Lee High School - Huntsville Alabama Alumni

Darwin Downs -

The Saga Continued

by Rainer Klauss

Class of '64

I was delighted to read Jim Pierce’s recollection of his boyhood in Darwin Downs. If he and Bobby wrecked their wagon where Stevens crosses Bide-A-Wee, those daredevils crashed right in front of my house. Ouch! Nothing like asphalt road-burn to make your day. Or were you able to run it up into a yard? How come you guys didn’t use cinder blocks instead?

Jim’s reminiscence also gives me a chance to relate an incident from those days that involved him and Bobby. I thought about including it in my recent article, but it didn’t fit into that structure.

It wasn’t all sunshine, cookies, and picture shows back then, of course. As Jim’s hairy ride down the Bide-A-Wee hill demonstrates, all kinds of things can get out of hand—especially when childish emotions and prejudices take over.

A few years after Darwin Downs was built, the city saw the need to install storm sewers throughout the neighborhood. At the site closest to my house, the work crews had trucked in concrete pipes that were about 3’ by 5’ and dug a trench down to the creek, the most logical dump for the run-off.

One winter afternoon (I think I was in the fifth grade, Mrs. Pullen’s room) at the beginning of this project, several friends and I gathered at the site. We had been there for awhile, climbing up on the pipes, trying to roll them, jumping around on them, leaping into and across the trench-- just having a ball when intruders appeared: the Pierce boys, Jimmy and Bobby.

They had lived on Polk Drive for some time by then, but we had never played with them. They were from the wrong part of the neighborhood (at the most, there were seven houses between my house and theirs), they didn’t go to Rison, and they were Catholics (and most likely Yankees, too). Plenty of reasons to exclude them and be wary of them, right?

When they showed up at the dig, they probably just wanted to join in on the fun, but we thought they were trespassing on our territory. (They lived about three houses away from where we were.)

“We’re playing here. This is our place. Beat it.”

“No. We can play here if we want. You don’t own this.”

“We were here first.”

“So what?”

Perhaps the situation escalated to taunts and insults after that. I’d been at Rison for a year: I could talk the talk.

I don’t know who started it, but suddenly we were fighting. Against the warnings of all our parents, we found ourselves engaged in a type of warfare our hometown was working to advance—the launching of deadly projectiles (dirt clods and rocks, in our juvenile version).

We ran for cover or grabbed some ammunition. I caught a glimpse of a rock targeted at me, so I started to duck into one of the pipes. Unfortunately, I didn’t stoop low enough, and I rammed my head into the edge of the pipe.

I don’t remember if I saw stars or fell back on my butt (probably both), but I was stunned and in pain. Only one or two minutes into the fray, and I wasn’t interested in repelling the invaders any more. I just wanted to go home.

My friend Hartwig could see that I was a bit wobbly, and he accompanied me as I walked off. Dirt clods pelted us as we retreated.

We got a little ways up the street and Hartwig said: “Rainer, you’re bleeding.”

“No, I’m not,” I replied.

“Yes, you are,” he said, pointing to the side of my head.

I took off my cap and looked inside. A big patch of blood was soaking into the gray fabric. I clapped my hat back on my head and began bawling.

We started running. Hartwig was first into my house, and he alerted my mother. I’m sure I was an alarming sight as I burst inside, crying and bleeding profusely.

Actually, my mother and I were veterans of this kind of bloody scene. My head had already been stitched up a few years before that when my forehead collided with a friend’s toy gun. In the grip of this new minor trauma, I remembered the earlier appointment with the needle, and I didn’t want another one.

“Please don’t take me to the doctor, Mutti (German for mommy),” I pleaded and sobbed. “I’ll be alright.”

But she could see that my scalp was split open; mercurochrome and Band-Aids weren’t going to help. She got me and the bleeding under control. After awhile my father came home, and we drove to the Huntsville Clinic on Washington Street.

Doctor Robert Sammons, who had sewed me up the first time, got to work on my noggin. Maybe he joked about me showing up again so soon. Soothing me by telling me I was a brave boy, he deadened the area around the wound with Novocain. Then he cut and shaved the hair off so that he could put in the stitches. I could feel the sutures going in, but that didn’t hurt. I was beginning to feel braver and braver. I left the clinic with a round gauze patch on my head—a little white crown—and wore it to school for about a week before the threads were pulled.

So, how did the Battle of the Pipes end? I don’t know. I’m probably the only one who remembers the event at all. I did go back to the pipes, though. Once they were buried and before the protective curb and drain were installed, I crawled through the pipes to the creek, keeping my head down as I moved toward the small circle of daylight.

There were no further battles with the Pierce boys. We didn’t become friends (then), but we never tangled again.

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And More Darwin Downs History

That Ye Wondered Of

by Rainer Klauss

Class of '64

In last week’s Traveller, our Illustrious Editor wonders: “Now why they named a street in Darwin Downs that [Bide-A-Wee] is a question.”

Here’s the answer from the Elder Statesman of the neighborhood. Bide-A-Wee Drive is the only street in the original development that carries through on the theme suggested by “downs,” the word of Celtic origin that means an open expanse of elevated land; a rolling terrain populated by sheep and cattle in England (and Scotland and Ireland, by extension).

I never saw any sheep in the old days, but cattle we had aplenty. Downs could have conjured up all sorts of images and ideas, but I think the imagination of the developers gave out after that one example; otherwise, we could have had Brigadoon Lane, Glenlivet Drive, or Rob Roy Road instead of the motley collection we got.

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Freda Dianne (Massey) Dobbs

Lee High School Class of 1968

Sister of Charlotte Massey, Class of '64

Published in The Huntsville Times on 6/17/2004.

Freda Dianne Massey Dobbs, 54, of Courley died Tuesday. Mrs. Dobbs was a lifelong resident of Madison County and attended Central Church of Christ.

She is preceded in death by her father, Fred O. Massey. She is survived by her husband, Larry Dobbs; two sons, Jason Dobbs of Hazel Green, and Kevin Dobbs of Birmingham; two daughters, Lisa Chance and Laura Rose Baker, both of Hazel Green; mother, Rosemary Massey of Huntsville; sister, Charlotte Massey of Huntsville; brother Steve Massey of Huntsville; and three great-grandchildren, Andrew, Mary Kaitlyn and Emily Rose. The funeral will be at noon Friday at Berryhill Funeral Home with Tom Reynolds, Winfred Felton and Herb Underwood officiating. Burial will follow in Maple Hill Cemetery. Visitation will be from 6 to 8 p.m. today. Memorial donations may be made in loving memory of Freda Dobbs to the Comprehensive Cancer Center Regarding Pancreatic Cancer Research, 1001 L.N.B. 2001 3rd Ave. South, Birmingham AL, 35233.

Sujbect:My Sister

Charlotte Massey

Class of 64'

Tommy, my beloved sister, Freda Dianne Massey Dobbs passed away June 15, 2004 of pancreatic cancer. She was buried this past Friday and her obits were in paper June 16, 17, 18th. She graduated in 1968 from Lee High School. Anyone that graduated in 1964 thru 1968 and knew me, knew my sister. She went to a lot of parties and activities with me and was like a twin sister to me. There is a picture in the paper of her and she grew more beautiful as the years passed. Classmates can sign her guestbook in the Huntsville Times. She fought a brave battle but the cancer won. Thank you Tommy for mentioning her. Alice Gullion Preston and her husband Jimmy came to visitation and know they share in my sorrow.

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Ed Paulette, Class of '64

Not only do I know what it is, but I have one that I brought with me to Sweden from the States when I first moved here. I have to admit that I don't use it very often and since refrigerator ice makers (for perhaps obvious reasons?) are not common in Sweden, one has to plan well ahead. One can't even buy ice at the grocery store! Hardly civilized!

I have to admit that I got the lazy man's version with the 110 v motor. It turns 50/60 th's as fast over here and occasionally blows the fuse on the 220->110 v transformer I use, but the flavour (note "our") of ice cream made with lots of real cream and real vanilla beans is just not to be beat.

It is the standard (of course!) for judging all other ice cream. I remember once reading a Consumer Reports test of different brands of ice cream and their standard for comparison was, in fact, "real" ice cream made the old fashioned way. The taste, the way it melts away in your mouth without leaving a clump of processed seaweed behind, ahhh!

Over here I have discovered that if you water-fill and freeze the 1 liter brick-shaped tetra-pack milk packages that we buy milk in, a firm slam on the concrete doorstep does a very effective job of converting the contents to cracked ice -- just right for the icecream maker. Coarse salt is easy to get since there is a tradition of making one's on cured salmon (raw).

We also buy our Weber grills in the States and bring them home to Sweden (about once every 15 years). Some things are just necessary for a well-lived life!

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Memories Of Making Ice Cream

by Gary Kinkle

Class of ’64)

After seeing last week’s photo of the ice cream maker, my sister Linda Cianci (Class of ’66) called me. We laughed thinking about the way our dad used to make ice cream.

Whenever we made homemade ice cream, since none of the 5 kids in our family wanted to help with the cranking, dad set out to solve the problem.

The car we had was a ’53 Plymouth. The Inside hub of the wheel contained a large nut. Dad removed the handle on the ice cream maker, and put a nut on it. He rigged up a metal bar with sockets welded on each end. The sockets were the same size as the nuts on the car wheel and ice cream maker. He jacked up the rear wheels of the car, aligned the wheel and the maker, put on the metal bar, and speeded up the idle so the car would run without giving it gas. He started the car, put it in first, and let out the clutch. The ice cream maker would start turning.

One of us kids would get to sit in the car in order to push in the clutch whenever he wanted to test the maker by turning it manually to see if it was done.

We thought this was amazing. I don’t know if we saved time, but we were just glad that none of us had to crank. My grandfather had used this same technique way back when.

I don’t know when the electric ice cream makers came out, but we had never seen one.

When ice cream is made, it is always best to cover the top with ice to let it sit for awhile to harden slightly. My dad had this old army coat that he would use to cover the maker while it was sitting. For years, as we made ice cream for our kids, we would joke that the ice cream would not be as good if we did not cover the maker with an old nasty coat.

When the ice cream was ready it was the best in the world.

Just recently my aunt mentioned that her eight year old granddaughter did not know what homemade ice cream was. Neither of us have an ice cream maker, so she borrowed one from my mother and we had home made peach ice cream. Still as good as ever. Nothing like it and for some reason it is sooooooo much colder than the store bought.

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