Lee High School - Huntsville Alabama Alumni

Eddie Burton, Class of '66

When I was in the 8th grade at Lee Jr. High which was my first year there, I just couldn’t see the blackboards. All of my teachers moved me up to the front desk in front of the boards but I’d still have to squint and sometimes even get up and walk up to the board to see what was written there. I don’t remember what made my parents take me to an optometrist but it was either me telling them or one of the teachers sending a note home. Neither one of my parents wore glasses but my sister, who was 8 years older than I, wore glasses from the time she was a young girl.

When the optometrist tested my eyes he discovered that my sight was 20/800 which is two times legally blind. There is no telling how long my eyes had been that way and I just didn’t know it. Of course in 1961 there was no one hour optical so it took me about 10 days to get my new glasses, a pair of black horn rimmed beauties that really made all the girls go wild. No wonder I was dateless that year. But I wouldn’t trade being able to see for a gang date with the whole cheerleading squad. Well maybe I’d have risked one eye. It was amazing what I could see when the optical tech put those new glasses on my face. I could see and read signs from all the way across the room and when I went outside for the first time in God knows how long, I could see individual blades of grass and leaves on the trees. The next day when I went back to school I could be moved back to my regular seat in class and read even the smallest print on the blackboards.

For the rest of that school year my grades went up and that was the best year I had ever had in school as far as grades were concerned. Thanks to nothing but being able to see. Then later on when I started playing guitar in bands, I just said hey if they were good enough for Buddy Holly they are good enough for me.

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Subject:Collins' Picture

John Scales

Class of '66

More about that picture (that Collins sent last week). The 20th Special Forces Group, a National Guard unit headquartered in Birmingham, is commanded by a colonel. He has two lieutenant colonels, eight majors, and numerous captains on his staff and over 1500 soldiers under his command in units all across the eastern US. (The group was activated and commanded all Special Forces, active and National Guard, in Afghanistan in 2002-2003) At the time of that photo, however, the staff was dominated by Huntsville residents and in particular Lee High School graduates. The S-1 (admin officer) was Marvin Osborn of Huntsville, I was the S-2 (intel officer), LZ Johnson of Huntsville was the S-3 (operations officer), C. E was the S-4 (logistics officer -- although perhaps not until a little time after that, I'm not sure), and John Fulda was the staff engineer. Mad Mike Cress, shown in the picture, lived in Anniston and was the chem-bio defense officer. He is a Vietnam veteran (173rd Airborne Brigade), like John Fulda (4th Infantry Division) and me (D/58th Infantry). We all spent far more time than you would believe (given we were National Guard) on duty in many places around the world and enjoyed contributing what we could to what became an elite unit under our commander, Colonel Jim Horak of

Elberta, Alabama.

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Subject: A Late Bicycle Story

Skip Cook

Class of '64

Craig Bannecke and I were riding around Lakewood one fine summer afternoon in my dad's 1963 Ford Falcon when we spied Craig's little brother David. David was riding Craig's old bicycle. David assumed the pose of the speed racer when he decided that to chase after us on the bike. Putting his head down and peddling for all he was worth, David picked up some speed. It should be noted that David was the typical little brother and received zero slack from Craig, and very little from any of Craig's friends. In what I can only describe as a rare act of concern for David's safety and well being, Craig said "Stop the car or David's gonna kill himself." I stopped abruptly so Craig could warn David of the unsafe condition. David, with head down, never saw

the Falcon stop and rode full speed into the back of the car. WHAM!!! We jumped out of the Falcon ran to the back and saw David laying on the street not moving. Craig kneeled down to check his brother for signs of life. David opened one eye, smiling, and said "GOTCHA". Craig proceeded to pound on his little brother. I don't think Craig, or David, ever said anything to their parents about the episode. My father never knew what caused that little ding on taillight chrome piece.

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Subject: A Trip down Automotive Memory

Lane

Chip Smoak

Class of '66

How many of you remember the Ford automobiles that had back windows that slanted down towards the back seat like this / and the center of it could be lowered?

You could have it open even on a rainy day without the rain blowing into the car. I do not know why Ford only used that concept the one year, which I believe was 1959.

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Subject: A Little Help Please

Chip Smoak

Class of '66

Come on, Gang. Tommy is good and he has carried the ball for a long time but he needs a little help. Let your classmates know what has happened or is happening in your life. It is good to share. You may not think you have anything interesting to say but I promise that most of us will be glad to hear from you and about you. All of us have memories.

In fact, I will take this opportunity to apologize to one of the ladies that I popped with a rubber band one day. I don't believe the rubber band actually touched her but something stung her. I was being a typical callow teenage boy. It seemed funny at the time but now, in retrospect, it was not funny to the lady and I regret causing her any discomfort by popping her with a rubber band, one that stretched almost arm's length. I hope that she is a reader and sees this.

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Subject: A Frightening Thought

Chip Smoak

Class of '66

Based on what I have read about and by Collins Wynn, the thought that he and Big John Fulda were majors in the Army is a frightening thought. The fact that the Army would promote them to these positions is more frightening. However, everyone seems to have survived the experience without being any the worse for it. So I want to say to them and any other Lee alumnae that have served their country in or out of the military, thank you, thank you, thank you with all my heart. It is through your sacrifice and service that we all enjoy freedom. Those who have not served do not know or really understand the sacrifices of those who have.

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The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over The Lazy Old Dog

By Tommy Towery

Class of ‘64

I was half watching an old movie the other night while working on something else when my thoughts were captured by the sounds coming from the television set. It was a sound that had slipped away from everyday life so stealthily that I don’t guess I even knew it was uncommon in today’s life.

The sound was coming from a manual typewriter. Think about the sounds they made. Close your eyes a minute and remember that sound…do it! Is there anything else that sounds like that sound? I can’t think of anything. The old familiar clack-clack-clack that I heard took me back to the timed typing tests of my typing class at Lee. I went through as a member of Mrs. Parks’ typing class. How many of you remember sitting there in her class waiting to start to type like a driver at a drag strip awaiting the green light.

“Begin.”

Those words would fill the room with clacking in a wave of sound as unique as the ocean waves breaking on a beach. There would almost be a rhythm in the beginning as all of us beginners typed at almost the same speed. It would then dwindle down to chaotic noises as the faster typists like Bob Walker left most of us several lines behind. In the next minute, or five minutes depending on the test, the room was then filled with random bells that announced the end of the lines, followed by the clicking of the carriage return levers that were being pushed to slam the carriages back to advance to the next line.

Can you remember the name of the typing book? Wasn’t it Gregg Typing? It was one of those standup books and the pages folded over the top instead of left to right. We had to use typing books stands to hold them, if I remember right, or they would stand up by themselves one.

Remember how a bell would sound when you only had five more spaces left in a line? If you kept typing, the carriage would stop at the end and not let you go any further. If you needed to squeeze in one or two more letters, you had to release the “carriage stop.”

“Qwerty” keyboards, named for the top row of letters of the typewriter, were designed to make typing hard. That’s because the early mechanical machines could not keep up with a good typist. That’s why the common letters like “A-E-I-O-U” are either on rows where you have to lift you fingers to get to them, or use other fingers besides your strong index fingers to strike the letter. None of those letters are at rest under your strongest fingers. They did a good job in slowing many of us down.

We used the term “peck” to describe how we pressed on the keys. “Hunt and peck” was used by people who were not “touch typists.” Those who did not get the wisdom that Mrs. Parks was willing to give us were destined to remain “two-finger typists.”

Carbon paper helped us make two or more copies of a paper we were typing, but also required two or more corrections when the inevitable mistakes were made. Typewriter erasers were often round wheels (made of rubber with glass or metal shrapnel embedded) and had a brush on the end. Some were more pencil shaped with or without the brush on the opposite end. You were never supposed to erase over the opening in the typewriter, but were supposed to move the carriage to the side and erase there, and then blow off the little bits of rubber and paper left behind. Often this procedure resulted in a hole in the paper. No one ever used the brush…they just blew the specks off the paper.

Later on a white tab of chalk embedded paper was invented that allowed you to retype the incorrect letter and it would try to cover up the mistake with the white chalk. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. The little paper tabs ended up with some strange words on them from trying to fix multiple mistakes.

A better solution to fixing mistakes was to use “erasable paper” which was easily erased with a normal pencil eraser. It looked a lot like onion skin paper. Using that type of paper didn’t leave the same type of mess as the other methods on normal typing paper. Speaking of mess, how many of you ended up with black fingers and other places when the ribbons had to be replaced. Remember the fun of trying to remove the old ribbon and then trying to remember how the new one was supposed to fit into all the loops and levers of the typewriter? That same type of mess also came after you hit two keys at the same time and had to open up the typewriter's top and untangle the keys, which had all the black ink on them.

Some ribbons were red and black, and a lever on the typewriter allowed the ribbon to be moved to select either one of the individual colors. These ribbons were created primarily for bookkeeping entries where one needed to show negative items in red. There were “elite” and “pica” models of typewriters, which were named to indicate the size of the letters and hence the number of letters per line they created. Pica modes were 10 pitch and elite were 12 pitch.

The two most popular names of manual typewriters I remember are Smith Corona and Royal. I always liked the Royal model better and I think they were more expensive. Underwood and Remington also made fine machines as well, but I don't remember them from school. We used standard office models at Lee, but by the time college rolled around, many of us were happy to have portable ones to use to type our papers. I remember turquoise as a favorite color for portable typewriters.

Deranged, satanic typewriters would cut the holes out of letters like “e” and “o” and “p.” Some would not feed the paper properly. Remember that you had to loosen the tension on the roller to align the paper properly and then click it back tight. Tabs were set manually with tab buttons. Rollers had their own sweet sound as you fed paper into them and then at the end of a page yanked it out making the roller rat-a-tat-tat.

We also learned that to center a title on a page you went to 42 and backspaced one letter for every two letters in the title. How much easier is it to just hit “center text” these days? If you wanted words underlined, you backspaced to the front of the word and type the underline key – manually for each letter.

Need a word in Bold letter? No problem. Just backspace back through the word and retype the same letters. Do that as many times as you like to make it bolder and bolder.

What did you do if you needed to write Pie-Are-Squared and use that little elevated “2”? Well, you stopped typing and manually rolled the paper down a half a line to type the two. If you wanted to write the symbol for water you typed “H”, rolled the paper up half a line and typed “2”, then rolled it back into place and typed the “O”. If you wanted subscript or superscript then you did it manually. There were no special fonts for them on a manual typewriter.

“Stop!”

That sound from Mrs. Parks signaled a time to cease typing. Of course there was always someone who had to try to get one more word in. It normally required a louder and firmer “I said STOP!” from her to really get every student sitting in the typing room to end the test. What fun it was to look at the paper and see how differently the words that were typed were from the ones that you thought you were typing. Heaven help if you got one key off with either hand. “The quick brown fox” would then read “yjr wiovl ntpem gpc”.

One of my funniest memories of typing class happened one day when one of the male shop teachers (can’t remember his name) had come over to sharpen a pencil or something in Mrs. Parks’s class while we were doing a timed typing exercise. Just as he started out the door, she yelled “Stop!” to get us to quit typing. When he heard that he stopped dead in his tracks like a kid stealing candy from a store. I swear I think he threw his hands up over his head and must have been thinking “Don’t shoot officer – I stopped!”

Another funny memory was the day I think Gary Metzger or Jerry Schultz (or someone like that) was sitting in home room, which was in the typing lab that year, and was messing with a typewriter while the morning announcements were being made. We were all supposed to be paying attention and most of us acted like we were. He was typing a note by faking a cough and hitting a key at the same time. It was a sound cover-up like a prisoner would use to cover the sounds he was making hammering his way out of the cell. Each cough would cover the creation of a new letter. This was going fine until one final cough. The cough covered the sound of the peck and the letter, but it did not cover the loud “ding” that signaled that the carriage was about to reach the end of the line. All eyes, including Mrs. Parks focused on him, with his hand caught in the cookie jar. We laughed but Mrs. Parks had to act mad, but we knew she was also laughing inside.

Although many of us practiced with “Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country,” the phrase “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy old dog” had a special reason for us typing it. Does anyone remember what is special about that phrase?

I still say that the ability to type that I learned from Mrs. Parks was the greatest skill I learned from anyone in any school, bar none. It may have been the greatest influence in my life.

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