Jim Pierce, Rainer Klauss, Bob Pierce, Georg von Tiesenhausen.

The Battle of the Pipes

Rainer Klauss

LHS '64

A few years after my neighborhood, Darwin Downs, was built, the city installed storm sewers throughout the subdivision. At the site closest to my house, in an empty lot at the bottom of the long hill coming down Bide-A-Wee Drive, work crews had trucked in concrete pipes that were about 3’ by 5’ by 5’ and dug a trench down to what we called the Big Ditch, a creek that began as a spring on the side of Chapman Mountain. 

   One winter afternoon after school (I think I was in the fifth grade at Rison Elementary), several friends—Georg von Tiesenhausen, Juergen Kampmeier, Hartwig Schulze, and I-- gathered at the site.  We played there for a while, climbing up on the pipes, trying to roll them, jumping around on them, leaping into and across the trench-- just having a big time-- when intruders appeared: the Pierce brothers, Jimmy and Bobby (and perhaps their friend, Chris Chambers). 

They had lived on Polk Drive for some time by then, but we had never played with them. They were from the wrong part of the neighborhood, they didn’t go to Rison, and they were Yankees, as far as we knew. Plenty of reasons to exclude them and be wary of them, right? 

When they showed up at the dig, they just wanted to join in on the fun, but we thought they were trespassing on our territory. (They lived about three houses away from the construction site, at the intersection of Bide-A-Wee and Polk.)

“We’re playing here. Beat it. This is our place,” one of us proclaimed.

“No. We can play here if we want. You don’t own this.”

“We were here first.”

“So what?”

The situation escalated to further taunts and insults. I’d been at Rison--a school built in the 1920s for the children of mill workers--for a year already. I had received an education in truculence and the shock value of forbidden words.

“Assholes! Sons-of-bitches!”

Fighting words! I don’t know who started it, but suddenly we were at war.  Against the warnings of all our parents, dirt clods and rocks began flying.

We ran for cover or grabbed some ammunition. I saw a big dirt clod arcing my way, so I ducked into one of the pipes. Unfortunately, I didn’t stoop low enough, and I rammed my head into the edge of the pipe.

I was knocked on my butt. I don’t know if I saw stars, but I was stunned and hurt.  Only one or two minutes into the fray, and I wasn’t interested in defending our turf any more. I just wanted to go home. I got up, hunched over for protection.

My best friend, Hartwig, could see that I was wobbly, and he accompanied me as I walked off.  Dirt clods pelted us as we retreated.

We walked a little way up the street and Hartwig said: “Rainer, you’re bleeding.”

“No, I’m not,” I replied.

“Yes, you are,” he said, pointing to the side of my head.

I snatched off my cap and looked inside. A big patch of blood was soaking into the gray fabric. I clapped my hat back on my head and began howling.

We started running. Hartwig reached my house first, and he alerted my mother. I’m sure I was an alarming sight as I burst inside, crying and bleeding.

Actually, my mother and I were veterans of this kind of bloody scene. My head had already been stitched up a few years before that when my forehead collided with a friend’s toy gun. (I almost scratched his eye out with my own pistol’s barrel). In the grip of this new trauma, I remembered the earlier encounter with the suturing needle, and I didn’t want another one. 

“Please don’t take me to the doctor, Mutti (German for mommy),” I pleaded and sobbed.  “I’ll be alright.”

But she could see that my scalp was split open; mercurochrome and Band-Aids weren’t going to suffice. She got me and the bleeding under control. She called my father home from Redstone Arsenal, and we drove to the Huntsville Clinic on Washington Street.

Soon, Doctor Robert Sammons, who had sewed me up the first time, got to work on my noggin. Maybe he joked about me showing up again.  Soothing me by telling me I was a brave boy, he deadened the area around the wound with Novocain. Then his nurse snipped and shaved the hair off so that he could put in the stitches. I could feel the sutures going in, but there was no pain. I felt braver and braver. I left the clinic with a round gauze patch on my head—a little white crown—and wore it to school for about a week before the stitches were pulled.

So, how did the Battle of the Pipes end? I don’t know. As the only victim of the conflict, I’m probably the only one who remembers the event at all. I did go back to the pipes, though. Once they were covered and before the protective curb and drain were installed, I crawled through the darkness of the pipes to the creek, keeping my head down as I moved toward the small circle of daylight.

We never tangled with the Pierce brothers again. The next time we encountered each other was in high school, and then we became friends. In the band, Bob sat behind me and played the Sousaphone, and Jim served as the stage manager of the Lee auditorium. Many years later, Jim was of profound help to me during a troubled time in my life. I know that Bob and his musician friends had brought enjoyment to veterans groups and others with their downhome music.  Hartwig, my staunch friend, died in his thirties, the victim of virulent diabetes, a disease that often could not be controlled in those days.

The Wayback Machine

"Little Honda" is a song by the American rock band the Beach Boys from their 1964 album All Summer Long. Written by Brian Wilson and Mike Love, it pays tribute to the small Honda motorcycle and its ease of operation, specifically the Honda 50.[3]

Immediately following its appearance on All Summer Long, the song was covered by The Hondells, whose recording produced by Gary Usher peaked at No. 9 on the U.S. Billboard 100.

Well, the cataract surgery on my right eye is done and my vision has greatly improved. I've been going through some medical procedures the last six weeks, but the main side effect has been being tired all the time. With limited mobility I have enjoyed watching a lot of basketball games. With my Memphis Tigers out of the run for the NCAA Championship, I am destined to just watch other teams, as well as many of you.

I decided to run Rainer's story this week, and will return to some of the stories in my journal next week.

 SAVE THE DATE!

 LEE LUNCH BUNCH

CLASSES OF ’64, ’65, ‘66

THURSDAY, APRIL 25, 2024

11:00 A.M.

LOGAN’S ROADHOUSE

4249 BALMORAL DR. SW

HUNTSVILLE, AL 35801

(256) 881-0584

Please save the date for our next lunch gathering in April. We will be meeting back at our old place, Logan’s Roadhouse. We all enjoyed the change of location last year to Carrabba’s, but they were getting a bit difficult to work with. There are just precious few restaurants that are willing to let a sizable group reserve a private space, if they have one, without paying a large fee. As long as we have an acceptable number of lunch guests, Logan’s will not charge us that fee. So, it is necessary for you to let me know if you plan to come so I can keep up with the number. As always, I will need to call the restaurant by noon the day before to let them know an accurate number of guests. We cannot go over that allowed number. We have always been well received at Logan’s, and they have a menu that appeals to most everyone.

Hope to see all of our regulars plus any of our group that has not been able to come before. Thanks and looking forward to seeing you soon!

Patsy Hughes Oldroyd ‘65

keithandpatsy@att.net

H (256) 232-7583

C (256) 431-3396   or on Facebook

Last Week's Questions, Answers, 

And Comments

Floyd Richard "Ricky" Simmons, LHS ‘64, "I hope to make a Lee Lunch Bunch this summer or in the fall."

Joel Weinbaum, LHS ‘64, "I got a late start with the Lee crowd coming into the lead class as a Junior, Sept. '62, after we had moved from the Muscle Shoals area that August. Made friends quickly, but the big concern was getting into the wrong street crowd having my own motorbike. I think it was the image of the Pierce brothers with their Vespas that struck the greatest fear.

Joy Morris, LHS '64, "Are we having our 64,65,66 reunion this year?  If so, I would like to help. Tommy, thank you so very much for all you do to maintain our connection with each other.  We are truly blessed you share your wonderful talent of writing with us all."