Leon High School
Tallahassee, Florida
Class of 1959
What do you remember most about September 1955? Below are headlines for the month, followed by classmates' memories of the month, followed by links to other websites with September 1955 info.
To view other months/years of the countdown, click here to go back to the Countdown Page.
If the menus above don't work for you, try the text menu at the bottom of the page
September 1955 Headlines
(courtesy of http://dmarie.com/timecap/)
Sep 6 - Class of 1959 enters Leon High School
Sep 9 - Don Zimmer, hits 4,000th Dodger home run
Sep 9 - Elvis Presley's 1st appearance on Ed Sullivan's Show
Sep 10 - "Gunsmoke" premiers on CBS TV
Sep 15 - WCTV TV channel 6 in Tallahassee-Thomasville, FL
(CBS) begins
Sep 19 - Argentine president Juan Peron, resigns & flees
Sep 21 - Last allied occupying troops leave Austria
Sep 21 - Rocky Marciano KOs Archie Moore in 9 for
heavyweight boxing title
Sep 21 - USSR performs nuclear test
Sep 22 - (ITV) Commercial TV begins in England
Sep 24 - Pres Eisenhower suffers a heart attack on vacation
in Denver
Sep 26 - NY Stock Exchange worst price decline since 1929
Sep 29 - "Sergeant Preston," debuts on CBS
Sep 30 - Death of James Dean
COUNTDOWN TO GRADUATION - SEPTEMBER 1955
LINKS TO WEBSITES WITH GOBS OF MORE SEPTEMBER 1955 INFO
Top 10 Hits of September 1955
(First week of the month)
(courtesy of
1. Rock Around The Clock - Bill Haley & His Comets
2. Ain't That A Shame - Pat Boone
3. Yellow Rose Of Texas - Mitch Miller
4. Learnin' The Blues - Frank Sinatra
5. Hard To Get - Giselle Mackenzie
6. Yellow Rose Of Texas - Johnny Desmond
7. Seventeen - Boyd Bennett
8. A Blossom Fell - Nat King Cole
9. House Of Blue Lights - Chuck Miller
10. Maybelline - Chuck Berry
US R&B chart toppers this month:
Maybelline - Chuck Berry & His Combo
US Country chart toppers this month:
I Don't Care - Webb Pierce
Personal Memories of September 1955
(from Bob Hoffman, with contribution from Tom Cash!)
Here we are in September already! Starting High School! How exciting ... but what do you remember most?
I went to do my monthly search and got off on a tangent. See the 6 auto photos above? What do they all have in common? Answer further down. Click any photo to see it larger - click the name below the photo to read all about the car.
Well, as always, in my monthly attempt to arouse memories, I first looked over the list of headlines above, then did a Yahoo and Google Search on "September 1955." The first thing that jumped out at me was the 15th - WCTV TV channel 6 in Tallahassee-Thomasville, FL (CBS) begins! How about that! We made the headlines! I was surprised to learn that channel 6 just started then - thought sure I had watched it before high school. Guess not.
Another thing you might notice about the headlines is that there are some links (white underline) there. I saw that first one, Santa Barbara races, in my search and wondered why it was significant. Then, I came to the last one, death of James Dean, and learned why. Seems that James Dean drove his little Porsche convertible in that September 3rd-4th race, before totalling it and killing himself on September 30th. Juan Peron showed up in the search also, so I included a link to that page. Click the links to see more detail.
I always include headlines of interest to me, like Elvis and Rocky and nuclear testing and Ike and the stock market and Sergeant Preston. Click on the link above the headlines if you want to see a bunch more.
But, how about something about Leon High School. As I've said before, I don't recall much about starting school, etc., but one thing I do remember is the juke box in the cafeteria -- and I'm obviously not the only one. Tom Cash wrote "The one thing that came instantly to mind was the cafeteria. It had a juke box! I'm pretty sure I remember hearing Cherry Pink and Appleblossom White while eating lunch. Also, in the spring of '56 hearing Elvis for the first time sing Heartbreak Hotel." I don't see Cherry Pink in the Top 10 above, but it was #4 last month (August 1955), so it was probably on the juke box when we started school. The song that I remember most is Sixteen Tons by Ernie Ford. Seems he recorded it on September 17th, but it didn't come out until a month later, and then hit the top of the charts in 11 days. Must have stayed there a long time, because I'm sure I heard everybody singing along in the lunch room for a long, long time. Of course, my Freshman year is probably the only year I ate in the lunchroom, because I later got my first car, discovered the joys of eating "off-campus", and never darkened the door of the cafeteria again.
Now, it's quiz time. Those 6 cars pictured at the top of this chatter? All cars that were produced in 1955 and 1956, but no longer exist. I guess there may be a stray Studebaker or Packard factory hidden somewhere around - I think they still produce a limited number of Studebaker Avantis in Canada, but in general, these cars are all gone. I knew we had lost a few, but never realized the number was that high - and that's not all of them, just those that were probably most familiar to us. There was the Crosley - my brother's first car was one - wierd little car. Here's one Crosley link and here's another one. I think those stopped in 1948. And there were a bunch more ... but enough of that. How about which cars were produced then, were stopped, and are now being built again? I thought of two - Thunderbird and Chrysler 300. Click either of the blinkey photos below for more detail, a timeline, bigger pictures, etc..
PLEASE - if you have any walks down memory lane that you'd like to share, particularly in the October 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
'Shivers down the backbone....'
Well, that's pretty much all I've got to say about September. Surely, someone out there in the Class of 1959 has a better memory and can tell us some tidbits that may spark nostalgia in all of us?
Chrysler 300
Ford Thunderbird
Why, you may ask, am I so hung up on cars in September? Well, the 1956 models are about to show up and I wanted to be sure to do justice to the 1955 models first. Speaking of 1956 models, we may all know that the Chrysler 300-B had the most horsepower of all, but do you know which car was 2nd? Surprise, surprise, surprise ... it was the 1956 Studebaker Golden Hawk! Click here for details.
And what else did I find in my search? Mostly trivia, probably of interest to only a few. Did you know that there was a movie Titanic back in 1953? And, that Barbara Stanwyck was in it and it made it's debut in France in September 1955? Well, if you'd been in France instead of fooling around at Leon High, you might have known that. Click her photo to read more.
Wanna flip through the pages of the September 1955 Motor Trend Magazine with write-ups on the Top Cars of '55? Click on the Motor Trend cover and I'll show you a few of the pages, with neat ads and articles like those shown in miniature below. You can buy the mag on Ebay if you hurry - auction runs through Sep-15-05 19:27:55 PDT and there were no bids as of Sep-14-05 14:10:13.
