Mr. Milton Dickerson passed this week. He was a teacher at Smith County TN High School in Carthage during my teen years there. He was an all round great guy and coach, but not so much a great teacher, but that was the way of life back in the day.
Milton, better known as Monk Dickerson did some auctioneering and real estate marketing, a little coaching and occasionally ‘called’ a basketball game. He was ‘available.’ When someone needed to be away, Monk was available to fill in until the person in charge returned.
As if ‘Monk’ wasn’t a bad enough nickname we students in the Chemistry course at SCHS in 1957 renamed Monk, ‘Uncle Miltie’. Those were days when the Milton Bearle Show was the most popular show on TV, so it was just going to happen that Monk became Uncle Miltie.
We were going through the motions and following the adopted text through the Chem. course. It wasn’t particularly difficult and I did my ‘best’ to participate on a serious level for a change. But I was lazy and easily distracted: not to mention having a history of being the class clown for the past ten grades.
I was having a terrible time grasping the concept of chemical equations. It was not clicking in my head. Johnny Capalenor spent a full fifty minute period in study hall repeating, “it has to be the same on each side.” Over and over and over, Johnny just said the same phrase until all at once I got the concept. The hard parts were the atomic weights and valences.
We were drilling for a big test on the chemical symbols, atomic numbers and valences. I spent several nights and study halls memorizing all the chemical symbols and other stuff on the periodic table. I had it down pat on the day of the test.
Uncle Miltie gave the test by calling out the element and we were to put the symbol, the atomic number and the valence in rows going down the page. I was clicking along without a bit of uncertainty. When the test was finished we were to pass our papers to the person behind us. Uncle Miltie proceeded to call out all the correct information so that our classmates could check our data.
It was going well and I was feeling really good. Finally the girl who checked my work was to report my score. Her answer was …………………… “all correct” ……………………”except” ………………………………………”all the chemical symbols are left out!” I got a ZERO on the test! I had worked hard, and I was devastated!
I was given a chance to bring up my grade by making a graphic of the “tree of coal.” The tree of coal is a big tree with little labels of all the stuff that is made from coal. There were hundreds, and since I am compulsive about this type of project I made a tree of coal that was suitable for framing!
I was employed at Fred Cleveland’s Pharmacy after school and on weekends when Uncle Miltie’s birthday came along. Fred Cleveland’s Pharmacy had been existence since the beginning of the Twentieth Century. We had stuff in our cabinets and display cases that most folks never heard of.
Did you know that Paregoric that is used to stop vomiting is opium and camphor? Citrate of magnesium was sold as Pluto Water. Condoms were kept out of sight in a very special drawer, and there were hair products in quart sized cans.
Glossy Pomade was a heavily scented concoction designed to straighten curly hair. The primary consumers were assumed to be our citizens of color, though I never sold any Glossy Pomade to anyone.
Uncle Miltie was well along in the process of losing his hair. We often gave him a hard time about it. On his birthday there appeared a nicely wrapped present on his desk as a token of our regard and best wishes for many more to come.
Uncle Miltie opened the package and was having fun showing Glossy Pomade all around the class when he called Runt Poynter to the front of the class. He turned Runt toward the class and proceeded to massage a whole hand full of Glossy Pomade into his hair. What a mess; what a site and what fun. Runt knew who brought the pomade, but he kept quiet and endured the event.
I’ll bet Uncle Miltie used that can of Glossy Pomade for many years afterward: probably on hinges and axles.
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