1965 William C. Taylor High School Yearbook.
Photo/Courtesy Fauquier County Historical Society

Tommy C was standing in the doorway of Mrs. Ford’s 3rd period Math class blocking my way. This was the fifth day in a row he’d been waiting for me there and it wasn’t even his class. He had a serious look on his face and when I approached the door to go in he leaned over me and grabbed me by my shirt sleeve, “Somebody said you called me a n****r”. I pulled away from him, “I didn’t call you nothing”, I stuttered. But he wasn’t fazed, “I’m gon’na turn you upside down and stuff you in that trashcan over there”, I’d already heard it had happened to others so it wasn’t surprising to hear that I might be next. “You called me a n****r and I’m gon’na kick your butt!” I was trying to get by best I could, but he wasn’t having it. This was quite a turn of events from how life was the previous school year, just last year we had been king of the castle at Southeastern Elementary in Calverton. We ruled the hallways, even substituting for teachers when they were out for the day (I’ll bet they’d never allow that now). I had been placed in charge of the copier machine and the audio / visual projector, making copies when teachers needed them and moving the projector and TV stand from room to room, on demand. But here at Taylor I was a rookie, the first day of high school we were all lost in this huge complex. The school had 3 floors of classrooms, there was even a gymnasium and an auditorium. We arrived not knowing where to go or who we could trust. That’s when Tommy C. latched onto me as his next “project”. Just as he was about to drag me to the trashcan, another student, Tommy Marshall walked up behind him with a big grin on his face and asked him what he was doing. I had seen Tommy Marshall around and knew he was a friend of my brother, Raymond, he was also the drum major for the school’s infamous marching band. Tommy C. told him his plan to dump me upside down in a dumpster, but Tommy M. grabbed him and said, “Don’t you know who this is?!”.
“I don’t give a damn who he is, he’s getting stuffed, he called me a n****r”. Of course, I’d never called him anything, I didn’t even know who he was and definitely wasn’t out looking for trouble. “Wait a minute man, this is Raymond’s little brother, Ray Brown”. Tommy C. turned around and looked at me with shock on his face, “You’re Raymond’s brother? Naw man, are you really?” He stood me up, brushed me off and steadied me, “Hey man, I was just bull sh*tting with you. I wasn’t gonna do nothing to you, Raymond’s my man, and you’re his brother? and Barbara Brown is your sister? She’s fine.”
He let me go, continued straightening up my tussled clothes and told me that from then on if anyone bothered me I should come see him and he’d take care of it. It was starting to dawn on me that being Raymond’s little brother may have some perks after all… Believe it or not, that very same day, I went down to the cafeteria for lunch and ran into Tommy C. again. I had my lunch tray in hand, and he was sitting surrounded by his gang of friends. He called me over to his table and told me to sit down, as he introduced me to others at the table. There were books in the only free spot, and he told me to just sit them on the floor and go ahead and sit down, so I did. It never occurred to me that those books didn’t belong to him, but I soon found out who they belonged to. From behind me I heard, “Who moved my books, who moved my F—ing books!?” I turned around to see Barbara F. standing there holding her lunch tray and looking like she was going to kill somebody, ME!!! “Did you put my books on the floor? Pick’em up, NOW!” I have to tell you that on the first day of school we were warned to stay away from Barbara F, it may have been announced in Freshman orientation class, I’m not sure. But her reputation preceded her immensely. She was more feared than the toughest boys in school and here she was standing over me, ready to kick my butt. I got up as fast as I could, picked up her books, placed them on the table, gathered my tray and was about to slowly slink away when Tommy C. spoke up, “Wait a minute Barbara, don’t you know who this is?”
“I don’t care who he is, he’s about to find out who I am”, she screamed.
“Naw, naw, this is Ray’s brother, Ray Brown’s little brother, he’s okay” – But Barbara wasn’t quite ready to cool down yet, because by then a small crowd had gathered around to watch me get a beat down. Tommy C. finally got her to calm down and she asked me to pull up a chair (a different chair, she had already taken her chair back). From then on I was riding on the coat tails of my older brother and taking full advantage of his popularity.

Some of the girls sported Converse All Stars with the gym socks rolled down over their shoes.

Now, you may think that I’m exaggerating about just how popular Raymond was in High School. But you must realize that while I was an eighth grade freshman, he was a senior, played lead trumpet for the marching band, concert band and bass guitar player for “The Swingin’ Knights”, the soul band that played at all the school dances, they even had gigs at non-school functions like the National Guard Armory and juke joints in the area and they even went to D.C. to audition for a TV show once. You will find that Raymond is mentioned quite frequently in his senior class year book, now let’s see… voted “Most Likely to Succeed”, “Most Popular”, “Best Dressed”, with his girlfriend and present wife, Shirley, “Best Couple” and other popularity sundries that elude me right now. Raymond also ran a lucrative business at school. Before drugs came on the scene the only fix kids needed during the day was a sugar fix and that’s where Raymond came in. He carried a gym bag full of candy, Charm Pops, Chico Sticks, candy bars, gum, cookies, you name it, he had it. He would stop by Haught’s Store before getting on the school bus each morning and purchased his day’s supply of goodies and from the time he stepped on the bus til he ran out in mid-afternoon, he was open for business. The bus driver even allowed him to get off the bus at Southeastern and buy cookies from the cafeteria lady and he got off again to sell candy at Central Elementary each morning in front of the school, in plain view of the principal. The candy business kept him dressed in the latest styles. While all the other kids had to resort to shoplifting to get the clothes they wanted, Raymond was able to pay cash for his Converse All Stars, Peter’s jackets, Nehru shirts, Gaberdine pants, blazers, two tone Bucks, wingtips and all the other ‘must have’ clothes of the time. Long before name brand items were in, you had to own a Peter’s jacket to be anybody, Peters had the trademark ‘silk’ sleeves and to prove you were wearing an original Peters, guys would turn the jackets inside- out to show the silk sleeves and expose the Peters name on the label. I owned an imitation Peters, just like the imitation Chuck Taylor Tennis shoes I wore, mine weren’t Converse All Stars, I wore Bob Coozy’s, which were throw off of the “Chuck’s” that everyone else wore. The problem with that was when you walked into school with anything imitation, you knew you’d be challenged to prove you were wearing the real thing. So when I came to school with my Sears and Roebuck jacket that closely resembled a Peters, I knew that sometime during the day, someone was going to pull back the collar to check the label or check the back of the jacket to count the trademark creases, stitches, elastic or sleeves, that’s why when you had a Peters original, you just wore it inside out to rebuff anyone who might try to call it a fake.

Genuine Peters Sports Jacket .

Like I said earlier, I took full advantage of my brother’s popularity and it began to go to my head after a time. My friends started treating me differently. Henry Jefferson concocted a scheme to find a girlfriend for me by using Raymond’s name. He gathered ten of the prettiest girls in the eighth grade together and lined them up on the front steps of the school; acting as my hype man, he then announced me to the girls and told them who my brother was. He brought me out and told me to choose whoever I wanted from the group. Fortunately for me, my “King for a Day” crown only lasted seconds. I chose Alicia J. out of the group, as far as I was concerned she was the prettiest girl in school. “I’ll take that one” and pointed to Alicia, before I could get all the words out of my mouth she had already turned her back on the proceedings and started making her way back into the school. As she left I heard her mutter, “That’s okay, I’ll pass. ” That ended my rein as “King Sh-t”, as they use to say.

I joined the school marching band in the eighth grade, Barbara Jean and Raymond had been long standing members by then and I wanted to march along-side them in parades. Taylor High School was renowned for their great marching band. We even got to the point to where fireman’s carnivals paid us to appear in their parades, the payment was to assure that we attended, but at the same time precluded us from competing for trophies. They wanted us there, but we always won and no one else got a chance to get the top trophy so when bands in the area heard we would be there, they wouldn’t show up. They had to keep us from competing for an award, so they paid us not to, this also meant we had to put on a special show at the carnival grounds after the parade. We were the only band that was asked to do this. Our drum majors at the time were legendary for their dazzle and finesse, Tommy Marshall, Duke Walker come to mind. We were the Grambling state University of high school marching bands in our area. Our dance routines were crisp and uniform in their delivery.

On one occasion the Taylor High marching band was invited to the Sperryville Fireman’s Parade which is a least 30 miles from Warrenton and 40 miles from home. We marched in the parade and performed afterwards at the carnival grounds. After the parade, the band members relaxed by enjoying the carnival rides and the midway games. Somehow, I must have lost track of time and when I went back to get on the bus to go back to school, it had already left. It must have been around 10 or 11 pm by then. I was 13 years old and abandoned 40 miles from home. I expected at any moment that Raymond would realize I wasn’t on board the bus, yell out for them to turn around and come back to get me. This never happened. It started getting very late and I started getting worried. The carnival closed and I was forced to look for other means of getting back home. I decided to try to hitch hike, that’s when I ran into Pat George, this guy was at every fireman’s parade in a 50 mile radius of Warrenton. It was rumored that he was from a privileged background, but was somewhat mentally disadvantaged. Pat George always hitchhiked everywhere he went. He played his guitar and sang sitting on the back of a pickup. He was always in area parades; everyone knew him, but he seemed to have no friends. So I decided to hook up with him in hopes of having a better chance of catching a ride home or as close as I could get to home. As I stood on the Rt. 522 outside Sperryville, I told Mr. George of my predicament, he stayed quiet. George had exactly seven pieces of equipment that he was traveling with, 1 guitar, 1 microphone, 1 mike stand, 1 portable speaker, 1 speaker cable, 1 stool, 1 suitcase full of unknown junk. When I walked up to him he had those seven items sitting in front of him on the side of the road. While we stood there with our thumbs out watching cars pass by, I told him that I was going to move up the road a little at a time to get closer to home while waiting for someone to give us a ride. So I walked about a quarter of a mile ahead and he stayed where he was for a few minutes, then picked up his guitar and brought it up to where I was standing. He left his guitar near me and then he walked back to the rest of his equipment and one by one, brought each of the seven pieces of equipment and sat them by me. He counted them aloud as he sat each of them down (“1”, he said softly, going back and retrieving another item, “2”, going back and retrieving another, “3”, going back and retrieving another, and so on and so on until he got to “7”)… each piece was placed exactly as they had been where he’d been standing before. He could have easily carried more than one item at a time, but I guess the idea never came to him, and I knew better than to ask why he did it that way or to suggest he try another approach. A while later, we decided to move again and the meticulous process of moving his equipment, one piece at a time, began again. I just watched, too cold to worry about my safety with this man. I felt I knew him and other than this counting thing he had, he seemed ok to me. About two hours into our journey, my father and mother showed up and picked us up. Dad went home through Culpeper and since Pat George lived in Warrenton, Daddy put him out in Remington, so he could hitch the rest of the way home. Mom and Dad later told me that Raymond sat on the bus all the way home knowing that I was not on it and never told anyone to turn around to get me. When he arrived back at school, he got in the waiting car and announced “I think Stanley missed the bus”. I guess he didn’t want to bother anybody on the bus with this information. Mr. George passed away some years ago, I think he was reportedly hit on the road as he tried to hitch a ride after a parade. But I’ll never forget our short encounter.

The remainder of my first year at Taylor High was quite uneventful. I got into several fights, most often due to my not being able to keep my mouth closed. I saw several really good fights, one in particular comes to mind. I had a friend, we’ll just call him ‘Bodine’ (because that’s what we called him). Bodine was a really good basketball player and every day during lunch there was a pickup basketball game in the gym. Bodine, being as good a player as he was, was always picked to play. I, on the other hand, was usually a spectator. On this day, Petey M. was playing on the opposite team as Bodine. Now, you’d have to know that Petey had somewhat of a reputation as a tough guy, someone you would not want to mess with. So when Petey had the ball, most folks kind of backed off a bit and let him do just about whatever he wanted. Their defense was lowered a notch when they guarded him. Bodine, for some reason, had not yet caught on to this practice and guarded Petey as tightly as he guarded anyone else, this was unfortunate. Petey got the ball and drove toward the basket. He bogarded his way past Bodine, elbowed him as he jumped and scored over him. The very next time down the court, Bodine was determined to not allow the same thing to happen, so when Petey drove toward the basket, Bodine jumped and swatted the ball completely across the court. There were o-o-o-hs and a-a-a-ahs from the bleachers, people sat in shock waiting for the next shoe to drop and it did not take long. Now you have to consider Petey’s reputation, he was reputed to carry a gun to school, he was reputed to have used it before, so by reputation, your best bet was to stay away from this guy and do absolutely nothing to upset him. Bodine was aware of this, so when Petey turned to him in the middle of the basketball court and began to pummel him to the ground, both fists smashing him in his face, all Bodine could do was lie there defenseless with his hands in the air in a surrendering gesture lying on his back. As Petey punched and kicked him, everyone just sat and watched helpless to do anything, because they knew if they did, their lives would be in jeopardy. I jumped up to put a stop to this terrible beating, but Henry Jefferson grabbed me by the arm and told me to sit my butt down and stay out of it. All I could do was watch it happen. Petey moved away from him, left the gym and left school. We all expected his next move was to get his gun and bring it back to school. Bodine got up, we ushered him out of the gym, and he stayed hidden for the rest of the day. The next day, when word got out that Petey was in school with his gun looking for Bodine, he didn’t find him because Bodine was smart enough not to come to school that day. I never went back to the gym at lunch time to watch any more basketball games after that. I must say that no one actually saw Petey with a gun, but the rumors ran rampant and were enough to make you stay clear of him and speak only when spoken to.

Henry saved my butt many times, even when I wasn’t even aware that I was in danger. He kept his nephew from beating me to a pulp after I had gone to a party over the weekend and stolen his girlfriend from him. The next Monday on the bus, Henry sat by Horace J. and kept him from pounding me senseless and I didn’t even know about it until the next day. But I did get dumped by his girl the same Monday and she and Horace J. got back together. I was probably just being used as a wake-up call for him to get his act together; she probably had no intention of going steady with me.
This takes us to the tenth grade. This was my last year at Taylor and Taylor’s last year as a High School. The last year it was segregated, it was turned into a middle school the following year and integrated.

As I look back over what I have written thus far, it makes me wonder why these stories and these incidents stick out so much in my mind. Especially when I notice that I have not mentioned very many teachers or things that I feel were a positive influence in my life, so I will do that now. When I think of teachers, there is a short list that comes to mind that have been positive role models to me.

1) Mr. T. J. Berry – Industrial Arts, Wm. C. Taylor High (He was also my elementary school teacher from 1st thru 4th grades)
2) Mr. Addison Lightfoot – Band Instructor – Wm. C. Taylor High
3) Mr. Clifford Hazzard – Principal – W.C. Taylor High

Yes, Wm. C. Taylor High School was like just about any other school in America and it left a positive and lasting impression on me, with many great memories. I hope that these memories, which I’ve shared with you, leave a positive impression on you as well.

All non-cited text is the property of:
S. P. Brown
Copyright ©1997-2013
All rights reserved
Revised: Sept. 2013