Shari Stiver Archives

August 3, 2013

Jackson Band Concert

I had a hankering to attend a band concert. I missed Cape’s Wednesday night concert at Capaha Park, but happened to be coming back from Perry County with Friend Shari on July 11, so I suggested we catch Jackson’s concert.

It took a bit of looking to find it,. We were a little early, so I told my passenger (who had slept most of the way back from Altenburg), “I’m going to take a 7-minute nap,” and set my alarm. When I woke up seven minutes later, she said, “You REALLY can fall asleep fast, can’t you?”

I couldn’t figure out why people were setting up their chairs at the top of the hill, several hundred yards away from the bandstand. I mean, sure, being able to get to the parking lot in a hurry is nice, but you needed binoculars to see the stage and I couldn’t imagine that you’d hear anything that far away.

Great warm-up act

Steve Schaffner’s group got toes to tapping. I could have listened to them all evening. Shaffner retired this spring after 22 years of conducting the Central junior, senior high school orchestras.

And, much to my surprise, the sound was great. I walked all the way up to the folks sitting at the top of the hill and could hear as well as if I had been in the front row. The guy running the sound board did a great job.

The main event

Before long, the Jackson Municipal Band took the stage. They played well, with enthusiasm and the crowd liked them, but I’m low-brow enough that I like the group that played Blue Grass, folk and country music. I’m not complaining about the muni band, but it’s not really my thing.

The Municipal Band’s website has the history of the organization, which dates to 1920, and a current schedule.

Great evening, great location, perfect weather

If I only make it to one band concert every 40 or so years, I’m glad I went to this one. The music was great, the temperature was perfect, the sound system was excellent and the mosquitoes must have gotten lost. These is plenty of parking, so I think I’d rather go to Jackson than Capaha Park.

It looked to me that everyone was having a good time, particularly when free ice cream was handed out.

Band concert photo gallery

Sometimes it’s better to let the photos tell the story of an evening. Click on any image to make it larger, then click on the sides to move through the gallery.

July 21, 2013July 21, 2013

Snakes Alive!

I have a number of places I take visitors and friends for a ramble. A week or so ago, I took Friend Shari and her mother, LaFern, on a ride that paused at Horseshoe Lake near Olive Branch, Ill.

The little park and spillway at the south end of the lake is almost always pretty. Shari stopped to use the restroom – it’s an outhouse, but Friend Claire pronounced it acceptable on our visit last year. Shari also gave it a passing grade.

While she was otherwise occupied, LaFern and I checked out the spillway. I saw a huge fish chasing minnows as soon as I got there, but he disappeared, never to be seen again on this visit.

There were plenty of turtles, including a softshell with a neck a foot long who was snurfulling along the top of the water until he spotted us.

Snake

This guy cruised by to the base of the spillway, then disappeared. His coloring and rounded head makes me believe he was harmless.

Moccasin, maybe?

I was less sure about this one. His body was thicker and his head was more triangular. I was ready to label him a water moccasin. Either way, I wasn’t about to dip my toe in the water.

I’m happier with turtles

I was happier to see a batch of turtles looking like they were playing on a seesaw. I count at least five on this log. (You can click on the images to make them larger.)

Ernie Chiles and I rode our bikes around the lake in 2009.

July 12, 2013July 12, 2013

1-2-3 JUMP!

Here are five young women Friend Shari and I met at the Old Appleton bridge. They said they are all from Cape.

I went to the trouble of getting their last names, but in case anything they did needs plausible deniability, I’ll just go with first names, left to right: Makayla, 16; Nicole, 16; Sara, 17; Sylvia, “almost 18,” and Autumn, 16.

I dubbed Makayla The Smart One because she didn’t engage in any of the Tomfoolery of her friends. She hinted that she might do so when there would be no photographic evidence around, but I don’t know if she did. (Click on the photos to make them larger.)

The Wild Child

“Almost 18” Sylvia was quickly named The Wild Child. When I first met her, I asked what the girls planned to do. “You’re not going to do anything crazy like jumping off the bridge are you?”

“Do you want me to?” she asked.

“No, no, no,” I replied. “I wouldn’t ask you to do anything like that. People drown here all the time.”

The next thing I heard was “SPLASH!”

The floodgates opened

After Syliva’s head popped out of the water attached to the rest of her body and she pronounced the water deep enough that she hadn’t even touched bottom, the rest of the girls, minus The Smart One, lined up. There was some discussion about jumping on “Three!”

The message was garbled

Sara, The Countess, jumped ON three.

Countess Sara was all alone

I thought maybe the other girls wanted TWO water safety checks before they launched, because Sara was on her own.

The first shall be last

The Wild Child must have heard that “the first shall be last,” because she was the last of the quartet to hit the water this time.

Getting it together

The girls lined up for another go. I heard them working out the details. “This time I count 1-2-3, THEN we all jump.” The timing was a little better this round.

Time to dry out

Shari and I left the crew hanging out and drying out. I took a careful count to make sure we were leaving behind the same number of girls we saw when we arrived at the bridge. If anything happened after that, I’d go looking for The Wild Child.

Former Wild Child Shari was content with wading in ankle-deep water below the dam. Wife Lila, in a text message, commented, “I jumped off that bridge once. Glad there are no pictures.”

July 11, 2013February 26, 2021

Alan, Lisa and Reality

I was supposed to meet Friend Shari and her mother, LaFern for an afternoon ramble. The left rear tire was a little low, so I went down the hill to Plaza to have them check it out. I rolled forward slowly and nothing appeared to be sticking in it, and it would taken them an hour to get around to me, so I had them air it up and I went to pick up my passengers.

We were going to be driving around on some remote roads, so I stopped at an auto parts store and picked up a portable tire inflator “just in case.” My two passengers pronounced it “cute” and thought it would make a good Christmas stocking stuffer. (If you get one, credit – or blame – me.)

We paused at the Thebes Mississippi River overlook and admired Alan and / or Lisa’s pronouncement of devotion. You can decry graffiti on public property, but it had to have taken a long time to etch out “Alan Hearts Lisa Always” in the seat. It was at least 3/8″ deep and filled in with black.

There is always a cynic around

In different handwriting and with an indelible marker, the inevitable gonna-rain-on-your-parade cynic scrawled, “This Week!” above the “always.”

Debris from flood

We looked at debris, including a green buoy, deposited by the recent flood.

What are these?

On the way to the car, we tried to identify these purple things. We weren’t sure if they were berries or grapes. They were intermingled with mulberries and poison ivy. Maybe somebody can tell us what we were looking at.

This is bad news

When we got to the parking area, I noticed the tire was down about a third. I said we’d better go back to have it checked out. Just before we got to the bridge, I could tell the tire was almost flat by the way the rear end was acting squirrelly. Yep, it was nearly flat. I pulled out the “cute” inflator and let it pump away. The box said it should inflate a tire in five minutes, but that might be one that’s not leaking air. When it hit 32 psi and wouldn’t go any higher, we took off.

By the time I got to Plaza at William and Kingshighway, it was flat again.

The nice man who looked at it said I was lucky to have made it in at all. It had a big split on the inside of the tire. “And, by the way, did you know you had two wrong-sized tires on the rear of the car?”

Nope. But it turned out to have been two tires I had to buy at Sam’s in the middle of Nowhere, GA, when I had a blowout on a day when temperatures were just short of that of the surface of the sun. Since the second tire was getting close to the wear bars, I had them replace both of them. That should keep me safe from hydroplaning if I have to make a mad dash through a tropical storm or hurricane.

Did I mention I had calendars and books for sale? I ask because Wife Lila called yesterday to say that our 20-plus-year-old washer died on the same day she had her power steering dohickey replaced.

I felt like I had been swatted by the guy who added a dose of reality to Alan and Lisa’s message.