Early Christmas Vignettes

Tommy Towery

LHS '64

I had a little trouble coming up with a subject for this week's edition, so I thought I might just throw together some unrelated stories about some of my early Christmas memories.

The constant deluge of Christmas music on the radio fosters one of the memories which always comes to mind this time of year. Sometime well before Lee High School days I participated in the annual Huntsville Christmas Parade. At the time I was attending Central Presbyterian Church and most of my friends were destined to attend Huntsville High rather than Lee. My memory is sluggish about why or when, but sometime during that period I was in the youth choir and we were selected to participate in the parade, riding on a float and singing a Christmas carol. I don't recall how many of us were involved, but it was probably a dozen or less. I also don't remember going to any special choir practices, but I am sure we must have because we performed our song without sheet music of any kind. The song we sang was "Angles We Have Heard On High" and my most memorable though about singing that song was how big a breath I had to take after the prolonged "Glo-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ria" verse was sung. Now for some odd reason I seem to always think of one spot on the parade route when I think about singing in the parade, and that spot is right in front of The Grand Theater. I do not know what happened there to make me identify with it, but whenever I close my eyes, that is what I see.

The Christmas parade that year was the first parade I remember participating in, and probably the last one until I was a member of the Memphis State ROTC program and we marched in the Veteran's Day Parade each year.

Another early Christmas memory is from 1954 when I went with my Grandmother to see "White Christmas." We were living on East Clinton and we walk the couple of blocks to the Lyric Theatre to see the show. It was rare that we attended movies together and I am sure that would not have been my first choice of movies to see, but even as an eight-year-old kid I loved the movie from the start and it continues to be one of my favorite ones to watch each season. I think my favorite song from it was "Count Your Blessings."

My grandmother must have been 49 years old at the time we saw it, and in my kids mind that was old. These days I listen to the song as I would like to think she listened to it back then and I hear it in a different manner. By the time we sat in the movie that night, she had experience two World Wars, the Depression, the Korean War, the loss of her mother, her husband, and a grandchild. She was a widow living with her daughter, my mother, and was helping raise two grandchildren. She never had learned to drive a car and she had to take a bus to work every day as a cook in the Rebel Inn in West Huntsville. We were living in a rental house which was still heated by coal fireplaces. But she still felt blessed. So to her, and to me these days, the song was filled with the idea of appreciating what you have and not worrying about what you did not have. I count my blessing every day I am alive these days, even though I have also known wars, deaths, and family tragedies. I have many blessing to count on my own.

Have any of you got a topic you wish to discuss with your classmates. With Christmas on the horizon, what memories do you have which you might like to share?

We are still going through the slow songs we loved to dance to back in our high school days. I hope some of them bring back some wonderful memories.

The emails to JKBUSHART@cableone.net and mgurley@sc.rr.com were both identified as not being deliverable and will be removed from my list. Sorry.

Comments on Last Week's Issue

Phillip Stewart, LHS ‘66, "Randy was a friend at Lee but became a much closer friend at Auburn.  Rest in peace my friend. "

William Dale Meyer,  LHS' 66, "Any thoughts on a reunion?"

Jimmy Troupe, LHS ‘66, " No comments - before the comments were required."

Elbert Balch, LHS ‘65, "Outstanding as always.  Tommy, you keep the memories alive!"

Barb Biggs Knott, LHS ‘66, "Watching the Alabama/Auburn game this past weekend was a rollercoaster. With 24 seconds left I was shocked but elated when Alabama was able to tie the game. Those 4 OT's were confusing to me as I never paid attention to what was required in OT for college games. Just glad the Tide was able to get the win! "

Photographic Memories - Who Are They?

Each week I plan to share a group of photos from the 1960 "The General" yearbook without disclosing the names of the individuals. You may stop and try to identify them here, and when you are through you may scroll to the bottom of this page to see the identities of your classmates in the photos.

Slow Song Selections

You Picked in the Past

You Belong To Me - the Duprees

The Duprees are an American musical group of doo-wop style who had a series of top-ten singles in the early 1960s. Their highest charting single, "You Belong to Me" reached No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1962. "You Belong to Me" is credited to Chilton Price, Pee Wee King, and Redd Stewart. Price, a songwriting librarian at WAVE Radio Louisville, had written the song in its virtual entirety as "Hurry Home to Me", envisioning the song as an American woman's plea to a sweetheart serving overseas in World War II. 

(Editor's Note: Though I was not the one to select this song, I always identify it. I have "seen the pyramids along the Nile" and "watched the sun rise on a tropic isle (many times and several isles). I have "sent photographs and souvenirs," "flown the ocean in a silver plane," and "watched the jungle when its wet with rain (many rainstorms and many jungles." The only thing in the song I have not experienced is "seeing the marketplace in old Algiers." All that said, there's still time and Algiers is calling!)

The Identites of the Classmates in the Pictures Above