Just sitting on my front porch enjoying the late September afternoon with the high temps cooling down a bit, letting my mind meander and bring up pleasant visions of the present and past.
I’m seeing butterflies and birds coming through our yard getting nectar from our flowers, building surplus energy for their journey to Central America for the upcoming winter.
Saturday morning, I was standing on the patio when a beautiful tiny green hummingbird flew up within a foot of my face and hovered looking at me for at least 30 seconds, then flew away.
God built a very sophisticated navigational system in these tiny birds that enables them to make their annual pilgrimage to the warmer winter quarters in southern Mexico and Latin America. Think of the distance that the hummingbirds fly and most of it is over the Caribbean for hundreds of miles. It’s amazing, considering their tiny size and that they cannot feed until they reach land.
My thoughts change to kids I went to high school with both in Union County and my senior year at Columbia, Alabama. I remember the Cuban missile crisis and how us seniors watched on a small portable television as the Russian ships closed in on the U.S. Navy ships and submarines.
Air Force F-100s, F-4s, and Navy carrier jets were on alert at Homestead Air Force Base in South Florida. The Navy carriers were loaded for bear (Russian bear).
The Army Airborne, Marines and Special Forces were ready to launch if the Russians didn’t turn back. A last-minute deal was reached between the U.S. and Russia. The Russians would turn their ships, remove their ICBMs from Cuba, and the U.S. would remove their ICBMs from Turkey.
We senior boys found about a month later that the senior girls had picked out a boy to spend intimate time with if we went to a nuclear war with Russia that afternoon. The girls were way ahead of us boys and never told who each girl picked for their supposed last date. We boys tried and tried to get the scoop on who picked us, but never could get a senior girl to fess up. I still wonder who picked me.
As it was only three months from our junior prom at Horace Maynard High, Claude Weaver our principal contracted with dance instructors to teach us Union County rednecks how to dance. The dance instructors, a man and woman, taught us how to turkey trot, jitterbug and slow dance to liven our upcoming junior prom. This was the spring of 1961.
Chubby Checker, with the support from Dick Clark of American Bandstand, recorded a song written by Hank Ballard called “The Twist.” This recording by Chubby Checker sold 15 million records during late 1959 and 1960. It was one of the most successful recordings during the 1950s.
Well, the prom night had no turkey trot, jitterbug, or slow dance going on, but every junior there could twist, and we did.
By the way, I worked with Chubby Checkers’ adoptive mom for five years at Freeman International in Columbia, Alabama. She was a very nice lady.
There are kids, both boys and girls, that I went to school with at Horace Maynard High and Columbia High that I plan to get in touch with. I get a list every year from a classmate of Columbia High with contact information for the remaining senior class of 1962-1963. Each year the list gets shorter.
It’s funny how my mindset still sees them as young seniors with so much anticipation for the future. Most now are great grandparents as my wife and I are. When I look in the mirror, I realize that youth has gone and we are like General McArthur said about old soldiers—we are all fading away.
Life for me has been a good ride. I didn’t make some goals I set for myself, but I’ve met a lot of good people and a few rotten potatoes along the way, but the good vastly outnumbers the bad.
As our generation marches to its final days, I remember what an old Italian friend told me, “The only thing you take with you at the end is your reputation.”
Well time for the internet and some doo-wop from Kenny Vance and the Planotones.
See y’all next month.