180122 January 22, 2018

Where Did the Good Times Go?

Tommy Towery

LHS '64

    If you are a regular reader of the stories I feature in Lee’s Traveller, it will come as no surprise to you I have several recurring subjects I often share. This article touches on a couple of those areas.

    I miss the Friday nights of my past. I know this makes me sound old, and I don’t want it to sound so, but I can’t explain it any other way.

    In my younger years Friday nights were always special to me – I always seem to have something to do, even if it was almost a regimented routine activity. I can trace the feeling back to living on East Clinton Street and going to school at East Clinton Elementary. In retrospect, my memory takes me back to the time when I first remember our family having a TV set. I was 11 years old in 1957 when TV markets across America starting marketing Shock Theater, a syndicated package of 52 classic horror films produced by Universal Studios. Screen Gems encouraged local markets to create their own hosts, and before long, local newscasters, weathermen and other station employees found themselves slapping on greasepaint, fright wigs and capes. The viewers in Huntsville were served by a TV station in Nashville, since we had no local stations yet. 

    Nashville's Universal Monster Movies were on Friday nights with host Dr. Lucifur and aired from 1958 to 1967 on WSIX-TV. The show was live and ad-libbed. They were rated number one in Nashville in that Friday- or Saturday-night time slot. They beat The Tonight Show on NBC and whatever was on CBS.

    The only way we could receive the signal was to go outside and point the tower-mounted antenna toward the transmitter tower north of us . If we wanted to watch a Birmingham station we had to point the antenna south.

    My first memories of it being a special night was of late in the evenings when I prepared for the viewing by popping a big bowl of popcorn and mixing up a big pitcher of grape Koolaid. Of course our TV at the time was just a black and white set, but that seemed okay since most of the classic movies being shown were filmed in black and white anyway. Our set had a 21” diagonal screen with no remote. Besides the volume and 13-number channel knob on the front of the set, there were also knobs on the back to adjust the vertical hold, contrast, and brightness of the picture. It was a learned skill to finally be able to adjust the set to prevent the screen rolling and to get the blacks and whites contrasted enough to make out the images on the screen.

    For the first couple of months after Shock started I sat at home, usually alone, and watched the monsters on the snowy TV. Later I was sometimes joined by Bob Davis or Buddy Crabtree, Mike Thompson, or Mickey Drake - all kids that lived nearby. Eventually my primary viewing partner was David Sutton, when he started coming to my house and later me joining him at his house for the weekly horror shows. I especially enjoyed going to David’s because of the atmosphere – he lived up on Wells Avenue, just across the street from Maple Hill Cemetery. There was just something fitting about watching horror movies across the street from the stoned wall surrounding the deathly quiet cemetery. It was even spookier walking home alone after midnight.

    But monsters and creatures can only hold the attention of a young boy for so long, especially when the menu contained only 52 classic movies. Eventually the limited supply of movies begin be repeated. There are only so many originals and sons of and brides of them and one meeting another to hold one’s interest. I even got tired of Abbot and Costello meeting all of them. It was inevitable for my interests to eventually change to a different subject. This is especially true when in my case. About the time I entered the seventh grade my Friday nights were hijacked from Shock Theater as a result of a church skating party at Carter’s Skateland. I have repeatedly shared stories of my love of skating and how it consumed my attention, and my Friday nights.

    Of the previously mentioned group of Shock Theater companions, only one followed me to Carter’s and that was Mike Thompson. Mike was a friend from East Clinton who eventually went on to Huntsville Junior High and Huntsville High when my own path to higher education took me to Lee Junior High in the ninth grade and the climb to my high school diploma as the tenth, eleventh, and finally twelfth grades were added to grow my class year to becoming the first graduating class at Lee High School.

    In the beginning my Fridays were solely dedicated to learning how to skate. I had no time for members of the opposite sex – they would come later. I paid the 50 cents admission fee and rented my skates at first, but later on was given a wonderful set of precision skates by Gene Bales, a friend of my brother Don. On Friday nights Mike and I would walk the approximate two miles to the skating rink, with our biggest obstacle being the process of crossing Pinhook Creek to Traylor Island, without having a bridge on our chosen route to make the crossing easy.

From Our Mailbox 

Subject:    Cagle's Grocery

Brenda Bell

    Tommy in the January 15th issue of the Lee's Traveller CE Wynn was asking about Cagle Grocery. This grocery store belonged to my grandparents. It was on Humes in Northeast Huntsville. Many of the kids that walked home from school would stop for a cola and cake. The house and store building are still there but we recently sold it with the passing of our parents. My grandparents started this business in about 1932 and my Dad took it over after their death in 1968. That is a good memory for me.