1964 Memories of The Canterbury Tales

Tommy Towery

LHS '64

My journal and book include my memories of my introduction to The Canterbury Tales in my Lee High School senior English class. The internet states that four knights confronted Archbishop Thomas Becket at the Canterbury Cathedral on December 29, 1170. Becket had argued with King Henry II over the division of power between the King and the Church and had excommunicated some of Henry’s followers. The knights demanded that Becket pardon these men and when he refused to do so, one of the knights sliced off the top of Becket’s head with a sword. Soon after his death, local people began to report miracles associated with items covered in Becket’s blood. Becket became a saint and his tomb at the Cathedral became a pilgrimage site. The Canterbury Tales (Middle English: Tales of Caunterbury) is a collection of 24 stories that runs to over 17,000 lines written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer between 1387 and 1400. It is widely regarded as Chaucer's magnum opus. The tales (mostly written in verse, although some are in prose) are presented as part of a story-telling contest by a group of pilgrims as they travel together from London to Canterbury to visit the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral. The prize for this contest is a free meal at the Tabard Inn at Southwark on their return. It is odd I still remember the Old English verses we were required to learn back then. Who was the winner in Canterbury Tales? Answer and Explanation: In The Canterbury Tales, no one wins the contest because the work was never finished. Each pilgrim was supposed to tell 4 tales which would have meant that the work had 120 stories. However, Chaucer never finished the work, and the book only contains 24 stories.

Entries From the Journal:

Monday, February 24, 1964

55th Day - 311 days to follow

Clear

Took the rest of my science project in today.  At last it's completely finished.  Was late for school though, but I didn't have to stay in.  Found out I made 84 on the physics test and 95 on the geometry.  We had to know the first eighteen lines of Canterbury Tales for English today - the first six in old English.  After school we went to Mullin's then I came home....

And From the Book:

The punishment for being late to class without a good excuse was to have to stay after school.  "Staying In" it was called.  That had always been the policy in Huntsville schools.  If you got there late, you stayed late.  They had a special place where you went and sat after school.  It was in a room with all the other people who were "tardy."  One came to count on it.  It was a part of life; part of the rules.  For some unknown reason that day, I did not have to pay the price even though I was late.  I really wanted to go to school that day and really didn't plan to be late.  I had to turn in the rest of my science project.  It was finally completed and it was such a relief.  Besides, I had another project I had to complete in English. 

We were studying Canterbury.  It was a place in English literature.  When I sat in Lee High School I was not even sure whether or not it was a real place.  It might have been like Camelot, a mythical place that didn't exist except in the words on the paper of a book and in the mind of the writer and reader.  On that day I was the reader.  Of all the Canterbury tales and of all the traveler's stories, most high school boys liked the Miller's Tale the best.  It had such a classic story line:

This Nicholas was risen for to pisse,

And thoughte he wolde improve the joke:

He shoulde kisse his arse before getting off.

And up the windowe dide he hastily,

And out his arse he putteth quietly

Over the buttocks to the thigh-bone;

And there spak this clerk, this Absolon,

"Speak, swete bird, I noot nat wher thou art."

This Nicholas then leet fly a fart,

As greet as it had been a thonder-clap,

That with the strook he was almost blinded;

And he was ready with his iron hot,

And Nicholas amidde the arse he smoot;

It brought down the house when it was read aloud in class.  I found it strange to be able to say the words "pisse" and "fart" and "arse" out loud in a school, no matter how they were pronounced or spelled.  The boys all belly laughed, the girls giggled and blushed, as if they had never used the words themselves.  The teacher sat there trying to act af if nothing was wrong.  The whole tale seemed to have been slipped into literature just to give teenagers something to really enjoy reading.  That's the whole idea of reading, to enjoy it.  So what if it was a little dirty?

Learning the verses in Old English was both fun and difficult at the same time:

Whan that Aprille with his shoures soota

The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,

And bathed every veyne in swich licour

Of which vertu engendred is the flour;

Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth

Inspired hath in every holt and heeth

Even though they were learned by decree, the verses remained a part of my life as they have for so many others.  The spelling would never be there, but the sounds would.  Even if they were read with a Southern drawl by a boy from Huntsville they would burn a permanent place in my mind.

And how about Canterbury?  It turned out to be a place after all.  It would take me 23 more years to make my own pilgrimage to Canterbury.  But finally I got to visit the same ancient cathedral made famous by the Tales that we read aloud that day.  On the day I went to Canterbury, upon walking into the door of the vast cathedral with its awesome vaulted ceiling, I, as had probably millions of others before me, started off in a whisper, "Whan that Aprille, with his shoures soote."  The moment took me back to high school, when I waited my turn.  I remembered the day that each member of the class stood up in front of everyone else and repeated the same lines, each with their own attempt to pronounce the Old English verses.  I could never have guessed on that day, that someday, I really would have my own Canterbury tale to tell.

Science Fair Results Article in The Huntsville Times

I built three different types of mazes to see if my hamster could learn to recognize the various passageways and find his way out. One made had different colored door, one had different shaped doors, and the final one had same shaped door for each room.  I kept charts of all the tries he made and bound them into a book and called the project "A Study on the Intelligence of a Hamster."

Are any of you readers on this list as well, or remember what your Science Fair project was?

The Wayback Machine

Although I never hear a song made from the lyrics of The Canterbury Tales, I often put this song in the same genre as it. It is a traditional English ballad. The song lists a number of impossible tasks given to a former lover who lives in Scarborough, North Yorkshire. 

"Scarborough Fair/Canticle" appeared as the lead track on the 1966 Simon & Garfunkel album Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme in counterpoint with "Canticle", a reworking of the lyrics from Simon's 1963 anti-war song "The Side of a Hill". The duo learned their arrangement of the song from Martin Carthy, but did not credit him as the arranger. They later made a "pretty substantial" monetary settlement with Carthy's publisher when asked, but unbeknownst to them, Carthy himself did not receive anything from it. The Simon and Garfunkel version of the song was featured on the soundtrack to The Graduate in 1968.

Many thanks to all those who made comments for this week's issue.

The snow and winter weather visited us again this last week and I was able to take advantage of being snowed-in by having some extra time to work on this week's issue. Once again I use the crutch of my journal and my book (A Million Tomorrows...Memories of the Class of '64). The book covered the range from the assassination of President Kennedy until my graduation from Lee. I know my memories are much stronger than many of you because I had most of them written down. I wish I had started it sooner. The book is still available from Amazon.com, along with several other books about the history of Huntsville during the Sixties.

LEE LUNCH BUNCH

Classes of ’64, ’65, ‘66

Thursday, April 24, 2025 11:00 a.m.

Carrabbas’s Italian Grill

(Upper parking deck at Parkway Place Mall)

Classmates from ‘64, ’65, and ’66, please mark your calendars for the next Lee Lunch Bunch. This begins the 15th year of our lunches together. This is also the 60th year from graduation for the Class of 1965. Hopefully, many of this group will be able to come on this date, share all of the latest from our daily lives, and have a good meal together.

Please do let me know if you are planning to come. I will need to let the manager know how many no later than a couple of days before. Thanks and hope to see you in April.

Patsy Hughes Oldroyd ‘65

304 Wellington Rd.

Athens, AL 35613

H (256) 232-7583

C (256) 432-3396

keithandpatsy@att.net

Last Week's Questions, Answers, And Comments

Mary Burns Cattadoris , LHS ‘65, "This wasn't a song of 1967 but in 1965 I was smitten with Len Barry's, "123." I first saw him on American Bandstand and instantly fell in love with him and his hit song. I was working at Sno Wite on Whitesburg and played his song over and over on the jukebox. Then in June of that year I went to see him perform that song live at an auditorium in Utica NY. I made a fool of myself by running down the stairs to get his picture, fell and broke the heel of one of my shoes. I was so embarrassed!"

Joel Weinbaum, LHS ‘64, "I needed Microsoft CoPilot with me in English class...."

Johnny Roberts, LHS ‘66, "Tommy, don’t be discouraged but you have asked a question that requires us to have a memory. As Ricky admits, our memories are slipping."

Dennis Overcash, LHS ‘66, "I usually don't respond to the memories as most of mine were prior to or after my one year (66) at Lee but for your prior week's query on first kisses it was in Massachusetts at the youth group at the Officer's Club at Watertown Arsenal when in Jr High. They had occasional parties and at one we played spin the bottle.  I don't recall anything about that kiss but pretty sure it was just a peck on the cheek or puckered lips.  I still have memories of the night for a different reason.  A neighborhood boy a couple of years older than I was invited by someone to attend and he and I were best described as mortal enemies and my spin landed on him. Anyway, when it was a boy-boy or girl-girl pair shaking hands was the response and that was a terrible experience having to shake his hand."

Linda Kinkle Cianci, LHS ‘66,  "To the prior week's question - my first kiss, at around age 11.  I don't remember who I kissed or if I spit or ran away, but the game was Spin the Bottle, and it was in Jerry Brewer's backyard. We lived next door to him, and our parents would probably have "brained" us (a common term used back then, at least in my house) if they'd known what we were doing.  Past that, I don't remember the first." 

Linda Kinklel Cianci, LHS ‘66, "I remember open-book tests very well.  They terrified me almost as much as the tests without benefit of an open book.  As I remember, the open-book tests had a lot of questions with limited time, indicating we'd better hope we had studied well enough to know exactly where to find those answers.  I usually had not.  I remember the first time a teacher announced we were having an open-book test, thinking I had it made.  It didn't take more than one test to realize how wrong that thinking was.  I think I heard our grandson saying during Christmas break that while tests were few during his first semester in law school, they are open-book, and that NO, they are not easy."

Nancy Davidson Hummel, LHS ‘65, "I don't remember ever taking an open-book test. But at my age, there are a lot of things I don't remember! Wish I had written things down like you did, Tommy."