number of glasses of wine, Jim volunteered to pick up the check.

I think he’s going to use my photos to prove this was a business trip. He was going on and on about how he was prepared to take the bullet if anyone on the riverbank took a potshot at his magnet.

Then, he went and banged my car door on the curb again.