Occasionally, I hear from some of my old friends from high school or college.
I mostly keep up with them (and they with me and Miz Jo) on Facebook. What would we do without social media on which to send our birthday greetings and Christmas cards? Not to mention cell phones to connect with the world — or at least, as much of it as we want to connect with.
Back when cell phones expanded from just talk and text to smart phones, I rebelled. “All I want to do with my phone is make calls,” I announced to no one in particular. Now, making calls is way down on the list of things I use my phone for. My phone has replaced the dictionary, encyclopedias, and road maps — complete with a back-seat driver telling me to “Turn here. Turn here. Recalculating.” I even shoot all my television stories on my phone.
What Gutenberg’s printing press was to the Middle Ages; the capability to modulate electromagnetic waves is to our age. Instant connectivity. The phones give us the entirety of all the knowledge of humanity at our fingertips. Not to mention, it created the medium in which I have been employed since high school- broadcasting.
“High school” brings me back where I started a paragraph or so ago. An old school buddy of mine, Jimmy Slay in Meridian, called and asked me if I would come speak to the senior group at Chucky Baptist Church for their monthly meeting. Jimmy and I took a bunch of classes together when we were at Mississippi College. The one I remember most vividly was biology. We were on the same team dissecting a worm — one worm for three people. I was chosen to do the dissecting. I carefully made the required incisions with the scalpel and pulled back the epidermis without so much as touching a single internal organ. Jimmy was impressed. “Oh Walt!” he said. “You missed your calling! You should have been a worm surgeon!”
Chunky is in Newton County about 10 miles west of Meridian. It’s on the Chunky River a few miles upstream from Stuckey Bridge, which is supposed to be haunted. The bridge is a few miles upstream from Dunns Falls, the tallest waterfall in Mississippi. A little farther south, the Chunky River merges with Okatibbee Creek near Enterprise to form the Chickasawhay River, which merges with the Leaf River at Merrill to form the Pascagoula River, which empties into the Gulf at Pascagoula to form the oceans of the world.
I have probably done more stories about the Pascagoula than any other single river in the state. For such a short river (two counties long), it has a lot of character. There are high clay banks on the north — through swaps in the middle — to broad saltwater flats at the Gulf.
Not only that, but it also still has places where you can’t get any “bars” if you want to disconnect from the world for a
