Huntsville Tours?

Tommy Towery

LHS '64

Put on your tour outfit and grab your umbrella, we're going on a tour.

The last couple of weeks we have been looking at some of the places that tours to New York City would include. I started thinking, if I were to be a tour guide to someone who was visiting Huntsville today, what attractions would I want to show them.

Now I have not lived in Huntsville since the day after my graduation in 1964, and a lot of things have come and gone since then. Many of the places I held dear are no longer in existence outside of my memories, but some of them still exist.

There is a tendency for many of you readers to avoid participation in some of our discussions, so I thought I might make it easy by limiting the responses to three places. I know there are a lot more, but perhaps you might be willing to share if I am only asking for your top three places.

So, using the form below, list out the Top Three Huntsville attractions you show would someone who has never been to Huntsville before. How would you tell them, "Welcome to my world?"

The Wayback Machine

Welcome to My World

"Welcome to My World" is a popular music standard written by Ray Winkler and John Hathcock and recorded by many artists, most notably Jim Reeves.  A traditional love song, the bridge includes lyrics taken from Matthew 7:7–8 ("Knock and the door will open; seek and you will find; ask and you'll be given ... ," from the Sermon on the Mount).

Reeves' version was included on his 1962 album A Touch of Velvet and was released as a single in the United States in early 1964, reaching No. 2 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart in the spring of that year. It was also occasionally aired on pop radio stations, reaching the No. 2 spot on Billboard's Bubbling Under Hot 100 chart. The song became one of Reeves' last major hits in the U.S. during his lifetime, as he was killed in a plane crash on July 31, 1964.

If the mention of grabbing your umbrella for a tour confuses you, then you have probably never been on a guided tour with a tour director. On many tours, the tour directors use umbrellas as a type of flag for the participants to rally around. Whenever you are marching from one attraction to the other, you just follow the umbrella held high about the guide's head and keep up with your group. Different guides have different colored umbrellas to lead their groups.

Last Week's Questions, Answers, And Comments

Linda Kinkle Cianci, LHS ‘66, "Now that you mention it, I don't recall fireworks shows either, until mid-1970s when we went down to Huntsville and watched a celebration at Braham Springs Park."

Linda Kinkle Cianci, LHS ‘66, "I think the first bus trip I took was with the band to Tuscaloosa for state competition on the UA campus, when I was only in 7th grade.  It was fun, though I'm not sure it was much fun for the chaperones.  The next trip was with Barbara Harrison Cooper ('66) and a bus full of very lively ladies, traveling to Ohio to the Longaberger Basket factory.  They were all from Huntsville and surrounding areas, and since it was a chartered bus trip were able to make a pit stop to pick me up in Nashville. That was fun trip!"

Escoe Beatty , LHS ‘65, "Tommy ... Since I don't have a phone number I thought I might try to get you this way!  At Patsy's last get together I met your cousin and she wanted to borrow my old 1960 annual for you to see.  I just wanted to make sure you didn't have a copy.  I'm fine for you to check it out."

(Editor's Note: Thanks for the offer Escoe, but I do have a digital copy of the annual already."