141208 December 8, 2014

My Introduction To Lee

(Continued)

by Tommy Towery

LHS '64

        Last week I wrote about how I personally elected to attend Lee in the ninth grade, explaining how I was not forced to go there because of where I lived. I realize many others in my class did not have the opportunity to make the same type of choice. Many of my soon-to-be classmates were required to attend Lee because their parents were relocated to Huntsville as part of the Space Race. They had no choice of which school they would attend or even in which town they would live. They did not love Huntsville the way I did. As for me, I came from deep roots in the Huntsville community. I am a fourth generation Huntsvillian. My great-grandfather and great-grandmother moved to the city in the late 1800’s and most of my ancestors worked in the early cotton mills which drew many job seekers. My grandfather was working at a mill when he met and married my grandmother and my mother was born in Huntsville in 1923. My brother and I were both born in the Huntsville Hospital, me in 1946. I lived in a town which I felt I belonged, and wanted the same feeling for the school I would attend.

        My academic road to Lee was not simple. When I entered the first grade, we lived in Redstone Park and my initial introduction to formal education was at Farley in the first grade. Back then I had never heard of pre-school and any form of kindergarten was reserved for  rich folks. I remember getting out of school for cotton picking and shortly thereafter my family moved to Halsey Avenue and I transferred to Rison. Before the school year was over, my family moved again, this time to Huntsville Park, but I finished the school year at Rison by riding the city bus from West Huntsville to Rison each morning. Each afternoon I would get on the city bus and make the trip back across town. I was six at the time. The summer before I started the second grade we moved to East Clinton Street (our fourth move in a year) and I started my second year of school at East Clinton Elementary School. As earlier noted, I finished the second through the sixth grade there and the seventh and eighth grades at Huntsville Jr. High before we made the move to McCullough Avenue, via a short move to Hart Avenue, the summer before I entered the ninth grade.

        To remind you, I stand by my statement about wanting to go to Lee because I wanted to be a nobody. Though I made the statement I was "somebody" at Huntsville Jr. High (because I was known as “Don’s little brother”) there was one area in which I was still a nobody. That area was the social scene. I did not benefit socially from my brother’s fame, and in fact I never had a date nor can I recall a single girl I even had a crush on in the eighth grade when I was 13. I did not even know where to start to try to get a girl interested in me. I did go to a movie with one of my first cousins once, but it wasn't really a date. Most of my out of classroom contact with females my own age was at Central Presbyterian Church which I attended. Even there, I had no girlfriend, despite the Biblical passage of "love one another." I did start noticing girls in a different way though, but still not romantically.

        Oddly, that was not true about my interest in the girls I met who went to Lee. For a couple of years before I transferred to Lee Jr. High, I had been addicted to roller skating at Carter’s Skateland on Traylor Island. My very good friend, Mike Thompson, who lived up the street by East Clinton school, and I would often walk there on Friday and Saturday nights every week to skate. Though it now appears it was only a little over a mile walk, it seemed much longer back then, especially when you add in the discomfort of rain or shine travel conditions. One obstacle always in our way was Pinhook Creek which ran behind Carter's. To keep from having to walk all the way down the Parkway to get to the Traylor Island bridge, we played Lewis and Clark looking for a Northwest Passage to our destination. We finally found some old bridge posts sticking out of the water and with care we could jump from one post to the other to make it across the creek and walk through the field to the skating rink. More than once a bad hop from one of the post resulted in one or the other of us landing knee deep in the creek.

        When I started going skating, I was probably 12, and in the beginning I was more interested in the developing the skill of skating than I was in becoming social with the people around me. I started learning to skate by pulling myself around the rink with the aid of the cinder block walls and rails near the seating area. Though I fell constantly, I got up each time and tried again. I came home with dirty pants and more than once split the seat out of what I was wearing. Eventually I was able to venture out and stumble around the rink without falling. Skating did not come natural to me, but once I mastered the basic skill set I was able to quickly advance in mastering the sport.

        Puberty: ("the time of life in which the two sexes begin first to be acquainted" [Johnson], late 14c., from Old French puberté and directly from Latin pubertatem (nominative pubertas)) according to one dictionary definition. Another definition would be “the state to which Tommy Towery grew while participating in the process of learning to roller skate at Carter’s Skateland.” I began to notice girls and began to ask girls to skate. I also began to get crushes on girls, even though they were never aware of their attraction to me.

        What, you may ask, does this have to do with why I went to Lee Jr. High instead of continuing at Huntsville Jr. High? As I became a better skater I finally began to look forward to the "couples only" skate periods. Well, two of the girls I began to ask to skate, Barbara and Pam, both went to Lee. Though I never actually dated either one of them, I felt this desire to be around them. So, such feelings also influenced my thought process as a 14-year-old male. 

     The picture above is my ninth grade school picture. This was the first year my school picture was made in color. I was not handsome as my brother was, and not even cute in my own mind. I look at this picture and have a hard time remembering being so young.  In looking at all my school pictures, this one stands out as the only one I had made in which I was not sporting a crew cut. This was my Brylcreem year, "A little dab'll do you." Perhaps I wanted a new look for my new school. I don't know which bothers me more about that school picture - it being printed off-center or me having the top button of my shirt buttoned. Even with the Brylcreem I still did not look so debonair. I guess I was destined to be a nerd.

       My family and I had moved to McCullough Avenue, I remind you, and lived right next door to Ray Walker. We lived in an area which was on a bus route to get the students to school. I do not know how I learned where and when to catch the bus, but somehow I did and on the first day of class I waited across the street from my house and had my initial encounter with a group of nameless faces which would eventually become a major part of my growth to adulthood. I think I was told I was not standing at the proper bus stop, so the next day and each morning afterwards I would walk over to Ray’s house and catch it with him and a few others which I cannot recall. Maybe some remember if we had to pay a ten cent fare each day or if it was free to ride, but I do remember not making many stops between where we got on and our final destination of Lee. I cannot remember exactly where we got off the bus or re boarded it after school, but I think it was in the front of the building in the parking lot. Riding the bus got us to school much earlier than classes began, and so, on the very first day, I was introduced to the time honored tradition of "walking the halls" which circled the auditorium. I do not know in which grade my fellow ninth graders had begun this ritual, but I quickly adapted my own efforts into participation. One benefit of such constant circling was the ability to interact with the girls from the skating rink, even if it was only to say “hi!” as we passed. I also became aware of other females I had seen at Carters, such as Linda and Sherry. I cannot recall who my male friends were as I walked, but most of the boys I knew at Lee were acquaintances from Boy Scout Troop 66. This included Bob Ramsey and Don Cornelius, Johnny Carter and Jim Ramsey. Johnny was also a friend from Carter’s Skateland. Several other boys had been my classmates at East Clinton Elementary School.

        My homeroom teacher was Mrs. Jane Parks, a person whom I have often written about. I shall go into the schooldays as I remember them later, but will now skip ahead to the last school bell and my activities after school. When school let out I joined my fellow bus riders on the trip home. In my memories, the ride home was a different route that the ride to school, and I remember wandering around several neighborhoods dropping off classmates before we finally got to my stop. I think my bus continued up Monte Sano, but I can't be sure of where it went after I got off. My one major memory of the bus ride home is when some of the girls who rode it with me found out I was Don Towery’s brother. My secret was out! Several of them started hanging close with me to try to get an in with him, but their attention did me, nor them, any good.

        The rest of my normal school day was to head into the house and turn on the TV. This was the era of “American Bandstand” and my growing prowess on the skate floor made me yearn to develop similar skills on a dance floor. Each day my generation would watch new songs get rated and learn new dance crazes. I remember the three songs introduced each day and statements like “It has a good beat and is fun to dance to . . . I’d rate it a nine.” We also watched guest performers lip-sync to their latest songs. For this period in my life, my afternoons were spent alone, with just me and the television. Later my attention would move to the telephone, my first step into the social media world.

        To be continued.