Signing Yearbooks

Of all the gushy "Remember the time...blah, blah, blah" sentiments in my high school year books, my favorite came from a no-nonsense fellow graduate: Mack Neal. Now let me tell you first, a funny little ditty about Mack Neal.

One day when we were in middle school (oh, we called it Junior High back in the 1960's), we had a substitute teacher. A MALE substitute, too. He didn't look at the student roll the teacher left for him to use, I guess. He just asked us our names for some reason. When he got to Mack, Mack answered his name. Of course he said, "Mack Neal." But for some reason the guy thought he said, "McNeal."

"OK, son, I've got your last name. What's your first?"

"Mack Neal."

"No. I need your FIRST name."

"It's Mack Neal."

The class had to straighten him out.


Mack and I had gone through the same elementary, the same Junior High, the same high school, some of the same classes, known each other since we were 5, played in the summers while in elementary and Junior High school under the street lights on Turner Street while I spent the night with Gayle Robinson, and just really grew up together. Mack wrote the MOST PROFOUND AND UNFORGETTABLE thoughts when he signed my Senior annual and he said,

"It's been real."