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Dicey
by W. F. Stokes, Jr. 1957 was fast approaching an end. Halloween had come and gone and Thanksgiving was near. We all looked forward to Christmas, and premium gasoline, referred to as ethyl, was less than twenty cents a gallon. None of my third grade classmates had thoughts more pressing than the Thanksgiving Holiday. Living in south Alabama near the Florida panhandle, the most devastating catastrophes we dealt with were remnants from hurricanes that occasionally blew in from the Gulf of Mexico. Hurricane Flossie, for example, had struck us in 1956 and dumped torrential rain that caused major flooding. During those heavy rains, the rivers and creeks overflowed their banks sometimes even flooding the town. When that happened, school buses couldn't get across the bridges and school was closed until the waters subsided. Such natural catastrophic events provided us with impromptu school holidays for a few days. Daddy bought an Admiral black and white television in 1954. We could get only two channels most of the time and watching it was like viewing a black and white picture through a single layer of porous gauze. We got a new outside antenna shortly after we got the television and the reception got better. When the weather was just right, we could get channel 10 from Mobile; otherwise, it was channel 5 from Mobile and channel 3 from Pensacola. The new antenna came with an electric Tena-rotor, which turned the antenna toward the station. The rotor was controlled by an electric controller inside that sat on top of the television. The inside unit had a knob in the center of a circular dial that was inscribed like a compass. The knob had a pointer that could be turned to the desired direction. If all worked well, and the wind had not turned the antenna, the antenna could be dialed to point in any direction from inside. Our electric Tena-rotor broke within a year and we resorted to making antenna adjustments with a large pipe wrench. But such adjustments proved time consuming. Ultimately, we manually set the antenna to point halfway between Pensacola and Mobile and left it there. The highlight of the day was coming home from school, watching the afternoon western, then playing outside until dark. Once while in Pensacola, I saw a woman at the Woolworth lunch diner who looked enough like Whip Wilson to be his sister. That cinched it for me – I was sure all the cowboys featured in the westerns lived in Pensacola and made movies from there. After supper, I might get to watch another program or two, after I had finished my homework. Before the television, entertainment came from listening to Gang Busters, Jack Benny or The Shadow on the radio. Having a television antenna standing outside one's home was a status symbol. We were among the last in the neighborhood to exhibit such a luxury. We watched that Admiral television in disbelief, as news of the Russian Sputnik broke October 4, 1957, and President Eisenhower talked about a cold war. One day the teacher announced that everyone in the school had the opportunity to purchase personal identification tags. She had a sample, which she held up for the class to see. I recognized the tags immediately. Daddy and my uncles had called them "dog tags" when they were in the Army. The tag was a small piece of stainless steel stamped with a name, address, telephone number and a religious affiliation. I knew immediately, as did my classmates, that I had to have a personal identification tag. The teacher passed out order forms for us to take home and fill out with our parents. She gave us a deadline to have our orders and money back to her. I was excited when I got home that afternoon and couldn't wait to show Mother the order form. I remember Mother looking at the form and saying something I didn't understand about an iron curtain. She wasn't nearly as enthusiastic as I had been about completing the form. I couldn't understand why. The next day I proudly took my completed form and seventy-five cents to the teacher so that she could order my personal identification tag. It took about a month for our personal identification tags to be made and shipped to us. We all waited anxiously for them to arrive. Everybody was getting one. Though it was not openly discussed, there was quiet talk about boyfriends and girlfriends swapping identification necklaces. It was resolved that all that would come about in due time but first, after they arrived, the owner had to possess their personal identification tag. Once owning them became common place, there would be time for swapping. Finally, the big day came. The identification tags had arrived! As we began the school day, the teacher announced that she would give them out at recess, if we behaved. I was overwhelmed. It was all I could do just to sit still and mind my manners until recess. The entire class was on their best behavior. It seemed that recess time would never come, but it did come finally. And the teacher opened her big desk drawer and pulled out a big brown bag. From that bag, she took out a small box. Then she then pulled out a bag containing chains. She opened the small box and pulled out the first tag and read the name on it. The student whose name was read went up and claimed their tag. The teacher continued passing out the tags and chains until everyone had one. In no time, the classroom buzzed as we admired our very own personal identification tags. Everyone was comparing their tag with their classmates’. Never before nor since, has such a mundane experience – having one's name and address stamped into a piece of metal – been considered such a prodigious and significant event. Everyone in the class was wearing a personal identification tag, except for Dicey Coleman, but no one had noticed. Dicey had shied away from the front of the room. Everyone was so busy admiring their new personal identification tag that no one paid any attention to Dicey, and no one had noticed that her name hadn't been called by the teacher. Dicey was blonde, extremely pale and very shy. She didn't speak, unless she was spoken to and her responses were always soft and quiet, almost apologetic. Her lips were pale, just like her skin, except for the light sprinkling of small brown freckles across her nose that dissipated as they melted into her cheeks. She wore plain clothes – never anything fancy or stylish, hand-me downs from her older sisters. She had two older brothers and two older sisters. No one noticed Dicey until the teacher called her name. Dicey was surprised and stood uncomfortably by her desk. With her head hanging, she looked at the floor and spoke softly, as if to avoid being heard by anyone other than the teacher. Most everyone was still busy admiring the identification tags of their classmates. I heard Dicey tell the teacher that there must be some mistake because she hadn't paid for a personal identification tag and she hadn't ordered one. The teacher quietly motioned for Dicey to come to her desk. Dicey approached her desk, cautiously in her usual timid fashion. The teacher reached into the small box and pulled out an identification tag. She told Dicey that it had her name on it, then she handed the tag and a chain to Dicey. She told Dicey that she had ordered it for her. Dicey smiled shyly, blushed and thanked her, as she read her name on the tag and smiled. Then she threaded the chain through the hole in the tag and slid the necklace over her head and around her neck; she began to glow. It was the first time I could recall seeing any color in her face. Her smile beamed and her cheeks were rosy-red as she walked proudly back to her desk. No student in the class had thought about the possible underlying purposes for the identification tags, other than a fashion statement – something that was cool to have at that moment. We never realized the real purpose for the personal identification tags may have paralleled those adopted by the military. At the time, our nation was concerned with Sputnik. A few years later the national focus intensified because of activities taking place on a small island lying approximately 90 miles from the Florida Keys. In those days school children were taught to "duck and cover" under their desks to shield themselves from the radioactive fallout of a nuclear attack. Of course, the "duck and cover" rule applied only if you weren't too close to the initial impact zone. We never considered that Whiting Field, a Naval carrier pilot training facility less than 30 miles away, or Redstone Arsenal, a few hundred miles to the North, might be strategic targets in a nuclear strike. Personal identification tags would have made the identification of bodies simpler for the survivors cleaning up after a nuclear attack. But none of my classmates related personal identification tags with the cold war or a nuclear attack. We were naive. Times were simpler then and we just didn't think about such things. We didn't think about Dicey's family maybe not having seventy-five cents to pay for her personal identification tag, either – but the teacher did. |
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