Photo: A souvenir cheerleaders threw to fans back in the day.
By Tom Poland, A Southern Writer
TomPoland.net
We gathered in Lincolnton, Georgia, to reminisce. Class of 1960’s Sylvia McCurry, Tommy Cunningham, W.C. Bentley, Buddy Dallas, Pat Mercier, and Little Roy Lewis were in class again—a personal history class in an old feed and seed store turned Mexican restaurant turned Southern American restaurant. Denise Dallas and Bonnie Lewis and guest speakers Gary Ward and I rounded out the group.
As people tossed names out, the name, Tech, came up. Among the memorabilia I brought was a small red-and-white football the Central Supermarket gave to cheerleaders to toss into the crowd. I looked across Main Street and the long-burnt Central Super Market rose from the ashes. Owners Tech and Dot lived again and classic Ford Galaxies, Chevy Impalas, Dodge Darts, and one brilliant white Cadillac parked out front.
As Gary spoke, he flew us through a bluer-than-blue October sky in an MX2 200 miles per hour upside-down just over the ground. Little Roy played “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” as Earl Scruggs looked on with approval, and James Brown glided through as Buddy shared Godfather of Soul stories.
Gary told us how the legendary Dr. Pennington once took off when he shouldn’t and another pilot landed on Penny Doc’s wing. Neither pilot was hurt.
We remembered people . . . Principal R. A. Langston, Coach Buddy Bufford, Jonelle Folds, Tracy Fortson, Billy Nieman, Harriet Butler, Alice Albea, Dr. Weems Pennington, Herbie Garrett, John Ludwig, and others.
We remembered places . . . the 378 Drive-In, Crawford-Brezeale Drug Store, City Pharmacy, Bently’s Roller Rink, and the Milky Way Freez Bar.
We remembered the 1960 Class C State Champion Red Devils, the start of a dynasty.
I was glad Class of ’60 president, Buddy, long-time attorney for James Brown, invited me and Gary to join his classmates. Gary, class of ’59, shared how he became a pilot and went on to perform in airshows across North America. I shared how I came to be a columnist, a teller of stories.
Buddy brought his 1960 high school annual and I brought my 1967 annual. “These two annuals, though seven years apart,” I told the gathering, “tell the same story. The last year together of classmates striking out into the big wide world to create a life all their own.”
The Lincolnton we knew no longer exists. That’s why I shared Dickey’s “Looking For The Buckhead Boys.” An aging man returns to Buckhead seeking just one place and one teammate he’ll recognize. Just one. His childhood home has been torn down, he doesn’t recognize the old drugstore, and the pool hall has become a shoe store. The old gang no longer exists, but sunlit pictures in the “Book of the Dead,” the 1939 North Fulton High School Annual, say it once did. “O the Book Of the Dead, and the dead, bright sun on the page where the team stands ready to go explode in all directions with time.”
Explode is right. Scattered forever.
Our birthday throws us into our first serious involvement with people and it stays with us throughout life, at least it has for me. I never forgot those souls and I don’t think the Class of 1960 has either.
Back home I had a Buckhead moment as I looked through my annual’s senior class. Of 59 students, 22 are dead—heart attacks, strokes, cancer, car wrecks, a plane crash, and a suicide. Time carries on as the rest of us await our fate.
The takeaway? I believe I can speak for the 1960 graduates when I say we all have been born twice, once when we entered the world and again when we entered the first grade. Everything since has been an extension of the first grade. Everything since—dead classmates and more—lives on in Memory.
