Sheila's Potpourri
News from Huntington
Arthur Jones of Diboll and I were discussing fuel prices, especially diesel prices, since he owns a log truck. Most likely those scandalously high prices do not affect younger drivers like they do older ones who have been trucking for many years and can remember when fuel was priced a lot lower, per gallon. Beamon says he cannot imagine rolling up to a diesel pump and filling his own truck up with the black gold that it takes to make the 18 wheeler move along our highways nowadays. He said it would be bad enough to fill a company vehicle up much less his own. Gas prices change almost daily and usually they are moving up. Even on little cars and, pickups, you cannot get by for a few dollars, At least thirty or more dollars will be needed to fill a tank. I'm having a hard time figuring how younger folks, especially, pay their gas bills the way they drive. They go past our house in pickups and simply fly. Not only does such driving habits take more fuel but the roads are generally so rough and full of holes that cars and trucks surely stay out of alignment and tires stay out of balance. All the years Beamon and I have been married with him on the road, that was my job to sit too long waiting to get the vehicle balanced and in alignment. Quite possibly folks don't do that, just drive one as is, In the good old days of the fifties, my sister and I finally got a car. She was not old enough to drive but once in awhile we had a wild Saturday night. Sammie Williams and sister Linda; Marilyn Russell and her sister Judith and Christal and I pooled our money to go to the movie at the Panther Drive-In. "Pooling" would have been so much easier if we could have found some money to pool. It was about all we could do to dig in purses and pockets and come up with fifty cents to buy gas. It was tough to find enough money to get my sister and me into the drive-in but to buy gas, too, was a bit much. Once we managed to get the money, off we'd go to Jack Shelton's station and fifty cents would last until our curfew came about. Remembering seemed to be the thing to do this past week with the cold, windy and wet weather. Randy called one night after he received the Free Press that showed The Family Affair Club in Diboll on the history page. The building was getting light strips under the floor and was really up to date for our area. Randy was laughing about them having twin amplifiers with 740 watts for their sound and that was very impressive and was really loud for those dancing and enjoying the music. Randy was boasting the 600 watts of power with the mobile disco (K-JAM) that he used for dances. Just last week at the Sound company where he works, they were using amplifiers of 18,000 watts of power. So the world of sound has come a long way. I well remember when we met Randy in Baton Rouge when he was on tour with Vince Gill. We stayed back stage with Randy and could see the crowd. One younger guy sat through the entire show with his head almost touching the front of a huge floor speaker. Most likely he was deaf as a post after that show. They had enough speakers to propel the sound all over the LSU coliseum and I had to use earplugs just to stay behind stage. It is no wonder so many folks look at you with a question mark on their faces. They can't hear what you are asking! Eileen was sick and Randy was bored when she took to her sick bed. He dragged out some of his old tapes and found one of the second Farm Aid show Willie Nelson put together out in Austin. Randy had been in the touring business for six months when he was Sent to' work the concert. He and 13 other guys worked three days and the concert ran all day and night. First Randy was amazed at the number of his co-workers and entertainers who are now dead from that particular show. He remembers vividly the incidents that were happening both on stage and off. I've urged him to write a book about last 20 years on the road 'but he says folks would lose interest when he wrote a book with nameless characters. Probably you'd have a failure with a tell all but no, real names.

We were talking about the price of fuel and he said we should be like Kenny Chesney who is preparing for a tour with 40 18-wheelers and 13 or 14 buses. Wouldn't you like to sign the credit card ticket for the purchase of that fuel? When I think of how much an entertainer makes per show, right behind that thought comes the realism of how much it costs to put on that concert. Sometimes it just doesn't do much good to remember so much of the good old days. It is depressing to know how far a dollar or a gallon of gas would go way back then. My Uncle Neal Denman called from Georgia and mentioned that he and Evelyn had gone "to town." We old folks still use that term from years ago when it was a real trip to go to town once in a while. He said when they buy eggs and milk at today's prices it brings to mind when he was a kid still at home. He will be 80 this year so it was a long time ago that he was a youngster. His mother Barbara Denman would send him to town to Jack Sheltan's grocery store which was about where Huntington's First Baptist Church is today. She instructed him to get a dozen eggs which would be 10 cents and gave him an extra two pennies to get a few pieces of candy for him and his sister Ethel. Off he flew but disaster struck when the clerk told him the dozen eggs was now twelve cents. He was devastated at that bit of news. Sadly enough Mama Denman declared their holiday baking would be less due to the price of the eggs. His luck was going backward that day.. He also told of neighbor Bobbie Kimmey selling milk and