A Moment in Time

October 2022 by Mickey Dunaway Honestly, I am either bewildered by October or excited by it. I love the crisp breezes painting the Autumn leaves, and high school and college football are in mid-season. When I fished a lot, this was the perfect season. Jet skiers were no longer running up and down the lake, and the big fish were beginning to feed on the smaller fish as winter approached and were easier to entice to my lure. Coffee and conversations on the patio just seem sweeter.

However, I am not a fan of Halloween or any of the nonsense that goes with it. As a principal, Halloween gave me more than any other holiday. It comes at the height of football season, and the cheerleaders inevitably like to have “spirit week” during Halloween week.

One year the cheerleaders strong-armed me with their AllAmerican cuteness and good grades to have a “Halloween Day” during the middle of “Spirit Week.” I put them off for a couple of days, and as I thought about it, Halloween that year was on a Sunday night, and I figured we could endure one day early in the “Spirit Week” with kids with painted faces and funny costumes. Oh, how wrong I was!

The one thing I did not consider—I think it was because cheerleaders are not only All-American-cute and are All-American well-behaved—is that the “Cheerleader-effect” could not be applied to the other 1,300 students in our school.

On the second day of Spirit Week, the opening bell had barely stopped ringing when I saw my first temporary delinquent. He was dressed as a KISS band member, took what looked like a bottle of bourbon from under his costume, and took a healthy slug to start the day.

I could identify the bourbon bottle ( I only use the spirits medicinally and in my famous pecan pies), but I could not identify the “perp” because he or she looked like half the other students dressed in KISS makeup that year. Trying to run him down was fruitless. I had learned early on that I could not catch a 15-yearold with a head start. So, employing a StarTrek Klingon proverb—”Revenge is a dish best served cold—” I was pretty sure someone would rat him out before the day was done.

Sure enough, before the day ended, he had passed it to one too many fellow freshmen, and his 4th Period teacher caught him in the act and brought him to me.

After I brought him to my office, I sniffed the cork on the bottle of the Single Barrel 23-Year-Old Pappy Van Winkle Bourbon and had the perp breathe in my face. So, after his breathalyzer test, I told him that he had taken his last breath at school for the next ten days—including the football game on Friday night and the dance to follow. He seemed not bothered at all—not an unusual reaction from a high school freshman. However, less than an hour later, when his father arrived to pick him up, I saw a very different response, not from the son but from the father. I saw one of the saddest reactions by a parent in my career when I told that father he would have to go down to the Police lab and plead with them about getting back his bottle of prized Bourbon.

leT ’s look for a feW oTher ocToBer momenTs ThaT We mIghT compare To losIng a 23-year-old BoTTle of pappy van WInkle BourBon.

Manhattan Project facility at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, ca. 1950.

Henry Ford’s Model T went on sale. It was to be a universal car for the masses. The sale price was $825.

President Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday in November as Thanksgiving Day. Not sure when the fruitcake became popular.

Soviet Union Launched the first satellite, Sputnik I, into orbit. 4,852 satellites now orbit the earth. 2,944 belong to the U.S. Elon Musk has launched 46 Starlink satellites of his own.

Columbus landed in the Bahamas after 33 days and declared the land El Salvador in honor of the Spanish King. Thinking he had landed in India by sailing west, he named the natives he encountered Indians. And school kids have been confused ever since by Indians and Indian Indians.

The Manhattan Project, creating the atomic bomb for the U.S., began on this date when Albert Einstein warned FDR that his (Einstein’s) theories could lead Hitler to develop an atomic bomb. This tiny piece of history can only be categorized as a factoid. Yet, the quote “Great oaks from little acorns grow”—a 14th-century proverb according to the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations—has never been more accurate than the implications of Einstein’s warning to FDR 83 years later.

Martin Luther King became the youngest person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. He donated the $54,000 that came with the prize to the civil rights movement. We could use more of that altruism in our world today.

Harvard University is founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts. One might argue that Harvard and its sister institution, Yale,—founded in 1701— have had undue influence on the politics of the United States, especially in foreign policy.

The Volstead Act created Prohibition in the U.S. Lasting 14 years, it was a significant source of income for organized crime who produced their own or imported European spirits through Canada.

After 13 million shares of stock were sold in a panic on the previous Thursday, 16 million more were sold on Black Tuesday. The “Roaring Twenties” era of almost unparalleled growth ended with Black Tuesday. So significant were the events of Black Tuesday that the stock market only fully recovered in the 1950s.

Mt. Rushmore National Memorial was completed. It is located in the Black Hills of South Dakota and contains the heads of Washington, Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt, and Lincoln. Why these four? OK, Lincoln, Washington, and Jefferson seem obvious … but Roosevelt always appeared to be an outlier. However, below is what each represents to the nation in order. Washington: Birth Jefferson: Growth Roosevelt: Development Lincoln: Preservation