VOTE INTEGRITY

 JULY 31, 2026, HISTORY BECAME RECORDED AS THE MOST SIGNIFICENT ESTABLISHMENT OF VOTE INTEGRITY FOR THE PRESIDENT SINCE OUR TWO HUNDRED FIFTY YEARS OF EXISTENCEOF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!

LIFELINE IMC

 My early “Career” began when I was BORN!  You see, I was my father, William Gifford Ingram, was a Dodge dealer in Lineville, Alabama.  I had washed cars for as long as I could remember.

His partner, Clay Alford, decided to he would take a job with Standard Oil in Birmingham.  He had been in charge of sales, bookkeeping, banking and inventory.  Dad was charge of the employees, mechanical work, welding, the parts department, glass for car windows and windshields and backlights, the paint department and painting and State Farm Insurance claims.  That was a lucrative business!

As you can tell, Clay left us with the task of taking care of “front”!  It was in 1953 and I was 12 years old.  Before he left, he gave me a crash course in bookkeeping!  When he actually left, I found out that was no picnic!  I did know it yet, but my fortunes were about change, speaking literally.

Working late one night, I received a phone call.  Thinking I was my Mom wanting to know I was coming home.  But to my surprise, it was my District Manager from Atlanta.  He introduced me as Bob Poor, his NEW DM.  He was spending the night in Oxford and planned to be here around 9 tomorrow, if I would be available.  Since I would not be in school, so I said yes.  He said he would be here tomorrow.

I had never seen a District Manager and my Dad had seen one seldom.  If I had that job, I swore that I would see all my dealers once a month.  I was to see how prophetic that would become!

I was a godsend!  He only straightened out the financial report I had to send to the Zone Office each month, he showed me report a profit each month, because I switched to proration and instead of cash reporting.  I guess he was in the dealership a half dozen times in the first month!  He most of the time he spent a whole day in the dealership each visit.  He would not visit each month, but once in five or six weeks.  I got to know him quite well.  I was to meet him again in the future, in his same job!  

This is an excerpt from my logues of record!

D. KEITH INGRAM

LIFELINE VIII

 WHEN MARK TWAIN CELEBRATED THE RIVERBOAT AGAIN!

Our Senior year at the Lineville High School Junior/Senior Banquet was the high point of our 12 years of schooling!  You see, our Three Musketters and some helpers built a full size Sidewheeler Mississippi Riverboat, in all its color and splendor!  Mark Twain's memory could be felt in his presence!

We required that the model be built on the stage in the Auditorium at the Elementary School, where the banquet would be held.  We had to collect the largest pieces of cardboard of we had to reserve from Piggly Wiggly and Dollar General.  After we collected all the cardboard, we had four piles a foot high and we were hoping that were enough!

We borrowed a book out of the Library to have a reference in building the Riverboat.  There were plenty of pictures of real Riverboats to pick from, but after a while it got so confusing that we went home to start anew.

The next day we looked at Sidewheelers only and the elements in their simplest form to devise a plan.  We got our plan laid out, but we played it by ear as we went!  We started with the Sidewheel, because it was the most important and largest element of our design.  The rest of the design was the matter of filling in the shape of the ship and details.

Of course, we used lots of masking tape and the most of the cardboard.  We painted it red with white accents.  It was an handsome gentleman I would say so!  

LIFELINE VII

Bobby Pettus and Micky Riley stayed my closest friends throughogut my twelve years in school in Lineville.  We three continued with our art, which kept us out of classes quite often.  We could get away with it because we were straight A students!  On the other hand, we got by with more than we should!  In fact, we spent most of the first month making banners for the football games, which the we got the paper for the banners from Piggly Wiggly.

We will not bother with specific grades, because I cannot determine which incident in which grade, in certain cases.

We were active in social events, such as sock hops, graduation and the annual Junior/Senior Banquet, which was the most significant event of the year!  When we were Sophomores, the Senior Class chose Paris as their theme and we three were chosen a free hand to create it.  We got classmates to make imitation Cherry buds.  We had determined that it was too early for Cherry trees to blossom.  They stripped thin limbs and pasted fake buds on the trees.  They looked like Cherry buds, but I have no idea made them!

The second phase of the project was to build a look alike Eiffel Tower!  How you do go about that? !  Where do you build it?  How?  Out of what?  Well, cardboard is free for discards.  I can get all I want at the Pig or Dollar General.  Now, how do you assemble it?  Daddy has masking tape at the shop, and I can get some.  The old dorm has 16”  ceiling’s and we can use an empty room.  We will need 3 box cutters for cutting holes in the cardboard.

All was set to build an Eiffel Tower!  We started by cutting holes in the cardboard.  Based on our progress the first day was going to take too long!  How will we try the masking tape.  It worked!  Using masking tape and cardboard we finished the tower in just over a week!  

When we got ready to put it in the gym for the banquet we could not get it out of the dorm room!  We had to cut it in half and put it the Plymouth pickup we had borrowed, even though we had no driver’s license!  We reassembled it in the gym.  We had painted it flat black and needed to touch it up.

The tower took to build 70ft. of cardboard, 12 rolls of masking tape, 3 box cutters, 64 box cutter blades, $100.00, 10 gallons of gas for the Plymouth pickup (with fins we crafted out of cardboard), 40 Reese’s cups and 40 chocolate milks!  Just wait for our Senior year and see what we build!

KEITH

LIFELINE VI

 

My interest in writing is well known among my peers.  As I entered Junior High School that was my outlook, even though it was not apparent to me yet.  So, it was in my first day in the big boys' playground, or I was to find out that was to the contrary!  (My logo, above, was used by me for a sort of newsletter, until it wasn't getting the results I had expected.)

Right off the bat, I was being harassed by three boys in grades beyond me.  I guess I was a "pretty boy" and thought they were easy to take advantage of.  When I was about to start up the stairs to make some banners for the launch football game this week, they grabbed me to take me outside.  I had enough, so without thinking, I uttered the words, "LEAVE ME THE F*** ALONE!", in a very loud voice!  I was never bothered again, throughout the rest of my days in school!

Micky Riley, Bobby Pettus and I spent at least as much time out of the school as in it.  If there was a game, we made banners and decorated the town.  If we had a Senior/Junior Banquet, we created all of the theme-based decorations.  We made history for the unique decorations! When we were Sophomores, our first year for the event we were involved in, we built a model Eiffel Tower out of cardboard and masking tape.  Since it was early spring, we collected spindly trees and taped them to fake white dogwood buds.  The theme for the banquet was Paris in Springtime.  We three and Billy Mack Howle, because he had the only car, went out to see the Mt. Zion Cemetery.  It is rumored that a headstone turns around 360 degrees at midnight!  Like I said, it is a rumor!

When were passing a field we saw lights.  We were it was convinced that was aliens!  The bottle of lemon flavoring we had drank at the event could not have had anything to do with it, could it?

KEITH

SIXTH GRADE

MISS CLEGG

MISS CLEGG

MISS CLEGG!

No teacher ever preceded a reputation for toughness!  It was not limited to the curriculum, but to those who were limited in knowledge or learning capabilities.  She spent more time and energy with those few than all the rest of the class.  It was evident that she was determined to pass all of those in her class, come hell or high water!

My experience in her class was commendable, both my own and Miss Clegg's.  Because Micky Riley and I were capable in art, we were given those assignments, which resulted in special privileges.  Of course, Bobby Pettus was always included as our assistants, as The  Three Muskeeters.  We were responsible for the art that became Miss Clegg's classroom's permanently.  For example, a full size generic body's circulatory system, which took almost the year to complete.  We illustrated various human body parts, even male and female differences.  I don't how I wound up with the illustration of the full inner and outer human ear, but I found it in a book and I have it displayed in a frame in my "office"

Speaking of performances, Miss Clegg did one or own herself once!  When asked Billy Ray Lipham she had not turned in his assignment paper, he answered, "I ain't got nair'n".  She responded by leaning over his back and beat her with her fists on his back!  After she quit, you could have heard a pin drop.  She did nothing else until the bell rang shortly for ending the day.  I think Billy never did repeat such a comment like that again.  

That's how it was in the Sixth Grade.

KEITH                          

LIFELINE IV

ILLUSTRATING

 Miss Pitman was prim and proper as my Fifth Grade teacher.  She knew from the Fourth Grade who would need to concentrate my efforts on and those self-starters could fend for them-selves.  I fell in the latter category, fortunately.  Micky and I were called on for any creative projects.  I learned typing on an Underwood Electric typewriter.  I was supposed be in the class a full year, but my speed surpassed the qualifications for the full year, so Miss Smith would not take my second semester.

This year officially joined Bobby Pettus as our third member along with Mickey Riley and myself to become The Three Muskeeters as we called ourselves.  Bobby's father, Doc, died of a heart attack on Good Friday.  The emptiness he had missing gave us companionship that he needed.  

I don't recall what happened of real significance during the Fifth Grade, but we were about to change that!  We were going to be in  Miss Clegg's Sixth Grade homeroom and this was going to be a whole new ballgame!    

KEITH