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Memphis, Tennessee - This is the last issue of 2009. I thank you all for your support and promise I will do my best to try to keep Lee's Traveller going at least until after the reunion we should hold this year. I'm feeling a little bit like a real newspaper these day, fighting off the competition of other media forms. I look at Facebook and see that many of my previous loyal supporters have turned to that outlet for letting their classmates know about their lives and I am getting less and less emails each month with items to publish via this media.I wish you all the best New Year's possible and wish that we could all be together at Bradley's to dance the night away on New Year's Eve. I'd pay a dollar to do that again.Please include your school and class year with your e-mails.
One of my favorite early Rolling Stones Hit was “Time Is on My Side.” By the time they appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, I had already graduated from Lee High School, moved to Memphis, and was attending Memphis State University. Many of you were still at Lee though, and I’ll bet many of you watched the show that Sunday night in October of 1964. It was a great song to slow dance to.The U.S. version of was released on September 26, 1964 as a single and when they performed "Time Is on My Side" during their first guest spot on The Ed Sullivan Show, Sullivan was so shocked by their appearance he declared that they would never be invited onto the show again, but he subsequently invited them back several times.It’s the time of year for me to think about “time.” I have a tendency at the end of the year to look back at the things that have happened during the previous year, but this story is about another aspect of time. For some strange reason this year I have thought a lot about my own person time – actually my own personal timepieces – my watches.In today’s world of Dollar Tree digital watches that sell in many varieties for one dollar each, we know it was not that way when we were growing up. Watches were not toys that our parents gave us. They were important and expensive in those days. My first watch was very special to me. I don’t know the brand, but I remember it well. I got my very first watch all by myself; no one gave it to me. I won it when I was about six or seven. Yes sir, it was at the Madison County Fair that I gave a barker a dime and carefully selected a small brown paper sack at the “Grab Bag” booth on the fairgrounds. I slowly opened up the bag and, to my great surprise and delight, inside I found a round, white faced watch with a brown shiny buckle-strap band. It was such a big deal that when I pulled it out of the bag the barker grabbed it from me and held it high in the air and shouted over the crowd for everyone in the midway to see that I had won a watch for just a dime. Hurry, hurry, hurry! You may be next.I wore that watch home and wore it for several years, sometimes forgetting to wind it up each night in the days when that task was required. The crystal got scratched and cracked, but the second hand kept ticking just like the more expensive Timex ones we saw punished each week on television as we were growing up.Now I don’t know for sure how long the watch lasted, but I do know that the next one that I remember for sure was the one that Dianne Hughey McClure gave me for graduation. It was a Boluva Caravelle, with the words “T.T.T. 5-30-64” inscribed on the back. I still have that watch, and I wore it from the day she gave it to me until I entered the Air Force. As an officer on flight duty, I was issued a military watch that had “military time” on the dial and one that could be set to the exact second using the time signal from WWV and the word “Hack” at the pre-takeoff briefing. I don’t know the brand of the watch, but it was black with a black band and extremely accurate. Time had to be so precise when you were dropping bombs.In 1972 the issued military watch was replaced by a Seiko diver's watch with the rotating bevel which I never found a use for. It cost me $25 and it was almost a coming of age ritual to get one on one’s first trip to Thailand. It was the watch I loved the most for its purely functional qualities. It was heavy, and it was accurate, and it was a great watch.When I lived in England I found it amazing that young folks were selling off at a steal the antiques that had been in their families for generations. They were being replaced by the pressed wood modern furniture one could find at a DIY (do it yourself) store. I say this for one reason – I was guilty of the same mentality when it came to watches.When the Texas Instrument digital watch came out in the mid-Seventies, I had to have one because it was modern and ultra high-tech for its time. I set aside the Seiko and bought the TI watch that showed the time in red LEDs when you pressed the button. A few months later I sold the Seiko for $35 at a gun show in Omaha and was happy then at the idea of a $10 profit for a used watch.Through the next 30 years I have gone through many watches, primary high tech LCD Casio and Timex ones with databanks and calculators and other such things – but I recently realized that I really miss the Seiko that I sold for a steal. I looked for one on eBay and the price for the ones like I sold for $35 are now in the $150+ range. It is my own punishment for being such a fool that keeps me from buying another one.Upon retirement I got a nice watch made from some shiny gold metal but not real gold. It still sits in my drawer, unused. A few months ago I was in a store and found myself an analog watch which resembles the military style one I wore in the Air Force and bought it for $15. It replaced the latest high tech Timex Ironman watch on my wrist.What is the moral of this long and drawn out tale of time? I think it’s showing me that I am on a road back to the basics. It’s a reminder to me each time that I look at the hands on the watch about the simplicity of life that I am seeking at this time in my own life. I found that when I had a digital watch I would always tell the time by the exact minute shown on the digital face (i.e. 12:58) instead of looking at the hands and saying one o’clock or close to one or something of the sort. In my life today, it’s close enough to say almost one o’clock. Hey, for a retired soul I think it’s time for time to be on my side again. It’s time to slow down and relax and a watch that doesn’t pinpoint the time is good enough for me now. Maybe it's a way of enjoying things the way they used to be and getting away from the rat-race I lived for so many years.As a matter of fact, when Sue retired I got her a retirement present to hang in the kitchen. Instead of a gold watch, I got her a clock that has only one dial and each day that dial points to Monday, or Tuesday, or Wednesday, or whatever day of the week it is – that’s all, just the day. As I get older I may trade that one in for one that just points to what month it is. Life has slowed down for me, and I am loving it.Alabama FootballA Dog Story
