Willa Cather

The place, Irmo High School in Columbia, South Carolina.

What two words best describe my Junior(1985/86) and Senior (1986/87) years at Irmo High School?

Library Pass

A library pass had to be signed by a teacher and could get you out of study hall and into the library. I managed to score 3 Library Passes a day and spent a good portion of my Junior and Senior years in the Irmo High School Library.

Welcome to Library Pass, where I will tell true stories from the Irmo High School Library.

Willa Cather.

Do you know who she is?

I am pretty sure that she is a famous author.

I never read any of her stories and/or books and/or novels and/or poems and/or plays.

I could not name anything Willa Cather has ever written and I am not really sure that she has even ever written any stories and/or books and/or novels and/or plays, as opposed to something else.

I don't know if Willa Cather is still alive.

I don't know if Willa Cather was/is white or black.

I do know that Willa Cather is not attractive and had a butt-cutt at one time.

How do I know this?

The same way I know that Samuel Clemmens looks like Mark Twain...

...Because there was a large, 10 pound, Willa Cather bust among the other author busts at the Irmo High School Library...

...until my friend Billy Lide stole the Willa Cather bust.

I doubt any one even noticed that Willa and her butt-cutt were missing.

I had certainly never noticed Willa's bust, until I saw it sitting in Billy's room.

Library Pass - I Am Still Waiting

The place, Irmo High School in Columbia, South Carolina.

What two words best describe my Junior(1985/86) and Senior (1986/87) years at Irmo High School?

Library Pass

A library pass had to be signed by a teacher and could get you out of study hall and into the library. I managed to score 3 Library Passes a day and spent a good portion of my Junior and Senior years in the Irmo High School Library.

Welcome to Library Pass, where I will tell true stories from the Irmo High School Library.

Have you ever had someone pull a joke on you or use a put-down or come-back on you that was soooo good that you couldn't wait for the perfect situation to arise so that you could use it on someone else?

It was Senior year.

Me and four or five of my friends were sitting in the library at a big table. The library was pretty crowded at the time.

Chris Thigpen leaned over to John or Steven Scoff and whispered something. Then Chris told Dave and Beattie the secret. Soon, everyone at the table, but me, was in on the secret.

Then, all of a sudden, everyone at our table, except me, jumped up at the same time.

Everyone in the library looked over at our table.

My "friends" all started moving away from me.

They all made faces as if they had just heard the most disgusting thing imaginable.

Thigpen said "Oh Turnipseed!" as he waved his hand back and forth under his nose and made a disgusting face.

All of my friends did the same, either pinching their nose, covering it with their hand, or waving their hand under their nose.

They sold it perfectly.

A few of them even acted suprised as if the smell was even worse than they had expected when they intitially lept up from the table in horror based on the (pretend) sound alone.

My protests that it was all a trick only made me seem all the more guilty.

It has been 20 years and I am still waiting to use that gag on someone else.

Mrs. Dozier Wins by Losing.

The place, Irmo High School in Columbia, South Carolina.

What two words best describe my Junior(1985/86) and Senior (1986/87) years at Irmo High School?

Library Pass

A library pass had to be signed by a teacher and could get you out of study hall and into the library. I managed to score 3 Library Passes a day and spent a good portion of my Junior and Senior years in the Irmo High School Library.

Welcome to Library Pass, where I will tell true stories from the Irmo High School Library.


My Junior year at Irmo High School, I had Mrs. Dozier (pictured) for A.P. World History.

Mrs. Dozier was an innovative teacher who tried to trick us into learning with games. Mrs. Dozier had invented a board game called Imperialism and we often split into teams for some world history trivia competition. AP World History was packed with some of the smartest kids in my class. The trivia competition usually involved boys vs girls. The girls outnumbered us, but we held our own because Jeff Deloach knew the answer to every question and because Kevin Markland would throw the girls off by giving them "Ehh!"s and mocking them if they got a wrong answer. This was an especially good tactic against Ellen Reddick.

Mrs. Dozier won National Teacher of The Year. I remember Mrs. Dozier being very excited because she had been selected as one of the finalists, out of 11,500 applicants, to become the first civilian Teacher in Space. Mrs. Dozier was not selected.

I don't know who George Santayana is, but Mrs. Dozier had a George Santayana quote taped to her podium that read,

"Those who can not remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

This has always seemed a decent validation for history as a school subject. Hitler would not have invaded Russia in the winter if he had taken Mrs. Dozier for world history.

On January 28, 1986 at about 11:30 a.m., Mrs. Dozier took us to the Irmo High School Library where a television was wheeled out so that we could watch the live launch of the space shuttle that she had come so close to getting to ride in.

As we watched with Mrs. Dozier, the Challenger shuttle exploded 73 seconds after lift-off, killing all seven crew members, including Christa McAuliffe, the first teacher in space.

Who? Me?

The place, Irmo High School in Columbia, South Carolina.

What two words best describe my Junior(1985/86) and Senior (1986/87) years at Irmo High School?

Library Pass

A library pass had to be signed by a teacher and could get you out of study hall and into the library. I managed to score 3 Library Passes a day and spent a good portion of my Junior and Senior years in the Irmo High School Library.

Welcome to Library Pass, where I will tell true stories from the Irmo High School Library.

Who? Me?

Way back in the mid to late 80's, long before Columbine or 9/11, the Irmo High School Library had a very sophisticated Security System.

You could only enter the Library through a narrow glassed hallway. In the hallway were little security gates that swung open to allow entrance to, and exit from, the Library.

To enter, you had to either be with a teacher, or have a Library Pass.

To exit the Library, you had to go through a detection device that beeped if you tried to remove a book from the library without checking the book out.

The security system didn't really keep students from removing books from the Library without checking them out.

If you wanted to take a book, it wasn't hard to tear the little metal detection chip out of the cover of the book and then take the book through the security gate, beep-free.

In fact, it was so easy to tear the little metal detection chip out of the books, that we did it all the time.

Did we read a lot of books?

No, but it was fun to hide the little metal detection chips in other student's stuff so that the beeper would go off when he left the library.

We would stand close by and laugh when the beeper went off and the clueless sophomore looked around with a "Who Me?" look on their face.

Then there would be a lock-down.

Mrs. Gilliam would spring into action and interrogate the sophomore as they fished around in their bag.

Still makes me giggle thinking about it.

Library Pass - The Basics

The place, Irmo High School in Columbia, South Carolina.

What two words best describe my Junior(1985/85) and Senior (1986/87) years at Irmo High School?

Library Pass

A library pass had to be signed by a teacher and could get you out of study hall and into the library. I managed to score 3 Library Passes a day and spent a good portion of my Junior and Senior years in the Irmo High School Library.

Welcome to Library Pass, where I will tell true stories from the Irmo High School Library.

The Basics

The Irmo High School Library was large. There was only one entrance/exit which was right across the hall from the main office entrance.

Inside, the library was one very large room with a windowed office area in the center and with shelves, tables, chairs, and cabinets spread about. There were also a few doors leading to some sort of media-arts area in the back of the library.

I spent about 2 or 3 hours a day in the library my Junior and Senior year. For that 3 hours, friends or other students with lunch periods, study hall, and/or library passes, would come and go.

Me and my friends would usually find a big table and sit around it talking.

"Talking in the library?"

I know, it sounds crazy, but it's true. The library was large, it was easy to find a spot away from any librarians, and no students were actually reading in the library, so no-one ever complained.

Even if you got too loud, all the librarians would do is look over at you menacingly.

We were not afraid. These were not real tachers, they didn't know our names, and they were too engrossed in the card catalouge to come over to our table and dispense discipline.

Aside from my Library Pass, I always made sure that I brought a very sharp pencil and some paper to the library.

I didn't use the pencil to write on the paper, the paper was for making paper airplanes.

Not those blunt-nosed loopy stunt planes, but simple, straight-forward, streamlined, sharp-tipped paper airplanes made by following the steps.



The ceiling of the library was a sort of white spongy fibre, most likely friable asbestos.

It was great fun to throw a sharp pencil, or a really sharp-nosed paper airplane, up into the ceiling to see if it would stick.

At any given time there were a number of pencils and airplanes stuck in the ceiling.

More fun than Study Hall.

L.P. - Introduction

The years were 1986 and 1987.

The place, Irmo High School in Columbia, South Carolina.

Irmo was a pretty big High School. I graduated with 780 other seniors and the classes below mine were even bigger.

Every student at Irmo High School had an hour long lunch period where you had to either be in the cafeteria, or in a Study Hall.

I was a Senior in 86/87. I got early acceptance to University of North Carolina over thanksgiving break of 1986. I didn't need many classes to graduate my senior year and I had 2 study halls in addition to lunch study hall.

Study Hall sucked. Everyone sat at individual desks that were arranged in rows, and you couldn't talk. There was a teacher sitting in the front of the room who could see all of the students.

I tried to sleep but the desks were uncomfortable. I tried bringing a large ziplock bag which I would blow up and then seal, making an air-pillow. This would work for about 15 minutes before the air seeped out of the bag and my head hit the hard desk.

How did I get out of 3 straight hours of sucky Study Hall every day?

In what unlikely place did me and my friends find refuge?

What two words best describe my senior year at Irmo High School?

Library Pass

A library pass had to be signed by a teacher and could get you out of study hall and into the library. I managed to score 3 Library Passes a day, mostly from my AP teachers.

Welcome to Library Pass, where I will tell true stories from the Irmo High School Library.