Adivsory Board: Barbara Wilkerson Donnelly, George Lehman Williams, Patsy Hughes Oldroyd
Contributors: The Members of Lee High School Classes of 64-65-66 and Others
Hope all of you are surviving the cold weather. I think it's too cold for Memphis, so I'm headed to Florida for a few days.
Please include your class year with your e-mails.
T. Tommy
________________________________________
From Our
Mailbox
Last Week's
Mystery Photo
This Week's
Mystery Photo
I found these replicas of some past toy favorites on eBay. Anyone else remember them?
_______________________________________
For Those Of You Who Are Not Into
Visual Trivia
I Say
"Klaatu barada nikto"
Does that mean anything to anyone?
________________________________________________
Off To Florida
And To Visit With
Bob Walker
by Tommy Towery
Class of '64
By the time many of you will read this, I will be winging my way to Florida for a really late, and somewhat early, Spring Break. I know it's not quite Spring yet, but I decided to go anyway and make up for the one I missed in 1964.
The real purpose of the visit is to spend a few days with Bob Walker, Class of '64, who was my best buddy from my days at Lee High School. Bob lives in Ormond Beach now, which is not really Panama City, but is a real close neighbor of Daytona Beach and that's just about as good.
My plans are to go down and just hang out with Bob and catch up on the news and talk over old times. The plans are to just visit and talk and not chase girls and drive fast and lay on the beach, but we will enjoy it. We've grown up a little.
Bob and I became friends on one of my first "Road Trips" from Lee. He and I shared a room when we went to the Alabama High School Press Association seminar at the University of Alabama in 1961. It was shortly after that trip when we ran into each other at Shoney's one Saturday night and joined up and cruised the strip between there and Jerry's. From that weekend on we did that almost every weekend.
We double-dated to the Junior Prom, took a trip with his brother to Washington DC in 1963, and several trips with his family to Gulfport, Mississippi. We worked on the school paper together, and had a memorable night following the graduation ceremonies in 1964.
Bob went to a college in Mississippi and I went to Memphis State, but we still kept in touch. He spent the night with me in Sacramento, California, the night before he deployed to Vietnam. That was a sad farewell.
After that we kind of lost touch with each other until 1991 when I used a campus police friend to do some research for me. I thought to myself "How many Robert Kennedy Walkers can there be that was born on the Ides of March." A little undercover work and I had his address and we got back in touch. Each year since then, beside normal talking, I have called him on his birthday and he has called me on mine.
So, I'm off to visit with him and talk over old times and just "hang out" with my friend.
___________________________________________
Marty Phillips, Class of '65 - It’s a Wheel-O made by Wham-O. With two small tracks of metal in a U-shape that you held in your hand and manipulated to balance the Wheel-O (small wheel with two magnetized spokes on each side of it). You could roll the Wheel-O back and forth. You could also put colorful tabs on the Wheel-O to create psychedelic color trails as you Wheel-O'd. Groovy toy!
____________________________________
Jeff Fussell, Class of '66 - No need to Google this week's photo, Tommy. That's one of my all-time favorite toys -- the Whee-Lo. As a young boy, it was my mission to see how fast I could get it going before it flew off the end -- and it went plenty fast. There were generally two things we would do with a toy -- make it go faster or sharpen it. Imagine the fun if we could get a Whee-Lo that used one of those Neodymium magnets on the hub of the wheel!
__________________________________
Subject:Greg Dixon
Rod Dixon
Class of '69
Feb. 11, 2007
Just a quick update on my brother Greg. This past Thursday he had bypass surgery. His doctor in Florida suggested he have this done in Atlanta. He had 5 bypasses done and as of today is out of ICU but still has a way to go. Anyone interested in getting updates or sending him a note can get the info at gregsheart.blogspot.com I am sure he would enjoy some words from his friends.
___________________________________
Subject:MARS Radio System
Mike Griffith
Class of '66
During my two years in Viet Nam, I used MARS a couple of times, when I passed though the Cam Rahn Bay Air Base. In my second tour, I discovered that at certain "Long Lines" microwave sites there was a limited access to WATS lines that connected to the Army WATS network back in the world.
After finding the WATS number for the Redstone Arsenal, I could call and ask one of the operators to give me an off-base number that would give me dial-tone access to local Huntsville numbers. The quality of the lines was much better than with MARS, but it required a lot things happening right in order to make it work. Usually, the civilian operators working days would not/could not break their rules and give an outside line, so I would have to call during the night, when they were a little more co-operative. This was a problem for me, since nighttime back in the world was my daytime in Nam and we could not generally get to the WATS lines during our day. The few times that it worked was great.
While on R&R in Bangkok, there was a place where one could pay a set fee for a block of time. Had to give them the number, time-frame and the money upfront; they called the number and directed you to a particular cubicle-booth and when time was up the call was cut off. Amazing how we did things before cell phones!
_________________________________
Mathematical Dreams ex Lewis Carrol
Bruce Fowler, Class of 102 (octal)
I too suffer from such dreams (mentioned by Tommy Towery in the last issue) although the subject of mine are usually some form of literary interpretation, an activity I find as tragic and distastefully (literally) as converting old tee shirts into food (ala John W. Campbell's *The Moon is Hell*,) and the authority figure is usually a hippie statistics professor I encountered in graduate school who told me upon learning I was from Alabama that all Southerners were racial bigots unworthy of civilization. Again, no connection between the subject and the figure. But I do recall some comment by Feinman in one of his autobigraphia about a dislike for literature study.
I am told by some of my colleagues who are psychologists that this occurs to everyone although I am at a loss this moment what their explanation is. Probably something to do with monsters from the id that are really ourselves.
But I also find the converse occurs. Somehow particularly knotty maths problems sometimes resolve themselves in slumber although one is challenged to awaken rapidly enough to write the solution down before it fades.
As for being crazy, I have long surrendered any hope of people not perceiving me as so and have resolved myself to enjoy it now that I am old (at least statistically) and gray. Hoka Hey!
