THE BROOKS EXCHANGE BAND (1968-1969)

One of the first garage bands that I played in went by the name of The Brooks Exchange Band. We all lived in Hamptonville North Carolina and the name came from the local telephone company Yadkin Valley Telephone because we all lived in the 468 phone prefix. The first time we got together we practiced upstairs at Reid Lowder's home who was the principal of our High School Starmount High School. The members were Rod Lowder, Chris Shore, Dick Steelman, Keith Hall, Randy Long, and Tim Sizemore. Rod, Randy, and Tim played guitars, I played the bass, Dick Steelman played the keyboard, and Chris Shore played the drums. The group later was condensed to Rod, Chris, myself and Dick Steelman. We began practicing at Dick Steelman's house in the garage not knowing at the time bands were given the name Garage Bands. This would have been around 1968 and 1969. I would have been 13 and 14 years old. My first bass guitar was a Kent Newport Bass. The reason I bought a Kent was because Don Houser who performed in my brother's band played a Kent Bass. My first amp was a homemade amp which came out of a Wurlitzer Juke Box and it housed a fifteen in speaker. The amp belonged to Ronnie Wall who was the bass player for my brother's earlier band called The Invaders.

Book of Gratitude, Air Conditioning

When I was born in 1955 in Elkin NC at the Hugh Chatham Memorial Hospital, I was born premature. I weighed 4lbs and 5 oz. My mother was able to return home while I was left at the hospital to stay in an incubator until I was big enough to come home. My mother and father said that when they pulled up in the parking lot of the hospital they could hear me crying outside of the hospital. I never thought about it until I had grown up that the hospital didn’t have air conditioning and that the windows were raised to keep cool in the middle of July. We grew up in Jonesville NC without air conditioning and I didn’t think a thing about it being so hot. All of our cars didn’t come with air conditioning either. We just rode around with the windows down. We used an oscillating fan and that was all that we had in the 1950’s and 1960’s. I can remember when my grandfather built his new house in Hamptonville NC that he put in an attic fan. When the fan was on it would suck the outside air in and the curtains would stand straight out. Later on dad had one installed in his house too. A few years later dad bought a 50,000 btu window unit to go in our den and he had to have it specially wired for 220 volts. This was probably in the mid 1970’s. After I graduated and moved out and got married he had central air installed in his house. Today it is a common thing to have central air conditioning in every new house and also the older apartments now have a window unit. All the automobiles now come with air too. I am gracious for air conditioning everywhere that I go now. You just couldn’t imagine going into a restaurant or a store shopping that didn’t have air conditioning. If people had to go without air conditioning for just a few days they would have a hard time making it in today’s society. The schools in our community in Yadkin County would dismiss early when the summer heat was above a certain temperature because some of the rooms were not air conditioned. Just think of all of the animals that live and sleep outside in the summertime. Some of them do not even have any shade. The first thing that we look for while we stay outside is a good old shade tree to keep us cool. I must say again that I am grateful for air conditioning, fans and also shade trees to keep us cool in the summertime.