Re: College Roommate, Best There Ever Was: Dr. Jerry Wendell Duncan

On Thursday, June 1, 2023 at 2:56:03 PM UTC-4, Jimmy knows crooked Sammie Ervin IV wrote:
> He was always full of good humor, invited me to stay in his home in Petros, TN within hollering distance of Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary. I could write a book full of all our hi-jinks, practical jokes, and tomfoolery in college. He was just the best roommate in the world and always jovial and very kind to me, visited us when I was in law school. 
> 
> His mother and dad, and his pretty sister, were also the very best, kindest folks you'd ever want to know. His dad owned and ran Duncan Store in Petros.   They had me several times as an honored guest at the Duncan home, and every occasion was a feast and the greatest of fellowship.
> 
> When Jerry was right out of dental school he filled one of my molars and the filling seemed to last forever. I still have that 12-year molar. It's got a gold crown and had a root canal a few years ago. 
> 
> Goodbye, dear friend. I hope to see you again someday. 
> 
> https://www.knoxnews.com/obituaries/kns042303

There were a bunch of us rakes that ran together:   Philip Denmark from Jacksonville, FL;  Morgan Tracy, also from Jax; Mickey Hammer from all over E. Tenn. and Heifer's Junction; and David and Sarah Swann from Bull's Gap, and Earl, whose last name I can't remember, but who heaved a chair from one end of the long dorm hall to the other when I stuck a coke bottle cap under his door with ferric sulfide and hydrochloric acid and generated just enough rotten egg gas to stink up his room.     Also rans were John Wachtel and Bill Hendon, friends who stayed wisely out of the mischief.

Jerry was always regaling us all with stories of Brushy Mountain, and all the bootleggers who made white liquor using 100-lb. bags of cane sugar and corn meal bought at Duncan Store.  One time the revenuers came and threatened to confiscate Duncan Store's large storage of sugar, yeast, corn meal, and charred wooden barrels bought as salvage from nearby distilleries like Jack Daniel's.

Jerry would tell us the story of how he got thrown into jail as a teenager for some of his rowdiness, such as drag-racing, fleeing to elude arrest, and what-not.  The following Monday when he boarded the school bus and sat down, one side of the crowded bus full of songsters issued a powerful chorus:   "What kinda bird don't fly?"

The other side of the bus full of songsters answered with gusto and in perfick tune "Jailbird! Jailbird!  Jailbird!"

Meanwhile back at the dorm, in wintertime, Millard Williams hung his half gallon of OJ out his window to keep it cool.   Somebody in our gang of mischief-makers got a ladder, opened the OJ container, and spiced it up with a large cup of urine.  Millard must have liked it.   He was never heard to complain.   His roommate who disliked him to no end never said a word about it. 

Next time the prank was played with ipecac and that caused a big ruckus at our dorm, of accusations and denials.

Then there was the time that fish and game officials stormed into the dorm looking for the guy, a former roommate of mine who later flunked out of law school.   He had been stalking and shooting the die-dappers and grebes and whatever else that moved at Cherokee Lake.  They confiscated his gun and put him out of business.  Later, one of those cops, who was son of my friend the gunsmith,  gave me that gun.   I still have it.  The damn thing is deadly accurate and I am a crack shot with it.  Them was the days.   I'll betcha no guns have been in that dorm for the last 50 years.