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
ABOARD THE CITY OF NEW ORLEANS - I'm taking advantage of the eight hour train ride from New Orleans to Memphis to use the ole' laptop to prepare this week's edition of Lee's Traveller. I apologize up front if there is a massive amount of typos. Trains seem to be bumpy.
Please include your class year with your e-mails.
T. Tommy
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Last Week's
Mystery Photo
This Week's
Mystery Photo
From Our
Mailbox
"Ticket To Ride"
Reaffirms Editor's Beatles Belief
by Tommy Towery
Class of '64
It seemed a little déjà vu on the cruise last week when the onboard show turned out to be another Beatles tribute show. After seeing the "1964 - The Tribute" show last month it looked like we were in for another trip down memory lane. It turned out that the onboard show was not a duplicate of the one we had already seen, but featured the later era of the
Beatle music.
For those of you who are unfortunate enough to have never experienced a cruise, you should know that besides all the food you can eat one of the best things on the ships are the stage productions that are designed to keep you entertained. They are elaborate and feature dancers in skimpy, colorful costumes and lots of high energy song and dance. This show was called "Ticket to Ride" and oddly enough took up with the Beatles music where the other show left off.
Although the show was entertaining, it only proved to me that I was correct in my feeling that it was the early Beatles music that I hold most dear in my heart. This show featured the Magical Musical Tour type music and Sgt. Pepper's costumes as well. To me the songs like "Lovely Rita - Meter Maid" and "Eleanor Rigby" as well as listening to Maxwell's silver hammer go bang was no where as entertaining as "She Loves You" and "I Want to Hold Your Hand."
In the show, besides the girls in the G-string, one thing truly entertained me. The band that performed was one of the bands that played in one of the many bars on the ship. They were a Philippine band, and I could not help but remember all the nights I sat in the clubs in Guam and Thailand and listened to the Philippine bands that played there. It was so odd to see a bunch of Oriental looking musicians who could "copy" almost any sound in the Top 40 on the radio. You could close your eyes and hear Elvis or Motown. They did as good with country songs as they did with Oldie Goldies. It was truly amazing. Any of you Classmates that were given the opportunity for an all-expense trip to Southeast Asia courtesy of Uncle Sam probably know exactly what I am talking about. The local bands that played in Huntsville at dances while we were growing up could play most of the songs, but they never sounded exactly like the recording artists the way that the Philippine bands did.
But I must be fair when I say that the final two songs of "All You Need Is Love" and "Let It Be" reminded me that there were still one or two really good songs put out by the Beatles in their final years.
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Subject:Cafe du Monde
Linda Beal Walker
Class of '66
I will be thinking of you enjoying the beignets at Cafe du Monde. Again, in my AT&T days, our office had to go to New Orleans for some sort of seminar and we flew to New Orleans one afternoon, had a rubber chicken "banquet" dinner meeting, visited the French Quarter afterwards, and the next morning after a brief two hour seminar, we were able to go sightseeing for a few hours before leaving N.O. One of the places we visited was Cafe du Monde, but there was no place to sit inside. We stood outside in the cold, windy weather and sipped our coffee and hot chocolate and devoured several beignets. One of my more pleasant memories of my years with AT&T.
By the way, have I ever told you about the time I wrote a check at Penney's and the clerk asked, for identification purposes, where I worked. I told her AT&T, and she said "How do you spell that?"
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Subject:Your Vacation
Jeff Fussell
Have a wonderful vacation. We just got back from Savannah ourselves. It’s good to get away from the routine.
If we ever find our way back to New Orleans, you can bet I’ll be ordering up some of those Cafe du Monde goodies. Be safe.
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Subject:Crusin' in Style
Charlie Hancock
Class of '66
I hope you have a good time on your cruise. We've done four cruises and all were very nice. Last time, you couldn't enter the buffet or dining room with getting your hands sanitized. That help prevent sick cruise ships. It seemed to work.
I defy you to NOT gain weight on the cruise unless you only eat and exercise. I avoided all unnecessary exercise. My vacations don't include working out.
Go ashore every chance you get. And bring a camera. And sun block.
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Tommy Towery, Class of '64 - Since no one else wrote in about this, I will have to identify it myself. This is a collapsible clothes rack for drying clothes inside. We had two of these when I lived on East Clinton Street. All the arms that hold clothes to dry would lift up and slide down the side of the main mast and the legs would raise up around it. You stood it up in front of a heat source, or over the grate of a floor furnace, and dried the clothes when it was too cold or wet to hang them outside. We often put our's on our screened in back porch.Its appropriate to say that during the early Zorro days, I took one of the arms off, wrapped it in tin foil and used it as my sword. That was done the first year that Zorro appeared on Disney.
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Since the lead story this week deals with the later Beatles era, we thought this might be an easy tie-in for a Mystery Photo. Please include your class year with comments and try to add a story rather than just identifying it.
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An Old Farmer's Advice
* Your fences need to be horse-high, pig-tight and bull-strong.
* Keep skunks and bankers and lawyers at a distance.
* Life is simpler when you plow around the stump.
* A bumble bee is considerably faster than a John Deere tractor.
* Words that soak into your ears are whispered...not yelled.
* Meanness don't jes' happen overnight.
* Forgive your enemies. It messes up their heads.
* Do not corner something that you know is meaner than you.
* It don't take a very big person to carry a grudge.
* You cannot unsay a cruel word.
* Every path has a few puddles.
* When you wallow with pigs, expect to get dirty.
* The best sermons are lived, not preached.
* Most of the stuff people worry about ain't never gonna happen anyway.
* Don't judge folks by their relatives.
* Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.
* Don't interfere with somethin' that ain't botherin' you none.
* Timing has a lot to do with the outcome of a rain dance.
* If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop diggin'.
* Sometimes you get, and sometimes you get got.
* The biggest troublemaker you'll probably ever have to deal with, watches you from the mirror every mornin'.
* Always drink upstream from the herd.
* Good judgment comes from experience, and a lotta that comes from bad judgment.
* Lettin' the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier than puttin' it back in.
* If you get to thinkin' you're a person of some influence, try orderin' somebody else's dog around.
* Live simply. Love generously. Care deeply. Speak kindly. Leave the rest to God.
