During the evening of our special reunion, one of our founding residents, Emily, had composed and read out to all of us there, a special poem that summarizes a lot of everything that symbolized that special time in our lives. It's copied here with her permission (I hope):
" TALKIN’ ‘BOUT TREE TOP
Thank you old neighbors and friends for coming to this Tree Top Reunion in 2011.
Who but us could remember living off Nations Ford Rd as a little slice of heaven.
It was the 70’s when love was in the air along with the sweet smell of marijuana.
You could say no to getting high but if you inhaled at Tree Top…well, you were gonna.
When I told other friends about this reunion they gave me that “I don’t get it” stare.
Is it a high school, college or family reunion? No, it’s Tree Top…you just had to be there.
There’s no explaining Tree Top. We had no common ground other than being young and loving life.
There were only parties and more parties and suffering hangovers was our biggest strife.
Do you remember the parties at the Clubhouse? I can still smell the popcorn and the beer.
It was like Cheers where everyone was welcome and you just walked home…no DUI fear.
We somehow dragged ourselves to work each weekday for whatever jobs we had. Disco’d Friday night in Charlotte. Drove to Myrtle Beach Saturday for shagging at the Pad.
The patriarch of Tree Top was the beloved and truly unforgettable Joe Galyan.
He can be a man of few words but has the heart and spirit of a true stallion.
But you had to guard things around Joe because if he could see it, touch it or smell it
He would back up the Truck of Fortune, load it up and drive somewhere to sell it.
And then there were the beach trips. Sabbash over Easter and Gotcha over Labor Day.
Thank you Chief Gotcha Dick Hale! We still talk about those trips to this very day.
If you walked down a certain hallway at Tree Top and heard the sexy sounds of Barry White
You could be certain that Jack Lemons was entertaining some lovely lady in the night.
Or perhaps the melody you heard on that same hallway was the sultry Donna Summer
Which could only mean Charlie Lavene’s evening was not going to be a bummer!
Many great love stories began at Tree Top and the couples are still together and strong. Frank and Sissy deserve a prize for something. They finally got married…..but they dated for SO LONG!!
And then there were Charlotte Knight’s nights with Dan Pfeifer and they were just the cutest pair in town.
But so were Pete and Myra and all these years later they are still making the “Rounds”.
Gladys and Mike Vaughan were such a sweet couple and they are still sweethearts today. Mimi and Charlie Crisp….how they used to make me laugh with all the funny things they would say.
My first roommate at Tree Top was the cute Mary Hinson who will always have a special place in my heart.
My last roommate at Tree Top was the floozy Donna Reeves, a special friend and I hope we’re never far apart.
I never dated many guys at Tree Top because I was “in love” with Barry Porter …the bad boy with class.
Tucker told me years later he was her prom date….if I had known that then I would have knocked her on her ass.
E-Rack was always a cutie but the atmosphere in his apartment was so thick you could cut it with a knife.
Now I know that he was simply a very spiritual person and enjoyed being high on life.
Jill Kinney…I heard she had a party once and had a horse brought in. That girl had class!
I always wondered Jill…was it really a horse or just a horse’s ass?
And sweet Martha Bailey and Linda Tyler were always the parties’ loveliest belles.
We Southern girls say “Bless your heart” so sweetly when we really mean “Just go to Hell”.
Fred Parker was a party animal at Tree Top and could often be quite the rascal
But he had the sweetest roommate by the name of Zissel….we just called him Pascal.
Did you know that Mecklenburg County Sheriff Chip Bailey was a Tree Topper? Yes, he surely was.
In the midst of all the sinning and debauchery at Tree Top, there lived the future fuzz!
Who wins for the nicest guys at Tree Top? Joe Moody, Larry Harmon and Sam Tyler…that’s a slam dunk!
I have never heard them say an unkind word about anyone but I have seen them all drunk.
Did you know that our very own Susan Ratledge was in a movie with George Clooney.
She really is a movie star although until I saw it, I thought she may be a little looney.
Tree Top without Charlie House would be like Santa Claus without his deer.
You could always count on good old Charlie unless he met a floozy and she had beer.
Did you know that today is Elvis Presley’s 76th birthday? So a toast tonight to the King.
Joe Galyan took me to see Elvis in 1974 along with Shirley Stokes and Larry Springs.
We all moved away from those apartments on Farmhurst Drive & High Meadow Lane.
We moved on with our lives but somehow the Tree Top day memories still remain.
We have lost some dear friends but I think they are smiling down on this reunion from above.
Charlie, Ceil, Doug, Helen, Mike, Patsy, Ted and, Tommy….we celebrate your lives with love.
It’s easy to see tonight that we are all older, life is not as simple and certainly not as much fun.
But for a few years at Tree Top we were all together, we were all happy, we were all young.
If I had to compare those long ago days to something more poetic it would have to be Camelot.
“In short, there was simply not a more congenial spot for happily ever after than there at our Tree Top”.
Written by Emily Stephens Tadlock
for the 2011 Tree Top Reunion
Dilworth Billiards
Charlotte, N. C.
January 8, 2011
I agree with Emily, it was our "Camelot" for the swingin' swingles 70's. May it, and the friends we made there, live in our hearts forever.
Hey you all, please leave a comment, and tell what you thought. This is a perfect venue for that kind of thing. AND, as Emily and Joe mentioned, we're planning an Oct 1-2 weekend Tree Top Reunion here @ the beach, so comment on that as well. That's the weekend after the end of Fall SOS.
TTFN,
Your ex-Chief Gotcha
BTW - whatever happened to Barry (fire-starter) Houston?
