Kirbyville Elementary School, 2nd Grade, 1955-1956 - photograph

Photograph by D.T. Kent, Jr., of happy memory

A Fish on Ice at Mixson's Grocery - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com

A Fish on Ice at Mixson’s Grocery

As with my teacher’s disapproving eyes
A poor iced fish glared out upon the world -
Without her sanction everything had changed
And silent on the ice she watched life pass

Holding my mother’s hand, I was passing too
From baby food to breakfast cereal
Somehow the fish appeared to feel that this
Was an affront to her cold dignity

And thus her eyes – they seemed to follow me
And since the fish was dead, what could she see?

Kirbyville - The Santa Fe Depot - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Kirbyville - The Santa Fe Depot

I loved to sit and watch the trains go by
As they blew smoke and steam into the sky

Or sometimes paused beneath the water tower
And sat there on the siding for an hour

The crew in overalls to the café
Hamburgers and coffee most every day

They swaggered back along our old Main Street
Important working men with schedules to meet

The whistle blew, the steam escaped, the train
Breathed heavily, and lurched and clanked to gain

Escape from our small town, then down the line
A tunnel through forests of oak and pine –

In dreams of boyhood, through memory’s eye
I love to sit and watch the trains go by

A Baton, but no Orchestra - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

A Baton, but no Orchestra

Majestic in their yellow-painted shields
Imperious trumping traffic lights command
Through glares of green and red, and garish orange
Obedience in all the traffic below

How sad - there is no traffic to command
Though once there was, before the lordly lights
Were lifted up: a little town was here
With pharmacies, feed stores, hardware, and cafes

And a movin’-picture show. All gone now.
And then the state put up the traffic lights

Frost on the Windshield - poem

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Frost on the Windshield

Poor Kirbyville is mostly closed this morning
The cinder-block bakery is empty
And the only fast-foodery’s not yet open
Its neon tubes still dark against the stars

But the stop ‘n’ rob is busy enough
The gas pumps serving as anchorages
For trucks and boats, some headed to the lake
After taking on coffee and gasoline

And sausage-biscuits greased and slammed, and wrapped
In yellow paper of such painful sadness

The Photographs of D.T. Kent, Jr.

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

The Photographs of D. T. Kent, Jr. I

“Old men forget…”
-Henry V

We see them in D.T.’s old photographs
Still standing tall on a Kirbyville street
Leaning upon a crutch or stick or friend
Or sitting in the summer shade at home
Shelling peas, shucking corn, mending harness
Because idle hands are the devil’s workshop
Loggers, farmers, railroaders, sawmill men
Always summoned to the government’s wars
But never to the White House for a medal -
That honor is not for the likes of them



The Photographs of D. T. Kent, Jr. II

“...she is a woman / More worth than any man…”
-The Winter’s Tale

We see them in D.T.’s old photographs
Standing on the steps of the Methodist church
The worthy women of the Bible Class
More dutiful than any old bishop
In teaching, preaching, healing errant souls
Whether daughters or sons, husbands or mules
Shelling peas, shucking corn, mending a quilt
Because idle hands are the devil’s workshop
And never taking tea with the First Lady –
Who would be welcome in for supper, though


The Photographs of D. T. Kent, Jr. III

“…an aery of children…”
-Hamlet

We see them in D.T.’s old photographs
Playing on the steps of a country church
Or running barefoot in the cow-cropped grass
Before Ma’am rings the bell for Sunday school
Getting up the milk cows, fishing in the pond
Or sitting in the summer shade at home
Made to shell peas, shuck corn, mend harness
Because idle hands are the devil’s workshop
If they were asked to the White House to play
Momma would make them wash behind their ears


The Photographs of D. T. Kent, Jr. IV

“It was a lover and his lass…”
-As You Like It

We see the girls in D.T.’s photographs
Discreetly flirting on a Kirbyville street
Under the stern-browed matrons’ watchful eyes
Or jitterbugging to the new jukebox
In some joint Momma wouldn’t approve of
Cokes, Nehis, and Dr Peppers raised high
Because the sawmill hands got paid today
And the other boys are home from the war:
Oh, look how happy they are, our moms and dads
Forever young, forever in our hearts


Thank you, Mr. Kent

Doctor Lazenby and His Errant DeSoto

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Doctor Lazenby and His Errant DeSoto

The first famous DeSoto, a fellow by the name of Hernando, got lost leading the boys through the swamps of the New World in the 16th Century and died of a fever somewhere along the Mississippi River in 1542.

Because DeSoto was in the past considered a hero (the cultural milieu skated around that genocidal maniac thing), Chrysler produced a series of cars under that name until 1960.

Doctor Lazenby, the ancient dentist who could have been a character in Andy Griffith’s fictional Mayberry, drove a turquoise-and-white DeSoto which was not unlike its namesake in blundering around the streets of my small town in the 1960s. His DeSoto was one of the last of that mark, a sort of land-bound HMS Ark Royal with high-sailing tailfins that menaced the town’s one blinking caution light.

Dr. Lazenby was known as a great dentist and a poor steersman – he lumbered his DeSoto along Main Street on whichever side seemed convenient.

The town raconteur more than once told of the events one high noon when Dr. Lazenby was driving on US96 slowly but erratically. The young chief of police – in those days the only police – turned on his bubble-gum machine and followed Dr. Lazenby for a long, long time. After a few musical bars from the siren, the officer finally coaxed Dr. Lazenby into docking his DeSoto along the shoulder.

“What do you want?” Dr. Lazenby is said to have asked, somewhat annoyed.

“Right now I want your driver’s license,” the officer replied.

Dr. Lazenby gave his license to the officer, who then walked back to the Shamu to radio a license check to the dispatcher at the county seat.

Dr. Lazenby decided that he would continue on home to lunch as planned.

Another lengthy, slow-speed pursuit ensued, and again Dr. Lazenby stopped the DeSoto at a time convenient for him.

When the officer, with the license (driving, not dental) still in hand approached the DeSoto again, Dr. Lazenby is said to have demanded, angrily, “Now what in the (Newark, New Jersey) do you want!?”

Let us all pause and savor the moment.

I never knew Dr. Lazenby very well; my parents took me to one of those young whipper-snapper dentists educated after the Spanish-American War. Thus, for me Dr. Lazenby was a sort of background character, a cheerful old codge, one of the many wonderful people whose genial eccentricity gives a small town a certain quiet joy.

Whether the story about old Dr. Lazenby and the young police officer is true, well, I don’t know, but if not, it ought to be.

-30-

Goodbye, Miz Burres

Mack Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

Goodbye, Miz Burres

Music teachers are even more essentially American than red brick schools, soda fountains on Main Street, Studebakers, baseball, and sidewalk cracks that must be carefully stepped over.  Without a Miss (or the East Texas variant, Miz) Burris or Bernice or Emma to play the piano for school assemblies, weddings, funerals, Sunday liturgies, and visits to the nursing home, America would lose some of her soul and much of her Soul.

After all, some adult once showed young Beverly Sills how to grace a high note and young Ivory Joe Hunter how to echo life on the keys of an old piano.

Our Miz Burres died last week at the age of 102.  At 100 she was still giving private lessons at home.  In her 80s she was infinitely pleased to have her own childhood piano teacher, Miz Lexie / Aunt Lexie, sit in on her young students’ recitals.  And for decades before that she demonstrated infinite patience with schoolchildren, including a few inattentive oafs.

Like the wonderful old three-story school that reposed in pontifical majesty between First Methodist and First Baptist, perhaps in order to keep the peace between them, Miz Burres had always been there and would always be there.  A photograph of her with second-graders in 1955 and a photograph of her at a celebration of her happy century taken last year show exactly the same woman: elegant, white-haired, smiling, surrounded by adoring fans, including her last student. 

And that last student, still a schoolgirl, will in years to come teach other children how to play the piano, and will show them ways of patterning notes, saying, “This is how Miz Burres taught me…”  And so, yes, Miz Burres will always be there when little hearts and hands learn the keys and then grow up to celebrate civilization through music.

A young person of my acquaintance once visited Westminster Abbey, and in a cloister ambulatory now stepped out by sneakers rather than by monastic sandals, noted that she was looking down at the grave of her friend Muzio Clementi, who lived to the age of eighty despite having been married four times.  “Miz Burres taught me his sonatinas,” the young person said, “They’re fun to play.”

While driving to Miz Burres’ funeral, the same person, now a young woman, switched on the CD player and heard the prologue to Mozart’s Die Zauberflote, something else she learned to play from Miz Burres.

Much of what is good in life we all owe to each Miz Burres who blessed us in our youth.

Parade magazine is offering its first ever Music Educator Award of $10,000 to a music teacher working in an American school, kindergarten through university.  At Parade.com/music you can nominate that special music teacher who so much influenced you.  There is surely in your life a Miz Burres who could use that money to buy some better instruments or some new sheet music for her children’s lessons.

Miz Burres never had children at home, but like James Hilton’s fictional Mr. Chips, and in very truth, she can say, and surely does from a happy, happy place in Heaven, “I thought I heard you saying it was a pity... pity I never had any children. But you're wrong. I have. Thousands of them. Thousands of them...”

Goodbye, Miz Burres.

-30-

Kirbyville Elementary 2nd Grade, 1955-1956

Kirbyville Elementary School

2nd Grade, 1955-1956

Photo by D. T. Kent Jr. of happy memory