Spider in the Balcony
	Salty Burns loved and lived every sport there was. During the 1950's he was a high school teacher and coached football, basketball, baseball, and softball at a number of high schools in Tampa: Jefferson, Plant, Chamberlain, and Leto. He led the Plant Panthers to a basketball state championship in 1958. As Leto High School's first football coach, Salty, with his son, Jack Burns, as quarterback, led the Falcons to a city championship in 1967. Salty was Chamberlain High School's head football coach and also their softball coach. Two of his softball teams won world championships. Salty Burns was, predictably, inducted into The Florida Athletic Coaches Hall of Fame. Turning the clock back to the mid 40's and the Seminole Theater on a Saturday night. My brother, Joe Pat, and his best friend, Salty Burns, where teenagers. They were up in the balcony at the Seminole Theater and the movie was probably a western. Salty lived one street over from Ellicott Street, where we lived. He and Joe Pat had walked to the picture show like most teenagers did on Saturday evenings. Joe Pat and Salty had purposely situated themselves at the edge of the balcony. They were directly above some teenage girls. On Saturday nights practically the entire theater was filled with teens. During a very poignant part of the movie when everything was deathly silent, Salty and Joe Pat slowly lowered a rubber spider on a string down onto the girls below and they went berserk. They screamed, threw their popcorn into the air, and ran out to the lobby, wildly brushing their arms, dresses, and hair with their hands. Needless to say, the people around them hurried into the light of the lobby as well. Joe Pat and Salty didn't expect it to cause such an uproar. It didn't take long for the manager to figure out what had taken place. I think one of the girls still had her arms tangled in the string and the fake spider was dangling off of her somewhere. I don't know how he figured out that Joe Pat and Salty were the culprits; probably because they were high-tailing it out of the balcony. He caught them and brought them into the lobby. A small crowd gathered around them. They said that all the boys thought it was pretty cool. One older man said, "I didn't know what it was. I just got outa there when I saw them girls going berkshire!" I've heard my mother tell this story a hundred times. She always smiled about it later but said it really scared her the night the phone rang and it was the police. They said they had Joe Pat and Salty there at the station and Mother and Daddy needed to "come down and pick them up." They weren't in trouble, just "boys will be boys." The constables wanted Mother and Daddy to know what Joe Pat and Salty had done, and to talk to them about it. I don't know why they didn't call Salty's parents, too. Mother said she never told on Salty, that she thought both of the boys had learned their lesson. Last week when I wrote the story, "The Horses of Ellicott Street," I got a response from a woman in Tennessee. I used to have bird dealings with her husband, Doyle Frasier, many years ago when they lived in Tampa. He was a well-known waterfowl breeder. The woman, Susie Frasier, used to be Susie Burns. She was Salty Burns's sister. She said she loved the story about our horse, Ginger, because when she was a girl she also had a chestnut mare named Ginger. She and Salty sold her to a man in our neighborhood, a cabinetmaker named Inman. Joe Pat also knew Mr. Inman. Susie and I put two and two together and it seems reasonable, if not probable, that her horse, Ginger, and our horse, Ginger, were the same. I guess we'll never know. Joe Pat, Salty, Mr. Inman, and even Ginger are all gone now. Susie had always wondered what ever happened to her horse. Reading the story about Ginger living a long, happy, retired life on a farm, and having a colt, made her feel good. Lash Out Loud