Not Always Best
Whatever the subject, it is a good thing in life to have a healthy contempt for the "wisdom" of “experts.” Somebody pulled our high school down and what we have left are postcards and paintings. The building could have been saved, at least the front wing.
But as Carol Burnett screamed at her mother Vicki Lawrence, “You ran off the only man I ever loved, and,” pointing to her husband Harvey Korman, “look what I got stuck with.”
The old pictures bracket my 1949-1953 years at Bay County High School, as it was in those days before Mosley, Rutherford and Arnold. Now it’s Bay High School without the word County. The most popular picture shows a 1957 Chevrolet parked out front. The same ’57 Chevy is also parked in front of a popular picture of Cove School. The artist isn’t quite old enough, eh?
The old picture above shows cars from the middle to late 1930s. I can’t get close enough to identify all three of them, but the black sedan on the right is a Silver Streak Pontiac, and I’m going with 1938, prove me wrong.
My first day at Bay Hi, September 1949, we freshmen had to wear a rat cap, red and white, just like the same stupid orange and blue rat cap we had at the University of Florida exactly four years later. Principal was John M. Johnston. Orin Whitley was band director. Later assistant principal, my Algebra 1 teacher was Gil Wilson, whose specialty in class was sarcasm at students who didn’t know the right answer. “Bless your little pointed head,” he would say. And “Use your head for something besides a block to keep your ears apart.” Always a good math student, I was never the butt of his sarcasm, but was present many, many times when his putdown humiliated students. Such would not be tolerated these days, which goes to show that the old ways weren’t always best.
Why did I go there? The mind wandered, but it’s my blog, eh, like it or lump it, eh, the mind wandered. My favorite teachers at Bay High, Orin Whitley and Bill Weeks.
The car I remember out front my first day at Bay High was not a 1938 Pontiac, though that age cars were still on the road, and not for years would the 1957 Chevy be there. No, I remember a 1949 Chevrolet Styleline Deluxe sedan,
in a medium-dark metallic green that was new for that year and probably the most popular color. Our rector, Father Tom Byrne had one.
1949 was the first year of a total new look after the 1942 to 1948 models that bracketed World War II. That year, Chevrolet had two complete lines of cars, the Styleline with the humpback
and the Fleetline with the sleek back,
and they were the same price. Plain and Deluxe models in each, four door sedan, two door sedan, club coupe, business coupe. Plus convertibles.
And 1949 was the year that Chevy broke out of the all wood fabric top station wagon body that ended with the 1948 station wagon
and offered two station wagons, one with real wood trim
and a brand new all metal station wagon with wood applique’
The mind wandered down this dusty side road because instead of John 3:16, or a quotation from Shakespeare, or some other worthy there’s a picture of me walking out of the front door of Bay High School on a September day in 1949 and seeing a brand new 1949 Chevrolet parked out front.
Not sticking around to see what lucky student was being picked up that day, I walked down Harrison Avenue to 4th Street, east across the 4th Street Bridge, right on Massalina Drive, around the Bayou to home where soon would be our 1949 Plymouth woody wagon.
Four years later, fall 1953, GM had a grand show on the green next to the football stadium, proudly showing off the very first Corvette. A white convertible with red seats and an overhead valve straight six cylinder Chevrolet engine.
TW remembering before +Time