Lee High School - Huntsville Alabama Alumni

Bruce Fowler, Class of '66 - Most Illustrious ORF Editor, I had no idea I would be so inspiring. The item pictured is a radiometer which is part number J30600-82 in the current Edmund Scientifics Catalog. The name is a bit of a misnomer since it does not actually quantitatively measure anything, nor is it very efficient at radio frequencies. The name is a hold over from the nineteenth century and the device is an exemplar of the resurgence of the particle theory of light.

You indicated you wanted to know how it works. The answer is very simple - conservation of linear momentum. If a photon (of the proper frequency) strikes the black side of a vane it is absorbed and transfers its momentum to the vane. If a photon of the same frequency strikes the white side of a vane it is reflected and transfers twice its momentum to the vane. So the vanes whirl in the presence of light with the black sides forward.

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Jeff Fussell, Class of '66 - My good friend Bruce will certainly provide a thorough rundown on the Crooke’s Radiometer in the mystery photo, so I’ll leave the underlying theory and physics in his capable hands. I had one of these myself (and may very well have ordered it from Edmund Scientific). It was a fascinating thing to watch when you consider that it really didn’t do a whole lot. When you think about it, a fascination with things that may not do much, but do so for less than obvious causes is a fair litmus test for identifying the inner nerd. I yield the floor to Bruce.

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Subject:Suggestions

Steven Shipe

Since your site is full of reminiscenes, perhaps articles that incorporate input from the crowd ahead of time would be appropriate. You could make top ten lists, asking for suggestions ahead of time: Top Tens films of the 60s, Top Ten Places to Hang Out, Top Ten Songs, etc.

Or you could compare the new to the old: daily habits of life that have changed since then.

You could also broaden your range to include history of Athens and Decatur. I recall us going out to an old airport strip in Decatur watching the weekenders drag. We lived in Athens while our house was being built at Meadowbrook Estates and lived behind the town barber, Charlie Sammet, who also filled in as the County Coroner. Just try free association for more topics and build from smaller parts.

You are doing well, sometimes better than commercial papers. I lived near Kansas City, Missour for several years. The Kansas City Times and Kansas City Star folded together as morning and evening papers. Now, the latter looks more like one of those free newspapers that gets thrown on your driveway, whether you want it or not.

I cannot understand the person who wrote back unhappy with your coverage of the segragated facilities in Huntsville. Some people just like living a fantasy better than reality, have you noticed?

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Classmates' Responsd to the

Music and Words Story

Polly Gurley Redd, Class of ’66 - As a dance attender who regularly looks forward to the “music mix” you offer each week, thank you for being our DJ these many years. Your wealth of stuff has sparked memories of so much from my time in Huntsville and while I may not always respond to you, I do often correspond with others and with my sister who also reads this and is class of 71. Keep it up – don’t be discouraged by one or two responses. I dare to say there are many of us out here who just read, remember, and enjoy the dance, because we are too old to get up on these hips and knees any more.

I am glad you are there.

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Eddie Burton, Class of ’66 - Tommy, that was brilliant. As a musician I had to please as many in the audience as possible. You can't get everybody. As a songwriter, I had to write for the mainstream. Middle of the road, not too far to the left or right so as to not offend and touch as many as possible. As an editor you've had to do the same thing and I for one, applaud you.

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Jim Ballard, Class of '67 - Liked your well developed metaphor Tommy. Made me think of a kid I used to chum around with in the fourth grade (Joe Bradley Elementary, when my family moved from East 8th Street to "Holiday Homes"). His name was Malcolm Lowry. Don't know what happened to him. He and I tramped all over the Triana area swamplands, look' in for frogs, turtles, tadpoles or any little critters that came our way. We got a big kick when we found tadpoles with legs..."Hey...a fish with legs..." we called them, even though we knew they were not "fish", of course. We also collected water/weed samples in jars so we could take them to my house and see all the little squiggly paramecium and amoeba critters under a microscope I got one Christmas. Ole Malcolm and I loved the natural wonders we discovered. (I will say my mother didn't cotton too well about keeping smelly jars of swamp water sitt'in atop my little "science" desk...but she came around eventually) I guess it was the tadpoles that fascinated Malcolm and me the most. Regular visits to the swamp kept us on top of their slow evolution from tadpole to frog. Therein lies our little metaphor. We soon discovered there were a lot of tadpoles that didn't make it beyond being a tadpole. Some were denied the dance because they never grew legs. Half a century later, I've met a whole lotta people like that. Ones who never grew legs. The Princess never kissed them because they never became full grown handsome respectable frogs. They were denied the Dance, just like those tadpoles in the Triana swamplands...

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Escoe G. Beatty, Class of '65 - The comparative analysis that you have presented to us to explain your positions and reasoning behind the publishing of your baby, "The Traveller", was well done. I have always been very defensive and maybe a little to out spoken at times when you have been challenged but, after all anyone that doesn't care for what is written is not required to read it!! In response to the article... "You should always dance with the one who brought you!" I do not have to question where you are coming from or where you are trying to go with what you write because I know you and I trust your integrity. Enough said!

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Lynne Berry, Class of ’70 - What a beautiful spirit you have. I'm sorry that you have had to catch some slings and arrows lately. You do a fabulous job. It is much appreciated by many of us who were in the "lower" classes (1970 here), who looked up to you all with awe. Your comparison in this issue to a disc jockey is perfect. Just keep doing what you are doing. Lee's Traveller online is proving to be a great interchange, with you as the catalyst and all sorts of interesting input (like Don Wynn's story about the Council High School players and Porter Moore). Thank you.

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Sharon Towery Linsky, Class of '65 - Of course you are called to this type of format...and we all enjoy the "music" and the "dance"...it is heartwarming to read artcles, comments from our classmates...it brings back memories of when we were all together at Lee Jr High/High School...reminesence is actually therapeutic...Please keep up the great work you are doing.

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Gary Hatcher, Class of ’66 - I am not one to write much, but I want you to know that you work on the Traveler is very appreciated. I look forward every week to reading the latest issue. You have allowed me to get to know the people I went to school with better than when we were in school. If we, all of the 300 or so that read you paper each week, don't say it in words, please realize that there are 300 or so of us that enjoy it and hope you don't stop. I do remember that you once mentioned what it cost you for the web site, please let all of us know that again. Again, thank you for keeping us entertained, informed, and best of all a Fami-Lee.

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Phil Rutledge, Class of '67 - I'm sorry you have become discouraged with your web site. I was not in your class but find your writings a very important part of my week. I left Huntsville to go to college and never returned to live. However, I have ties to Huntsville and the memories there. I connected with long lost friends through you site. Your efforts are very much appreciated.

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Don Blaise, Class of ’64 - I sincerely feel that 99% of those of us who have enjoyed this WEB site know that you did not mean anything racial about your comments on CHS. Please keep up the much-appreciated work and don’t worry about being PC on my account.

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THE "BOMB"

The Wheels of Freedom

by Tommy Towery

Class of '64

(Editor's Note: Accepting Steven Shipe's request about doing some stories on the cars we drove, I will start it off with the following story. Many of you have already read this since it was lifted from my book "A Million Tomorrows...Memories of the Class of '64." Following the story is an outline for submitting your own input about your car. But now, here's my story.)

Of all the cars I ever owned, I guess I both loved and hated my car in high school the most. Most people have fond stories of finding that first car they couldn't live without and working hard and saving money to buy it. The car was usually a little run-down, and their parents really didn't want them to buy it but they got it anyway. My first car was a little different. I didn't have to buy it, I kind of inherited it.

My first car started out as the family car. Mother bought it and drove it first and then my brother started to drive. He joined the Navy and left town, my mother remarried and moved to Memphis, and my grandmother couldn't drive. One morning I woke up and found that I was the only one left in the house who could drive, so I got the car. And what a car it was.

"The Red Bomb," later shorted to just "The Bomb" was my car. It was a 1953 two door Customline Ford V 8, painted red of course. At least it started out as a red car, but the sun faded it so badly that it was almost orange. The Bomb was a perfect name for this collection of classic auto parts. Mother had bought a different 1953 Ford in 1960. One Friday night, about a week before the first payment was due, Don was coming home from a date and ran off the road into a field and hit a two-foot ditch. It was totaled. The front end was smashed and the frame was bent, but the engine and Don survived. Don went to the hospital and the car was towed home.

It sat in the driveway for a long time and finally Don found a friend, Gene, who had another 1953 Ford with a bad engine. Our engine was good, so we bought the body from Gene for $75 and towed it home. With the help of some of Don's friends, we took the engine out of the wrecked one and put it in the other body. I remember my part of the transfer was to remove and replace the battery box. I was proud of that and bragged for many years to come that I helped change out the engines. That was when it was cool for boys to know how to work on cars. I even remember getting some grease on my hands. Don filled the old car's gas tank with water to add weight, and sold it for scrap. I think he got seventeen dollars for it.

With the engine implant, the new car ran okay and didn't give us too much trouble, even with the work having been done by amateurs. The next problem happened one morning as I was on the way to school. It was raining and a lady ran a stop sign and darted out in front of me. I hit my brakes but the streets were wet so I slid and hit her broadside. She was a very lucky person, for she had all six of her children in the car and none were hurt. I too escaped injury, but not the Bomb. Its hood was crunched in as were both front fenders, but the engine survived that assault too.

The lady I hit did not have insurance, and even though it was her fault, we didn't get any money out of the accident. I didn't have any insurance either. Even the thought of that these days scares me to death. She paid for her car and we paid for ours. After several weeks of looking, we finally found a new front end and got it installed for $75. The new front end was white and not red like the rest of the car. We couldn't afford to have it painted.

Another problem was that the garage made one little mistake when putting the two parts together. The one little mistake they made was with the entire wiring bundle, I think. The first time I drove it after getting it out of the garage, when I pressed on the horn button in the center of the steering wheel, the bright lights came on. The parking light switch blew the horn, unless I stepped on the dimmer switch, and then the regular lights came on. I'm not sure where the parking light controls were, and I was afraid to try the windshield wipers. It made for some interesting driving for about a week. After a short while, the thrill was gone and we took it back to the garage got the wiring fixed. It remained white on the front end and red on the back for the rest of the time I had the car.

It was not much to look at, and as the days and months passed, it ran worse and worse. It didn't really matter, The Bomb was mine and I loved it. It has always held a special place in my heart, maybe because it was the first car I soloed. I remember one weekend when I was fifteen, and before I had my driver's license, Mother went to a conference in Florida for dental assistants and Grandmother was at work. There was a girl I wanted to see and she lived about five miles from the house, so I took the car and drove over there. I just got in it and went. Until this confession, no one has ever been the wiser. The Bomb was neat.

Don was my driving instructor. Some afternoons after school he took me out into a new housing development being built in Jones Valley and let me drive. There were lots of streets but only one or two houses had been erected. The initial encounter with a clutch was eye opening, and we bounced back and forth up the street for the first couple of sessions.

Eventually I got better, and even though I felt confident, I did not want to drive the straight-stick Bomb for my road test when I went to get my license. Don decided that I would do better in an automatic, so he borrowed Gene's red 1960 Chevy automatic for me to use. I went down to the old Elks' Theater and took my test. I remember the last words of my inspector were "Pull up over there, and be careful." I had passed.

That was the last time I drove the automatic '60 Chevy. From then on I drove the straight-stick Bomb. Less than two hours after I received my license, I tried to take the Bomb up a rather steep hill going up to the court square from the water department. Stopping at the top was no problem, but trying to let out on the clutch and take my foot off the brake at the same time was more of a task that I was capable of acomplishing, having been a driver for only two hours. As I let off the brake, I rolled backwards before I could let out the clutch, so I slammed on the brake. I tried again only to make another advance to the rear. Lucky for me and for all, there was no one behind me. When I found myself at the bottom of the hill, I decided that fate did not want me to go up that hill. The hill had won that day. But I knew that in the days to come, the hill would never get any steeper. I would get better and I would win the war with hills in later battles.

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Now, send in some information about the car you had at Lee High School, such as:

When and where you got it.

How much did it cost.

What model and color was it.

Any special features like a radio, reclining seats, special engine, mud flaps - souped up or luxury items.

When you got rid of it and why.

Any tickets, wrecks, special trips, etc.

A picture you can send us of you and the car or just the car.

Class year with your submissions please.

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That's the Way

We've Always Done It

Here’s a story from ThinkerToys by Michael Michalko. Imagine a cage containing five monkeys. Inside the cage there is a banana on a string. Before long a monkey walks over and reaches for the banana. As soon as he touches the banana, all the monkeys are sprayed with cold water. After a while another monkey makes an attempt to grab the banana — with the same result. All the monkeys are instantly sprayed with cold water. Pretty soon, when another monkey tries to reach for the banana, the other monkeys will try to stop him.

Now forget the cold water. Remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new one. The new monkey sees the banana and obviously goes over and starts to grab it. But to his surprise, all of the other monkeys attack him to prevent him from touching the banana.

Next, remove another of the original monkeys and replace it with a new one. Now all of the monkeys currently in the cage stop the new one from getting to the banana. Replace the third, fourth and fifth monkeys with new ones. Each one becomes a willing opponent to allowing anyone to touch that banana.

Now, none of the monkeys in the cage at this point were every sprayed with cold water. But they continue to prevent each other from grabbing that banana — the one food that they should all naturally love. None of these monkeys ever approaches the banana again. They have no idea why it’s off limits — But that’s just the way things have always been done around here.

Sound familiar? If you walked in to your work, church, marriage or neighborhood as an unbiased outsider, what would you question about the “normal” activities there? Are you accepting old traditions that defy the intelligence or spiritual insight you have today?