Once school was out, summer was always my favorite time of year. With nothing I had to do, I spent most days walking out Highway 64 to Oak Grove to chill with Jessie Yancey, Dennis Person or other friends of mine. I recall one day that I walked much further out Billy Maher Road instead, to Old Brownsville Road, where I recall running into Frederick Smith, and I remember it being one of the hottest days of the year. I also vividly remember the elderly people on their porches saying "Good Evening," which confused me as it was only about one o'clock in the afternoon! I eventually learned that for older African-Americans, there was no afternoon, only morning and evening. One older woman that Frederick and I stopped to talk to stated that the world was in the final days, as it had never been so hot in June before. She spoke on the subject with firm conviction.
As I recall, this was also the summer I took driving lessons at Bartlett High. After one of the lessons, as I was leaving the campus, a friend of mine named Anthony Crawford called down to me from an upstairs window that the Sophisticated Gents were having a party on July 12 out on Ellis Road. This was a social club that seemed to center around James Chaffin and some older guys that had gone to Bartlett High School before us. I had attended one of their parties before, but it had just begun to really get under way when my parents had expected me to come back home. Even so, I tried to attend their events when I could. Later that afternoon, I walked out to Oak Grove and found James Chaffin out in front of his house working on the blue Impala that he had purchased from Ricky Fields, and he also reminded me about the event on Friday night. Ricky and Kevin Burns drove up right around that time to see what James was doing with the old car, and then Terrence Kelley pulled up with flyers and posters for the event. Although I had wanted to attend the party, I don't recall being there, so I probably wasn't able to go.
That month I also had summer camp at Springdale Lakes at Myrtle, Mississippi near New Albany. This had been my church's presbytery camp grounds for a long time, and was much beloved. It had three spring-fed lakes, one of which had a sort of beach, and although the facilities were somewhat primitive, we always enjoyed ourselves. I didn't know of course at the time that we would never be back. The presbytery for some reason turned the camp and facilities over to the New Albany Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, which could not afford to maintain and keep it, so it was sold and closed. We eventually had summer camps in other locations, but nothing was ever the same after we lost Springale.
The very next week was state leadership camp at Kingston Springs, Tennessee, sponsored by the Tennessee Association of Student Councils. I had imagined it would be a fun few days, but it quickly got off to a bad start for me, because one of the workshops involved a scenario where a boat only had room for four people, and we were to decide who to keep and who to leave behind to die....as I recall one of the characters was a Black woman on welfare, another was a research scientist, and so on. Maybe if I had not just come from my Christian summer camp, I might have gone along with the program, but as it was, the "workshop" was immoral and disgusting, and I said so. In my opinion, it was entirely inappropriate to have high school students make value judgments about who should live or die in a disaster or crisis under the guise of "leadership training." I think the director of the camp got fairly disgusted with me, but I held my ground that as a Christian I could not participate in that particular exercise, and as I recall a few other high-schoolers agreed with me. I recall that Rhonda Holloway was also at the camp, and things ended up getting better before the week was out. At the campfire one night, a young man from Franklin County named Tracy Kinslow and his friend Tracy Hayward started rapping the lyrics to old rap songs, inlcuding "Rapper's Delight," which I hadn't thought of in years. We ended up becoming friends, at least during the camp days. Some years later, when I had occasion to drive through Winchester and Decherd, I tried to look Tracy up and could not find him. My mom and dad were originally supposed to pick me up from Kingston Springs, but they found that Rhonda's dad, Dr. Sammie Holloway was going up to pick her up, so he agreed to bring me back as well.
The following week I was in Gulfport, Mississippi with my grandparents, and as usual, I ventured across the tracks into the Black neighborhood called Soria City to shoot basketball and hang out. My grandmother didn't like the neighborhood much; she called it "Sewer City," but I never felt uncomfortable there. On the other hand, on one particular day, I encountered a group of youngsters who told me, "You in Soria City, now. Act right, homeboy!" I didn't quite know what to make of that, but they laughed and didn't seem malicious about it. Then one of them asked me if I was from California. That truly did surprise me, because I couldn't imagine why anyone would think I was from California.
Still a week later, I was back in Bartlett for band camp, although school had not yet started. In those days our practice field was behind the Bartlett United Methodist Church, and behind a row of houses on Shelby Street, which did not sit well with some of the people who lived in those houses. We had an amusing incident early when Mr. Cooke, the band director, backed his pickup truck into the wooden podium where the director or drum major was to stand and knocked it down. He was as good-natured about it as we were, although it left the directors and drum majors with no elevated place to stand for conducting. Not as funny was a lawsuit brought by a man living on Shelby Street against the band, complaining that since he worked nights and slept during the day, our afternoon rehearsals were depriving him of sleep or rest. Fortunately, when his case came to court about the end of August, the judge dismissed it. By then school was back in session.
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