I do not know what term the young people use today for what in my day was called a "hangout." When I was in high school, the hangout was the pool hall at Holcomb, or McGee's Drive-in at Kennett, or the A&W, or the pool hall at Kennett, or the bowling alley -- places like that.

I have wondered since where the term "hangout" came from.

I have learned that early English shopkeepers, that would be store owners or entrepreneurs today, set up poles in the middle of the road in front of their places of business. From these poles they would "hang out" flags. Those flags described the goods or services the respective stores sold.

Consequently, folks would often gather around those flags seeing what goods they could buy and where. Often they would linger there around the poles which businesses used to "hang out" their advertisements, so to speak.

Soon these "hang outs" became regular meeting places. Thus, the term "hangouts" evolved.

All of these hangouts had one thing in common. They were places where men and women gathered to pass time, gossip, and fellowship.

If you are a western history fan of any kind, or if you watched Roy Rogers, Matt Dillion, Bonanza, or shows like that, then you are familiar with other hangouts, some of them famous hideouts.

Remember Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid? Butch, Sundance, and the Wild Bunch used three famous hangouts or hideouts. They used the "Hole-in-the-Wall" in Wyoming, "Brown's Park" on the Colorado/Utah border, and "Robbers Roost" in Southeastern Utah.

Obviously, the term is not relegated to history. When searching the Internet I found places like myspace.com/hangoutslive, Teen Chat Hangouts, Teen Hangouts, Bikernet Hangouts, etc.

Some of my friends and I had a favorite hangout when we were kids. On my grandfather's farm was this enormous tree with a huge hole in the bottom. You could stand in that hole, as a child of course, and look up into the tree. We all swore there was a witch that lived there. That did not keep us from using it as a hangout, though.

Jack Rollins is the managing editor of the Daily Dunklin Democrat.