RRN Online Volume 261

June 02 '01

Volume 261

Celebrating Five With Readership Analysis

With this issue a new publication year begins for Ridge Rider News. Some readers may have RRN Turns Five forgotten that this newsletter was birthed during the first week of June in 1996. More recent subscribers are excused for not knowing the history of this newsletter. However, family members are expected to commit such facts to memory. After all, a big reason for developing this newsletter is it's historical value. In the grand scheme of history, this newsletter will most likely be overlooked, but for the descendants of this writer, perhaps it will be noted that these writings were appreciated, if not for the workmanship, then maybe for the glimpse of family history which it shall surely provide.

As creator of Ridge Rider News, I am no less amazed today than I was five years ago to discover that other persons find the content of this newsletter interesting. As the sixth year of RRN begins, I have no illusions that persons enjoy reading the newsletter because of any talent I may have for expressing myself. In fact, because so few persons take time to write anyone these days, I'd wager most readers are simply starved for a personal note or letter from a friend or family member. Granted, this newsletter is not a personal letter, but it can be viewed as such without bending the truth very much. At the least, I think RRN is far more personal than a magazine or newspaper could ever be.

Based upon what readers have expressed, I find the following observations interesting. Some readers, having once read the newsletter partly or completely merely discard it as one might toss out a daily newspaper. I have no problem with anyone doing this, and if I am allowed to categorize readers based upon their actions, then these folks are "discarders."

To my knowledge, there are some readers who have saved every copy they have received. I don't have a count to share, but I'm pretty sure the number is between five and ten people. Of these, "savers" as I like to call them, a few state their reason for saving is because they like to leaf through the back issues from time to time. I do the same thing, too, and my reason is usually to compare my writings of today with that of yesterday. So far, I can't say if I'm doing better or worse.

Savers can be further subdivided to include those persons who save an occasional copy as opposed to every copy, and belong to a "selective saver" category.

I know of one reader who likes to clip the Bodock Beau articles and pass them along to other friends. There may be others who do the same thing. These are "clippers."

My heart has a special place for those readers who, having read the week's current issue, mail or otherwise give their copy to a friend or relative, and occasionally I hear of multiple copies being sent from a single household. Again, I don't have a solid number to share, but I suspect there are about a handful of folks that fall into this category of "sharers."

Whether one is a discarder, saver, selective saver, clipper, or sharer, I can only say thank you for your interest.

Within the past year, eight new subscribers have been added to the weekly mailings. Three of these were the result of my sharing my hobby with my classmates at our class reunion last August. Presently, fifty-nine copies of the newsletter are printed each week. Fifty are mailed, eight are hand delivered, and one copy is carefully stored in a ring binder for posterity.

Of persons to whom this newsletter arrives in "printed form," thirty-one are residents of Pontotoc and Pontotoc County, while twenty-seven reside outside the "land of hanging grapes." Misssissippians receive the bulk of these, but a few wind their way to California (1) and New Mexico (1), with the rest comprising the southern block of Florida (1), Georgia (2), Alabama (1), Tennessee (2), and Louisiana (2).

RRN has an "online" version available for persons with access to the Internet. At this point in time last year, persons reading the newsletter online averaged about eight per week. Internet readership has declined sharply since January, with only one reader consistently checking the website each week. Any speculation as to the cause of the decline would be conjecture, but as was true of the proverbial horse, you can lead readers to the water, but you can't make them drink. Perhaps these folks know the newsletter is out there in cyberspace, but without a hard copy hitting their mailbox each week they tend to neglect reading the newsletter.

For more than two years, one subscriber has received this newsletter by mean of electronic mail (email), followed by a second reader slightly more than a year ago. Within the past year, two more subscribers have begun receiving this newsletter electronically, bringing the email total to four. Of this group of readers, two live in Georgia, one in Minnesota and one in Mississippi.

The total number of households receiving this newsletter direct from the publisher is sixty-three. In some households, more than one person reads the newsletter, and as mentioned above some readers share this newsletter with others. Short of sending out a survey, it would be difficult to determine the total readership of this newsletter, but I would put the amount near one hundred.

The previous information is being shared not in a boastful manner, but to inform readers of this newsletter’s general appeal to others and it’s impact upon persons not living in Pontotoc County. RRN looks forward to a sixth year of publication and encourages each reader to get to know another fellow subscriber by attending this year’s celebration at the home of Wayne and Barbara Carter in Pontotoc, on July 28^th, 2001.

Visiting Ed In His Neck Of The Woods

He first appeared in this newsletter about two years ago, when I wrote of a former junior college classmate contacting me via email. I attempted to visit him about a year ago, when I passed through the small community of Newellton, Louisiana. Fate placed us in different places that day, so our reunion was delayed until recently when I again found myself driving through his "neck of the woods."

Since graduating from Senatobia’s Northwest Mississippi Junior College in 1962, our paths have seldom crossed, but there were a couple of occasions when Ed Dandridge was drawn to Pontotoc for a wedding or other reason that reunites families from distant parts. I think it was Clarice Duff who told me Ed would be in Pontotoc for a wedding some two or three decades ago, but it could have been my Aunt Billie, who once kept tabs on everything that happened in Senatobia for me and was responsible for helping Ed and me become friends during our college years. Time has left only a cloudy memory of the occasion for either Ed or me. Perhaps, I should check with Ed’s Aunt Clarice, who is his mother’s sister.

On the maps that I have, US Hwy. 65 originates at Natchez, Mississippi, and after crossing the Mississippi River at Natchez, strikes a northern course at Vidalia, LA, meandering through the capitals of Arkansas, Missouri, and Iowa, before disappearing beyond Albert Lea near the intersection of I-35 and I-90 in southern Minnesota after spanning approximately 1100 miles. Newellton, LA, is proudly numbered among the cities and towns along US Hwy. 65 that owe their accessibility and availability to modern roadways. Newellton lies in the rich delta soils of Louisiana and is entirely dependent upon agriculture for its economy. Situated virtually in the "middle of nowhere," Newellton seems to be a place one travels through en route to somewhere else, not a destination itself. Ed Dandridge has spent most of his career coaching and teaching students in Louisiana and for the past several years has enjoyed teaching Biology and Science in the small high school at Newellton.

My work for Supervalu has taken me through Newellton on my way to Jonesville, LA, exactly twice otherwise I might have seen Ed more frequently. When I scheduled my trip to Jonesville, I sent Ed an email to let him know I would be returning to Greenville after leaving Jonesville, and that I should be in Newellton around noon.

The next day, I stopped by the principal’s office to ask permission to visit Ed and was told he had a class but would be breaking for lunch in the next five minutes. I was escorted to his classroom and found the 9^th grade biology students mostly idle. The school year was quickly grinding to a halt and testing for this group was complete.

In the moments before the lunch bell rang (an electronic tone rather than the traditional buzzer/ bell), Ed showed me the bank of computers for student use and the computer that is used to maintain the school’s website.

We ate lunch in the school cafeteria. It would be my first school cafeteria meal in almost thirty years. While edible, it was less than delicious, but I’m certain it was nutritious. At least, it consisted of a green vegetable (string beans), a meat (baked breaded chicken nuggets), a starch and dairy product combo (macaroni with cheese), a fruit (canned fruit cocktail), bread (roll), and of course the obligatory pint of milk.

I met a few other teachers during the lunch period and noted not all of them partook of the cafeteria food, bringing instead a lunch from home. While seated across from Ed, I extended my right thumb and asked him if he remembered the two scars it has which I have as a reminder of the day our boisterous wrestling match left me scarred for life. He remembered the event and expressed his sorrow once again and in the process of remembering recounted how I "got him back."

As with so many dastardly things I’ve done in the past, I claim no recollection of what he had remembered of my retaliation.

"Don’t you remember what you did to me in organic chemistry?" he quizzed. "We were making ethanol in the lab, and I came by to check on your progress. You handed me a test tube sample, and when I took out the cork and took a whiff of it, it almost took my head off. I must have staggered back six feet or more before hitting the wall. I think it must have been ammonium hydroxide."

Though I did not remember, I’ll bet Ed learned a valuable lesson that day.

No, I don’t mean, "Mess with Wayne and pay a price."

Instead, chemistry students are taught how to handle chemicals and how to identify certain ones by smell. Students are cautioned to never hold their noses directly over a chemical and inhale. One should always hold the open container in front of his or her face and while using a hand in a fanning motion waft the vapor toward the nostrils.

I shared with Ed that I had tried to forget a lot of events that transpired in my younger days and was apparently successful in the case of the potent chemical episode. However, I explained that I could still recall being a party to the disreputable practice of "running tests." For the uninitiated, "running tests" refers to stealing a copy of a test before it is administered to a class. Braver souls than I made the actual "run" entering closed buildings, avoiding detection by campus security, all for the single purpose of pilfering a teacher’s cabinets and desks looking for the next day’s test.

After the "run," the stolen test was brought to a "brain trust," where the group worked out the answers and shared the results with the "runners." For the mathematically challenged in such courses as trigonometry and physics such a drastic measure might mean the difference between passing and failing, for the rest of us, it probably meant less than a letter grade’s difference, but like cheat notes it offered a sense of confidence before a "big test."

I only remember being a party to such a crime on one trig test and two physics tests. At the time, fear of being found out and expelled from college played heavily on my emotions, while situational ethics and peer pressure helped me justify my actions.

Our physics teacher was too shrewd for us, and upon noticing an unusually large number of good grades on a test she apparently thought too difficult for us, she remarked as she distributed the graded work to the class, "I don’t know if you found this test easy, or if you found it ‘easily,’ but you won’t find the next one."

After that incident, "runners" found no more physics tests, grades were soon normalized, and "running tests" stopped almost as abruptly as it had started.

If this remembrance has a moral, perhaps it is along the lines of "crime doesn’t pay." Over the years, I have often remembered this dark period of my life, always with a sense of daring sprinkled with a few grains of stupidity, but never with a sense of pride.

Ed lived off campus in nearby Independence, MS, and to my knowledge never participated in the practice of "running tests."

After a brief lunch period, I said goodbye to my old friend, Ed Dandridge, but not before inviting him to the annual gathering of readers this coming July 28^th. However, the five-hour drive that separates Pontotoc and Newellton will probably mean most readers will not be introduced to an individual who played a colorful role in the days of my yesteryears.

Bodock Beau More Redneck Jokes

Here are a few more redneck jokes. Ken Gaillard was kind enough to send them our way.

You Might Just Be A Redneck If

You take your dog for a walk and you both use the same tree.

You can entertain yourself for more than an hour with a flyswatter.

Your property has been mistaken for a recycling center.

Your boat has not left the driveway in 15 years.

You burn your yard rather than mow it.

The Salvation Army declines your mattress.

Your entire family sat around waiting for a call from the governor to spare a loved one.

You offer to give someone the shirt off your back and they don't want it.

You have the local taxidermist on speed dial.

You come back from the dump with more than you took.

You keep a can of Raid on the kitchen table.
Your wife can climb a tree faster than your cat.

Your grandmother has "Ammo" on her Christmas list.

You've been kicked out of the zoo for heckling the monkeys.

You think subdivision is part of a math problem.

You've bathed with flea and tick soap.

You've been involved in a custody fight over a hunting dog.

Your kids take a siphon hose to show and tell.

You think a hot tub is a stolen indoor plumbing fixture.

You took a fishing pole to Sea World.

You go to the stock car races and don't need a program.

You know how many bales of hay your car will hold.

You have a rag for a gas cap.

Your father executes the "Pull my finger" trick during Christmas dinner.

Your house doesn't have curtains but your truck does.

You wonder how service stations keep their restrooms so clean.

You can spit without opening your mouth.

You consider your license plate personalized because your father made it.

Your lifetime goal is to own a fireworks stand.

You sit on your roof at Christmas time hoping to fill your deer quota.

You have a complete set of salad bowls and they all say Cool Whip on the side.

The biggest city you've ever been to is Wal-Mart.

Your working TV sits on top of your non-working TV.

You thought the Unibomber was a wrestler.

You've ever used your ironing board as a buffet table.

You think a quarter horse is that ride in front of K-Mart.

Your neighbors think you're a detective because a cop always brings you home.

A tornado hits your neighborhood and does $100,000 worth of improvement.

You've used a toilet brush as a back scratcher.

You missed 5th grade graduation because you had jury duty.

You think fast food is hitting a deer at 65 mph.

Somebody tells you that you've got something in your teeth and you take them out to see what it is.

Joe Fannin believes there’s a lot of truth contained in the following thirteen words: "Inside every older person is a younger person – wondering what the hell happened."

For Original Material Only