Newsletter for the Alumni and Friends of
Hicksville High School Hicksville, New York

The Editors:
Buffalo Bob Casale '61	Linda (Piccerelli) Hayden '60
Pat (Koziuk) Driscoll '56	Bob (Gleason) Wesley '61

Contributing Editors: Bob Gillette & Walter Schmidt

Webmaster: Roger Whitaker

To contact the editors, email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

---

The Newsletter

Photo Gallery

BEST COLLECTION OF PIX YET
IT WOULD BE HARD TO PICK A FAVORITE.

Submitted by Art Lembke Class of 1949

54-story twisting tower in Malmo , Sweden  

The Breathtaking Melissani Cave in Greece  

 A Room With A View "Jade Mountain Resort" St Lucia

The Crooked Forest, Komodo Island Indonesia

Piano and Violin Building Huainan, China

Firework Long Exposure Shot

Mountain-side farming in the province of Bolzano (Bozen) in Italy

Tree House

Lavender Field in France

The pink and lovely..." Hiller Lake " ( Western Australia )
Its startling colour remains a mystery and while scientists have proven it's not due to the presence of algae, unlike the other salt lakes down under, they still can't explain why it's pink.

The gap between Europe and the United States is widening - by one inch a year. This photograph shows the vast gap between the two tectonic plates, as seen by a British scuba diver. Alex Mustard, 36, dived 80 feet into the crevice between North America and Eurasia to reveal the stunning landscape.The area - near Iceland - is riddled with faults, valleys, volcanoes and hot springs , caused by the plates pulling apart at about 1 inch per year.

Big Island , Hawaii

Snowy Night, Moscow, Russia

An onlooker of the annular solar eclipse witnesses the celestial event on May 20, 2012. Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA

To Sua Ocean Trench - Upolu, Western Samoa

Flower with beads of rain

The Fly Geyser - Wonder of Nature. Nevada, US

World's biggest cave found in Vietnam

Meteora. Greece

Frozen waterfall. Slovenia

Lenticular Clouds above South Georgia Island

Gardening Apartment , Thailand ...

Beautiful hanging lounger

A room with a view

Vermillion Cliffs National Monument, Arizona.

Fields of flowers

Christmas Lights, Selangor, Malaysia

"Niagara waterfall - The edge"

Unusual photo of the moon

Grotta Palazzese, a restaurant located inside an ancient cave facing the Adriatic Sea

Cactus' with flowers

Birthdays & Anniversaries

Memory Lane

This is an Excellent Collection of Colloquialisms

Thanks to Kathy McDonald Corey & Allen Court for the following.

A SHOT OF WHISKEY
In the old west, a .45 cartridge for a six-gun cost 12 cents and so did a glass of whiskey. If a cowhand was low on cash he would often give the bartender a cartridge in exchange for a drink. This became known as a "shot" of whiskey."

THE WHOLE NINE YARDS
American fighter planes in WW2 had machine guns that were fed by a 
belt of cartridges. The Average plane held belts that were 27 feet (9
yards) long. If the pilot used up all his ammo he was said to have 
given it the whole nine yards.

BUYING THE FARM
This is synonymous with dying. During WWI, soldiers were given life insurance policies worth $5,000. This was about the price of an 
average farm so, if you died, you "bought the farm" for your survivors.

IRON CLAD CONTRACT
This came about from the ironclad ships of the Civil War. It meant something so strong it could not be broken.

PASSING THE BUCK/THE BUCK STOPS HERE
Most men in the early west carried a jack knife made by the Buck knife company. When playing poker, it was common to place one of these Buck Knives in front of the dealer so that everyone knew who he was. When it was time for a new dealer, the deck of cards and the knife were given to the new dealer. If this person didn't want to deal he would "pass the buck" to the next player. If that player accepted, then "the buck stopped there".

RIFF RAFF
The Mississippi River was the main way of traveling from north to south. 
Riverboats carried passengers and freight but they were expensive so most people used rafts. Everything on the river had the right of way over rafts which were considered cheap. 
The steering oar on the rafts was called a "riff" and this transposed into riff-raff, meaning low-class.

SHIP STATEROOMS
Traveling by steamboat was considered the height of comfort. Passenger cabins on the boats were not numbered. Instead they were named after states. To this day cabins on
 ships are called "staterooms".

SLEEP TIGHT
Early beds were made with a wooden frame. Ropes were tied across the frame in a
crisscross pattern. A straw mattress was placed on top of the ropes. Over time, the ropes stretched, causing the bed to sag. The owner would then tighten the ropes to get a better night's sleep.

SHOWBOATING
These were floating theaters built on a barge pushed by a steamboat. These played small towns along the Mississippi River . Unlike the boat shown in the movie Showboat, these did not have engines. They were gaudy and attention-grabbing, which is why we say someone who is the life of the party is "showboating".

OVER A BARREL
In the days before CPR, a drowning victim would be placed face-down over a barrel and the barrel would be rolled back and forth in an effort to empty the lungs of water. It was rarely effective; hence, if you are over a barrel, you are in deep trouble.

BARGE IN
Heavy freight was moved along the Mississippi in large barges pushed by steamboats. They were hard to control and would sometimes swing into piers or other boats. People would say they "barged in".

HOGWASH
Steamboats carried both people and animals. Since pigs smelled so bad, they would be washed before being put on board. The mud and other filth that was washed off was considered useless "hogwash".

BARRELS OF OIL
When the first oil wells were drilled they had made no provision for storing the liquid so they used water barrels. To this day, we speak of barrels of oil rather than gallons.

HOT OFF THE PRESS
As the paper goes through the rotary printing press, friction causes it to heat. Therefore, if you grab the paper right off the press, it's hot. The expression means: to get immediate information.

Casale's Corner

On Nov. 18, 1995, Itzhak Perlman, the violinist, came on stage to give a concert at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center in New York City . If you have ever been to a Perlman concert, you know that getting on stage is no small achievement for him. He was stricken with polio as a child, and so he has braces on both legs and walks with the aid of two crutches. To see him walk across the stage one step at a time, painfully and slowly, is an awesome sight. He walks painfully, yet majestically, until he reaches his chair. Then he sits down, slowly, puts his crutches on the floor, undoes the clasps on his legs, tucks one foot back and extends the other foot forward. Then he bends down and picks up the violin, puts it under his chin, nods to the conductor and proceeds to play.

By now, the audience is used to this ritual. They sit quietly while he makes his way across the stage to his chair. They remain reverently silent while he undoes the clasps on his legs. They wait until he is ready to play. But this time, something went wrong. Just as he finished the first few bars, one of the strings on his violin broke. You could hear it snap -- it went off like gunfire across the room. There was no mistaking what that sound meant. There was no mistaking what he had to do.

People who were there that night thought to themselves: "We figured that he would have to get up, put on the clasps again, pick up the crutches and limp his way off stage to either find another violin or else find another string for this one."

But he didn't. Instead, he waited a moment, closed his eyes and then signaled the conductor to begin again. The orchestra began, and he played from where he had left off. And he played with such passion and such power and such purity, as they had never heard before. Of course, anyone knows that it is impossible to play a symphonic work with just three strings. I know that, and you know that, but that night Itzhak Perlman refused to know that. You could see him modulating, changing, re-composing the piece in his head. At one point, it sounded like he was de-tuning the strings to get new sounds from them that they had never made before.

When he finished, there was an awesome silence in the room. And then people rose and cheered. There was an extraordinary outburst of applause from every corner of the auditorium. We were all on our feet, screaming and cheering, doing everything we could to show how much we appreciated what he had done.

He smiled, wiped the sweat from this brow, raised his bow to quiet us, and then he said, not boastfully, but in a quiet, pensive, reverent tone, "You know, sometimes it is the artist's task to find out how much music you can still make with what you have left."

What a powerful line that is. It has stayed in my mind ever since I heard it. And who knows? Perhaps that is the definition of life... not just for artists but for all of us. Here is a man who has prepared all his life to make music on a violin of four strings, who, all of a sudden, in the middle of a concert, finds himself with only three strings; so he makes music with three strings, and the music he made that night with just three strings was more beautiful, more sacred, more memorable, than any that he had ever made before, when he had four strings.

So, perhaps our task in this shaky, fast-changing, bewildering world in which we live is to make music, at first with all that we have, and then, when that is no longer possible, to make music with what we have left.