Jocko's pizza with extra pepperoni and a pitcher of Tuborg

When I was a senior in high school, I had a group of buddies, most of whom were football players at Dunwoody, who used to get together to amuse ourselves in various ways. A group of us used to refer to ourselves as the 'Irish Mafia' and we would get dressed up in our Sunday best, drive over to Sandy Springs and a restaurant known as The Speakeasy and we would pretend that we were a group of mobsters. The running joke involved a situation where a couple of the guys would enter the building, look around, then motion for me to enter. After that we would sit at a darkened booth and the guys would order for me to the waitress. When we finished eating, one of the other guys would pay and the protection would ease out to check the outside of the restaurant, then escort me out.

I was never real sure what the poor waitresses thought, but it was rather amusing to pretend we were some type of group hiding out from the other 'families' and the police. Of course we were all teenagers, just barely legal, and it was just a lark for us.

Anyway, one of my buddies from the group called me today. A good number of us seemed to have a nickname. Gary DeFilippo was "Flip." I was TEB, TB, Uncle Teb and Mr. Baynham. Flip always referred to me as 'Mr. Baynham'. Mike Williams was "Willie", John Boswell was "Boz." Then there were Jim Connolly, Graham Gardner and Ronnie Brown. There were a few others who came and went depending on the weekend.

When I think back on that we were really pretty goofy. I guess we just didn't care. Oddly, a few of us attended quite a few first rate colleges: Harvard, Stanford, the Naval Academy. A couple of them actually made it out to my wedding in California. Of course, some of them were in California at the time and still live out there. But we had a good group from my high school days at the wedding.

I have been thinking about those guys lately. Apparently, a couple of them got together recently and had a mini reunion. They were talking enough about me that Flip decided to call me. I now have numbers for Flip, Willie and Jim.

Flip came to Dunwoody when we were juniors and split time with Willie at tailback. One of the few games we won that year was against Cedar Shoals. I remember Willie had a ton of yards that day, and it seemed like there were a number of long runs where I was leading Willie down the field toward the end zone. Everytime as we got near the end zone, I would try to shade the defensive back to give Willie enough room to run into the end zone. And every time, Willie would cut away from the direction in which I was shading the d-back. Every time we broke free and headed toward the goal, Willie would cut back into the field and get tackled inside the five yard line.

Upon that occurrence, Coach Jackson would replace Willie with Flip, who would drive in for the touchdown. So by the end of the game, Flip had a ton of points scored, but little yardage and Willie had a ton of yards but no touchdowns. Just the way it went.

One break we had a 'mead party' in which we bought about every bottle of mead we could find. I remember falling asleep on the couch downstairs in the basement and waking up to see Flip playing "LaGrange" by ZZ Top on my dad's Martin acoustic guitar, while several of my buddies were gatoring on the floor. That was too much of a scene; I went back to sleep.

I also remember one time when we went over to the Defillipo house and called the information line for the Great Southeast Music Hall. The recording said that we could come over that night to hear 450 pounds of the best Chicago blues around. That night about ten white boys were just enthralled to hear Willie Dixon and his band from Chicago play some excellent blues. By the end of the evening, we were down on the side of the stage, shaking hands with the band and the man himself. His fingers were like kielbasa. It was rather difficult to shake hands with such massive hands.

But I can say I saw and shook hands with the great Willie Dixon. And all my buddies were there too.

The Music Hall and Underground were my second homes on the weekends in those days. What a lot of fun. What a lot of fun.

Live music. Draft beer. And Jocko's pizza.

Hot pretzels, a bucket of beer and seats on the floor of the music hall.

What a lot of fun.

I wonder what happened to James Lewis Dorsey?