HELP!!!!

WALLACE EVANS

I have sent you an email address change of mine. I am also trying to get updated ones of the 1954 Classmates of SHS. Can you help?

I have about 12 or 15 that will work, but Daphne Hall, Lucille Carter, Charles Barnett, Cotton Fuller, Tom Brown, and Jim Girkin emails fail when I try to send.

Thanks for any help.

If you can help Wallace, put the new addresses under “comments;” they’ll come to me and I’ll forward them on to him. For that matter, if you know my e-mail address, send ‘em direct to me.

RETIREMENT UPDATE

Got this note in my e-mail today:

Hello Family and Friends!

Yes, Mary Kay is giving up the "dream job" and going to the house!

I am really excited and looking forward to being outside in my yard and clearing a big path inside my house, and playing with our grandchildren!

Please come help me celebrate on May 17th beginning at 3:00 in the Downtown lobby of First Security Bank.

My friend and very capable assistant, Ann Snow, will take over as Gold Club Director!

:) Mary Kathryn Van Patten James (Class of ’56)

NEWS QUICKIE

First, this from this morning's paper:

Donnie Lee Shands
Donnie Lee Shands, well-known Searcy resident, died Wednesday, April 25, 2007. He was 66 years of age.

Now, on a somewhat more cheerful note, Mary Kathryn Van Patten James (better know through most of her adulthood as Mary Kay) has put her name on the Retirement List at Searcy's First Security Bank, effective May 17th. She thus Suzy Hoffman Boyette on the put-your-feet-up-and-relax-for-while brigade.

This is Mary Kay (on the left) with her colleague, Ann Snow, taken this last Tuesday.

PICTURE POSTCARDS

Want to see something unusual from out of our past?

Follow this link: http://www.rootsweb.com/~usgenweb/ar/white/postcards/ppcs-white.html

Have a nice day.

REALLY LONG-AGO MEMORIES

Sometimes our classmates/readers come up with the darndest things. Witness this note from Don Thompson:

Interesting postcard found on eBay™. I removed the postmark and enlarged the pic.

This photo is of the 1911 Searcy May Day Parade.

Let’s put this into historical perspective for a moment. This photo was taken SEVEN YEARS before the Communists took over the Russian government (read up on it and find out that it wasn’t really a “revolution” as they tried to convince the world).

Later, the Communists tried co-opting May Day as a Communist holiday, with a HUGE annual parade in Moscow, etc.

Meanwhile, the United States managed to elude that attempt on their part, and May Day was observed in Searcy until sometime in the 50s.

P.S. If you can't read that faint caption, it tells us that those were public school children marching, and that this was taken on Spring Street, looking north toward the Court House.

Thanks, Don.

FYI

I took some very old material from this site, re-wrote it, and have started running it on my personal site.

This covers my arrival in Arkansas and then concerns itself with life in the latter 40’s, primarily.

You might want to check it out by following the link on the left. The first installment is dated 4/4/07.

-Tom

DIGITAL ALCHEMY

There seems to be a little confusion about my little home business which, for lack of anything better, I call:

DISCS-2-DIGITAL

In this little effort of mine, I take your 33s, 45s, cassettes, or reel-to-reel tapes, digitize them, clean out a lot of the static, and then place them on CDs, so you can enjoy them again … and still have them.

Now, what I DON’T do is transfer film and/or videos to DVD’s. I don’t do slideshows, either.

BUT …. I know someone who does, since some of you have asked.

A caveat first. At Wal-Mart and other electronics retailers, you can find a moderately-priced gadget that takes a videotape on one side and a DVD on the other. It claims to transfer the videotape to the DVD. I have no idea how well it works, and also wonder how the gadget handles it when a film/VHS is over 2 hours long, since that’s the capacity of a DVD.

Don’t know how it handles copy protection on the tape, either.

If you feel like playing with it at home, get one, but don’t say I recommended it to you.

Now, what to do with this other stuff. Let me recommend JJ Film Conversion.

John and Jamie Lemons are set up to handle the video stuff. They can handle the audio stuff, too, but at that point, they’re getting onto my turf. Yet, they’re set up for 8mm and Super8mm film, and videotape to DVD transfers: I'm not.

You can go to their web site, http://www.jjfilmconversion.com and find out more. They are here in Searcy, and nice people.

As for me … well, you already know how to get in touch with me – and I hope you will.