My mind was brought back several years to the late sixties and my high school days. During these days, Tomball Independent School District was the largest district in the area. The only one probably bigger was Cy-Fair. Now I know a lot of you have a hard time believing me, but Magnolia, Cy-Fair and Klein were periods on a page in comparison to Tomball. I don’t mean to be offensive to anyone, but I can remember the days when some of those schools would show up at football games with holes in their band uniforms.

During the late sixties I belonged to a band named December’s Children. We were a group of hippie wannabe’s. We wanted long hair, but it couldn’t be too long because it wasn’t allowed in school or in my home. I wanted to play the guitar like Jimi Hendrix, but my dad wouldn’t let me play loud enough to cause the needed feedback on my Fender Jaguar. I wanted to dance like Date Thomas, but my feet wouldn’t go in the right direction. (For those of you who do not know Date Thomas, don’t worry, I will write a story about him in the future) All in all as I said before, we were hippie wannabe’s.

The leader of our band was a guy named Danny Maddox. He was our lead singer. Jimmy Conn was our drummer and Donald Foley was our lead guitarist. If I’m not mistaken, Art Cummings was our bass player and yours truly played rhythm guitar. Me and Jimmy occasionally visit each other and reminisce about our youth.

Danny doubled as our manager and it was his duty to book our group with different gigs. During these days, somebody would reserve the old Humble Camp building and we would have high school dances out there. Humble Camp was a large gas plant on the west side of Tomball and they had a community building for use by the public.

If I’m not mistaken, we played one gig out there, but the highlight of my musical career was the year we were booked for the Magnolia High School Homecoming dance. I’m a little fuzzy on the year, but I think it was 1969. We were on Cloud Nine when we got this booking, as we knew the “out of town” exposure would surely launch our musical career.

Groups like The Beatles, Hendrix, ZZ Top and many others were real hot then and we were about to give them a run for their money.

The night of the dance I took my woman with me (now my wife, but UN-known to me at the time) and we were ready to blow the walls out at Magnolia High! A whole 20 people showed up…but we had fun anyway. One young lady in particular who sticks in my mind danced the night away to the music of December’s Children.

That’s the last gig I can remember. The band broke up and we all remained friends. I tried my solo career for a few months. I recorded some reel to reel tapes on Mrs. Bogs’ tape player and I even went to a guy in Houston and auditioned. I never told my parents I had gone into town, but looking back I have a hunch this guy wasn’t above board anyhow. I played and sang my song in his quarters, he thanked me and I left. He told me he was looking for a different style of music. God watches over little boys and foolish teenagers.

My band years are over. The songs I wrote are in my piano bench. The tape has been long gone and my Fender Jaguar was sold. Bo Diddley’s performing on TV. I need to dream for a while…

Clifford

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