Doing Without!

Tommy Towery

LHS '64

Ice storms are both destructive and disruptive. As I write this, I am still suffering the effects of the latest ice storm which has swept through the South. Here in Memphis over 130,000 homes lost power due to fallen tree limbs and over-weighted power lines due to ice buildup. I am going through the third day since the ice disrupted the power service to my house along with over 1,900 homes in my neighborhood. It makes me happy that almost exactly one year ago I put out the money to have a Generac whole-house generator installed. This is the first time it has really proved itself worth the money. It is powered by natural gas and kicked on less than a minute after the house went dark and has been running non-stop for almost 72 hours. My biggest missing item is cable TV, but the internet is working so I can stream shows using my Roku, or watch live TV using a digital version of what we once used – an antenna.

The loss of power to my neighbors means they are doing without lights, heat, cable television, electric garage door openers, computers and tablets, internet and ways to charge their cell phones. When I think of living under those conditions I cannot help but think back about life when I was growing up in Huntsville. When I think back about losing power back before I graduated from Lee in 1964, I cannot recall much about how it affected my life then.

I do not know if it is because I am an adult now and was only a child then, but for either reason, I cannot recall much at all about losing power and how it affected me. To me now, as an adult, I can tell you the details of almost every ice/wind/storm event which caused me to have to live without power and how it affected me. Was life so simple then? I am thinking it was.

Early in my life I lived every day without central heat and cooling. My home had coal-burning fireplaces and electric fans to keep the house warm or cool. I did not have cable television to entertain me – only four channels that ceased operation at midnight if I was lucky. My family never had a garage with a door – a detached garage in the back yard on East Clinton was the best we did, and we never kept our car in it. No computer, no internet – passing notes in class was the closest we came to social media. No cell phone - early we had a party line and later upgraded to a private line which was the biggest step in technology I can recall. 

In times of power outages, we hauled out the emergency candles and the kerosene (sometimes called coal oil) lamps and fired them up for light. Checking on the internet I found coal oil is a shale oil obtained from the destructive distillation of cannel coal, mineral wax, or bituminous shale, once used widely for illumination. Because kerosene was first derived from cannel coal, classified as a terrestrial type of oil shale, it continued to be popularly referred to as "coal oil" even after production shifted to petroleum. I was always amazed that turning the knob to make the wick smaller increased the brightness of the lamps. I never lived in a house with Air Conditioning when I lived in Huntsville. Quilts and more clothing or less clothing were the answers to temperature control in my world. 

Of course in my early childhood ice on the road did not concern me as much as ice on the sidewalk, because I walked almost everywhere I went. Once I started driving The Bomb, my 1953 Ford, I never seemed to be going anywhere where I encountered an icy road anyway – when I could get the thing started.

It makes me wonder what the high school kids today would say to hear our stories about losing power when we were their age. I would bet there would be a lot of skeptics who think we are making up those stories – like the stories about us having to walk to school and back, with both ways being uphill.

I am open to (and soliciting) comments about your own stories of losing power when you were growing up. Was it a big deal to you?

Here's Glen Campbell's take on power line losses.

I am trying to keep this a little shorter than some other issues, since my desktop computer's internet connection keeps coming and going.

Comments on Last Week's Issue

Dianne Hughey McClure, LHS ‘64, "Tommy I do remember the Tommy Roe incident Not as clear as you but I do remember. You won't believe this but something brought the incident to mind last week. What my thought was "thank goodness I had Tommy to big brother me" Thank you. Who knows what things might have happened without you."

Eddie Burton, LHS ‘66, "Love the store signs in the pictures."

Polly Gurley Redd, LHS ‘66, "I loved the article about associating songs with people. Jim and I just went to see Ain't Too Proud, the story of the Temptations. It was full of all that music we grew up with and brought back many memories of dances and fraternity parties. Jim's fraternity had a jukebox in the basement and it was well used and full of great music, just like you talked about. I tend to remember places and not the people, but thank you for sharing."

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

Don't Let the Sun Catch You Crying - Gerry and the Pacemakers

"Don't Let the Sun Catch You Crying" is a song written by Gerry Marsden, Freddie Marsden, Les Chadwick and Les Maguire, the members of British beat group Gerry and the Pacemakers. It was first recorded and issued as a single by Louise Cordet in February 1964. Shortly after Cordet's version failed to chart, the song was recorded by Gerry and The Pacemakers themselves in April 1964. The Gerry and The Pacemakers recording became an international hit, and remains one of their best known singles.

It was released in April 1964 as Gerry and the Pacemakers' fifth single in Britain, and spent 11 weeks on the United Kingdom's Record Retailer chart, reaching No. 6. In the US, it was the breakthrough single for the group, spending 12 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100, reaching No. 4. 

The Identites of the Classmates in the Pictures Above