Barbara Wilkerson Donnelly , Joy Rubins Morris, Paula Spencer Kephart,
Rainer Klauss, Bobby Cochran, Collins (CE) Wynn, Eddie Sykes, Cherri Polly
Massey
Staff Photographers: Fred & Lynn Sanders
Contributers: The Members of Lee High School Classes of 64-65-66
Well, by the time you read this the editor will be in Des Moines, Iowa, visiting Sue's oldest daughter and family. I don't think we have any General's living there, but I could be wrong.
I had a great time at Sue's Coldwater High School, Class of '68's reunion last weekend. She was part of a graduating class of about 63, and 23 showed up for the reunion. Their high school was torn down (much like Rison) and so their is a void in their past. It was a small affair compared to our group's, but very nice. On Friday night they had a social get together where only the classmates attended. Saturday they had a local Bar-B-Q place cater the meal and they had a small, informal, but very nice program and invited some of the teachers. There was no band, not even much background music; all they did was visit, eat, and talk about the good old days. They have only lost one member of their class.
This was my first reunion as a spouse and I found that you can still have a good time if you let yourself. I enjoyed the stories, even though they were not a part of my memories.
T. Tommy
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Okay, so it's no mystery as to what the item is this week. It certainly solved a few mysteries to the males back then. Comic books gave way to "girlie magazines" for many of our classmates. The above is a 1965 vintage magazine now being offered on e-Bay. We've had some good stories shared in this Lee's Traveller that we could have never shared in the old Lee's Traveller. I know that some of you guys (maybe even girls) have some stories to share about the most famous of all magazines during our Lee days - Playboy. What about it? Anyone want to send in a funny or two. I'll leave the name off it requested, but I just have a feeling that there may be a few more stories that have never been shared. Did any of these end up in school lockers, or maybe even passed around in a study hall? What were the teenage girl's thoughts on the subject? Collins wants to know!
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Welcome To Rison, Ron!
by Ron Brand
Class of '66
My first memory of Rison Elementary requires that I confess something I would never have told anyone while I was going to school there; to my shame, I was born a Yankee in some God forsaken place called Ohio. It doesn't bother me now to admit it because I'm about as Southern as you can get, in a naturalized kind of way.
I really don't remember having a hard time adjusting to the kids or the funny way of talking or the Dick and Jane reader when I walked into Rison on that first day of school in the second grade. I really remember thinking how cool (no, cool wasn't a word yet) I mean, how great everything was. I was still enthralled with my new surroundings when I was led out with the rest of my class to the sunken concrete ally which ran right next to the school up and down the west side, covered with a wooden triangular roof like over an old bridge and bordered all along the outside of the ally by a seven or eight foot tall solid concrete wall (the kind with all the little pebbles in it). This was the neatest of all! It looked like a train station on TV or a long tunnel that led towards a smaller, separate building at the rear of the school; the lunchroom.
My first inclination that something was not right came on the breeze that was wafting from the small building in back. These were not smells that I recognized and their intensity increased as I climbed the stairs. Once inside, I was somewhat reassured because all the kids were sitting and eating and talking a mile a minute and having a good time. The line formed along the right wall and when you got to the front you got your tray and silverware and moved across the serving line where they filled the holes in the tray until the holes were all gone. When I had found a seat and contemplated the mysterious things in front of me my world was shaken considerably, for even at that young age, I had already acquired that most important trait of the true connoisseur, the lust for pigging out; with what was in front of me, that was not going to happen.
If I had known any cuss words I would have said them, but I didn't so I just let depression wash over me as I inventoried the items on the tray; bottom right hand corner, I swear it looked like what my dog did when he got up in the morning; and slap in the middle of it, to reinforce my initial impression, was a pink bone of some kind. I instinctively knew it was not what it looked like (the whole room would have cleared out much earlier) but I knew I wasn't going to taste it. Bottom middle of the tray was filled with macaroni smothered in melted, gooey, cheesy stuff. I didn't like cheese. I liked chicken and meatloaf and fresh rolls and rice and gravy and green beans and corn on the cob. Wasn't any of that here! Bottom left hand corner, chopped up grass and weed stems with little white cubes in it. It smelled really bad. It smelled so bad that people were pouring vinegary stuff all over it just so they could stand to eat it. Something's got to be pretty bad if you have to pour vinegar on it to like it. Top left corner, finally!! something I recognized! Plain, yellow, cake but I sure would have preferred some icing on it. Top middle of trey, things are looking up; jello with fruit cocktail. Top right corner, looked like a small pancake but some kind of meat in it. Smelled all right but really hard. I was still depressed, but at least, I thought, I can have cake and jello.
It was then that life kicked me again, when with my first bite, I realized they had left the sugar out of the cake! It sure wasn't my day. Well, the jello was delicious. I brought my lunch in a paper bag for a long time after that until I came to appreciate the cooking of the deep South; probably a week or two. I then became one of those chow hounds that would go from table to table until I found someone (usually a little girl to whom eating was not that important) with whom I could swap my desert for another helping of greens or pinto beans, or if I was lucky, for my new favorite, MACARONI AND CHEESE!!!
One of my favorite memories from Rison was the oak trees. Actually, I can't think about Rison without giant, spreading, oak boughs being in the mental picture I form; they were all pervasive, and why wouldn't they be? They were truly magnificent. I know that when you remember things from the past, invariably, they are not as big or as remarkable as you might remember them, but we played tag AROUND these trees and hide and seek (two or three of you could hide on the other side of these babies). I would bet most of them were 6, 7, 8 feet in diameter. I'd make another bet, too; those trees may not have been there when Jesus was born but I'll wager when Columbus landed in the new world they were already fifty feet tall and bushy. You know that feeling you get when you walk out to where you parked your car or your bike and its gone? or you reach for your wallet and nope! not there? That's the feeling I get whenever I drive by that corner now. Some a**hole cut them down. It makes me even madder because I wasn't living in Huntsville when they were building the freeway and cutting down those trees that God spent five or six hundred years growing. If I had been there, I might could have kept it from happening; maybe not, but I would have tried.
I remember that at recess, on the wide, cement walk at the front entrance, is where the jump ropes twirled and made their swishing sound on each rotation as they hit the ground. (I'm a poet and don't know it; iambic pentameter, no less) The boys at recess would usually play dodge ball or football or just stand around and lie. I have to admit, however, that I jumped rope every once and awhile because that's where all the girls were; especially a couple I really liked. It has been established in prior articles in this tabloid that Darla Gentry held every boys heart at her beck and call; and while I was certainly included in that group, I feel that I would be remiss not to confess my no lesser infatuation for Susie Smith, she of the pure white hair, rosy complexion and turned up nose; and they both liked to jump rope.
Whenever I walked into either one of the front entrances of Rison, (that's how I remember it, one entrance on each corner but I just can't see it clearly in my mind, so I might be wrong) I would always read with amazement the school name on the outside of the building followed by the date it was built: 1933 (might have been 1936). That was like Jurassic to my mind at the time. Once inside the building, the first thing I would notice
would be the weird but pleasant smell of the red, oily sawdust looking stuff that the janitor threw down on the hardwood floors (usually after classes in the afternoon) with the same motion Grandma used to feed the chickens, then would brush it on down the hallway with his push broom, leaving behind a noticeable shine and that pungent odor that I don't quite know how to describe. One thing that never entered my mind when I was in that building (because its something you just don't consciously think about)
was how comfortable it felt. I was at home there. I'm sorry its gone.
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Eddie Burton,Class of '66
Tommy, I'm 57 years old. Why have I never heard of virgin pins? I never notice any of the Lee girls wearing them. My girlfriend who went to Butler didn't wear one. Whatever that means. This is a very educational site.
(Editor's note: Eddie, do you know how hard it is to not make a snide comment on your question when you leave yourself so open? Perhaps you travelled in a nicer crowd?)
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Barbara Seely Cooper, Class of '64
It never ceases to amaze me how much I missed in my school years. By that I mean how many things that were perfectly obvious to everyone else seem to have been a total mystery to me. Even with full credit given to my very protective parents, my cluelessness has no real excuse. The latest, but probably not the last, evidence of my idiocy is the Virgin Pin. Swear to G**, I don't recall hearing that name for it. Just my luck, too. Probably had one and wore it on the wrong side, and walked all over the hallowed halls of Lee wondering at the stares. Sigh.
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Tales of the “Spamanimal”
by Barbara Wilkerson Donnelly
Class of ‘64
It was only a matter of time until one of us brought up the food issue in a serious way. So let the “Spam Wars” commence. Our Most Illustrious Editor would have you believe that Spam is concocted from a multitude of mystery meat, but I have it on good authority (Ed’s) that the Spamanimal is, in fact, specially bred to produce the perfect rectangle that fits inside those little wonder cans. He also asked whether I remembered Spam’s biggest competitor, which he used to stock at Kwik Chek (I’ll bet Skip, Bobby, and Craig will know this one, too.), and I did . . . It was “Treat.” Couldn’t begin to touch Spam, though, buddy. I ate Spam occasionally while in high school, but was more inclined to deviled ham, potted meat, and Vienna sausages. My mother would take the Vienna sausages, slice them up into tiny pieces, add mayonnaise, and mash them up to make sandwiches for me. I think the result was pretty close to today’s Spam Spread. (I used to eat one about 10:15 each morning our sophomore or junior year while I worked in Mr. Hamilton’s office. He used to kid me about it. I remember him saying, “Good grief, Barbara, how do you stay so slim and eat like that?”) I was in the grocery store about 3 days before Tommy’s article came out, and as I passed the canned meat section, the Spam Spread caught my eye. I haven’t bought it in years! All of a sudden, I just HAD to have Spam Spread on crackers. Imagine my surprise to read Tommy’s bad-mouthing of the Spamanimal less than 24 hours after I had finished off the can. I have to admit to great trepidation as I pulled that little poptop tab. I remembered Spam Spread on crackers with much fondness. Could it possibly measure up to that memory? It was even BETTER than I had remembered.
Tommy’s article got the memories flowing, and I recalled that Terry Preston and I had spent the better part of one week swapping “Do you remember?” food stories. I remember hot tamales from Huntsville Park as if I ate them yesterday. We would take a large “stewpot” and buy several dozen at a time. The man who sold them used to push a cart around town, but I remember going to his house to buy them. He had added a kitchen onto it just to make the hot tamales. The cart was parked outside. My mother told me that the reason I loved them so much was that she actually craved them when she was pregnant with me. One day when Daddy was driving her to Huntsville Park to buy the tamales, she kept scratching her ankle, which was itching. I still have the “hot tamale” birth mark on my ankle. I have never found any hot tamales which could come close to those from Huntsville Park. Mother would quarter a head of lettuce, and we’d each have a section with up to a dozen hot tamales. Back then, of course, the drink of choice was either a little Coke or a Double Cola. I’d usually drink two Cokes, because the tamales had a kick!
I also remember buying the best hamburgers and stew I’ve ever eaten from Phillip’s Café. I think it was located on Seminole Drive. If you were traveling south (Are you guys significantly impressed with that direction, coming from me?) on Governor’s Drive and turned left where Seminole intersected at the old Piggly Wiggly Supermarket, Phillip’s would be on the left before the mill. We used to pick up hamburgers and then go to the drive-in. Does anyone else remember Phillip’s?
We also ate a lot of Gibson’s BBQ. It was located on the Parkway then, but I can’t quite place it. I think it would have been between University Drive and Oakwood Avenue, or maybe it was past Oakwood. They had carhops back in them there days. They had (and still have) the best sauce for BBQ. I also liked Gibson’s catfish. In fact, I liked catfish period. My dad would go fishing and bring home a full stringer of catfish just about dawn. My mother would fry them for breakfast. That was probably the only time in my life that I would willingly eat something that didn’t smack of “breakfast food” origins. I’m your basic bacon-and-egg person, and catfish are a strange choice, aren’t they? The last time Ed and I visited Gibson’s (down by the river) many years ago, I heard a sweet voice ask, “Aren’t you Barbara Wilkerson?” I looked up to see the smiling face of an old friend . . . Gale Thompson. That was an even better treat than any BBQ or catfish!
No food story would be complete without mentioning the Krystal. Every Saturday night, Mother and I would visit the Krystal. I always had two hamburgers, fries, a Coke and either chocolate or lemon pie. Linda Ragland and I used to go there for lunch sometimes when we went to the movies, and the only thing that ever varied with my order was the pie! The Sno-Wite Cafe was good, but it wasn’t the Krystal, was it?
Does anyone else remember the Ritz Café? My dad painted the ceiling when I was very small, and it was very different . . . almost like little stars. I wish I knew what that finish was. Mr. Taylor owned the Ritz, and his son, Junior, worked there with him. I can still picture both of them so clearly. My favorite food was veal cutlets, but that was before I found out how the little animals were treated. I don’t even want to think about the little Spamlets, so let’s don’t go there!
The best foods of all were cooked by my mother. Daddy had worked as a short-order cook when he was in high school, and he learned to make the best chili in the world. He passed the recipe on to Mother, and she would make it often. We were never of the persuasion at my house that chili and other hot foods were for Winter, any more than ice cream would be reserved for Summer. I still don’t grasp that concept. I would drink hot coffee in the back yard in August and never give it a second thought. The secret to Daddy’s chili was that after the meat had browned ever so slightly, he would cover it with water and cook it until it had tenderized. Then the water was poured off, seasonings were added, and it was browned just a little more. The same principal was applied to hamburgers, and Mother’s were the best ever. Her spaghetti started out the same way, also.
My very favorite at-home meals involved pinto beans, black-eyed peas, turnip greens, fried potatoes, fried okra, tomato slices, cucumber slices, and cornbread. I loved fried cornbread. That reminds me of something my grandmother used to make called (I think) a “hoecake.” It was basically an enormous biscuit. Dinner (lunch to us today) was the main meal of the day back then, and my grandmother always made hoecakes. Mother would also cook fresh green beans in a huge pot. On top of the beans, she’d place as many tiny new potatoes as possible, and then on top of them, she’d add fresh whole okra. This would all steam for a couple of hours. I remember that she’d always count the okra when she put it in, and again when she took it out. I always wondered if the little okras would try to escape, or what? We weren’t big meat eaters at my house, except for breakfast and sandwiches, but I was a great fan of fried ham (with biscuits and gravy, even for supper (the evening meal back then). When we drove home on Church Street (?), we’d pass the cotton gin, and it always smelled like ham to me.
My very favorite, all-time lunch was a bologna, cheese and lettuce sandwich. Back then, of course, we said, “baloney.” I remember watching the butcher slice a big ole tube of baloney into pieces for us to take home and place in the “icebox.” The refrigerator (or “Frigidaire,” as everyone said then) was very small at my house, with a freezer not much larger than a couple of large shoeboxes. It had to be defrosted regularly, also. I wonder how many of our children would even know what it means to “defrost the refrigerator”?
We ate fried bologna sometimes while we were at Auburn, before it became more expensive than real meat, but Ed tells me that, when he was young, his mother would dip it into egg, and then batter and fry it. I don’t even remember another brand other than Oscar Meyer. I liked bologna so much that, when I was at the hospital waiting for Devon to be born, the nurses were laughing because I was singing, “My baloney has a first name . . . It’s O-S-C-A-R.” I guess if she’d been a boy, she’d probably be Oscar, instead of Devon.
Of interest to me in my thought-ramblings is the fact that I HATED peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches, but loved peanut butter-and-banana sandwiches. I have since developed a LOVE relationship with PB and J. I remember C.E. talking about Terry’s Pizza, and that brought to mind the fact that I had never eaten a pizza until I was somewhere around sixteen years old! It was at Terry’s Pizza. Maybe C. E. cooked it for me!
Well, all this talk about food has made me hungry. I’d be interested in hearing more “Do you remember” food stories from the Generals. All the stories make me miss home and friends, and I’m really looking forward to our next reunion. In the meantime, if you’ll excuse me, I think there’s another can of Spam Spread and some crackers waiting for me in the pantry.
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Trivia Question: What happened to the front door of Rison when the building was torn down? There is a Fami-LEE connection.
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Jeff Fussell, Class of '66
Hawkah!! That appears to be ace warfighter and man of mystery, Blackhawk leading the charge with Hendrickson, Chop Chop, Chuck, Olaf, Stanislaus, and Andre close behind.
Well, I'm not so sure about Andre.
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Rainer Klauss, Class of '64
This week’s Lee-Bay Item: The Blackhawks! That seven-member paramilitary team battling Communism, all sorts of arch-criminals, mad scientists, tyrants, and other weirdos and evil-doers was probably my favorite comic-book in the mid-50s. I liked them better than Superman or Batman.
There was Blackhawk, their leader, described by one writer as the “Tyrone Power” of comics; Stanislau the Pole; Andre the Frenchman (“Sacre Bleu!” was his signature oath.), Olaf the Swede; Chop-Chop the Chinese; Chuck the Texan; and Hendrickson the Dutchman. They were born in the comic book world in 1941 to take on the Axis powers; they became very popular, and their adventures continued—with story-lines and characters shaped to the times—into the 90s.
Their appeal to me: they were an international brotherhood of warriors, wore a neat uniform (blue coats and caps consciously modeled by the series creators, in part, on Nazi regalia), flew cool planes, had a secret island hideout, and came up against interesting villains and their often-fantastic weapons. I quit buying the comics in the late 50s when I moved over to science fiction novels and hot rod magazines. And that’s why I became a space cadet and model-car builder rather than an Air Force pilot.
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Subject:Vienna Sausages
David Lemaster
Class of '66
Did you know that buried in the construction of a Vienna Sausage is a geometric revelation? Yes, Sir! The diagonal of a Saltine Cracker is equal to the length of a Vienna Sausage. Check it out! I don't know who thought of making those 2 products work so well together. My guess is that they were a couple of mathematicians.
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Last Week's
Lee-Bay Mystery Item
Transferred Generals
We start a new series of mysteries this week. Bobby Cochran has sent us a few photos of people who were our classmates, but did not graduate with us. They were almost Generals (does that make them Colonels then?) but transferred to a different school before they graduated. We offer the first installment this week. Anyone have any memories about this former classmate?
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Definitions
Submitted by Bobby Cochran
Class of '64
1. THINGY (thing-ee) n.
Female......Any part under a car's hood.
Male..........The strap fastener on a woman's bra.
2. VULNERABLE (vul-ne-ra-bel) adj.
Female.....Fully opening up one's self emotionally to another.
Male......... Playing football without a cup.
3. COMMUNICATION (ko-myoo-ni-kay-shon) n..
Female......The open sharing of thoughts and feelings with one's partner.
Male...........Leaving a note before taking off on a fishing trip with the boys.
4. COMMITMENT (ko-mit-ment) n.
Female.......A desire to get married and raise a family.
Male...........Trying not to hit on other women while out with this one.
5. ENTERTAINMENT (en-ter-tayn-ment) n.
Female......A good movie, concert, play or book.
Male..........Anything that can be done while drinking beer.
6. FLATULENCE (flach-u-lens) n.
Female......An Embarrassing byproduct of indigestion.
Male...........A source of entertainment, self-expression, male bonding.
7. MAKING LOVE (may-king luv) n.
Female......The greatest expression of intimacy a couple can achieve.
Male.. Call it whatever you want just as long as we do it.
8. REMOTE CONTROL (ri-moht kon-trohl) n.
Female.......A device for changing from one TV channel to another.
Male...... A device for scanning through all 375 channels every 5 minutes.
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WANTED: Some information. Did anyone go to summer school and would like to write a little about the experience? Many who didn't do not have a clue as to what went on in summer school!
