Leon High School
Tallahassee, Florida
Class of 1959
What do you remember most about October 1955? Below are headlines for the month, followed by classmates' memories of the month, followed by links to other websites with October 1955 info.
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October 1955 Headlines
(courtesy of http://dmarie.com/timecap/)
Oct 1 - "Honeymooners" premieres
Oct 2 - "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" premiers
Oct 3 - "Captain Kangaroo" premieres, Good Morning,
Captain!
Oct 3 - "Mickey Mouse Club" premieres
Oct 4 - Brooklyn Dodgers only World Series victory, beating
Yankees in 7 (World Series #52)
Oct 6 - LSD made illegal in US
Oct 17 - Lee Merriwether joins the Today Show panel
Oct 20 - "No Time for Sergeants" opens on Broadway,
starring Andy Griffith
Oct 20 - Harry Belafonte records "Day-O" (Banana Boat
Song)
Oct 26 - Ngo Dinh Diem proclaims Vietnam a republic with
himself as pres
Oct 28 - Egypt & Saudi-Arabia sign defense treaty
Oct 29 - Belgium signs accord for 5 day work week (45
hours)
COUNTDOWN TO GRADUATION - OCTOBER 1955
LINKS TO WEBSITES WITH GOBS OF MORE OCTOBER 1955 INFO
Top 10 Hits of October 1955
(First week of the month)
(courtesy of
1. Yellow Rose Of Texas - Mitch Miller
2. Love Is A Many Splendoured Thing - Four Aces
3. Autumn Leaves - Roger Williams
4. Ain't That A Shame - Pat Boone
5. Moments To Remember - Four Lads
6. Yellow Rose Of Texas - Johnny Desmond
7. Tina Marie - Perry Como
8. Rock Around The Clock - Bill Haley & His Comets
9. Maybelline - Chuck Berry
10. Seventeen - Fontane Sisters
US R&B chart toppers this month:
Maybelline - Chuck Berry & His Combo
Only You - Platters
All By Myself - Fats Domino
US Country chart toppers this month:
I Don't Care - Webb Pierce
The Cattle Call - Eddy Arnold
Love, Love, Love - Webb Pierce
That Do Make It Nice - Eddy Arnold
Two magazines jumped out of my search, both of which I read back in the 50's. In fact, in October 1955, I was probably just leaving the Boys' Life family and "joining" the Playboy family. Click either magazine to see the cover in a larger view. The interesting things you'll notice on the Playboy cover are that there's no nudity and the price is 50 cents! My, my, how times have changed. CLICK HERE to get details about this October 1955 issue of Playboy. The Boy's Life popped up in both the Yahoo and the Google search. Not sure why, except this issue contains an episode of Og, Son of Og, which I guess was a biggie among the BL fans. To read a whole bunch about the entire Og series, which apparently ran in BL from 1922 through 1955, CLICK HERE.
Something else I bumped into was The History of Computing Project (thocp.net), which really has a bunch of detail about the history of computing, a topic close to my heart. According to thocp, October 1955 was important because "On 2 October 1955 at 23.45 the power finally shut off, the ENIAC retired. It’s estimated to have done more arithmetic than the entire human race has done prior to 1945." The ENIAC was the electronic numeric integrator and calculator, apparently an early computer brought to life about 1946. Click the photo on the upper left to read all about it.
About that same time, it seems that the Industrial Era of computing began, they initiated development of the FORTRAN language for the IBM 704, and began laying the groundwork for what would end up being my life's work. I didn't get into it until 1968 on a CDC 6500, but FORTRAN IV was definitely my language and I recall seeing a few rather old IBM machines while going to class at FSU. To read about History of Computing – Industrial Era 1955-1957, FORTRAN, and other related topics, click the photo of the IBM 702 on the left.
And that's about all I was able to dig up on October 1955. I keep trying to remember something significant from our high school days, as that was intended to be the topic here, but have had little success. As I said above, I remember the juke box and the cafeteria, and I recall there being somewhat of a race to see who could get to the cafeteria first. Seems like the teachers would hold us outside of the classroom door, then let us go when it was our turn. I remember rushing to get into the cafeteria line, and I recall there being a close race each day with Dick Whitmire - don't recall if he was in a nearby classroom or what, but I remember he and I would somehow end up at the cafeteria door at just about the same time each day.
Other than that, very little comes to mind about good old Leon. I remember those Leon book covers that had instructions on them on how to fold this way and that way to get them to fit whatever sized book we had. I suppose there are those who remember things like starting in band or on the football team or whatever, but I guess my time in those days was mostly occupied by motor scooters, newspaper routes, and just trying to make it through my first year in high school. And, speaking of getting by, I think it was about October 1955 when Mrs. Scarborough caught me cheating in Latin. I was in Latin I, then my brother, Dick, had her for Latin II the next hour. During our class, she would write the Latin II test on the blackboard. Seemed logical to me to copy it and pass it along to my brother and his friends, to aid them on the test. I couldn't believe it when my super-honest brother told her and gave the test copy to her. Seems like he could have just not read it, if he thought it was too dishonest. I didn't get in too much trouble, but it made me wonder about him. Guess he was trying to set an example for me. I don't think it worked too well ... haha. I didn't copy any more tests for him, however. He did stuff like that alot over the next few years ... trying to keep me as close as possible to the straight and narrow, I suppose. Don't think he had much affect - I think it was mostly luck and timing that kept me out of real trouble. Managed to make it all the way through high school without seeing the inside of a jail. Almost did around Spring Holiday time in my Junior year ... but that will come much later.
Well, that's it for this month. As usual, PLEASE - if you have any walks down memory lane that you'd like to share, particularly in the November 1955 time frame, by all means email them to me! I really enjoy having something in here written by someone other than me! I
Rockin' Rollin' Diaries
July '55 - '62
The charts in UK and USA, the releases
and other important events
Courtesy of http://www.rocknroll.freeserve.co.uk/october.htm
'Shivers down the backbone....'
Yup, all that computer stuff came later - in October 1955, I had no idea what a computer was and certainly no inkling that computers would occupy more of my time during my lifetime than eating or sleeping. One thing I do recall is "Ike" Eisenhower. Remember the "I Like Ike" campaign buttons? I do. Seems like he came through my previous home town of Superior, Wisconsin by train back in 1953 or 1954. Maybe I saw that in a movie, but I think I remember seeing him waving off the back of a train. Whatever, if you'd like to see a letter that Ike sent to Nikolai Aleksandrovich Bulganin in October 1955, click the Presidential Papers graphic.
Personal Memories of October 1955
Well, it's mid-October and I've not heard from any of you, so I guess I'll have to take that monthly walk down memory lane alone again this month. As always, I started with a search for "october 1955" on Yahoo and on Google, followed by perusal of the headlines listed above. I don't really wander through all this information to find topics, but rather to try to remind myself of topics that I can say something about.
Well, none of the above has much to do with Leon High School. In fact, this really ain't helping much on reviving my Leon memories, other than the Top Ten Hits list above. I can look through it and remember singing many of those in front of the cafeteria jukebox - Yellow Rose Of Texas, Ain't That A Shame, Rock Around The Clock, and Maybelline for sure. I also found another photo of an old jukebox - thought it was different from last month, but on closer examination, they look pretty much the same. The big deal on this one is that you can click it to see a closeup. Whoopee!
In my travels through the search hits, I also bumped into a list of the Country and Western releases in October 1955, on the Emory Law school website, of all places. Not sure what Emory Law has to do with C&W, but it looks like a complete list. Go check it out if you're a C&W fan.
OOPS!
I was just reviewing this page, before doing the November entry, and I noticed that I forgot to mention those graphics above (Mickey Mouse Club, Honeymooners, etc.) In case you didn't figure out, these relate to the headlines above, all great TV shows that premiered in October ... except Topper. Topper had its last episode broadcast on CBS in September 1955, then went to 6 months of reruns on ABC, followed by 5 months or reruns on NBC. Click any of the graphics above to read details of the shows, stars, etc.
