20- 1965 Oct: Banana Pudding, Comets, Type-Written Letters & Two Halloweens
The days unfold. Here’s a look back at 1965 from the eyes of a 13 year old eighth grader. I am sharing the original writings from a diary I kept during my childhood and am now writing commentary and reflecting back on those times from the perspective of 50 years later.
As a child, when I contemplated what the 2000's might look like, I certainly envisioned amazing, adventuresome times! Being a child of the 1960s, I expected flying cars; after all, the TV show the Jetson’s set us up for a big space filled future adventures. I looked forward to common-place space travel as was described in the movie 2001 A Space Odyssey. Well, we didn’t quite get to those points in the ways I might have envisioned, but we sure have some amazing technology and a communication interconnectivity across the planet that I would have never imagined.
“16 Oct 1965, Today is Saturday. I sold Miss Ethel a box of Christmas cards. I studied all my lessons. Sandra spent last night with me. 17 Oct 1965, I went to Sunday School and Church. Mom and Dad went to Mr. T Humber’s funeral. Today is my Science teacher, Mr. McKinney’s birthday. 18 Oct 1965, Tonight I helped with the Lion’s Teachers Night banquet by being a server. Mr. McKinney, the Science teacher, was there, but Mr. Cox (math teacher) was not. 19 Oct 1965, I had a music lesson today. We ate cake in Science class today (Mr. McKinney’s birthday celebration) Debby, Kay and Laurie seemed so taken with Diane now-a-days.”
A weekend brought my traipsing through the neighborhood selling Christmas cards. Kind-hearted Miss Ethel who lived a couple houses away, contributed to my small enterprise. Slowly I collected a little money and stashed it away in hopes of being able to buy my immediate family Christmas presents from my very own money.
Since Sandra and I had been at the county fair together with our brothers a few nights earlier, we enjoyed some extended time of an overnight, staying up until the wee hours and likely after eating pancakes on a Sunday morning (my father’s tradition was pancakes on Sundays) going to Sunday School together before parting ways later in the day.
The Science teacher, Mr. McKinney, seems to get a bit of extra attention during this time frame. He was younger than any teacher I had ever had up until this point in my schooling. Perhaps that was one reason he was quite popular among students. Why else would one ever note such a birthday?
“20 Oct 1965, Wednesday, I didn’t stay for basketball practice this afternoon. I made some banana pudding and some muffins for supper tonight. Some comet was supposed to come over the skies tonight. It didn’t. At least, we couldn’t see it. Mr. McKinney hit me during ball practice. 21 Oct 1965, I had a pretty good amount of homework tonight. I gave my Science report in class. I sat by Sambo on the way home on the school bus.”
Oh my, the memory of southern style banana pudding! That annotation looks as if supper consisted of banana pudding and muffins! I hardly think I could have gotten away with that. I have not treated my family to that delectable dish very often over the years. Shame on me. Could I use the excuse that it isn’t very healthy? No, not a good excuse: layers of bananas, vanilla wafers, vanilla pudding, and whipped cream! Ok, I’ll try to make a batch this coming weekend!
That comet pictured above was brilliant in parts of the country and was supposed to be visible all over the US. The southern US had a haze of overcast and thereby we missed the splendor, but now in 2017 I could find the public domain photo in NASA’s archives!
“22 Oct 1965, I had a music lesson. We ate barbecue at the schoolhouse. Mr T. Worthington fell at the schoolhouse. He was standing about four feet from me at the time. 23 Oct 1965, I have just been messing around all day long. Did most of my lessons. I typed a letter to Mike and Macy.”
A parent of a friend took a spill. As our parents all moved into their 50's and 60’s, I’m reminded of friends now in my peer group who have lost some steadiness and don’t move around with the agility of just a few years ago.
Seems I was putting my newly acquired skill of typing to good use. Typing a letter to friends was not so common. Typically, a sheet of stationary with pen-in-hand was the most common way to correspond with friends.
“24 Oct 1965, I went to Sunday School. Then we went to Columbus. Ate at the S & S cafeteria. We picked up Etta from the Saint Francis hospital. Her dad is in the hospital. She stayed at our house until 7PM. 25 Oct 1965, Mr. McKinney is a real cool teacher. I really like him. He understands students and he can be quite funny. A nut really. I think about Hal a lot. Did pretty good in basketball practice. Have game tomorrow. 26 Oct 1965, Tonight was our first basketball game of the season. The boys and girls teams won. I played all of one minute! We had cousins and my aunt and uncle over for supper. Today is my older cousin’s birthday. Her four year old daughter was in a bad mood. Fussed about everything, but we all had a good time anyway.”
Sundays continued to be filled with Sunday School and/or Church, but also almost without fail a trip to Columbus and the treat of eating out.
As I reflect back on the note about Etta and her father, I am reminded that just last April 2016, my childhood friend Etta passed away, likely in this same hospital mentioned in this post.
Ah, the excitement of the first basketball game of the season for the junior high team set in motion that weekly activity of building camaraderie and friendships, as we joined each other in being supportive fans attending the games or as in my case, struggled to gain some reputation as a member of the team. One minute of playing! Wow… That was a big disappointment.
“27 Oct 1965, We got an audio tape from Joe today. Little Rody talked to us on the tape. I could just cry I want to see him so! I am never going out for basketball again! 28 Oct 1965, I went to the Halloween Carnival in Richland at our Junior High. We don’t have school tomorrow. The floor show was very good. I saw everybody there. 29 Oct 1965, I went to the Halloween carnival over here in Lumpkin. I won a dish and a bow tie! Didn’t go to school today, because there was NO School. I decided not to stay for the basketball game after the carnival.”
Coming to terms with my brother’s family living in Germany now was a big adjustment for all of us. There was no more jumping in the car for a weekend trip to Tennessee to see them. Our corresponding by audio tape was forward thinking for that era. These ‘tapes’ weren’t cassettes. They were small reel to reel tapes about the size of the reels of film pictured in a previous story. After recording one side, we flipped them over and recorded the other side — getting about 30 minutes of voice recording per side.
Clearly, I was disappointed and probably somewhat disgusted at my stance in the world of junior high basketball. My dreams of being a star player, just because I was taller than most of my classmates, seemed dashed at this point. I felt like walking away, obviously, but I did hang in there.
I enjoyed Halloween as a kid. There really wasn’t much discussion in this era about the evils of celebrating Halloween. No one associated it with a worship of the dead or evil or dangerous spirits. At least in rural small town Georgia, the holiday represented a time for spending fun times with friends. A typical carnival had booths which offered silly activities — from a go-fishing booth where you’d throw a string extended from a fishing pole over a wall and once you felt a tug and pulled it back, a small trinket/gift of some sort dangled at the string’s end. Bobbing for apples was another activity I remember. Dunk-the-Teacher was a favorite — one of the schoolteachers would sit in a chair, suspended above a tank or small pool of water. Passers-by could pay a small fee to throw a ball and with good aim could succeed in knocking the teacher into the pool.
“30 Oct 1965, Laurie and I took her little sister and Lisa B trick or treating. Laurie and I didn’t get any candy this year, just the younger ones. Got back home at 8:30. Rode up to Columbus and got three new pair of socks. 31 Oct 1965, I went to Sunday School with Mama. Dad met us at church. Adie went with Jackie. We went to Eufaula and ate dinner (noontime meal) Drove out to Debby’s house.”
At 13, I can see that the thrill of Trick or Treat had changed. Taking younger kiddos around the neighborhoods had replaced the fun of going together with friends and soliciting candy from neighbors in exchange for not rolling their house in toilet paper or writing some simple message in chalk on the sidewalk nearby.
Again, I have a throw back thought to cliques and friends during these years. I mentioned Debby earlier as hanging out closely with several others and yet the weekend brought a visit to her house in the nearby Omaha vicinity, as I best recall.
Only a couple of months were left in 1965. Stand by for those concluding tales from November and December.
