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196 17 Summertime The excitement and tension of Birmingham’s spring 1963 civil rights campaign eventually gave way to summertime exhaustion. The entire community seemed to need rest and time to catch our breath. For the Jimerson children summer meant, as well, a constant effort to escape the oppressive Alabama heat. Without home air conditioning, we resorted to visiting the library, stores, movie theater, and any other place that promised “air cooled” comfort. Mrs. Walbert again offered her backyard swimming pool as a welcome respite. Dad moved his office from the Comer Building to a modern high-rise called the 2121 Building (said as “twenty-one twenty-one”), located a few blocks from the city center. On some weekends—especially Sunday a#er church—Dad would decide he had “work to do” and take us all to the quiet air-conditioned office building. We played on the office desk chairs, pushing each other around the room. I enjoyed reading the exotic black-oriented magazines stacked on a table, especially Ebony and Jet. They showed images of black life that I never experienced directly. Jet even carried photos of lightskinned black bathing beauties along with “social register” news of black communities around the country and political reports and commentary. One day while working on my homework at Dad’s office I opened a drawer looking for a pencil. What I found surprised me: a cigaree pack with only a few cigarees le#. I didn’t say anything. But I realized I had seen an unsuspected side of my father. He was a closet smoker. We never saw him smoke, but I now knew one secret he kept from his children. At home I enjoyed listening to AM radio, especially WSGN, “the South’s greatest newspaper,” the slogan their call-leers supposedly represented. Doo-wop was fading out, as surfing music gained popularity. “Who do you like beer,” I asked Tony, “the Beach Boys or Jan and Dean?” Tony replied: “Naw, I like fast cars. Gimme a ’Vee or T-Bird.” He grinned. “Please? Prey please with sugar on it?” summertime 197 The WSGN disk jockeys played “Surfer Girl” by the Beach Boys, Jan and Dean’s “Surf City,” and the “surf guitar” instrumental “Pipeline” by the Chantays . They played sappy songs like “Hey, Paula” as well as records I liked, including “Sukiyaki” and “Louie, Louie.” Without identifying the musicians’ race, they also played music by Ray Charles, Lile Stevie Wonder, the Shirelles , and other black Motown and soul artists. Even Peter, Paul and Mary singing “If I Had a Hammer,” with a final stanza that echoed civil rights movement goals: “It’s the hammer of justice. It’s the bell of freedom.”™ Frustrated the summer before by my inability to hit curveballs, I had given up baseball. This le# a gaping hole in my summer schedule for 1963. For reasons inconceivable to me now, I decided to join marching band “camp” at Shades Valley High School. Every morning I rode my bike to the high school for practice. We spent an hour or so learning to march in formation on the school parking lot. As a trombone player I marched in the front row. The older high school band members took this very seriously. It almost seemed like army boot camp marching drills. As the morning heated up, we retreated to the somewhat cooler band room, where we rehearsed both marching songs and concert pieces. Every Thursday evening, for the five or six weeks of band camp, we played an outdoor concert in Central Park. We sat on folding chairs, while people—mostly parents of band members—brought lawn chairs or blankets. Some families tried to enjoy picnic meals while we tweeted, blared, and squeaked through ten or twelve selections. One thing playing trombone teaches you—even if, like me, you’re not very talented—is to wait patiently for your turn. Another is to be satisfied in a background role, providing a (somewhat) rhythmic bass line accompaniment to the real stars, trumpets and clarinets. But one Monday the other trombone players whispered excitedly that it was “our turn.” One of the selections for the week’s concert would be “Shoutin’ Liza Trombone,” a song they had played before. It turned out to be a Dixieland-style trombone solo, full of trombone bravado and long sustained glissandos (the smooth gliding notes played moving the slide forward...

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