Waterman Street School Memories

This is the east side of Waterman Street School. See the front entrance to the right? Actually, there were two twin front entrances. This one is the one nearer to the eastern side. On those steps leading up to the front doors I remember discussing the life's mysteries, Sex, and such as how to make an egg's shell soften to feel like a thin membrane and to make it look like a hog's ball (soak it overnight in vinegar). I was fooled. Larry Southern showed me the soft-shell egg and told me it was a hog's ball. On those same steps one time Larry pulled out a condom and showed me, and I was impressed with the little white O-ring around the opening of it. Which I had a very scientific observation that went something like this: "so that is a rubber? Where do you buy them at?" About 12 or 13 years later again Larry would take a condom out of his pocket. This time it was on the back row of the Hill Street Baptist Church. I wasn’t along with Larry and my other friends that Sunday night but I got several first hand accounts. They heard that on Sunday nights at Hill Street Baptist Church some loose teenage girls went there and they were easy to pick up. So, the boys went to check it out. During the sermon Larry got bored and pulled out a condom and started playing with it. It wasn’t long until he blew it up and tied a little knot in the O-ring thing. His cousin Jesse, also one of us, reached over and flipped the balloon shape rubber. Larry wasn’t expecting it and it got loose from him and landed in the aisle. There was a big fan at the near the back pews that kept the air circulating and brought in air from the outside. The white balloon was yanked into action by the fan’s wind current. It floated and gently bounced down the aisle like it had a soul of its own and wanted it saved by coming down to the preacher’s inspiring sermon. Larry and the others quickly left. Many years later, Larry's younger brother became the preacher of Hill Street Baptist Church. In the picture see the fire escape ladder coming from the two class rooms on the second floor? One time a boy named Van rammed my head into the fire escape at ground level and it took about 8 stitches to sew me up. It was right in the center of my head, I looked kind of like Frankenstein's Monster for several years until the scar finally went away. If I look closely, I can still see a hint of it. Van died about twenty years ago. He was a diabetic. He died because he went to the hospital to have a leg amputated and they removed the wrong leg which caused complications.