Social media posting with the old pickup truck
By Harold Brummett
Denmark Star Route
Howard and I were talking the other day about the students returning to the University.
We discussed how over the years freshman enrollment has steadily grown. The
moneymen want the university to grow, but to what end?
In my opinion, the university focus is on money and just money. How do more students
make for a better University, Town or State? Most of them go back to Texas anyway.
When the students return, a favorite pastime is to get in my old truck early in the
morning and drive around going the speed limit. Gives the young scholars time to read
the bumper stickers on the tailgate and contemplate the meaning of life.
Bumper stickers are short and easy to read, kind of like a mobile Twitter. Of course, I
realize most don’t appreciate the effort by the gestures of friendship they display as they
roar around me in their expensive vehicles.
Besides, roaring around an old man in a beat up pick-up truck gives the youngsters a
sense of superiority. Would not want to deprive our future leaders of that – could be a
senator or legislator in the making.
As I go around the square, I see the young ladies have covey’d up while the young men
are starting to form bachelor herds. This natural instinct to form clusters is fun to watch
as each group watch each other. While times may change, some things remain the
same as the age-old dance continues.
Hardware stores, barbershops, shoe repair shops, drug stores and all the other
minutiae of a small town have given way to high-end restaurants and bars. These are
the places students display their wares alongside tourists looking for the locations that
spawned Southern art and culture. That place was here but it is not here anymore.
Pathfinders and founders are only reflections and are as faded as the negatives
developed at New’s drug store. There are photos you can look at, but the real culture
and art was sold many years ago.
I wonder if the University would ever change Hotty-Toddy to something more in line with
the current trends and morals, something like, say Hoity-Toity. Maybe, if the price