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WHITE HOUSE, TN. - We're on the road again and spending the weekend with the grandkids in White House. My basketball season is over and I am crushed, but I'm in a happy place with the topics we're covering in Lee's Traveller, and I've smiled more than cried over the weekend. I'm really enjoying the memories we're sharing - and this issue may share more than you need to know. I hope none of you cancel your subscription becuase of the lewd story I share with you this week. I am sure the statue of limitations has run out on the things we did as teenagers.Please include your class year with your e-mails.
Every Teenage Girl’s Dream – a 1960 Willis Jeep WagonThere she is, my first car. What a beauty! What can I say? My taste in cars when I turned 15 and got a driving permit was slightly different than most teenage girls??? Of course not. A T-bird, Porsche, or something along those lines would have been grand, but no such luck. My father purchased the Jeep in 1960 to use for his duck and rabbit hunting adventures. When it came time for me to learn how to drive, my father (being the ever practical engineer and not at all tuned into the desires of a 15-year-old female) insisted that I learn on a stick shift vehicle since you never know when that skill might come in handy. Since our other car was a Pontiac Bonneville with an automatic transmission, the default vehicle for my Drivers Ed was the Jeep. For those of you who have never had the privilege of driving that era of Jeeps, let me educate you on a few of its options. NONE! Of course, I exaggerate. It did have 4-wheel drive, impossible to come by in any other passenger vehicle at that time. And big knobby tires, great for all the snow storms we experienced in Huntsville. It weighed tons, and so you never had to worry about it being blown over in a wind gust. It didn’t have any kind of sound system, not ever an AM radio, so you were never distracted while driving. No power assisted anything, so you were able to develop your arm and leg muscles and use up extra calories with every turn and shift. With much tribulation and silent cursing, I did learn to master my driving skills using the Jeep, and have thus been able to drive any straight shift vehicle on the road then and now. I was, however, allowed to take my driving test using our Pontiac, since parallel parking was still a mandatory part of the test at that time and the Jeep was #*@% to parallel park. I did drive it to school many times during my senior year at Lee and during all three years I attended the University of Alabama in Huntsville (graduated in 1968, 1st UAH graduating class). I hate to admit it but, “Thank’s, Dad”. Every car I’ve owned has been a straight shift, by choice. It’s just so much more fun to drive than an automatic. Here’s a picture of my current vehicle, a 1999 Beetle - straight shift and all. 
About Bradley’s - I distinctly remember the time that I was watching some couples doing a very raunchy (in my opinion since I was somewhat shy and not very worldly) dance and asked whoever I was there with what in the world they were doing. I remember him saying they were doing a dance called the “Dirty dog.” Hmmm All I know is that my mother would have killed me, and I would have been put on restriction for the rest of my life if she had ever gotten wind that I was dancing like that, and back in those days, mother knew everything before I ever even got back home!My only regret about Bradley’s is that I did not get to dance with some of the greatest and cutest guys because they were already taken!Let me put some things into prospective in my defense, since there is a great possibility that I was the person who very likely could have been at least one part of the couple that was doing that raunchy dance that Patsy saw being performed.I need to set the stage correctly for this. My mother remarried and moved to Memphis in the spring of 1963. I stayed behind in Huntsville so that I could graduate with my class, rather than move to Memphis with her and my step-father and join the senior class of some school where I knew no one. Because of that Memphis connection, I made several visits to the Bluff City in the summer and fall of 1963. In the fall, the dances at Bradley's had already become a fixture in my world. So, when I went to Memphis, I would try to find dances being held there to attend. It was not hard to do.I remember one dance in September or October of 1963 that I attended that was being held at a VFW club. I knew no one, and chances are my shyness kept me from asking anyone to dance, but I loved the music and I loved being a part of the crowd. There was a local DJ turned singer there in Memphis who had just released a record and it was getting played a lot in that town. The singer was none other than Rufus Thomas. His song was called "The Dog." It was released as a "B" side of a record and was later followed by a similar song called "Walking the Dog". I was standing in the crowd at the VFW and all of the kids gathered around in a circle and one or two couples were inside the circle. I looked in and they were doing "The Dog." Well, if you remember the look of Babe in "Dirty Dancing" when she saw the teenagers doing their dirty dancing, well that was the look on my face.That was a chaperoned dance and the female chaperones quickly got inside and broke them up. Everyone went back to dancing the normal dances and before too long, the couples started in on The Dog again. This happened several time during the evening and each time the dancers were threatened to be kicked out of the dance, but they never did. I watched them enough to learn the moves, because I knew I would never see that dance on American Bandstand. I don't know where else it was being done outside of Memphis, but when I returned to Huntsville and went to my first dance at Bradley's I knew I may have been the first, but I wasn't the only one who had seen the moves. Dirty Dancing had come to Huntsville..."Do, the dog...Do the dog...everybody do the dog!"I wish I could take credit (or blame) for being the one who introduced The Dog to Bradley's, but I can't. I will say that I was one of the first (and best) at this raunchy dance. These photos do not show the position of the partner. If the album cover at the top of this column had been drawn the way I saw and did The Dog, it would look more like the drawing below.Yes indeed, the dance got it's design from the amorous moves of two dogs in heat in the back yard. Okay, Patsy, it was dirty...but fun. Usually the boy and girl danced facing each other, but at some random moment the girl would give a hop and turn around putting her hand on her knees and lean forward a bit. The boy would move in and sometimes put his hands on the girl's hips and sometimes on the girls shoulders. If you wanted to tame it just a little, the boy could turn around and the girl move in. Whether or not actual body contact was made with the thrusts he did... well, you remember how you did it and I'll remember how I did. I loved that dance. For an Eagle Scout, it was the definitive Dirty Dancing dance.Now all you girls can breath easy, because I'm not going to list the names of my dance partners - but I had a lot who knew when to hop and spin around. I will say that one of my favorite partners never graduated from Lee but was banished to Texas after she and another classmate stole a car and ran off to Florida. And The Dog was banned in the Lee Cafeteria during proms and in the Gym on the rare occasions we had dances there. Seems the chaperons in Huntsville were just as tight as the ones in Memphis. If any of you want to admit it, we're open for the stories.Rufus Thomas died not so long ago, but before he did I had the pleasure of seeing him perform many times at clubs on Beale Street in Memphis. I never heard him sing that my mind didn't wander back to Bradley's and the girls with which I did "The Dog." Thanks for the memories, Patsy, and thanks to all of you (you know who you are) that shared those dirty moments with a nice kid like me.
Geek Speak / Blog / 23 MarchLocating a MateI rear-ended a car this morning. So, there we were alongside the road and slowly the other driver got out of his car. You know how sometimes you just get soooo stressed and little things just seem funny? Yeah, well I couldn't believe it.... He was a DWARF!!! He stormed over to my car, looked up at me and shouted,'I AM NOT HAPPY!!'So, I looked down at him and said, 'Well, then which one are you?'And then the fight started.....