August is a few days away and it seems to me that if we are going to have a 40th reunion, we are within a year of it. I will be honest and say that I had hoped that by now this site would have a few more semi-regulars so we could work together to make it happen. I realize that not everyone can get to this site but I am still willing to do whatever I can. To that end I have created a group on Facebook for our class --- you regular Facebook users should have gotten an invitation. There are a few more of us there and it's a lot more visible. It's a stretch but I personally would like to see everyone show up. I know it's a stretch and most likely will not happen but I fully believe in the more the merrier. I see the group as being a place where more of us can work together to make this happen. Please, please give it your attention.
Obviously there will be more on this as we go. Thanks guys for helping out!!
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Thursday, July 23, 2009
A Tear
In high school, and for a time afterward I was macho, or at least I thought I was. Nothing could make me cry --- not a busted heart from a girl or s busted arm from an accident or a busted nose from a fight. I came close a time or two, like when I found myself in boot camp, far away from home and feeling so alone, but I was bound and determined that no one would ever see me break down, and that pledge lasted right up until my oldest son was born.
Now I can tear up at the drop of a hat, or a skinned knee. I got trained early on from my kids and its been reinforced all over again by my grand kids. I don't exactly blubber, but those little arms hugging my neck or the look on their face when I drop them off for the first day of first grade --- that "I'm a big boy now Dad, I can do this" look, and I just can't help getting misty eyed.
There have been other times too, obviously. Like when my Grandma passed and then again when Mom passed. Standing up there on that cold lonely hill looking at that fresh mound of dirt while someone sings 'Amazing Grace' will do that to you, or it does me. That particular song always brings a tear to my eye.
Then there's been the occasional beer tear. That old saying about taking the boy out of the country applies to me in spades. At times I still turn the radio dial to the nearest country station, especially if it plays the old stuff; the stuff we didn't always own up to listening to in high school. Sometimes on a far off military base I would go in the club and drop a few quarters in the jukebox and listen to a song that would take me back to Loudon and you folks.
It's 1977. The wind is blowing so hard outside that nobody is allowed to go out. The snow is piling up in drifts that partially bury some of the single story buildings. Everything that is familiar seems light years away. You sip your beer slowly as one of your selections start to play and almost everyone in the place gets a little bit quiet as Mel Street takes each of us back to wherever our homes are.
Smokey Mountain Memories is this week's oldie.
Now I can tear up at the drop of a hat, or a skinned knee. I got trained early on from my kids and its been reinforced all over again by my grand kids. I don't exactly blubber, but those little arms hugging my neck or the look on their face when I drop them off for the first day of first grade --- that "I'm a big boy now Dad, I can do this" look, and I just can't help getting misty eyed.
There have been other times too, obviously. Like when my Grandma passed and then again when Mom passed. Standing up there on that cold lonely hill looking at that fresh mound of dirt while someone sings 'Amazing Grace' will do that to you, or it does me. That particular song always brings a tear to my eye.
Then there's been the occasional beer tear. That old saying about taking the boy out of the country applies to me in spades. At times I still turn the radio dial to the nearest country station, especially if it plays the old stuff; the stuff we didn't always own up to listening to in high school. Sometimes on a far off military base I would go in the club and drop a few quarters in the jukebox and listen to a song that would take me back to Loudon and you folks.
It's 1977. The wind is blowing so hard outside that nobody is allowed to go out. The snow is piling up in drifts that partially bury some of the single story buildings. Everything that is familiar seems light years away. You sip your beer slowly as one of your selections start to play and almost everyone in the place gets a little bit quiet as Mel Street takes each of us back to wherever our homes are.
Smokey Mountain Memories is this week's oldie.
Thursday, July 09, 2009
The Porn Movie That Wasn't
The year was 1969 and an X rated movie was actually coming to Cole's Drive In. Several of us decided to sneak in and see it. It was Midnight Cowboy. It turned out to be a dud of an X rated movie, but excellent as just a plain ol' movie, and remains one of my all time favorites. Plus it won Best Picture that year. The trailer for it is this week's oldie. Enjoy.
Digging Up Bones
When I first started posting here I was a bit surprised by how much I remembered. I seemed to be able to recall a lot of things. The funny part of it is however, that I hardly remember anything.
If the four years we spent in high school was a plot of land I was trying to excavate, the more I dug and sifted thru the layers of sand, silt and cobwebs that have covered it up over the years, the more I realized I remember very little.
The memories I recalled turned out to be isolated little peaks in an otherwise vast emptiness. The gap from one memory to the next is a large unfamiliar void that contains no memories at all.
Of course I remember the highlights -- or most of them. Heck, we all do. But I sometimes have trouble recalling things that were an everyday occurrence. For example, I remember Norma Wallace sat to my left in freshman English and to my right was the wall -- but I can’t tell you who sat in front of, or behind, me. You figure I spent a year looking at the back of someone’s head, and I can’t remember who it was. Some memory huh?
I can see faces so clearly but I can’t always put names to them. Thankfully, I at least have a couple of yearbooks or I would be totally lost, because the two I don’t have are crippling enough.
I’ve stated before that I worked right after school, so to a degree that limited my extracurricular activities and the chance to interact with more people and do more things, but that’s really a cop out. I doubt I would have participated in much of the extra stuff anyway. Besides, there are guys I worked with every afternoon the entire senior year and I don’t remember their names.
That was one of the things that made dinner with the ladies a couple of months ago so fun. They remembered things I didn’t and it helped me uncover a few more things I had missed in my excavation.
Thanks ladies!
If the four years we spent in high school was a plot of land I was trying to excavate, the more I dug and sifted thru the layers of sand, silt and cobwebs that have covered it up over the years, the more I realized I remember very little.
The memories I recalled turned out to be isolated little peaks in an otherwise vast emptiness. The gap from one memory to the next is a large unfamiliar void that contains no memories at all.
Of course I remember the highlights -- or most of them. Heck, we all do. But I sometimes have trouble recalling things that were an everyday occurrence. For example, I remember Norma Wallace sat to my left in freshman English and to my right was the wall -- but I can’t tell you who sat in front of, or behind, me. You figure I spent a year looking at the back of someone’s head, and I can’t remember who it was. Some memory huh?
I can see faces so clearly but I can’t always put names to them. Thankfully, I at least have a couple of yearbooks or I would be totally lost, because the two I don’t have are crippling enough.
I’ve stated before that I worked right after school, so to a degree that limited my extracurricular activities and the chance to interact with more people and do more things, but that’s really a cop out. I doubt I would have participated in much of the extra stuff anyway. Besides, there are guys I worked with every afternoon the entire senior year and I don’t remember their names.
That was one of the things that made dinner with the ladies a couple of months ago so fun. They remembered things I didn’t and it helped me uncover a few more things I had missed in my excavation.
Thanks ladies!
Monday, July 06, 2009
Loudonese II
Somewhere I read that the dialect spoken most often in Tennessee is a "middling" dialect, not northern and not really southern -- or at least not the deep south. There are differences in Tennessee too. The folks around Memphis use words or phrases just a bit different than the folks in east Tennessee. Just ask Kay. :) So in keeping with that I'm going to add a little bit to a previous post about words I heard or used around Loudon when I was growing up.
Ever hear someone call an ear of corn a roastin’ ear, or call a cantaloupe a mush or musk melon?
When you’re talking about the nut, is it a p-can or a p-con? Personally I was always told it was a p-con since a p-can was something that used to be kept under the bed.
Do you say to-may-to or tu-ma-to? How ‘bout just plain ol’ t’may-ta?
Do you say po-tay-to or pa-ta-to? How ‘bout just plain ol’ tay-ta? Honestly I have no problem saying po-tay-to if I’m asking for baked or mashed potatoes, but if it’s sliced and fried up with some onion, that’s a tater. There's no two ways about it.
Ever hear someone call a white bean a navy bean, or a green bean a pole bean?
Ever hear someone refer to the police as “the law”, or refer to something over there as being over yonder?
Sometimes I miss folks who talk the way I do... or sometimes do. :)
Ever hear someone call an ear of corn a roastin’ ear, or call a cantaloupe a mush or musk melon?
When you’re talking about the nut, is it a p-can or a p-con? Personally I was always told it was a p-con since a p-can was something that used to be kept under the bed.
Do you say to-may-to or tu-ma-to? How ‘bout just plain ol’ t’may-ta?
Do you say po-tay-to or pa-ta-to? How ‘bout just plain ol’ tay-ta? Honestly I have no problem saying po-tay-to if I’m asking for baked or mashed potatoes, but if it’s sliced and fried up with some onion, that’s a tater. There's no two ways about it.
Ever hear someone call a white bean a navy bean, or a green bean a pole bean?
Ever hear someone refer to the police as “the law”, or refer to something over there as being over yonder?
Sometimes I miss folks who talk the way I do... or sometimes do. :)
Thursday, July 02, 2009
Our Music
I’ve said several times how much I enjoyed the music we listened to, and I did. We just didn’t realize at the time how lucky we were. Not only did we come of age in a time of major social, political and technological changes, we also experienced a golden age of music.
From the time we could call ourselves teenagers, we saw the British Invasion led by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and The Who; the advent of the psychedelic and heavy metal rock of Jimi Hendrix, Led Zepplin and Steppenwolf; and the rising of the mellow west coast rock of The Eagles, The Band and Jackson Browne, a down to earth, simple sound that was more country than most of the modern country of today.
I was never much of a Beatles fan, but even I could see the influence they had – influence that if possible, was even stronger than they’ve been given credit for. However, I was (and still am) a fan of the Stones and the Who; groups that to me were in some ways even ahead of the Beatles.
Over on the R&B side we said hello to Stevie Wonder and James Brown, and the Temptations showed over and over that they were so much more than just another R&B group.
In country, Johnny Cash enjoyed a strong resurgence after a relatively quiet period since he helped lay the roots of rock in the Sun Studios in Memphis, and we gave a big welcome to Merle Haggard, Kenny Rogers and a young song writer named Kris Kristopherson, who over a 5 year period wrote some of the best sounding songs since Willie Nelson came to Nashville. Loretta Lynn didn’t hide her accent when she sang Coal Miner’s Daughter, Bobby Gentry sang about Billy Jo McAllister, Ray Price told us about the Good Times and Sammi Smith asked us to Help Me Make It Through The Night.
We didn’t forget there was a higher power either, with songs like Turn, Turn Turn by the Byrds, Get Together by the Youngbloods and Spirit in the Sky by Norman Greenbaum, and if you want to stretch it far enough, In A Godda Da Vida by Iron Butterfly too.
With all the war and riots going on we also had to have upbeat songs like People Got to Be Free by the Rascals, He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother by the Hollies, Teach Your Children Well by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young and even Everything Is Beautiful by Ray Stevens. And then Marvin Gaye showed the world that a protest song could be a first rate song with a quality all its own when he recorded What’s Going On.
And finally, another slice of American slang came along when The Zombies recorded Time of the Season and were the first (I could find) to utter that now famous line, “Who’s your Daddy?”
Music still turns my mind back to high school quicker than anything else. Now you know why.
From the time we could call ourselves teenagers, we saw the British Invasion led by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and The Who; the advent of the psychedelic and heavy metal rock of Jimi Hendrix, Led Zepplin and Steppenwolf; and the rising of the mellow west coast rock of The Eagles, The Band and Jackson Browne, a down to earth, simple sound that was more country than most of the modern country of today.
I was never much of a Beatles fan, but even I could see the influence they had – influence that if possible, was even stronger than they’ve been given credit for. However, I was (and still am) a fan of the Stones and the Who; groups that to me were in some ways even ahead of the Beatles.
Over on the R&B side we said hello to Stevie Wonder and James Brown, and the Temptations showed over and over that they were so much more than just another R&B group.
In country, Johnny Cash enjoyed a strong resurgence after a relatively quiet period since he helped lay the roots of rock in the Sun Studios in Memphis, and we gave a big welcome to Merle Haggard, Kenny Rogers and a young song writer named Kris Kristopherson, who over a 5 year period wrote some of the best sounding songs since Willie Nelson came to Nashville. Loretta Lynn didn’t hide her accent when she sang Coal Miner’s Daughter, Bobby Gentry sang about Billy Jo McAllister, Ray Price told us about the Good Times and Sammi Smith asked us to Help Me Make It Through The Night.
We didn’t forget there was a higher power either, with songs like Turn, Turn Turn by the Byrds, Get Together by the Youngbloods and Spirit in the Sky by Norman Greenbaum, and if you want to stretch it far enough, In A Godda Da Vida by Iron Butterfly too.
With all the war and riots going on we also had to have upbeat songs like People Got to Be Free by the Rascals, He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother by the Hollies, Teach Your Children Well by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young and even Everything Is Beautiful by Ray Stevens. And then Marvin Gaye showed the world that a protest song could be a first rate song with a quality all its own when he recorded What’s Going On.
And finally, another slice of American slang came along when The Zombies recorded Time of the Season and were the first (I could find) to utter that now famous line, “Who’s your Daddy?”
Music still turns my mind back to high school quicker than anything else. Now you know why.
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