Page 63 - some-stuff-i-wrote-and-some-stuff-i-didn't-(2011)-h-morris-williams

Some Stuff I Wrote and Some Stuff I Didn't (2011) H. Morris Williams

Column April 27, 2008

HAVE A LICENSE TO SHAVE— OR ELSE

During our town’s centennial celebration in 1959, all the local men were
supposed to grow beards. Men who didn’t grow a beard were subject to be
tossed into Lake Desoto fully dressed by the enforcement squad— unless you
had bought and were wearing a ‘shaving permit’.

Friend Tommy Richardson gave me one of those souvenir ‘shaving licenses’
from 1959 just last week. Actually it was a metal button you wore on your lapel
authorizing you to go around whisker-free.

Some men bought the permits to escape the wrath of their wives who didn’t like
the scratchy beards. A cartoon back then showed a man shaving only after his
wife had put a knot on his head with a rolling pin.

The enforcement squad took their work seriously. Lake City Reporter publisher
R. L. “Strick” Strickland shaved and got two punishments. First he was pitched
into the lake. Then he was taken to Olustee Park, soaking wet, and locked up in
an old timey pillory— a wooden frame for public punishment with holes for head,
hands and feet.

The sign on the pillory explained why Strick was locked up there: “Had Beard,
Did Shave.”

Of course Strick grinned his way through all of it because it was all done in good-
natured fun. After all, it was a party— our 100th birthday party.

So let’s all start getting geared up for similar fun and mischievous merriment just
a year from now when we celebrate our 150th year.

THANKS, JOHNNY

Friend Johnny Bullard donated some interesting historical artifacts to our School
Museum last week.

* A 1939 White Springs High School commencement program.
Held in the White Springs Methodist Church, Lake City’s Reverend E. F.
Montgomery, Sr. delivered the sermon, Martha Marsh played a violin solo, and
Bernice Feaster sang a solo.

According to Johnny, student Frank Stewart Pound might have considered
himself the valedictorian of that class and he wouldn’t have gotten much
argument— he was the only member of the senior class that year!

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