Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh

Tommy Towery

LHS '64

My mother remarried and moved to Memphis the summer before my senior year at Lee, leaving me living with my grandmother so I could finish high school with my friends. You read last week about me moving to Memphis the day after graduation and my packing problems.

I was extremely homesick when I got to my new home. Even though I was a month away from turning 18, I had never really matured the way I should have. I really did not work during high school. I tried two jobs, but neither worked out with my school schedule. One was a short stint at Dairy Queen that only lasted one day. It was a combination of lack of business at the establishment and the inability to justify paying me to work there. The other job was at the concession stand at the 72 Drive-In. That job required me to work until 10:00 pm cooking burgers on the grill and popping corn and then taking about another hour to clean up, getting me home usually after 11:30pm on school nights. 

So, when I got to Memphis, I had to find something to do the summer before school started at Memphis State in September. That meant I needed to find a place to work rather than bum around all summer. My new stepfather was unsympathetic to my homesickness and demanding I find work. Since I had no experience to draw on, I relied on my memory of my school mates’ jobs and started applying at grocery stores which still had bag boys. No luck. I then went to Sears and some other department stores, and my lack of previous work experiences kept me from being hired at any of them.

After a week of no luck in my job search, I sat down one night and had a talk with myself. “What kind of experience do I really have?” The answer came to me as “camping.” The previous summer I had tried to get hired as a counselor at the Boy Scout Camp Westmoreland but failed. So, the next day I went to the YMCA to see if there was a chance of working at the Y’s day camp. It turned out they did not need anyone there, but they were in need of counselors at the summer camp at Pickwick Lake. It was a six-week camp, divided up into three two-week sessions, and the second sessions was about to begin. I did not have any friends in Memphis, and was not dating anyone, so I took the offer.

The pay for being a counselor was not very good, but it included room and board for the sessions. It was a dream job for me. Relying on my Boy Scout skills, I spent the summer teaching canoeing and water skiing, along with being a lifeguard at the lake’s swimming area. I had a cabin of eight kids and met some other counselors who would become my classmates at Memphis State when the school started.

When the summer sessions at Camp Pickwick was over, I was hired for a two-week counselor job at the other YMCA camp at Mammoth Sprints, Arkansas. It was located on a favorite canoeing river and again offered room and board, with no place to spend what little money I was earning.

When that camp was over, I returned to Memphis and was invited to take a job working with the Y at the afternoon gymnastic sessions for the underprivileged high school students. That job worked out fine with my college level when school began. I took classes in the morning and worked at the Y in the afternoons and Saturday mornings.

In following summers I worked the full six-week boys’ Pickwick camp and stayed for the following two-week girls’ as a lifeguard and boating instructor, and then the two-week Mammoth Springs for underprivileged boys. 

The YMCA jobs lasted throughout my college days, and even the summer after I graduated while awaiting my first Air Force assignment. I worked at Camp Pickwick that summer with my new wife while waiting. Many events in my later life resulted from that night when I asked myself what I had experience doing.

So, that was the transition from my days at Lee to my first job after graduating. I would be interested in hearing some of your first job after high school experiences. Use the comment section below to tell your tale.

The Wayback Machine

"Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh! (A Letter from Camp)"

1963

"Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh! (A Letter from Camp)" is a novelty song recorded by Allan Sherman released in 1963. The melody is taken from the ballet Dance of the Hours from the opera La Gioconda by Amilcare Ponchielli, while the lyrics were written by Sherman and Lou Busch.

The lyrics are in the form of a letter written by a boy to his parents expressing dissatisfaction with summer camp. Sherman wrote the song after letters of complaint which he received from his son Robert Sherman who was attending Camp Champlain, in Westport, New York.

The song was a major success and earned a Grammy Award. In 2019, "Hello Muddah" was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Recording Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". The song's mention of "Leonard Skinner", a boy at the camp who "got ptomaine poisoning last night after dinner", was an inspiration for the name of the band Lynyrd Skynyrd, although the band's name was also inspired by a physical education instructor of the same name.

The song scored No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 list for three weeks beginning on August 24, 1963. It was kept from No. 1 by both "Fingertips" by "Little" Stevie Wonder and "My Boyfriend's Back" by The Angels. The song also reached #9 on the Pop-Standard Singles chart. It hit number 1 in Hong Kong, where there were no summer camps in existence, according to Allan Sherman in his book A Gift of Laughter (1965).

Summer time is a'coming and I am personally looking forward to some warm weather. I know before long we will be wishing it would be cool again, but after miserable cold rain filled trips to Alaska and Michigan, I will enjoy the sunshine for a while.

Last Week's Questions, Answers, And Comments

Michael Crowl, LHS ‘65, "Reading about Vietnam, Don Ho, and Glen Campbell brought some memories for me during that time. While in Vietnam you were given a R&R vacation . I chose Hawaii; it was the closest they allowed you be to the states at the time. My reason was so my wife could meet me and have some time together. We happened to have booked a show where Don Ho was. He was a very nice person and put on a good show. On coming back from my service commitments I was working in Houston,TX,  as a manager of Piggly Wiggly. Glen Campbell’s sister use to shop with me . She brought Glen by a couple times and I got to spend a little time with him. He was a great guy , very down to earth.  Thanks for bringing back memories, you always do a great job of just that!" 

Linda Kinkle Cianci, LHS ‘66, "Thanks as always, Tommy, for helping us remember all those lost. The DCAS list is interesting though. Perhaps others will notice it too.  One Huntsville soldier I knew personally was not on the DCAS list - Sam Smith, LHS '67, Marine Corp, died in combat in 1967 or 1968."

Delores McBride Kilgore, LHS '66, “Thank you, Tommy! You are so appreciated!”