Barbara Wilkerson Donnelly, Joy Rubins Morris, Rainer Klauss, Bobby Cochran, Collins (CE) Wynn, Eddie Sykes, Don Wynn
Advisory Members: Paula Spencer Kephart, Cherri Polly Massey
Staff Photographers: Fred & Lynn Sanders
Contributers: The Members of Lee High School Classes of 64-65-66 and Others
Well, I'm off to Nashville the middle of this week, and had hoped to get together with some of the Nashville alumni, but have only heard from Linda Kinkle. You can reach me by cell phone at 901-438-0054 if you want to try to get together for dinner Saturday night. If we don't get a few more, we may have to cancel this event and try again later.
T. Tommy
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From Our
Mailbox
Last Week's
Lee-Bay Item
This Week's
Lee-Bay Item
Okay, so this week's item is not really on e-Bay, but some day it could be and it definately is a Lee-Bay item. The picture above is from a booklet and was sent in by Collins Wynn. Can you name this mystery item?
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Well...
It Was High Tech
To Us Back Then
by Tommy Towery
Class of '64
Okay, enough already! It seems like all we have been reading in Lee’s Traveller is about plane crashes, hurricanes, and death. It’s time for something more cheerful, and the editor is going to start the ball rolling on this one.
Today I was editing a slide show on my computer and was adding the background music to accompany the pictures. Atop my monitors (yes I have two of them at work) I have two speakers. I closed my eyes and listened to the stereo music coming from the speakers and was flashed back to around 1959 or 1960 when I first started paying attention to how a song sounded and not what the words said. The song today was balanced so well, that the lead singer sounded like his voice came from between the two speakers. With my eyes closed I felt that I would touch a speaker if I reached between them. That’s the magic of stereo.
I got to thinking about this. My daughter Tiffany has never known anything but stereo music. Sure she’s heard a lot of different media, like radio, cassette tapes, CDs and even stereo TV and DVDs played in 5.1 surround sound. She’s probably never been made aware that songs were not always played like this. You and I grew up and stated dating without stereo music, and were around when it became popular.
The big attempt at high fidelity that I remember was that you could put an extra speaker (not even a pair) in the back of your car and you could use a fader to get music coming from the back and the front at the same time. Of course all the music was still monaural, but it was neat to have the extra speaker. I even had one in “The Red Bomb.”
Then stereo records arrived. I remember my first Beatles album was $1.00 cheaper in Monaural than the same record was in stereo. I bought it at Montgomery Wards at Parkway City. Ah! But the difference in sound that stereo made, made the extra cost worth it.
I also remember when my family got our first stereo console with the left and right speakers. One of the roomers that we had rented a room to gave it to the family as a thank you for the months that we shared our home with him. The right speaker was on a long wire that could sit on the opposite side of the room as the left one, and by doing so made the impact of the stereo sounds greater. As a matter of fact, one of the first stereo albums I ever owned was called “Impact” and it was an album of TV themes that started off with a machine gun followed by the sound of a police car’s siren going from the left to the right of my living room. It was the introduction to “The Untouchables” theme.
The album was one of the first records we got from the Columbia Record of the Month Club (Click here for more info.). Remember that? Wow – four free albums if you only agree to buy…. (Fill in the rest of the blanks as you remember the one you might have joined.) However; after listening to stereo, mono never sounded the same, unless it was a portable record player at a kissing party.
This article is not just about stereo records and stereo music. It’s about the greatest technology impacts to me before I graduated from Lee High School. I’m going to list a few of my personal Fifties and Sixties technology favorites and would like to invite you to write me with your own choices. I’ll list a few of the things that I thought was cool in no special order.
1.Stereo record players – As the article describes.
2.The dial telephone – Most of us remember when it became popular. Before that, we had to wait until a voice on the other side of the phone asked: “Number Please”.
3.The transistor radio – When we only had tube radios, the power consumption was so large that we could not take music very far away from a wall socket. We drained our car batteries when we left the radio on too long listening to romantic music atop Monte Sano. If anyone did have a portable radio (that used tubes) the cost of the batteries to make it play for an hour was prohibitive not to mention the weight of the batteries.
4.Cable TV – We’ve talked this one over before, but to me it was one of the most significant technologies ever to affect my life.
5.Pop-top cans – Throw away the church key, we have freedom at last!
6.The electric typewriter. – Remember how we used to fight to get to use one of the two that were in Mrs. Parks’ typing class? Remember the white cover up powdery tape that we would backspace and then type the same letter and it would cover it up (well, almost cover it.) This was before the correctable typewriter.
7.Automatic opening doors – I remember that I got chased off from Kroger’s on Clinton Street when they first put in the automatic opening door, the one where you stepped on the mat and the door opened. Buddy Crabtree and I were going in and out constantly, just to watch the things open by magic. We’d try walking on the edge of the mat to see if we could make it to the door without setting off the switch. Finally the manager finally had to come out of the office and run us off.
Now I’m going to stop there. I don’t want to list everything. I have to leave a few so that some of you can offer your own nominations for “Technology that was invented between my birth and my high school graduation that changed my life and that I thought was really cool.” These are things I just "messed with" over and over because it was almost magic to me how they worked or what they did.
I also have a small list of technology attempts that made great promises but never achieved those promises. There were things I really wanted to work, but never reached the acceptance needed to fund the full development of the ideas.
1.3-D movies – We saw a few great ones, but the idea just didn’t catch on good enough for them to really make it a daily movie viewing experience.
2.The Flying Car – Popular Mechanics and other magazines showed us cars that could be converted into airplanes and we’d fly off into the sunset. Several models actually were built, but where are they now? Bob Cummings had one in an early TV show.
3.The Amphibious Car – Remember the cars that would allow you to drive into the lake and then drive out on the other side? I'm not talking about the "ducks" that some cities have for tourists. The one I remember the most was a little one that looked like a Triumph.
4.Cinerama – Great promises of sitting inside stagecoaches or riding on river rafts so real that you knew you were going to get wet.
Those are the failures I offer. What are some of your nominations? I think we can have fun with this if some of you will just sit back and think a little and then write something down to e-mail to the group.
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Tommy Towery, Class of '64
Am I the only one who played the baseball machine at Carter’s Skateland? I think not. It was in the back room, where you rented your skates, over in the southeast corner. There were also machines like this at the bowling alleys including Parkway Lanes, Plamor Lanes, and Starlight Lanes. There were always groups hanging around these machines, ready to challenge all comers to a game of skill.
The good baseball machines had buttons on the left side for the pitcher, and on the right side for the batter. The pitcher could select from fast ball, slow ball, or curve ball. Some models had a lever for the batting that most players would smack as hard as they could, like it would make a difference. Home and visitor teams took turns and the contest was not only to beat the opponent, but to beat the machine by racking up high scores. Free games were announced to the world by a loud pop. The higher you scored, the more free games you won.
You could strike out by missing the ball three times, just like in a real game or you could make an out by hitting one of the signs that said "Out" in the back of the field.
Remember how the little base runners would pop up out of the floor of the playing field and run the bases. There was a loud bell that would ring when a score was made, and when an out was made.
Another feature in some models was a stainless steel ramp that pointed to a target that would give you a home run when you hit it. Singles, doubles, and triples were made by hitting flags positioned at the back of the field.
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Subject: 1. The Good and 2. Snakes in the boat
Chip Smoak
Class of '66
The Good
The passing of Judy Adair Harbin confirms the old adage, "Only the good die young." What does that say about the rest of us? Our prayers and thoughts should certainly be and I am sure are for her family and friends who survived her. We aren't old enough to be losing so many of our friends and classmates.
Snakes in the Boat
Joan Baber McCutcheon's e-mail reminded me of I promise that this is a true story. When I lived in Shreveport, Louisiana, some neighbors went fishing at a local bank. Yes, a snake got in the boat. The man grabbed his pistol and blazed away at the snake, putting 5 holes in the bottom of the boat. The snake calmly exited over the side of the boat. His wife, of course, was ready to brain him and made sure that she spread the story far and wide to his great discomfiture.
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Subject:Judy Adiar
Paula Spencer Kephart
Class of '65
So very sorry to hear of Judy's passing. She was so pretty, friendly, and sweet to everyone who knew her. I did not know her well, but she was kind and friendly to all. My condolences to her family. A sad and great loss to the Lee family.
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Subject:Mullins' Chili
Ann Franklin
Rison-Dallas Association
While looking for something else in past issues, I found your article about Mullins' chili dogs. I grew up on all things Mullins and still occasionally order a "dry" (less grease) chili dog.
I have my mother's recipe for homemade hotdog chili that my family likes very much. You may want to try it.
HOTDOG CHILI SAUCE
1 lb. ground beef
1 T chili powder, or more (I use Mexene chili powder; is there any other kind??)
1 T hot sauce (if you like it spicy)
½ cup catsup
½ cup water
salt and black pepper, if desired
Brown meat, drain (I put the meat in a strainer and wash it with hot water and drain); add remaining ingredients. Simmer for about 10 minutes. This was my mother’s (Rose Schrimsher) recipe that she used when she worked for a short time in her sister’s (Ruth Pettie Kull) restaurant in Harvest, AL. The sauce is even better the second day.
NOTE: If you want the meat to be pulverized, cover it with cold water and break apart before you begin to brown it. That’s the way that I prefer it.
This is one of the recipes that will be in the Rison-Dallas Association Cookbook.
