Weaving a Tapestry of Designer Alligators - column, 8.7.16

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Weaving a Tapestry of Designer Alligators

Is there a rule requiring all book reviewers to employ the tired metaphor “weaves” (as in “The author weaves a tapestry of…”) in every essay?

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For the last forty years the Navy has been playing dolly-dress-up with sailors. One recent costume faux pas, the infamous “blueberry” camouflage work uniform, is being replaced with a more woodsy camouflage. Just why an Electrician’s Mate repairing wiring harness deep in an access passage in an aging destroyer should be required to dress in camouflage at all is a concept that has eluded the admirals. But the blueberry camouflage was precious.

The admirals will award each other more medals for all this.

One wonders if the admirals have redecorated the body bags.

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The British Olympics team have banned cleaners from their rooms after a number of thefts. Too bad no one stole those ugly “designer” shirts the British team wore in the opening ceremony.

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In Texas, killing an alligator is a felony punishable by jail time and / or a fine. However, a baby human killed before birth is regarded by the state as “medical waste.”

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Hillary and Donald bikini mud wrestling.

In a malarial swamp.

With those protected alligators.

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The Jasper Newsboy last week related news of local events and local people which will be little regarded east of the Sabine or west of the Neches, but which reflect the inherent nobility in most people:

Four Burkeville and Newton fire fighters suffered heat injuries, always life-threatening, in the menace of a house fire in August. The kitchen was damaged but the rest of the house was saved, with all the necessities and little joys of life: a roof, a bed, clothes, books, and pictures of dear friends and family.

The Jasper Volunteer Fire Department, too, did some serious heat-time in raising funds for a little child suffering from leukemia. This is because the men and women of fire departments know more about the preciousness of children than the State of Texas.

In Tyler County a great many people, including law enforcement, prison staff, and just plain folks also risked their lives in the heat to search for an elderly man who was lost. They thought nothing for themselves, but all for their fellow man, who, in the end, they could not save. Their rewards in this life were a bottle of water, suffering, and sorrow, but for their gifts of service their names, too, are written in a great Book.

And finally, Jasper Mayor R. C. Horn, one of the peacemakers of whom Jesus spoke, has departed this life. In a turbulent time he faced down violence, jerks, idiots, opportunists, attention-seekers, and racists of all flavors with his quiet faith and dignity, and will always be a role model for all.

We are blessed with heroes everywhere; it’s just that we usually fail to see them and then learn from them.

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A Jasper Cop and the Museum of Elvis

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

A Jasper Cop and the Museum of Elvis

Several weeks ago I was privileged to meet one of Jasper’s premiere citizens, a well-spoken, thoroughly professional, manly man with a fine sense of humor and a pretty car featuring lots of extra lights. We enjoyed a brief conversation about the inspection sticker on my own car, and he was so interested that he began writing about it.

When I modestly assured him that, really, hearing of its antiquity was more than enough amusement for me, he replied, “Now, sir, it is nine months out of date.”

Oops.

Y’know, if your car inspection sticker is nine days out of date, asking for a little mercy is not unseemly; if your inspection sticker is so old that it was countersigned by Sir Robert Peel, you’d better just confess your sins to the judge and do penance before the awful majesty of the law.

The next work day I visited the nice folks who inspect cars, and they enjoyed the moment too. Then, hat in hand and new inspection sticker on car, I made a pilgrimage to the judge’s office. The nice girls (I can say “girls”; they’re young and I’m old, so there.) asked if I wanted to see the judge and make a defense, and I said no, that I just wanted to pay my debt to society and slink out the back door with my hat covering my criminal face. In the event the fine wasn’t much more than a few of those multi-adjective overpricedacinnos at Clever Literary Allusion Coffee Shop, and I took out my checkbook.

“Oh, I’m sorry, sir; we don’t take checks.” Well, that makes sense – if a man can’t be trusted to keep his inspection sticker up to date, what other perfidy might he be capable of? Actually, the problem is that some people write bad checks even to judges, who have as much problem collecting on them as anyone else.

While one of the nice young ladies found ways of making my credit card talk, I enjoyed viewing the Museum of Elvis. I’ve never heard of a judge’s office featuring an Elvis museum. Not even Andy Griffith’s office in fictional Mayberry had one of those, but there’s one in Jasper, Texas.

After I was released with a new suit of clothes and a caution to mend my ways, I drove over to the Belle Jim to drown my sorrows in a cup of coffee.

And that’s it. There’s no story here, and that’s how it’s supposed to be.

When the police officer required me to stop, I stopped. When he approached the car, I didn’t toss my cigarette at him. Well, I don’t smoke anyway. I didn’t call him a Fascist pig, and he didn’t call me one, and I didn’t demand to speak with another officer, One Who Looks Like Me. Which would hardly be possible – I do have a twin, but he doesn’t look at all like me (I’m the handsome one), and he’s not a cop, and he lives far away. The police officer was thoroughly professional, as were the staff in the city offices, and in every way the visits were enjoyable – well, except for that ticket thing.

As far as any assertion of rights, yes, there is the matter of rights – in this instance, the right of everyone around me to be safe when I’m operating a few thousand pounds of machinery. They have the right to expect me to drive my car in a sober and responsible manner. They have a right to expect that my car meets minimal safety standards with regard to lights, horn, turn signals, and brakes. They have these rights because everyone has the right to life.

So, yeah, I’m cool with all that.

Visiting the Museum of Elvis was cool too, but the price of admission was a little high.

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Jasper, Texas

A Light Shines in Jasper

Mack Hall

A Light Shines in Jasper

Last week, nine new Jasper nursing graduates were capped and pinned before their families, friends, instructors, and God in a traditional ceremony that has graced this community each year for some four decades.

Over forty years ago a number of Jasper visionaries considered the needs and possibilities of health care in East Texas, and persuaded the people to vote the creation of a hospital district.

Among the first fruits of this dream were Jasper Memorial Hospital and, shortly after, JMH’s state-sanctioned LVN school taught by my aunt, Rhoda Holmes, RN and definitely old-school. 

Many people agree that the only thing Rhoda, of happy memory, got wrong was the design of the school’s first nursing cap, which looked like a misshaped cold-drink cup with some blue fringe. 

More recently, other far-seeing Jasper folks helped facilitate a satellite campus of Angelina College, to which the Jasper LVN program has since been transferred.  The hospital practicum is as intense as ever, but vocational nursing students now join students from other disciplines in college English, math, and science courses.   The success is demonstrable – Jasper LVN candidates are among Texas’ best in the state board exams.

Upon graduate, Jasper LVN candidates join for one last lesson, and that lesson is in faith and ethics in a traditional pinning and capping ceremony which originated with Florence Nightingale over 150 years ago.

For this dignified ceremony Jasper nursing graduates wear traditional white uniforms and traditional white caps.

And at this point your humble scrivener digresses: what is with the moldy-looking scrubsuits that now infect hospitals?  When, once upon a time, a suffering patient saw the white uniform of an RN or LVN approaching, he knew for a certainty that the (metaphorical) cavalry had arrived, and that all was going to be better.  Nowadays the patient cannot tell whether the slovenly-dressed individual walking the ward is one of the health care professionals -- the nice lady who tidies up, a surgeon, an imaging technician, the charge nurse -- or some Occupy thug who wandered in to relieve himself on the floor.

End of grouchy aside.

Dais dignitaries for the occasion were: Nadia Martindale, MSN, RN, ACNS-BC; Melvin Johnson, MA-English, MA-History; Whitney Craven-Larkin, LVN; Sharon Buffalo, MSN, RN; Charlet Blades, MSN, RN; Amber Murphy, BSN, RN; Elizabeth Powell, M.Ed, RN; Donald R. Samuel, M.D., M. Gilliland, M.D.; Lynn Pearson,M.D.; P. Bidwell, M.D.; Rodney Pearson, Jasper Chief of Police; and Honore Bailey, RN and some other letters after her name, Angelina College nursing instructor, role model, ministering angel, and, yes, of the old school.

This year’s graduates were: Pamela Smith Davis, Rokeshia Nicole Elam, Jana Wise-Horton, Chelsea Nichol Livingston, Candace Cheri Locke, Amanda Michelle Lundquist, Kari Michelle Martin, Denise Lynn O’Neal, and Christie Crawford Williams.

The founders of Jasper’s growing medical community are mostly gone now, but they left a wonderful legacy.  Jasper Memorial Hospital serves more people than ever, health care providers find the area a positive place for establishing their professional practices, Angelina College continues the excellence of the Jasper LVN program, and the Mary Dickerson will perhaps soon enjoy a renaissance in providing medical service.

The Lady with the Lamp (who is just as likely to be the Gentleman) now carries a high-tech pocket flashlight and a palm computer on her night rounds, and the white uniform has been sacrificed temporarily for (gag) scrubs, but the professionalism, the skill, and the care remain forever.

Those squeaky shoes a wakeful patient might hear walking the quiet hospital corridors at 0-dark-thirty – those aren’t really shoes, those are the wings of an angel.

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