170612 June 12, 2017

    From Rainer Klauss, LHS '64 - "Skip just wrote that he sent you three photos. Two of the folks he knew well; the other he did not know at all. I did. The following is my reply to him:

    The fellow in the middle is Gary Collier. He was a good friend of mine at Rison and then at Lee Junior High. His father was the minister of Epworth Methodist Church, which was on Andrew Jackson, close to where the last incarnation of Mullin’s is (now defunct). The church was razed a bunch of years ago, and Epworth Methodist built another church on Chapman Mountain. I don’t know if it’s still the case, but in those days Methodist ministers only served a particular church for a number of years. Then they were sent to serve somewhere else. After the 8th or 9th grade, Gary’s father took over as a minister of a church somewhere near Birmingham. I got one letter from him in which he told me how much he hated being down there. I think he also hated being a minister’s son. I never heard from him again and have always wondered how things turned out for him."

Traveller Articles Tie-Ins

Joel Weinbaum

LHS '65

    Interesting the timing of some of your articles. When Sherman Banks and I moved to Huntsville, August, 1962, we brought with us our motorbikes which we had used to deliver our news routes back in the Muscle Shoals area. Our parents had gone on a house hunting expedition just before that and luckily found a small brick house of new construction on Maysville Rd. Before the move, we had been used to full access to the Tennessee River at the Sheffield waterfront on Pickwick Lake. With the move, we brought along our 18’ Grumman aluminum canoe. Huntsville being landlocked, never used it again.

    We had some real adventures with that canoe, though, including being the first canoe to lock through the new 100’ lift at Wilson Dam. We also had under our belts accidents with automobiles just prior to our move, ten days apart, with only a half mile separation from the two accident sites, on the same 2nd Street of Sheffield. Sherman had to go to the hospital with a bruised kidney, I only had a twisted knee. The most interesting recollection for me, however, was hearing a man’s voice speaking to one of my newspaper managers who was calling my name while trying to revive me in the street. The man asked, “Is he dead?” No, he’s still breathing.” I then went back into shock not waking up until they were putting me on the ambulance sometime later. The newspaper manager was in the car immediately behind the one that hit me, making a diagonal turn at the old “Triangle” supermarket.

    After all that commotion I am sure we were all in shell shock coming to the big city of Huntsville, with its Parkway City shopping center.. We had barely moved in before those Pierce boys, along with their sidekick, Mac Yates, converged on us new arrivals with our small Harley Davidson motorcycles. Sherman’s mother saw the Pierce boys on their Vespas out in the street and afterward cautioned us to stay away from them to avoid getting into the wrong crowd. So i understand Rainer’s experience. Actually, we had already met and tried to waylay her fears. I don’t want to make this story too hard on those Pierce boys, including Mac Yates.

    Now, Skip Cook, I am sure it was him during gym, where one of the other boys was giving him a hard time over the basketball. I said something to the effect, “leave him alone, give the ball back.” I must have been feeling my oats that day. The intimidator slammed the ball down, saying “Whats it to you Weinbaum?” and came straight for me. There was anger in his eyes. He got within arms reach and I punched him. Then we went at it until the other boys broke us up. Afterward, my hand swelled so badly I went into Godsey’s office telling him I had jammed my hand on a ball and thought I had broken it, and needed to call my dad. After a repeat of the same story, my dad asked, “Did you win?” We were still so new to Huntsville we had not yet found us a family doctor. My advice, and I am sure Rainer would agree, keep your eye on those Pierces’.

    One last thing. Skip mentioned his dad’s job in the Navy was a Fire Control Technician. Interestingly, I became a Fire Control Technician, and retired from the Naval Reserve as a 1st Class(Petty Officer) Fire Control Technician with 24 years of service. I would also like to point out I became an electrical engineer eventually achieving the stature of “Senior Engineer" in my career. 

    But for these young people trying to get a start, I still say, “Go Navy!”