Long before the time I ever heard the name "Sun Tzu", I learned some of the teachings that have now become commonly accepted as good strategies during any level of conflict. I'm convinced, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that those lessons not only saved my life but saved the lives a many crewmen and copilots that flew with me.
I will admit that learning one of these things during a bar room brawl is a bit removed from the typical course of formal combat tactics that I would soon learn within the U S Army's syllabus of instruction. Despite the formality of all that, there was no way that I would ever abandon the hard learned lessons that came from witnessing things that happen when those teachings are ignored or abandoned.
The night of the bar room brawl just happened to take place during finals at Northwestern. It was also very close to the Christmas Holiday Season. The party started out to be a birthday celebration for one of the guys that worked as a truck driver for one of the motor freight companies that delivered and shipped the components that the Colossus Midland inventoried and distributed throughout our part of the South. There were lots of guys there and, as you may well imagine what a group of truckers might look like, there were some pretty tough guys on hand.
One of the guys at the party was named Franklin Rudolph Neal. Frank had received the nick name "Rudy Tootie Heavy Duty" or sometimes just "Heavy Duty." You can use your imagination of what a truck driver named Heavy Duty looked like. Despite his Big John frame work, in reality, he was a gentle giant but one who could handle himself when the time came.
Another member of the group was the former place kicker for the Northwestern Demons Football Team and a former neighbor of mine. He'd dead now but during his day, he was a scrapper, a great baseball player and a place kicker on the football team that should have gone to the NFL.
The last of the key players that night was a guy we called TW. He was a well known fist fighter from Fair Park High School and one that you would never want to get in a fight with.There were many more tough guys in the group including a pair of brothers that were hard bodied country boys who had come to town, found a job working as freight handlers, and did very well for themselves.
As things unfolded, the bar was packed and we had run out of drinks. I had the duty of going to the bar which was also jammed packed, and placing the order.While I was waiting, the guys on the end of the bar who were also waiting to place their order, began a conversation about playing cards. Being a card trickster who almost always had a deck of cards in his pocket, I spoke up and told them about a great card trick. They asked me to show them.
As I pulled the deck out and was fanning the cards getting ready to perform the trick, a guy came from behind me, grabbed me on the right shoulder, spun me around and said: "You can't play cards in here".
I explained to him that I wasn't playing cards and instead, was just showing the guys at the bar a trick. As I looked down at the deck of the cards and took my eyes off the guy, he hit me, broke my nose, knocked me out and I hit the floor.
As I was told later, there was more than a few "Oh shit!" exclamations from the bar area and things became very quiet. Several of the guys in our group heard it and made their way to the bar to see what had happened. When the first one arrived he found me laying in a pool of blood and turned me over to make sure it was me. When he saw that it was me, he said: "Who did this".
About that time, many more of my guys showed up and for just a second, the hitter turned his head away to see who these new guys were. That's when TW took the big, glass beer mug that was popular in the sixties, and broke it over his head.
He hit the ground in a semi conscious state and tried to get up. He made it to all 4's and was shaking his head once he'd managed to get to his hands and knees, still in the all 4's position. At that time, the place kicker for the Northwestern Football Team, let loose with one of those 50 yard field goal attempts and perfectly hit the mark between his legs which immediately put him back on the floor.
I don't know how long the beating took place on the hitter as I had regained consciousness and found myself holding a wooden bar stool making my way back to the hitter to cold cock him with the stool. Fortunately, someone from the bar that knew me but was not in my party, grabbed the bar stool and said "no, you'll kill him".
In the next few minutes the hitter was taken outside of the bar where one hell of a well deserved ass whippin' took place. Since I had to go to the hospital, I was taken away. The hitter had to go too but didn't go to the same one I did. I went to the Schumpert Hospital for surgery to fix the broken nose and the hitter went to Doctor's Hospital to repair the well deserved concussion and multiple broken ribs and contusions he'd received from my guys.
This was the first introduction I had ever received that taught me the value of striking when the other guy wasn't looking or had his back turned.
As I will relate later on in this epistle, I developed a keen skill for hiding in the night sky by shutting off our running lights and anti collision lights on the helicopter as well as NOT following orders of ingress and egress when attacking the North Vietnamese Army.
Next stop will be basic training at Ft. Polk then flight school. Stand by.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Monday, January 30, 2012
Part 18. Northwestern State University
College was a whole lot of fun and adventure. The 3 biggest social events of my college career stand out as a preface for what was later to come from me in life and, to this day, I relish the experiences I had as a member of the Kappa Alpha Fraternity.
When I was a pledge, my big brother was Michael Benson Muench (pronounced Minch), a blond headed wild man from Benson, Louisiana, a spot in the road just south of Mansfield, Louisiana that's roughly 35 miles south of my mom's house.
He was a great big brother and taught me the best way to gain pledge points and totally avoid having to do the menial tasks of washing active brother's cars or shining their shoes. I had to earn 500 points and washing cars and shoes didn't award many.
We came up with a plan that was based around the fact that our fraternity, one that was based on the gentlemanly times of the "Old South", did NOT have a Civil War cannon like all the other chapters had. Having remembered the John Wayne movie "Horse Soldiers", a Civil War flick that was filmed just outside of Natchitoches, my pledge brother and I did a little research when the rumors of a cannon being left there after the movie surfaced.
As it turned out, there was a cannon left on the film site which was on private property. We managed to wait until very late at night and we slowly and quietly slithered to the water's edge and borrowed a flat bottom boat that wasn't far from the site.
To make a long story short, be advised that a dis-assembled cannon WILL fit into the trunk of a 1966 Malibu SS 396 and a Standard Chevelle as long as you leave the trunk deck open. It will not however, fit into a 12' flat bottom boat. Despite all that and after many trips back and forth during the mosquito filled night, we eventually had our cannon.
We weren't asked many questions about it but whatever questions were asked resulted in some lie that surrounded a deal that assured the individual who owned it that it would be restored, loved and cared for at the University. That one managed to pass muster and we ended up as heroes.
All the pledge points we needed were awarded and neither Charles nor I had to shine another shoe or wash another car. The frat got together for a work day and before we knew it, the cannon was up and ready to fire. One golf ball shot from the cannon later, we were approached by campus security responding to the noise. We told them it was just a blank shot and just a test for future Old South celebrations. Got away with that one too.
Being a hero, I then was called in to participate in a difficult prank on our sister fraternity at Lamar University in Texas. As it turned out, and, as a function of brotherly love and maintaining a close relationship with other KA chapters, pranks were the order of the day. In this case I was asked to go to Lamar and steal the chapter's charter.
We pulled it off, got the charter and then called for a meeting. Protocol demanded that we expose our deed to #1, which was the term used then to describe the chapter's President. It was more of a jovial situation than one where two thieves were discovered. After much patting on the back by our Texas brothers and some behind the scenes planning of retribution, we were asked to come to the roof top of the frat house.
After making our way to the roof top which was above the second floor, we were told to low crawl and follow several of their brothers who were leading the way to the edge of the roof. Once there, we peeped over the top of a small wing wall that would prevent anyone from seeing the roof top from the street.
We were now sitting directly across the street from one of the girls dormitories, one which was equipped with the old style "crank out windows". Needless to say, it was hot as hell and the windows were cranked open in an upward position to let the steam out of....................Oh, did I forget to mention it was the girls shower room? Ugh, use your imagination, I will simply deny it all anyway. You know the term, plauseable deniability or something like that.
In any event, we knew that there would be a raid of some sort on our chapter and as we shook hands, laughed and said our goodbyes, we returned to Natchitoches to celebrate our success and wonder what manner of reciprocity would unfold from the brothers at Lamar.
As it turned out, one of the Lamar brothers decided to go home for a weekend. He lived in either McComb, Mississippi or Natchez, I can't remember which one but the Lamar brother kidnapped one of our guys and took him home with him. The next day when our brother showed up, he had an envelope in one hand and a smile on his face that ran from ear to ear. A meeting was called and all who were in attendence heard the details of the story.
At the end of his report, he pulled out the envelope, looked around the crowd of pledges and started laughing. He said: "Gentlemen, here is a little piece of paper that will be of great interest to your class". He pulled out a single sheet of yellow paper and announced that it came from the yellow pages section of a phone book at the airport in Natchez or McComb. He laughed and told us that we had to bring him the book and that it MUST match the torn page he had in his possession. That's when the light bulb went off in my head.
Being the airport bum that I had become, I knew that there was a Piper Cherokee 140 at the Natchitoches airport that could be rented. I called for a fund raiser and in no time, we solicited the services of a licensed pilot who grabbed whoever was in charge of getting the phone book and they flew eastward and soon crossed the Mississippi River.
Now that I think about it further, it was McComb. I didn't get to go on the trip but I definately planned the entire thing. Once the book was returned and the match was made, the pledge class surfaced as one of the best or most deviate in quite some time. This was not to be the last time that we used a plane to accomplish the craziness of a pledge class.
Shortly after that, in need of more money, I came up with a plan that held great promise for making extra cash. At the time, the idea surfaced because you could NOT buy Coors beer in Louisiana. The closest place was just east of Dallas in a town named Terrell, that was adjacent to Interstate 20. Forty five years ago the price of a case of Coors was $4.16 per case.
I left Natchitoches early one Saturday morning and made the round trip to Terrell and returned with a trunk full of Coors Beer in case lots. Since the typical college student of the day didn't have a ton of money to spend, he generally only had enough cash to fund one or two beers each for he and his date. I priced the Coors at $1.00 per can and made $20.00 per case. That was a ton of money 45 years ago.
I was making so much money on the side, I moved from the Rapides Men's Dorm to an apartment. As a coincidence, I moved in with a guy named Jackie Gibbs who was a friend of Lelands when he was in college at Northwestern.
I failed to mention earlier that my brother in law, Ronnie Oswald (rest in peace), who was a Produce Manager for Brookshire's Grocery Company in Shreveport, helped me get a job there as a package boy.
He did that because school let out at 3 pm but the Colossus closed by 5 pm and it was really difficult to make any time and therefore, any money. As another coincidence, the store manager and two of the butchers who arrived to take their place in the brand new Brookshire store in Natchitoches, were former work mates of mine and I immediately got a part time job there. Between working at the grocery store and bootlegging Coors beer, I had plenty of spending money.
Things were marvelous and despite the craziness of the hippie movement at the time, we avoided all of the drug things that were going on and focused on studies and having fun as a KA. As a matter of fact, I never even saw any marijuanna until I attended a training session for drugs when I was in Basic Training at Ft. Polk.
It sounds like all I did in college was bootleg and screw around. That's not true. All of the above happened over many semesters and I didn't get into any real trouble at all with the law or the faculty except for that panty raid thing.
As a matter of fact, during the fall semester of 68, I had already sharpened my airport bum skills to a point where getting that Cherokee 140 was pretty easy. Having some inside experience in the panty raid bidness, I came across some information about the new girls dorm that was very close to the KA house.
It seems, that in the early part of the fall semester when the temperatures were still hot as hell, several of the girls sun bathed topless on the roof of the dorm. It wasn't long before I connected the dots between the topless girls and a camera shot that could be taken from a low flying Cherokee 140 if it was running as silently as possible with engine speeds close to idle. The camera failed but the girls didn't. Man, was that a cool flight.
To end this, let me say that I was in a bar room brawl during finals of the fall semester of 68 and, being in the hospital for surgery to fix the broken nose, I missed a final which gave me an incomplete and dropped my GPA to a point where my draft status went to 1A and I was drafted into the Army. Whew, that ended my college career of craziness but did so after I had earned the 60 hours needed to qualify for flight school.
More coming later but I HAD to give you the example of the Cherokee 140 and how THAT influenced my life. Stand by for more.
.
When I was a pledge, my big brother was Michael Benson Muench (pronounced Minch), a blond headed wild man from Benson, Louisiana, a spot in the road just south of Mansfield, Louisiana that's roughly 35 miles south of my mom's house.
He was a great big brother and taught me the best way to gain pledge points and totally avoid having to do the menial tasks of washing active brother's cars or shining their shoes. I had to earn 500 points and washing cars and shoes didn't award many.
We came up with a plan that was based around the fact that our fraternity, one that was based on the gentlemanly times of the "Old South", did NOT have a Civil War cannon like all the other chapters had. Having remembered the John Wayne movie "Horse Soldiers", a Civil War flick that was filmed just outside of Natchitoches, my pledge brother and I did a little research when the rumors of a cannon being left there after the movie surfaced.
As it turned out, there was a cannon left on the film site which was on private property. We managed to wait until very late at night and we slowly and quietly slithered to the water's edge and borrowed a flat bottom boat that wasn't far from the site.
To make a long story short, be advised that a dis-assembled cannon WILL fit into the trunk of a 1966 Malibu SS 396 and a Standard Chevelle as long as you leave the trunk deck open. It will not however, fit into a 12' flat bottom boat. Despite all that and after many trips back and forth during the mosquito filled night, we eventually had our cannon.
We weren't asked many questions about it but whatever questions were asked resulted in some lie that surrounded a deal that assured the individual who owned it that it would be restored, loved and cared for at the University. That one managed to pass muster and we ended up as heroes.
All the pledge points we needed were awarded and neither Charles nor I had to shine another shoe or wash another car. The frat got together for a work day and before we knew it, the cannon was up and ready to fire. One golf ball shot from the cannon later, we were approached by campus security responding to the noise. We told them it was just a blank shot and just a test for future Old South celebrations. Got away with that one too.
Being a hero, I then was called in to participate in a difficult prank on our sister fraternity at Lamar University in Texas. As it turned out, and, as a function of brotherly love and maintaining a close relationship with other KA chapters, pranks were the order of the day. In this case I was asked to go to Lamar and steal the chapter's charter.
We pulled it off, got the charter and then called for a meeting. Protocol demanded that we expose our deed to #1, which was the term used then to describe the chapter's President. It was more of a jovial situation than one where two thieves were discovered. After much patting on the back by our Texas brothers and some behind the scenes planning of retribution, we were asked to come to the roof top of the frat house.
After making our way to the roof top which was above the second floor, we were told to low crawl and follow several of their brothers who were leading the way to the edge of the roof. Once there, we peeped over the top of a small wing wall that would prevent anyone from seeing the roof top from the street.
We were now sitting directly across the street from one of the girls dormitories, one which was equipped with the old style "crank out windows". Needless to say, it was hot as hell and the windows were cranked open in an upward position to let the steam out of....................Oh, did I forget to mention it was the girls shower room? Ugh, use your imagination, I will simply deny it all anyway. You know the term, plauseable deniability or something like that.
In any event, we knew that there would be a raid of some sort on our chapter and as we shook hands, laughed and said our goodbyes, we returned to Natchitoches to celebrate our success and wonder what manner of reciprocity would unfold from the brothers at Lamar.
As it turned out, one of the Lamar brothers decided to go home for a weekend. He lived in either McComb, Mississippi or Natchez, I can't remember which one but the Lamar brother kidnapped one of our guys and took him home with him. The next day when our brother showed up, he had an envelope in one hand and a smile on his face that ran from ear to ear. A meeting was called and all who were in attendence heard the details of the story.
At the end of his report, he pulled out the envelope, looked around the crowd of pledges and started laughing. He said: "Gentlemen, here is a little piece of paper that will be of great interest to your class". He pulled out a single sheet of yellow paper and announced that it came from the yellow pages section of a phone book at the airport in Natchez or McComb. He laughed and told us that we had to bring him the book and that it MUST match the torn page he had in his possession. That's when the light bulb went off in my head.
Being the airport bum that I had become, I knew that there was a Piper Cherokee 140 at the Natchitoches airport that could be rented. I called for a fund raiser and in no time, we solicited the services of a licensed pilot who grabbed whoever was in charge of getting the phone book and they flew eastward and soon crossed the Mississippi River.
Now that I think about it further, it was McComb. I didn't get to go on the trip but I definately planned the entire thing. Once the book was returned and the match was made, the pledge class surfaced as one of the best or most deviate in quite some time. This was not to be the last time that we used a plane to accomplish the craziness of a pledge class.
Shortly after that, in need of more money, I came up with a plan that held great promise for making extra cash. At the time, the idea surfaced because you could NOT buy Coors beer in Louisiana. The closest place was just east of Dallas in a town named Terrell, that was adjacent to Interstate 20. Forty five years ago the price of a case of Coors was $4.16 per case.
I left Natchitoches early one Saturday morning and made the round trip to Terrell and returned with a trunk full of Coors Beer in case lots. Since the typical college student of the day didn't have a ton of money to spend, he generally only had enough cash to fund one or two beers each for he and his date. I priced the Coors at $1.00 per can and made $20.00 per case. That was a ton of money 45 years ago.
I was making so much money on the side, I moved from the Rapides Men's Dorm to an apartment. As a coincidence, I moved in with a guy named Jackie Gibbs who was a friend of Lelands when he was in college at Northwestern.
I failed to mention earlier that my brother in law, Ronnie Oswald (rest in peace), who was a Produce Manager for Brookshire's Grocery Company in Shreveport, helped me get a job there as a package boy.
He did that because school let out at 3 pm but the Colossus closed by 5 pm and it was really difficult to make any time and therefore, any money. As another coincidence, the store manager and two of the butchers who arrived to take their place in the brand new Brookshire store in Natchitoches, were former work mates of mine and I immediately got a part time job there. Between working at the grocery store and bootlegging Coors beer, I had plenty of spending money.
Things were marvelous and despite the craziness of the hippie movement at the time, we avoided all of the drug things that were going on and focused on studies and having fun as a KA. As a matter of fact, I never even saw any marijuanna until I attended a training session for drugs when I was in Basic Training at Ft. Polk.
It sounds like all I did in college was bootleg and screw around. That's not true. All of the above happened over many semesters and I didn't get into any real trouble at all with the law or the faculty except for that panty raid thing.
As a matter of fact, during the fall semester of 68, I had already sharpened my airport bum skills to a point where getting that Cherokee 140 was pretty easy. Having some inside experience in the panty raid bidness, I came across some information about the new girls dorm that was very close to the KA house.
It seems, that in the early part of the fall semester when the temperatures were still hot as hell, several of the girls sun bathed topless on the roof of the dorm. It wasn't long before I connected the dots between the topless girls and a camera shot that could be taken from a low flying Cherokee 140 if it was running as silently as possible with engine speeds close to idle. The camera failed but the girls didn't. Man, was that a cool flight.
To end this, let me say that I was in a bar room brawl during finals of the fall semester of 68 and, being in the hospital for surgery to fix the broken nose, I missed a final which gave me an incomplete and dropped my GPA to a point where my draft status went to 1A and I was drafted into the Army. Whew, that ended my college career of craziness but did so after I had earned the 60 hours needed to qualify for flight school.
More coming later but I HAD to give you the example of the Cherokee 140 and how THAT influenced my life. Stand by for more.
.
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Mr Parch came to visit.
I am so glad that I don't have an editor looking over my shoulder, yelling at me and saying: "YOU IDIOT, YOU CAN NOT DO THAT". I get to stop in the middle of a story, change directions and share with you some of the astounding things that have surfaced from the comment section and private emails.
First of all, I would like to say hi to Charlie. He's one of the pilots from the Blue Team that flew Hueys for the Cav when I was there. I would also like to welcome a Navy buddy of mine that I've known since the 60's. Welcome aboard John, glad you're here with Martha and Otto.
Now, as far as Mr. Parch is concerned, I would like to ask a question before I make the explanations about Parch.
1. Have you ever heard the statement: "We all have our demons, don't we!".
I would think that most of you have already heard that or, having read the question, you might agree that there is, among all of us, that little voice in our ear that comes from someplace inside of us. I gave mine a name and an address. He lives right on my right shoulder on Shoulder Demon Drive.
He jumps up at the craziest time and tells me what he wants said during any given conversation. Only problem with that has to do with the fact that he sometimes says the craziest thing. It ranges all over the place but as an example, how does "Kiss A Fat Baby's Ass" sound? If that's never aflicted you, how about: "Does your mother have any children that lived?"
As a joke, me and a friend of mine had a business card program on the computer and some card stock available for play. We put one together that said something like"
Parch
666 Shoulder Demon Drive
Hades, 71105
We never had to make any extras but had great fun with them before we tired of that game. Despite that, the crazy comments continue to this day and in reality, Parch is the one that made me come back over here and post this even though I posted a new one this morning.
You may also find it particularly strange that as I prepared the computer area (just like he told me to) and then walked over to the stove and took all the medications that I must take as a post surgery preventive med, Parch said:
"Don't take all that and THEN go get on the computer to make a post! You'll be stoned long before you finish it, you idiot".
I ignored that because I knew that as soon as I stopped, turned on the televison set and laid down on the couch, he would be messing with me saying something like: " I thought you were gonna make that post, tough guy".I would start feeling guilty about that time and I'd get up, do it and not go to sleep until 2 or 3 in the morning.
I have developed a pretty good relationship with Parch and sometimes even call him by name to help me with a phrase or any given problem I may be having. Earlier today, as I was thinking about a series of emails from a dear friend from high school, I concluded something relative to the foundation I keep referring to throughout this blog.
That email explained an involvement that his family had at Colossus that went back to the 1930's but ended in 1945.
As I thought about that and I considered the year that his family's involvement in the business began, I concluded that the "Foundation of people I'm referring to", really began 83 years ago on the "not blood related " side of the players found in this blog, and a bit more than that on the blood relative side. .
To briefly explain that, know that my Uncles were born prior to 1930 as they were old enough to join the Armed Forces in December 1941. My Daddy was born in 1906 but he was a Civilian Contractor at Camp Beauregard, Louisiana during the entire war and didn't make it overseas. FWIW, that places people on my family's side of the equation coming in 106 years ago and other players that weren't blood relatives, 83 years ago.
The moral of that story is this:
Related by blood or not, the players in this story come from that greatest generation of men and women that faced it all, fought it head on and came out as winners when they finished. That's an incredibly important aspect of credibility when a story must depend on the approval of so many.
When I say what I have to say further on, you will know that it is NOT coming from some half cocked dreamer who never fought a war, who never experienced that kind of uncertainty or endured that kind of sacrifice in the name of freedome.
Parch is telling me that it's time to shut it down and I'm going to take his advice. Before I go, please think about these things by trying to see a bit down the road and understand that repeated patterns of successful conduct, decade after decade, generation after generation, is the kind of thing that creates the legacies of great American Patriots. Your comments are appreciated.
!
First of all, I would like to say hi to Charlie. He's one of the pilots from the Blue Team that flew Hueys for the Cav when I was there. I would also like to welcome a Navy buddy of mine that I've known since the 60's. Welcome aboard John, glad you're here with Martha and Otto.
Now, as far as Mr. Parch is concerned, I would like to ask a question before I make the explanations about Parch.
1. Have you ever heard the statement: "We all have our demons, don't we!".
I would think that most of you have already heard that or, having read the question, you might agree that there is, among all of us, that little voice in our ear that comes from someplace inside of us. I gave mine a name and an address. He lives right on my right shoulder on Shoulder Demon Drive.
He jumps up at the craziest time and tells me what he wants said during any given conversation. Only problem with that has to do with the fact that he sometimes says the craziest thing. It ranges all over the place but as an example, how does "Kiss A Fat Baby's Ass" sound? If that's never aflicted you, how about: "Does your mother have any children that lived?"
As a joke, me and a friend of mine had a business card program on the computer and some card stock available for play. We put one together that said something like"
Parch
666 Shoulder Demon Drive
Hades, 71105
We never had to make any extras but had great fun with them before we tired of that game. Despite that, the crazy comments continue to this day and in reality, Parch is the one that made me come back over here and post this even though I posted a new one this morning.
You may also find it particularly strange that as I prepared the computer area (just like he told me to) and then walked over to the stove and took all the medications that I must take as a post surgery preventive med, Parch said:
"Don't take all that and THEN go get on the computer to make a post! You'll be stoned long before you finish it, you idiot".
I ignored that because I knew that as soon as I stopped, turned on the televison set and laid down on the couch, he would be messing with me saying something like: " I thought you were gonna make that post, tough guy".I would start feeling guilty about that time and I'd get up, do it and not go to sleep until 2 or 3 in the morning.
I have developed a pretty good relationship with Parch and sometimes even call him by name to help me with a phrase or any given problem I may be having. Earlier today, as I was thinking about a series of emails from a dear friend from high school, I concluded something relative to the foundation I keep referring to throughout this blog.
That email explained an involvement that his family had at Colossus that went back to the 1930's but ended in 1945.
As I thought about that and I considered the year that his family's involvement in the business began, I concluded that the "Foundation of people I'm referring to", really began 83 years ago on the "not blood related " side of the players found in this blog, and a bit more than that on the blood relative side. .
To briefly explain that, know that my Uncles were born prior to 1930 as they were old enough to join the Armed Forces in December 1941. My Daddy was born in 1906 but he was a Civilian Contractor at Camp Beauregard, Louisiana during the entire war and didn't make it overseas. FWIW, that places people on my family's side of the equation coming in 106 years ago and other players that weren't blood relatives, 83 years ago.
The moral of that story is this:
Related by blood or not, the players in this story come from that greatest generation of men and women that faced it all, fought it head on and came out as winners when they finished. That's an incredibly important aspect of credibility when a story must depend on the approval of so many.
When I say what I have to say further on, you will know that it is NOT coming from some half cocked dreamer who never fought a war, who never experienced that kind of uncertainty or endured that kind of sacrifice in the name of freedome.
Parch is telling me that it's time to shut it down and I'm going to take his advice. Before I go, please think about these things by trying to see a bit down the road and understand that repeated patterns of successful conduct, decade after decade, generation after generation, is the kind of thing that creates the legacies of great American Patriots. Your comments are appreciated.
!
Short note about blog participation.
You guys won't believe who popped up regarding the blog.
There are guys from grade school, high school, college, flight school, my first unit in Vietnam, the famous 199th Light Infantry Brigade and the second unit which was commanded by none other than George Patton's son.
He was gone by the time I arrived but those of us in the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment Air Cav Troop, weren't a part of flying the brass around, we were stictly a combat unit that was composed of Cobra Gun Ships, Aero Scouts and the Blue Team who flew the famous Huey. They did everything from night time combat ops that we called Nighthawk Guns as well as troop insertion and extraction.
In addition to that, and in perfect harmony with the back ground stories of my Uncles stories about World War II, I managed to track down a couple of well respected Louisiana boys who, dare I say, are connected to the great military strategist, General Robert E. Lee. I won't mention their names now but let me say that one is a successful attorney and the other is the most astute financial officer I ever had the good fortune to work with.
In any event, this thing is beginning to look like a who's who of influential people from many different disciplines from the 50's onward.
I'm so excited about the Lee family coming on board I will pretty much have to take a break for a while and get my ducks in a row. Already done some study on Robert E. Lee and the incredible military moves he made when the Civil War was in high gear.
I guess it's almost heracy to say that it's a shame he didn't have the supplies and logistical support he needed back during that day. In any event, thanks so much to all of you who are now confirming your support of this through comments on the blog and direct emails. It's an inspiration for me and the stimulant that I need to continue with the message that so many of you are now telling me to continue with.
There are guys from grade school, high school, college, flight school, my first unit in Vietnam, the famous 199th Light Infantry Brigade and the second unit which was commanded by none other than George Patton's son.
He was gone by the time I arrived but those of us in the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment Air Cav Troop, weren't a part of flying the brass around, we were stictly a combat unit that was composed of Cobra Gun Ships, Aero Scouts and the Blue Team who flew the famous Huey. They did everything from night time combat ops that we called Nighthawk Guns as well as troop insertion and extraction.
In addition to that, and in perfect harmony with the back ground stories of my Uncles stories about World War II, I managed to track down a couple of well respected Louisiana boys who, dare I say, are connected to the great military strategist, General Robert E. Lee. I won't mention their names now but let me say that one is a successful attorney and the other is the most astute financial officer I ever had the good fortune to work with.
In any event, this thing is beginning to look like a who's who of influential people from many different disciplines from the 50's onward.
I'm so excited about the Lee family coming on board I will pretty much have to take a break for a while and get my ducks in a row. Already done some study on Robert E. Lee and the incredible military moves he made when the Civil War was in high gear.
I guess it's almost heracy to say that it's a shame he didn't have the supplies and logistical support he needed back during that day. In any event, thanks so much to all of you who are now confirming your support of this through comments on the blog and direct emails. It's an inspiration for me and the stimulant that I need to continue with the message that so many of you are now telling me to continue with.
Saturday, January 28, 2012
Part 17, You should have seen this coming.
FWIW, I know how to spell "ninth grade". That one got by me as have several other mistakes.
In any event and as it relates to the foundation that seems to be so important to me, the most important part of my story and the tales of my junior and senior year at Byrd High School, has to do with the friendships I made and how that effected me later on.
I made friends with kids that were in my neighborhood that I hadn't known prior to going to Byrd. Many of them lived within a few blocks of me but I never knew them because they attended public school instead of St Joseph's and or Jesuit.
IT was a neat time and I met a ton of kids who would later take their part in society and participate in the war as well as many other things. Some were hippies, some were military minded and some, mostly the girls, were just wanting to have a good High School experience without any problems. My junior year was the year I met Melissa.
As time went on, the parties seemed to high light most of the experiences that were talked about by the group I ran around with. We had some great ones as one of the girls, Camille, came from a wealthy family that owned a farm house about 15 miles south of Bossier City which was located just across the river from Shreveport. We used to sneak down there, drink beer, listen to rock and roll and more or less, became typical high schoolers of the 60's.
I continued to read things about the second world war, continued to drive to the airport, whenever the opportunity arose, but I had to study like most kids and that, more than anything, brought my studies about Patton, Eisenhower and all the famous people in the second world war, to a halt. I didn't miss it because I was having too much fun making up for the years I'd missed while in boarding school but I didn"t let all of that interfere with my aviation curiosities.
Leland had been playing around the airport circuit as he also had a love of airplanes which eventually took him to Chu Li, South Vietnam as a plane captain in the Marine Corp. You can scroll down and see a picture of him that is titled "Big Brother" or something close to that. I'm sure those inspirations came in part, from Joe Messina and the many trips he'd made to the downtown airport as well as the smaller fields around town. Those influences as well as the fact that he had met and become friends with Charlie Harriston (rip). Charlie was a Joe Messina student who eventually became a corporate pilot. Unfortunately, Charlie was killed in an accident and has been sorely missed by many. Despite that, Leland made the rounds and discovered crop dusting hangers filled with old, radial engined crop dusters as well as a couple of dirt strips that were used to serve farmers who had their own planes.
During one of my rides through the country, I found a hanger that had a Money Mite in it. You'll have to google that but in short, it was a single seat, low wing single engine airplane that this particular farmer had painted in an RAF paint scheme like the British used during the Battle of Britan. It was cool and I visualized myself buying one at some point.
In any event, even though my two years at Byrd had many high lites like belonging to the track team, I spent more time than usual doing high school instead of doing the study of history that was so easy to do in boarding school. FWIW, I ran a 10.2 second 100 yard dash and a 52.8 second 440 yard dash when try outs were made. Both of those numbers were not far from the State record at the time and Coach Woodrow Turner figured me to be a track athlete with promise. I eventually specialized in the high jump as we had a group of runners that ended up SETTING the state records in my events.
Terry Bradshaw attended Woodlawn High School while I was attending Byrd. We both ran track for our respective schools so we met during the track meets. One meet, when I was on the south end of the field at Byrd where the high jump pit was located, we were told to hurry up and finish our event because Terry Bradshaw was schedule to throw the javelin.
He had already set a National record and was expected to break it again. Sure enough, we moved out of the way and Bradshaw came in and broke the record. It was really something to see as we knew who he was and had watched him play as the quarterback for Woodlawn many times. As odd as it may sound, we pretty much expected him to break it as he broke every record everywhere. He graduated from Woodlawn, went to Louisiana Tech in Ruston, Louisiana and then on the the Pittsburg Steelers. You know the rest of the story from there so I won't bother with the details.
Many years later and some time after his years as the Steelers quarterback, Terry built a cattle ranch a few miles south of Shreveport. As a fascination to Tim Jr, it was located very near his grandfather's farm, the great Major General George McGovern (ret).
Melissa and I both attended summer school during the summer of 67 and were in car pool together. I was a bit careful when picking her up as her step daddy, Eddie Joyce, always had a keen eye out for boys who came to see her or her sister Ceil. Eddie was a Saipan and Tinian veteran and many years later, he and I would laugh about my fears when I came to pick up Melissa. We became very close and spent hour upon hour swapping war stories and our experiences in fighting the Asian.
After summer school, I was pretty fired up to get going with college as I had discovered that Louisiana Tech had a Professional Aviation Course there where you could get a bachelor of science degree in that discipline. I had an offer to run track for Northeast State in Monroe, only 20 minutes down the road from Tech but decided, after a little prodding from my sister Linda, to attend Northwestern State in Natchitoches, which is Louisiana's oldest settlement.
I took her advice and began studies there immediately. THAT is another story filled with pranks as a KA fraternity man and some flying that you will find most interesting or maybe a little perverted. In any event, I'll put this away for now and begin my thoughts for college then flight school with the Army. Stand by.
In any event and as it relates to the foundation that seems to be so important to me, the most important part of my story and the tales of my junior and senior year at Byrd High School, has to do with the friendships I made and how that effected me later on.
I made friends with kids that were in my neighborhood that I hadn't known prior to going to Byrd. Many of them lived within a few blocks of me but I never knew them because they attended public school instead of St Joseph's and or Jesuit.
IT was a neat time and I met a ton of kids who would later take their part in society and participate in the war as well as many other things. Some were hippies, some were military minded and some, mostly the girls, were just wanting to have a good High School experience without any problems. My junior year was the year I met Melissa.
As time went on, the parties seemed to high light most of the experiences that were talked about by the group I ran around with. We had some great ones as one of the girls, Camille, came from a wealthy family that owned a farm house about 15 miles south of Bossier City which was located just across the river from Shreveport. We used to sneak down there, drink beer, listen to rock and roll and more or less, became typical high schoolers of the 60's.
I continued to read things about the second world war, continued to drive to the airport, whenever the opportunity arose, but I had to study like most kids and that, more than anything, brought my studies about Patton, Eisenhower and all the famous people in the second world war, to a halt. I didn't miss it because I was having too much fun making up for the years I'd missed while in boarding school but I didn"t let all of that interfere with my aviation curiosities.
Leland had been playing around the airport circuit as he also had a love of airplanes which eventually took him to Chu Li, South Vietnam as a plane captain in the Marine Corp. You can scroll down and see a picture of him that is titled "Big Brother" or something close to that. I'm sure those inspirations came in part, from Joe Messina and the many trips he'd made to the downtown airport as well as the smaller fields around town. Those influences as well as the fact that he had met and become friends with Charlie Harriston (rip). Charlie was a Joe Messina student who eventually became a corporate pilot. Unfortunately, Charlie was killed in an accident and has been sorely missed by many. Despite that, Leland made the rounds and discovered crop dusting hangers filled with old, radial engined crop dusters as well as a couple of dirt strips that were used to serve farmers who had their own planes.
During one of my rides through the country, I found a hanger that had a Money Mite in it. You'll have to google that but in short, it was a single seat, low wing single engine airplane that this particular farmer had painted in an RAF paint scheme like the British used during the Battle of Britan. It was cool and I visualized myself buying one at some point.
In any event, even though my two years at Byrd had many high lites like belonging to the track team, I spent more time than usual doing high school instead of doing the study of history that was so easy to do in boarding school. FWIW, I ran a 10.2 second 100 yard dash and a 52.8 second 440 yard dash when try outs were made. Both of those numbers were not far from the State record at the time and Coach Woodrow Turner figured me to be a track athlete with promise. I eventually specialized in the high jump as we had a group of runners that ended up SETTING the state records in my events.
Terry Bradshaw attended Woodlawn High School while I was attending Byrd. We both ran track for our respective schools so we met during the track meets. One meet, when I was on the south end of the field at Byrd where the high jump pit was located, we were told to hurry up and finish our event because Terry Bradshaw was schedule to throw the javelin.
He had already set a National record and was expected to break it again. Sure enough, we moved out of the way and Bradshaw came in and broke the record. It was really something to see as we knew who he was and had watched him play as the quarterback for Woodlawn many times. As odd as it may sound, we pretty much expected him to break it as he broke every record everywhere. He graduated from Woodlawn, went to Louisiana Tech in Ruston, Louisiana and then on the the Pittsburg Steelers. You know the rest of the story from there so I won't bother with the details.
Many years later and some time after his years as the Steelers quarterback, Terry built a cattle ranch a few miles south of Shreveport. As a fascination to Tim Jr, it was located very near his grandfather's farm, the great Major General George McGovern (ret).
Melissa and I both attended summer school during the summer of 67 and were in car pool together. I was a bit careful when picking her up as her step daddy, Eddie Joyce, always had a keen eye out for boys who came to see her or her sister Ceil. Eddie was a Saipan and Tinian veteran and many years later, he and I would laugh about my fears when I came to pick up Melissa. We became very close and spent hour upon hour swapping war stories and our experiences in fighting the Asian.
After summer school, I was pretty fired up to get going with college as I had discovered that Louisiana Tech had a Professional Aviation Course there where you could get a bachelor of science degree in that discipline. I had an offer to run track for Northeast State in Monroe, only 20 minutes down the road from Tech but decided, after a little prodding from my sister Linda, to attend Northwestern State in Natchitoches, which is Louisiana's oldest settlement.
I took her advice and began studies there immediately. THAT is another story filled with pranks as a KA fraternity man and some flying that you will find most interesting or maybe a little perverted. In any event, I'll put this away for now and begin my thoughts for college then flight school with the Army. Stand by.
Friday, January 27, 2012
Part 16. Update and corrections from 15.
I must have had one of those brain things because I messed up the day I received my driver's license. In any event, with all the refiguring and editing of the time line, I discovered that I actually received my license during the summer of my nineth to tenth grade year.
My episode with Father Junkin and the decision to repeat the 8th grade in Arkansas rather than spend a six week long summer school session at Jesuit, put me behind a year. That, and the fact that the early 1950's rule that didn't allow kids to enter the first grade until they were six, actually found me as a 7 year old when I finished the first grade.
The cool thing about that surrounds the opportunities I had at the Colossus Midland as a part time delivery boy who had already been everywhere and met everybody when I went along with my Uncles during delivery times to all the plants.
That summer, we had an emergency breakdown order for a "Bucket Elevator Belt" that was used to convey corn from the rail road unloading facility to the top of a grain elevator that was located in a feed mill in Ranger, Texas.
As luck would have it, my Uncle Woodrow called me into his office and asked if I wanted to go that far to make a delivery. Needless to say, when I looked at the map, I said that I would be thrilled to go as the grain elevator was past Abeline, Texas where Eisenhower was born. My mind was racing and I was trying to figure out how early I would have to leave to make a distance that long and still get to see Eisenhower.
I went to the belt fabrication shop and worked all day on the conveyor belt. I had to punch holes in it to accommodate the bolts that were used to attach the buckets that the corn would be scooped up with. It was really easy as we had a metal template that allowed us to align the bolt holes precisely and prevented any kind of mistake in the spacing of the elevator buckets that would be bolted there.
When we finished, I loaded it in the back of a station wagon they used for deliveries, went home and prepared to leave early the next morning.
I left Shreveport at the crack of dawn and was racing my way to the grain elevator so that I could leave and go back to visit Eisenhower's birth place.
I went through Dallas and Ft. Worth without even stopping for fuel and continued west bound to Ranger. It was a really long trip and I didn't quite have enough time to tour anything by the time I made it back to Abeline, but I did go into town to see a marker and some notes about Eisenhower. I was a little disappointed but decided that I would get back to the library and hit the books about Eisenhower when I made it back to Shreveport.
I pulled into the Colossus Midland warehouse early the next morning and was greeted with an "atta boy" from my Uncles and several pats on the back from the other guys there. Cecil Murray came in and hugged my neck and told me, in a somewhat joking fashion, that he was glad I made it and that I didn't stop at any of the strip clubs in Dallas to drink beer with the all the naked girls.
I"m sure I reminded him that I was only 15 but he just laughed out loud and told me to get ready to go again because he had another break down at an asphalt plant in Bossier City.
I loaded the pick up truck with a few supplies that the maintenance crew at The Winford Company needed and I was off for another adventure. Cecil had me stop on the way to the plant to pick up a dozen donuts. He told me to go to the back of the yard and report to "Snuffy".
Snuffy ran the part of the plant where all the rock crushing was done. There was a conveyor belt there that had ripped itself apart and they had to repair it with the Flexco fastners I'd brought. When I showed up with the fastners, he recognized the delivery truck and began waving his hands to direct me to a parking spot close to the crusher. When I got out with the donuts, his face lit up.
Introductions were made and I told him how I fit into the picture at Colossus. He told me that he had to run the plant all day and would much rather do the maintenance on the week end. I told him that if he would wait until Friday afternoon to order his stuff I would deliver it on Saturday morning with another box of donuts. He had to get back to work but asked me to take the packing slip to the office.
When I did that, I ran into the owner in the parking lot. His name was Jim Winford, a man I'd heard of but had never met.
He saw the pick up truck and the papers in my hand so he walked toward me. I extended my hand and we introduced ourselves.
He told me that he knew all of my Uncles and that he and Cecil Murray had been doing business for quite a while. I was really impressed that the actual owner of the company would take time to talk to a kid that was really nothing more than a delivery boy, but he did and made me feel right at home. Little did I know at the time but my relationship with the Winford family was to be one that lasted until the day I was mandated to retire by the VA hospital in Shreveport. That was December 28, 2010. My introduction to Jim Winford was made 48 years ago.
That relationship was so critical to this story that I will wait until I get to my "after Vietnam years" to define it and explain why it was and still is so important. They don't make people like the Winford's anymore and I assure you, it is a really cool story.
In any event, I wanted to get back on the time line prior to my junior year at Byrd High School but wanted to make sure that the "You should have seen this coming" concept included the experiences I had with people like the Winford Family and historical curiosities like the trip to Eisenhower's home place.
Thanks for putting up with the no grammer, no spell check madness that these posts seem to have as typical. I'm feeling a bit better now and hope to be able to continue with this tomorrow. Thanks also for the comments and encouragements to continue.
.
.
My episode with Father Junkin and the decision to repeat the 8th grade in Arkansas rather than spend a six week long summer school session at Jesuit, put me behind a year. That, and the fact that the early 1950's rule that didn't allow kids to enter the first grade until they were six, actually found me as a 7 year old when I finished the first grade.
The cool thing about that surrounds the opportunities I had at the Colossus Midland as a part time delivery boy who had already been everywhere and met everybody when I went along with my Uncles during delivery times to all the plants.
That summer, we had an emergency breakdown order for a "Bucket Elevator Belt" that was used to convey corn from the rail road unloading facility to the top of a grain elevator that was located in a feed mill in Ranger, Texas.
As luck would have it, my Uncle Woodrow called me into his office and asked if I wanted to go that far to make a delivery. Needless to say, when I looked at the map, I said that I would be thrilled to go as the grain elevator was past Abeline, Texas where Eisenhower was born. My mind was racing and I was trying to figure out how early I would have to leave to make a distance that long and still get to see Eisenhower.
I went to the belt fabrication shop and worked all day on the conveyor belt. I had to punch holes in it to accommodate the bolts that were used to attach the buckets that the corn would be scooped up with. It was really easy as we had a metal template that allowed us to align the bolt holes precisely and prevented any kind of mistake in the spacing of the elevator buckets that would be bolted there.
When we finished, I loaded it in the back of a station wagon they used for deliveries, went home and prepared to leave early the next morning.
I left Shreveport at the crack of dawn and was racing my way to the grain elevator so that I could leave and go back to visit Eisenhower's birth place.
I went through Dallas and Ft. Worth without even stopping for fuel and continued west bound to Ranger. It was a really long trip and I didn't quite have enough time to tour anything by the time I made it back to Abeline, but I did go into town to see a marker and some notes about Eisenhower. I was a little disappointed but decided that I would get back to the library and hit the books about Eisenhower when I made it back to Shreveport.
I pulled into the Colossus Midland warehouse early the next morning and was greeted with an "atta boy" from my Uncles and several pats on the back from the other guys there. Cecil Murray came in and hugged my neck and told me, in a somewhat joking fashion, that he was glad I made it and that I didn't stop at any of the strip clubs in Dallas to drink beer with the all the naked girls.
I"m sure I reminded him that I was only 15 but he just laughed out loud and told me to get ready to go again because he had another break down at an asphalt plant in Bossier City.
I loaded the pick up truck with a few supplies that the maintenance crew at The Winford Company needed and I was off for another adventure. Cecil had me stop on the way to the plant to pick up a dozen donuts. He told me to go to the back of the yard and report to "Snuffy".
Snuffy ran the part of the plant where all the rock crushing was done. There was a conveyor belt there that had ripped itself apart and they had to repair it with the Flexco fastners I'd brought. When I showed up with the fastners, he recognized the delivery truck and began waving his hands to direct me to a parking spot close to the crusher. When I got out with the donuts, his face lit up.
Introductions were made and I told him how I fit into the picture at Colossus. He told me that he had to run the plant all day and would much rather do the maintenance on the week end. I told him that if he would wait until Friday afternoon to order his stuff I would deliver it on Saturday morning with another box of donuts. He had to get back to work but asked me to take the packing slip to the office.
When I did that, I ran into the owner in the parking lot. His name was Jim Winford, a man I'd heard of but had never met.
He saw the pick up truck and the papers in my hand so he walked toward me. I extended my hand and we introduced ourselves.
He told me that he knew all of my Uncles and that he and Cecil Murray had been doing business for quite a while. I was really impressed that the actual owner of the company would take time to talk to a kid that was really nothing more than a delivery boy, but he did and made me feel right at home. Little did I know at the time but my relationship with the Winford family was to be one that lasted until the day I was mandated to retire by the VA hospital in Shreveport. That was December 28, 2010. My introduction to Jim Winford was made 48 years ago.
That relationship was so critical to this story that I will wait until I get to my "after Vietnam years" to define it and explain why it was and still is so important. They don't make people like the Winford's anymore and I assure you, it is a really cool story.
In any event, I wanted to get back on the time line prior to my junior year at Byrd High School but wanted to make sure that the "You should have seen this coming" concept included the experiences I had with people like the Winford Family and historical curiosities like the trip to Eisenhower's home place.
Thanks for putting up with the no grammer, no spell check madness that these posts seem to have as typical. I'm feeling a bit better now and hope to be able to continue with this tomorrow. Thanks also for the comments and encouragements to continue.
.
.
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Reviewing Posts
I'm feeling a bit of melancholy creeping in on me tonight.
I've really tried my best to keep all the time lines in order as it is important to me that you understand the skyrocketing rate of speed that my life was traveling after my Daddy died. The time frames are key to me but they are especially key to some of my family and friends who read this every week. There was a lot of ground covered from the date of his death and the first night I found myself in South Vietnam flying Nighthawk Gunships against the Dong Nghai Regiment of the Nort Vietnamese Army.
In the last two posts I discovered a bit that was missing as it relates to things that "were about to happen" and the time frames I was building to introduce those things to you. I'm only off by one summer but it was enough off the time line that I wanted to correct it as it is important as it relates to the path I'm taking with this story.
Gimme a break and cut me a little slack as I'm having one of those moments that the docs say is a function of radiation damage to the brain as well as the different paths that my audio and visual clues must take now that part of my right temporal lobe is history and can no longer do that job as it always did.
I'll be back in a bit. Will load up on meds as per doc's orders and fall into never, never land for a while until I get my strength back. TB
I've really tried my best to keep all the time lines in order as it is important to me that you understand the skyrocketing rate of speed that my life was traveling after my Daddy died. The time frames are key to me but they are especially key to some of my family and friends who read this every week. There was a lot of ground covered from the date of his death and the first night I found myself in South Vietnam flying Nighthawk Gunships against the Dong Nghai Regiment of the Nort Vietnamese Army.
In the last two posts I discovered a bit that was missing as it relates to things that "were about to happen" and the time frames I was building to introduce those things to you. I'm only off by one summer but it was enough off the time line that I wanted to correct it as it is important as it relates to the path I'm taking with this story.
Gimme a break and cut me a little slack as I'm having one of those moments that the docs say is a function of radiation damage to the brain as well as the different paths that my audio and visual clues must take now that part of my right temporal lobe is history and can no longer do that job as it always did.
I'll be back in a bit. Will load up on meds as per doc's orders and fall into never, never land for a while until I get my strength back. TB
Monday, January 23, 2012
Part 15. You should have seen this coming.
The summer between my sophomore and junior year in high school was an adventure unlike any I had ever experienced before. Instead of hanging out at the pool and visiting with friends from grade school and Jr High, I worked in the warehouse and went traveling with my Uncles.
I met a long list of people from Nacogdoches, Texas all the way to Texarkana, Arkansas. There were many towns that played a big part in the history of Texas and it was like taking a field trip with the history class. Most of those trips were with Cecil Murray and my Uncle Charles with a few mixed in with Uncle Woodrow.
Having had my introduction into the various plants that produced, plywood, dimension lumber, cross ties, paper and other forest products such as wood chips to make the paper, I began to go to other places such as Natchitoches, Louisiana (pronounced Nack uh tish), where I would eventually attend college and be a member of the Kappa Alpha Fraternity.
From there, we went east and northward toward Minden, Arcadia, where Bonnie and Clyde met their end, and then on to Monroe where we had another store. Minden had more sand and gravel plants than I had ever even imagined. They seemed to be on every corner.
There was a company there named "Gifford Hill" They would use a huge drag line to dig the sand and gravel out of a pond and then send it to their sizing plant for classification. There were huge machines there that classified the size of the gravel through "shaker screens" that were equipped with 3 decks of screen cloth that would eject the unwanted stuff and make sure the right size gravel was produced.
Next time you look at any concrete, take a close look and you might see nothing bigger than a rock that would pass through a 1 1/2" screen and nothing smaller than a 3/8" rock that would be retained on the bottom deck by using a 3/8" screen. They still use that specification or size of aggregate to make concrete today. Now, it's called ASTM 57 but then it was "Concrete Gravel".
It was neat to watch and all that rock was very abraisive which made my trips to Minden a regular occurrence. The trips were great fun and the education spanned every imagineable discipline from heavy machinery for mining all the way to simple machinery such as belt converyors.
As a very interesting part of that history, I eventually met some real heavy hitters that worked for Gifford Hill, a company that eventually made the Fortune 500 list. I didn't get to meet Joe Greer that summer but it wasn't long before I did and his story is well worth mentioning as it was very influential in my develpment.
Joe was born in 1899 or maybe 1900, I just don't remember the exact date but I do remember the story of his 12th year as a kid. He was working as, get this: "An Assitant Chuck Wagon Hand on a Cattle Drive". Those were his words and he laughed out loud when he told the story.
During that particular year, there was a terrible dry spell and there were serious concerns by the owner that he would lose it all that season. Joe told me about the huge creek beds that ran through the property that the cattle depended on for water. He said they were dry as a bone.
The owner came in one day and told everybody that he'd read a notice in the paper that the First World War was beginning and the Fort, that was very near the cattle ranch, would be needing alot of sand and gravel to expand and prepare the Fort for the upcoming war and the tens of thousands of troops that would be trained there.
In any event, the owner decided to dig those creek beds and supply that material as a way out of the impending doom of the cattle business that was taking a nose dive from the drought. The most interesting thing to me about that story unfolded when Joe told me who the owner was. It was Mister Hill as in Gifford Hill.
Joe watched the first bucket of material leave that creek bed and throughout his adult life, watched that company hit Fortune 500 success before he retired as one of the first of their employees. .
Early on, I didn't have a clue what a hydro electric dam was nor did I connect the dots between the health of industry and how that relates to the strength of our Armed Forces. The point I wanted to make in telling this story is just as applicable to today's day and time as it was during the prepatory stages of manning up for the Firest World War. It had to do with SECURITY not ECONOMICS.
One is directly related to the other but, under certain circumstances, all the money in the world won't do you a damn bit of good if you lose your security and therefore your freedom. In my life, it has always been Military First and then, fine tune those things that make the American way of life the best on earth.
I'll pull all this together as the posts continue but for those of you who have been here since the introduction to Post #1, I think it's important that you see, read, understand, why I am the way I am and the path of life that brought me to this point.
Stand by. As the story of the summer vacation between my sophomore and junior year unfolds, be advised that I get my drivers license in November of my Junior year and, as part time help at the Colossus, began making those trips by myself and making acquaintences that would last me a life time and serve me well during my 37 year long career.
.
I met a long list of people from Nacogdoches, Texas all the way to Texarkana, Arkansas. There were many towns that played a big part in the history of Texas and it was like taking a field trip with the history class. Most of those trips were with Cecil Murray and my Uncle Charles with a few mixed in with Uncle Woodrow.
Having had my introduction into the various plants that produced, plywood, dimension lumber, cross ties, paper and other forest products such as wood chips to make the paper, I began to go to other places such as Natchitoches, Louisiana (pronounced Nack uh tish), where I would eventually attend college and be a member of the Kappa Alpha Fraternity.
From there, we went east and northward toward Minden, Arcadia, where Bonnie and Clyde met their end, and then on to Monroe where we had another store. Minden had more sand and gravel plants than I had ever even imagined. They seemed to be on every corner.
There was a company there named "Gifford Hill" They would use a huge drag line to dig the sand and gravel out of a pond and then send it to their sizing plant for classification. There were huge machines there that classified the size of the gravel through "shaker screens" that were equipped with 3 decks of screen cloth that would eject the unwanted stuff and make sure the right size gravel was produced.
Next time you look at any concrete, take a close look and you might see nothing bigger than a rock that would pass through a 1 1/2" screen and nothing smaller than a 3/8" rock that would be retained on the bottom deck by using a 3/8" screen. They still use that specification or size of aggregate to make concrete today. Now, it's called ASTM 57 but then it was "Concrete Gravel".
It was neat to watch and all that rock was very abraisive which made my trips to Minden a regular occurrence. The trips were great fun and the education spanned every imagineable discipline from heavy machinery for mining all the way to simple machinery such as belt converyors.
As a very interesting part of that history, I eventually met some real heavy hitters that worked for Gifford Hill, a company that eventually made the Fortune 500 list. I didn't get to meet Joe Greer that summer but it wasn't long before I did and his story is well worth mentioning as it was very influential in my develpment.
Joe was born in 1899 or maybe 1900, I just don't remember the exact date but I do remember the story of his 12th year as a kid. He was working as, get this: "An Assitant Chuck Wagon Hand on a Cattle Drive". Those were his words and he laughed out loud when he told the story.
During that particular year, there was a terrible dry spell and there were serious concerns by the owner that he would lose it all that season. Joe told me about the huge creek beds that ran through the property that the cattle depended on for water. He said they were dry as a bone.
The owner came in one day and told everybody that he'd read a notice in the paper that the First World War was beginning and the Fort, that was very near the cattle ranch, would be needing alot of sand and gravel to expand and prepare the Fort for the upcoming war and the tens of thousands of troops that would be trained there.
In any event, the owner decided to dig those creek beds and supply that material as a way out of the impending doom of the cattle business that was taking a nose dive from the drought. The most interesting thing to me about that story unfolded when Joe told me who the owner was. It was Mister Hill as in Gifford Hill.
Joe watched the first bucket of material leave that creek bed and throughout his adult life, watched that company hit Fortune 500 success before he retired as one of the first of their employees. .
Early on, I didn't have a clue what a hydro electric dam was nor did I connect the dots between the health of industry and how that relates to the strength of our Armed Forces. The point I wanted to make in telling this story is just as applicable to today's day and time as it was during the prepatory stages of manning up for the Firest World War. It had to do with SECURITY not ECONOMICS.
One is directly related to the other but, under certain circumstances, all the money in the world won't do you a damn bit of good if you lose your security and therefore your freedom. In my life, it has always been Military First and then, fine tune those things that make the American way of life the best on earth.
I'll pull all this together as the posts continue but for those of you who have been here since the introduction to Post #1, I think it's important that you see, read, understand, why I am the way I am and the path of life that brought me to this point.
Stand by. As the story of the summer vacation between my sophomore and junior year unfolds, be advised that I get my drivers license in November of my Junior year and, as part time help at the Colossus, began making those trips by myself and making acquaintences that would last me a life time and serve me well during my 37 year long career.
.
Sunday, January 22, 2012
I give up, Which post is this? 12, 13, 14?
Sometimes when I wait too late to start a post, the evening meds take over and make you the stupid person that you can only be when you are STUPID on meds.
It's not like being drunk on beer or anything like that, in fact, it's more like the days of the hippie movement when you could walk into a smoke filled rock concert hall and discover that you're stoned before you get to your seat.
Despite that, I have to tell you that coming home and ending my boarding school career was a mighty sweet thing for me. I immediately hooked up with Greg and was brought up to speed on everything that was going on around the neighborhood and family.
By doing that, I also got to hook up with Aunt Grace, my Daddy's sister, and Uncle Charles, her World War II veteran husband. After Daddy passed away, he was my first of several surragate fathers on both sides of the family.
Uncle Charles had become somewhat of a specialist in his area of responsibility at the Colossus Midland Belting & Supply Company, of which he was part owner. Since Greg and I were his right hand men, so to speak, both of us ended up working there and doing the clean up stuff and simple warehouse work for kids.
During that time and in line with Uncle Charles's somewhat unique position as an owner and a field specialist, I got to travel with him and keep him company with stories about Morris and St. Gregorys. He took me to every account he had in the city but one of them was the huge Ralston Purina Plant where all kinds of specialty animal foods were made.
We went there to deliver some magical part that was the only thing left to make one of their machines runable. When we arrived, we went into a man's office, delivered the magic little part, put away the signed delivery ticket and began a conversation.
Uncle Charles knew him very well and it was clear that they had become good friends. After their initial greeting, he motioned me to come closer so that I could meet Mr. Hamp Smith. We shook hands and he and Uncle Charles shot the breeze about one of the systems in the plant. Soon after that short conversation was over, Uncle Charles and I left and went back to his car.
When we got in the car, Uncle Charles told me that Mr. Smith was a World War II veteran but he was a very special kind of veteran. Uncle Charles said that the government called him a Bataan Death March Survivor.
I freaked as I had already read a ton of stuff about McArthur, Stillwell and the entire campaign for the Phillipines. .He told me that I would soon have my driver's liscense and probably be delivering parts to Ralston on my own. He added that I should never, ever, ever mention that I knew about it or ask him any questions at all about it. I promised to keep it secret and away we went, back to the warehouse.
As luck would have it, Greg and I were out of school just in time for taking inventory and breaking in some brand new push brooms that would have to clean 14,000 square feet of floor space. Despite the fact that it was hot as hell, it was kinda neat and instructive to actually put your hand on every part in a warehouse two stories tall.
I also learned that serious industrial supply companies have a magazine rack in the men's room and that they are filled with brochures of every known part you could imagine.
I learned alot about power transmission by rote. I had them in my hand during inventory counts and then I had the brochure that explained all about it and it's application to any specific job for which it was manufactured. No, I didn't spend alot of time in the men's room but when I did go there, I did some studying that was often times followed by taking a brochure home for my bathroom.
As another wierd coincidence, a guy named Cecil Murray showed up for inventory. Cecil was like a forest product specialist but he had been around long enough to where he could go to any plant of any kind and know all about the component parts of their systems.
He was kinda like the company drill seargent. He would yell instructions to the warehouse employees from an open door of the sales room and expect it to go all the way to the back of the warehouse. The coincidental thing regarding Cecil was his time in the Army Air Corp during World War II.
Cecil was attached to a bomber squadron and was directly involved with the bomb loading end or that team. One year, the Air Corp had a bomb loading competition and it was held at Esler Field, only 130 miles south of Shreveport. He and his team won the competition and was immediately sent out west to begin training on larger systems that the B 25's and B 17's he'd been loading.
Let's just say that there's more coming from that story but for now, I'll just say he was eventually transferred to Tinian just a short time after the Saipan/Tinian invasion where we took it from the Japanese.
What a unique oddity it was that I knew 5 men in that convoy/battle group and 2 were blood kin with one other being a future father in law, the Great General G.E. McGovern ret with the last two being Melissa's step Daddy, Eddie and our own Cecil Murray.
It was really super cool to be working at the Colossus amidst family and friends as well as my mother who had gone to work in the accounting department. If you add to that the fact that I was roughly a 3 minute drive from Joe Massina's hanger which was on the same street the Colossus was,
it was geographic heaven for me. I had all the toys a big boy wanted and they were all right there in front of me, every day.
To top off all of this, Uncle Charles' other partners were my Uncle Woodrow who was married to my Daddy's sister Nell, the one that came to Morris with Momma to pick me up when I broke my arm.
Then there was Daddy's other sister Helen who married a doughboy from the first World War. He was always referred to as Uncle Shirley. His name was Francis Shirley Hebert (Ay Bare) but Shirley was it. Helen was always called Aunt Baby by neices and nephews but "Baby Lee" by her siblings. Don't ask me how that unfolded but that was just the way it was.
In any event, during the first 3 months of that summer, I had ended my years in boarding school, reconnected with my people, had a lot of day trips to industrial plants in the area, met a lot of grown people and was surrounded by World War II veterans.
Uncle Woodrow was alot like Uncle Charles in that he was a specialist, too. He hardly ever went to the plants as his duties pretty well chained him to the warehouse/office building. Despite that, I found out that he spent his time in the Navy teaching something of an electronic nature and was stationed at Great Lakes Naval Station, the same base where Tim Jr took basic training, 7 years ago.
For purposes of point and foundation, you may well fill in the blanks about all the war stories I was made privvy too and how the closeness of the airport continued to influence my mind about being a fighter pilot.
Keep hanging in there, there will be more soon.
Tim
It's not like being drunk on beer or anything like that, in fact, it's more like the days of the hippie movement when you could walk into a smoke filled rock concert hall and discover that you're stoned before you get to your seat.
Despite that, I have to tell you that coming home and ending my boarding school career was a mighty sweet thing for me. I immediately hooked up with Greg and was brought up to speed on everything that was going on around the neighborhood and family.
By doing that, I also got to hook up with Aunt Grace, my Daddy's sister, and Uncle Charles, her World War II veteran husband. After Daddy passed away, he was my first of several surragate fathers on both sides of the family.
Uncle Charles had become somewhat of a specialist in his area of responsibility at the Colossus Midland Belting & Supply Company, of which he was part owner. Since Greg and I were his right hand men, so to speak, both of us ended up working there and doing the clean up stuff and simple warehouse work for kids.
During that time and in line with Uncle Charles's somewhat unique position as an owner and a field specialist, I got to travel with him and keep him company with stories about Morris and St. Gregorys. He took me to every account he had in the city but one of them was the huge Ralston Purina Plant where all kinds of specialty animal foods were made.
We went there to deliver some magical part that was the only thing left to make one of their machines runable. When we arrived, we went into a man's office, delivered the magic little part, put away the signed delivery ticket and began a conversation.
Uncle Charles knew him very well and it was clear that they had become good friends. After their initial greeting, he motioned me to come closer so that I could meet Mr. Hamp Smith. We shook hands and he and Uncle Charles shot the breeze about one of the systems in the plant. Soon after that short conversation was over, Uncle Charles and I left and went back to his car.
When we got in the car, Uncle Charles told me that Mr. Smith was a World War II veteran but he was a very special kind of veteran. Uncle Charles said that the government called him a Bataan Death March Survivor.
I freaked as I had already read a ton of stuff about McArthur, Stillwell and the entire campaign for the Phillipines. .He told me that I would soon have my driver's liscense and probably be delivering parts to Ralston on my own. He added that I should never, ever, ever mention that I knew about it or ask him any questions at all about it. I promised to keep it secret and away we went, back to the warehouse.
As luck would have it, Greg and I were out of school just in time for taking inventory and breaking in some brand new push brooms that would have to clean 14,000 square feet of floor space. Despite the fact that it was hot as hell, it was kinda neat and instructive to actually put your hand on every part in a warehouse two stories tall.
I also learned that serious industrial supply companies have a magazine rack in the men's room and that they are filled with brochures of every known part you could imagine.
I learned alot about power transmission by rote. I had them in my hand during inventory counts and then I had the brochure that explained all about it and it's application to any specific job for which it was manufactured. No, I didn't spend alot of time in the men's room but when I did go there, I did some studying that was often times followed by taking a brochure home for my bathroom.
As another wierd coincidence, a guy named Cecil Murray showed up for inventory. Cecil was like a forest product specialist but he had been around long enough to where he could go to any plant of any kind and know all about the component parts of their systems.
He was kinda like the company drill seargent. He would yell instructions to the warehouse employees from an open door of the sales room and expect it to go all the way to the back of the warehouse. The coincidental thing regarding Cecil was his time in the Army Air Corp during World War II.
Cecil was attached to a bomber squadron and was directly involved with the bomb loading end or that team. One year, the Air Corp had a bomb loading competition and it was held at Esler Field, only 130 miles south of Shreveport. He and his team won the competition and was immediately sent out west to begin training on larger systems that the B 25's and B 17's he'd been loading.
Let's just say that there's more coming from that story but for now, I'll just say he was eventually transferred to Tinian just a short time after the Saipan/Tinian invasion where we took it from the Japanese.
What a unique oddity it was that I knew 5 men in that convoy/battle group and 2 were blood kin with one other being a future father in law, the Great General G.E. McGovern ret with the last two being Melissa's step Daddy, Eddie and our own Cecil Murray.
It was really super cool to be working at the Colossus amidst family and friends as well as my mother who had gone to work in the accounting department. If you add to that the fact that I was roughly a 3 minute drive from Joe Massina's hanger which was on the same street the Colossus was,
it was geographic heaven for me. I had all the toys a big boy wanted and they were all right there in front of me, every day.
To top off all of this, Uncle Charles' other partners were my Uncle Woodrow who was married to my Daddy's sister Nell, the one that came to Morris with Momma to pick me up when I broke my arm.
Then there was Daddy's other sister Helen who married a doughboy from the first World War. He was always referred to as Uncle Shirley. His name was Francis Shirley Hebert (Ay Bare) but Shirley was it. Helen was always called Aunt Baby by neices and nephews but "Baby Lee" by her siblings. Don't ask me how that unfolded but that was just the way it was.
In any event, during the first 3 months of that summer, I had ended my years in boarding school, reconnected with my people, had a lot of day trips to industrial plants in the area, met a lot of grown people and was surrounded by World War II veterans.
Uncle Woodrow was alot like Uncle Charles in that he was a specialist, too. He hardly ever went to the plants as his duties pretty well chained him to the warehouse/office building. Despite that, I found out that he spent his time in the Navy teaching something of an electronic nature and was stationed at Great Lakes Naval Station, the same base where Tim Jr took basic training, 7 years ago.
For purposes of point and foundation, you may well fill in the blanks about all the war stories I was made privvy too and how the closeness of the airport continued to influence my mind about being a fighter pilot.
Keep hanging in there, there will be more soon.
Tim
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Part 12
I can close my eyes and rewind the moment I first saw St. Gregorys. Thinking back and trying to relate that to you isn't really all that hard. If any of you remember the movie Love Story with Ryan ONeal and Ali McGraw, you're in luck cause it was, in some ways, just like the movie Love Story.
If any of you can remember the scene that Ryan Oneal played when he drove off to college in that super cool sports car and pulled up to Harvard or where ever he went, THAT is what the first vision of St. Gregorys looked like to me. It was day and night different than Morris and even Jesuit in Shreveport.
We went through admissions in short order and then, after a break in the "Visitors Lounge", we took the tour of the school. Momma and Aunt Nell, my Daddy's sister, were anxious to see the place as they had a long drive back home and 3 other children to attend to.
We were all blown away by the Indoor Olympic Swimming Pool, the air conditioned gymnasium, football field, tennis courts, chapel, school cafeteria and the Jr. College side of the campus. We ate in the same dining room as the college students and I found that to be extremely neat.
I recall thinking: "What am I doing at a Jr. College in Oklahoma as a 10th grader in high school?" I joked about that in my own mind, and simply wondered further, how much cash was all this costing? Eventually I found out that, as a Morris graduate, I was a shoe in as were the 3 other students from Morris that reported to St. Gregorys the same day I did. There wasn't any payola involved beyond the normal tuition etc.
I was even surprised by the dormatory. It may not sound like much to those of you who never experienced dormatory living but let me say that even the bed manufacturer's make a difference. We had bunk beds which I typically didn't like. These, however, were made out of heavy duty, solid steel frames that allowed one to turn over in their sleep without shaking the bunk mate's bed below.
The usual jitters you get when reporting to a boarding school were gone. O'Malley was in the bunk bed in the next isle over and I could hear Sullentrop talking to Joe Farris, another Morris graduate. We had already been fitted and supplied with our blue blazer, grey pants, wingtips and pin stripped tie and we felt ready to get into the program.
Day one was a breeze and the classrooms themselves were nothing like Morris. Neither were the teachers. We even had a civilian who taught Oklahoma history and civics.
It took no time at all to get into the daily regemine of classes. I liked everything and every teacher I had. I was still waiting for the "catch" to unfold as everything I was seeing was simply too good to be true. I didn't even SEE a swat stick and no one talked about that kind of punishment. Before long, I found out what kind of punishment was typical at St. Gregorys.
One day, Father Paul had an issue with me for some reason or another and declared that my punishment would be "To translate The Gallic War from Latin to English". I clearly remember, upon hearing my sentence, saying to myself: "Jesus, Mary and Joseph, what in the HELL is the Gallic War"?
Aggrevated at first, I began the mountain of paper work that I feared it would become. I didn't even know that France was a player in any of it. Suffice it to say that before the semester was complete, I had a ton of information outlining logistics and strategies about wars from the days of the Roman Empire, to add to my previous studies of World War II.
To add one other item, I did not get a single swat that semester but I sure did get an education in the pros and cons of military maneuver.
I had great fun going to Oklahoma City on an occassional week end. My buddy Pat Cullen of The Cullen Lumber Company fortune, invited me home with him on several occassions. I met a girl from McGinness High School named Carolyn Reinig and I began to understand why some of the city kids wouldn't even THINK about going to a non co-educational school. Lordy, was she fine. Another girl whos first name I have forgotten taught me how to french kiss. Oddly enough, her last name has never been a problem to me, it's Hoover,
Thanksgiving was coming up before we knew it. I was talking to some of the guys about the bus trip and how long it was because we were almost in Oklahoma City but we had to go through Ft. Smith, Arkansas to get to Louisiana. It was some awful amount of time that was probably close to 12 hours. Farris heard that and told me that his daddy was coming in their airplane to fly him back to Little Rock for Thanksgiving. He said he would call his Daddy, who I knew from Morris days, and ask if I could ride to Little Rock with them in the plane and only have a 2 hour ride to Texarkana. His dad said "sure" and off we went to pack.
The following day Mr. Farris showed up with another man and picked Joe and I up for the ride to the airport and the flight to Little Rock. He had made arrangements for a car at the airport and all the plans were working like a charm. When we got to his airplane and stopped the car to unload, Joe said: "This is Daddy's Plane". It was a blue and white, twin engined, Aero Commander, the dream airplane to me.
Joe and his Daddy sat in the back to catch up on stuff and I had the great priveledge to occuply the right seat in the cockpit. THIS was a long way from a Piper Cub! I observed everthing from the preflight, the pre take off check list, the starting procedure and the radio work between the pilot and the tower. It was magical to me and I felt like I was born to be there, destined to fill that seat one day.
The flight to Little Rock was the nuts. We flew over mountain ridges where one of the Indian tribes stationed their out posts to make sure the Indians that came from the Mississippi River Plains, never invaded their territory. This is part of what we now call "The Indian Nations" and it is beautiful and filled with history.
We made it to Little Rock in a flight time that didn't last nearly long enough as far as I was concerned. I was in heaven. A two hour bus trip to Texarkana and an hour to Shreveport from there made the entire trip much faster than taking the bus. It was an experience that a tenth grader has never forgotten.
In addition to all the other things we did such as work outs in the Olympic Sized Pool, St Gregorys had a field trip for each class. Since we were the graduating Sophomore class of that year, we actually got to pick one of several locations to camp.
One of my good buddies was a guy named Raymond Kipp. I can't remember which tribe Ray was from but he was a pure blooded American Indian, the real deal and not one that had been so domesticated that there was very little connection to the past. In no way was this Ray's case.
You could tell that there was a very slight difference in his pronounciation/accent of English and that it was due to the fact that English was his second language. One time I heard him speaking to someone on the pay phone we used to call home. Ray had a great family and called home, too.
I overheard one of those calls and, a part of the conversation he had was in his native tongue. He was such a cool guy to have as my friend at the time because the camp site we picked had been a part of the Kipp Family Camp Outs and Ray filled me in on all kinds of neat stuff there.
Ray told me that the park had a river that ran through it. He said that it wasn't a wide river but it always had a real good flow to it. He told a story about a waterfall there that was only 10 or 15 feet wide and maybe 5' tall. He said that he and his brothes or Uncles use to go there to hide behind the sheet of water that formed that curtain as the water flowed into the stream below..
When I asked him why they needed to hide, he smilled and said: "To hide the White Lightning, Indians can't drink in the park". I thought to myself, "WHITE LIGHTNING", oh my God.
One thing led to another and between me, O'Malley and Ray, we came up with a plan where we would camp very close to the waterfall and that Ray would get the home brew and bring it to the camp.
The first night we were there, these "frog gigers" weren't missed, especially by the old Morris boys who knew we'd hunted frogs the entire 3 years we were at Morris. Frog Giggin' my foot!
Me, Ray and OMalley had a quart mason jar of pure bred white lightinin' made by the Indians that were friends or relatives of Ray. We made it to the water fall, climbed under it like the scene in "The Last of the Mohicans" where the daughters of the British General were hiding as well as a few others in their party including Daniel Day Lewis or whatever the star's name was. It was just like that, just not as big.
We did not even come close to finishing the quart jar as, by the end of the first cup, we had already had visions of the future. All in all, it didn't matter because none of us got caught and we got a great laugh out of it.
Shortly after the camping trip, we said goodbye and headed home for the summer. I didn't know then that I would never see Ray again as he was killed in action in Vietnam.
You could almost hear the sound of my heart hitting the floor when I found that out, as it was only last month during an outreach program I was going through to re connect with some friends from the past to see if they were Veterans. All of a sudden, being retired now, efforts to reconnect with some can bring with it some bad news. One of the guys from Morris, Sam Perkins was also killed in action in Vietnam.
In any event, those who have been following these posts since Post 1, "You should have seen this coming", should not forget the Latin/to English, Gallic War Translation, The flight of the Aero Commander or my relationship with Ray Kipp. There's not gonna be a test or anything but these three separate situations tie in later on as all this unfolds.
That's pretty much "IT" for my boarding school years. I'm moving on to Shreveport, public school, college and bar room brawls soon so stand by, another one is coming soon.
.
.
Part 12, You should have seen this coming.
Being a 9th grader at Morris brought with it the status of being a "senior" as the school stopped at the 9th grade. We had decisions to make regarding our preferences for high school but there were two choices for me and I'd already attended one of them when I spent the summer at Subiaco. The next logical choice for me was St. Gregory's in Shawnee, Oklahoma.
It was a high dollar prep school that had attached to it, a Junior College. Refusing to go back to Jesuit in Shreveport, I began to have discussions about St. Gregory's as the lure of going to school in the Indian Nations was too much for me to turn down.
I agreed to sign up as did Sullentrop, who had an uncle there that was a priest, O'Malley, one of the tough guys from Chicago, and Joe Farris, a kid from Little Rock whose Daddy was a big time building contractor of some wealth and notariety in Arkansas.
I played center for the basketball team and right end on the football team that year. We had alot of fun traveling over that part of Arkansas playing Kensett, Bald Knob and other small towns within a 30 mile area of the school. Those were some hard hitting strawberry pickin' farm boys and we had our heads handed to us more than once. Despite that, I learned early on about team work and travel. It was alot of fun because we were allowed to stop after games and eat hamburgers at a truck stop that was conveniently located on the way home.
Brother Robert took us to Letona Bluffs for our annual camping trip and frog gigging experience. It was great because we got to tube down the White River and explore the cave that was on the bluff overlooking the river. A cave opening overlooked the river and allowed one to stand on a very small outcropping of rock and jump into the river from there. It was scary as the jump was at least 30' off the river. I did it once or twice but Greg must have done it 10 or 15 times. He was a natural swimmer and had no fear of heights.
Brother Robert took us mountain climbing and one kid from Oklahoma named Johnson, fell and had to be taken to the hospital in Searcy which was maybe 20 miles away. Greg and I made it without any problem and were very proud of ourselves as some of the pathways on the side of the mountain made us depend on the next guy's hand in front of us to keep us from making the fall that Johnson did. It was a blast. Greg and I talk about those experiences from time to time as it was so much fun.
As the end of the school year approached and we knew that time was coming when we would be leaving forever, there were lots of conversations about the various experiences we had over the years. In addition to the dairy, hay farm, kitchen duty, potato peeling, and gymnasium work, as we became seniors, we got to work in the boiler room and the laundry.
Brother Bernard ran the boiler room that supplied steam to the laundry and every building at the school so it was a big boiler room. We shoveled coal but did so in the midst of classical music that Brother Bernard had playing all the time. Brother Linus ran the laundry which was next door to the boiler room so we got to visit with him, too. He was much older than most of the other Brothers and would always pat you on the head or back, give you a compliment of some sort and encouraged us to be good and study hard.
All things considered, Greg and I had one hell of an upbringing there and the Brothers who did the overseeing portion, weren't anything like the Jesuits. They were tough as nails but they were fair. We had a well known list of rules that were not to be broken and a specific punishment called "swats" if we broke them. A swat was generally administered through the use of a 2 x 4 that had a bunch of holes drilled in the end of it and a hand carved handle on the other. One swat was good enough for anybody to correct an attitude.
One day, Brother Julian came into the class and made the following announcement in his somewhat unusual voice which was caused by a nasal condition and an extreme overbite of his front teeth. He said:
"The following named individuals will report to the execution chamber after last bell: Baaaaahhtluh , Craaaafts, Caaaaaahill and a few others.
Greg and I knew we were in for it so we reported as ordered. Remembering the announcement and the unique sound of his voice was much easier than remembering the swat. As far as our infraction was concerned, we probably didn't turn our homework in on time or were caught talking in class. Whatever it was, the important thing that I remembered from those occassions were always connected to the punishment fitting the crime. The Brothers knew their stuff and never physically overdid it when a spanking was justified.
Before we knew it, it was time for the senior trip and off we went to a State Park near the Rockefeller mansion and farm that was west of Little Rock. We would climb sugar loaf mountain and generally roam all over the woods. A good time was had.........except for one very unfortunate situation I experienced on the last day at camp.
I won't mention his name as he's still alive but one of the Brothers came into the cabin and for some reason, that to this day escapes me, he jumped on me and hit me on my left arm exactly where it had been broken, incorrectly set, rebroken in the second surgery and set in a cast that had rubber bands all over it due to the requirements to keep the bones under traction.
In the same sense that I hit the nun in the head with the chalk filled eraser when she made her untimely comment about the death of my Daddy and the thoughts I had that resulted in me almost hitting Father Junkin with a speedball, I found myself, shaving cream can in my hand, putting Brother E in a head lock and hitting him repeatedly in the head. He had several semi circles that were imprinted on his forehead from the repeated hits I was landing on his head. He got away and ordered an immediate return to school where I was to meet with the powers that be to determine what would happen.
Brothers Roberts, Bill and one other Brother that I don't remember, were waiting for me in the football changing room. I figured my ass was grass but was ready to defend my position and the decision I made to pick up the shaving cream can and throw as many blows as I could to defend taking another hit on my arm where the tender area was from last years break..
After many questions from the Brothers were posed and answered by me, there was the unbelievable judgement that I would receive no swats at all. They cautioned me that hitting a man of the cloth was an offense that could lead to excommunication from the church.
Since this was the 4th time I had experienced something of this nature, I said that I would "Quit" rather than wait on the excommunication and that I would have my family communicate with the Pope to explain the situation. After that, and in view of the history with my family, nothing further was said and Brother E never laid a hand on me again.
If I told Momma once, I told her a thousand times that I considered her decision to send me to Morris the first time and again for two more years to complete Jr High on the second tour, was a decision that I considered to be the best she'd ever made about my education and my experiences in life.
She loved hearing that and knew that I was serious. I think the reason she loved it so much had to do with the fact that I left home as a ten year old who had just lost his Daddy and that I needed the kind of supervision that had proven to produce men like Greg's Daddy, my most loved Uncle Charles.
I graduated with good grades and a fabulous background in Algebra and Geometry thanks to Brother Cyprian Hill who was the head master of the school. Greg and I left to go home for the summer and play like crazy till it was time for me to head out for Oklahoma and the great boarding school known as St. Gregory's and the experiences of living in the Indian Nations. Greg eventually graduated from Jesuit but I'm sure no one gave him an ounce of trouble there. Slapping him would have been like hitting a rock. I'm telling you, he would be the last one you would want to pick a fight with.
More to come, be patient.
.
It was a high dollar prep school that had attached to it, a Junior College. Refusing to go back to Jesuit in Shreveport, I began to have discussions about St. Gregory's as the lure of going to school in the Indian Nations was too much for me to turn down.
I agreed to sign up as did Sullentrop, who had an uncle there that was a priest, O'Malley, one of the tough guys from Chicago, and Joe Farris, a kid from Little Rock whose Daddy was a big time building contractor of some wealth and notariety in Arkansas.
I played center for the basketball team and right end on the football team that year. We had alot of fun traveling over that part of Arkansas playing Kensett, Bald Knob and other small towns within a 30 mile area of the school. Those were some hard hitting strawberry pickin' farm boys and we had our heads handed to us more than once. Despite that, I learned early on about team work and travel. It was alot of fun because we were allowed to stop after games and eat hamburgers at a truck stop that was conveniently located on the way home.
Brother Robert took us to Letona Bluffs for our annual camping trip and frog gigging experience. It was great because we got to tube down the White River and explore the cave that was on the bluff overlooking the river. A cave opening overlooked the river and allowed one to stand on a very small outcropping of rock and jump into the river from there. It was scary as the jump was at least 30' off the river. I did it once or twice but Greg must have done it 10 or 15 times. He was a natural swimmer and had no fear of heights.
Brother Robert took us mountain climbing and one kid from Oklahoma named Johnson, fell and had to be taken to the hospital in Searcy which was maybe 20 miles away. Greg and I made it without any problem and were very proud of ourselves as some of the pathways on the side of the mountain made us depend on the next guy's hand in front of us to keep us from making the fall that Johnson did. It was a blast. Greg and I talk about those experiences from time to time as it was so much fun.
As the end of the school year approached and we knew that time was coming when we would be leaving forever, there were lots of conversations about the various experiences we had over the years. In addition to the dairy, hay farm, kitchen duty, potato peeling, and gymnasium work, as we became seniors, we got to work in the boiler room and the laundry.
Brother Bernard ran the boiler room that supplied steam to the laundry and every building at the school so it was a big boiler room. We shoveled coal but did so in the midst of classical music that Brother Bernard had playing all the time. Brother Linus ran the laundry which was next door to the boiler room so we got to visit with him, too. He was much older than most of the other Brothers and would always pat you on the head or back, give you a compliment of some sort and encouraged us to be good and study hard.
All things considered, Greg and I had one hell of an upbringing there and the Brothers who did the overseeing portion, weren't anything like the Jesuits. They were tough as nails but they were fair. We had a well known list of rules that were not to be broken and a specific punishment called "swats" if we broke them. A swat was generally administered through the use of a 2 x 4 that had a bunch of holes drilled in the end of it and a hand carved handle on the other. One swat was good enough for anybody to correct an attitude.
One day, Brother Julian came into the class and made the following announcement in his somewhat unusual voice which was caused by a nasal condition and an extreme overbite of his front teeth. He said:
"The following named individuals will report to the execution chamber after last bell: Baaaaahhtluh , Craaaafts, Caaaaaahill and a few others.
Greg and I knew we were in for it so we reported as ordered. Remembering the announcement and the unique sound of his voice was much easier than remembering the swat. As far as our infraction was concerned, we probably didn't turn our homework in on time or were caught talking in class. Whatever it was, the important thing that I remembered from those occassions were always connected to the punishment fitting the crime. The Brothers knew their stuff and never physically overdid it when a spanking was justified.
Before we knew it, it was time for the senior trip and off we went to a State Park near the Rockefeller mansion and farm that was west of Little Rock. We would climb sugar loaf mountain and generally roam all over the woods. A good time was had.........except for one very unfortunate situation I experienced on the last day at camp.
I won't mention his name as he's still alive but one of the Brothers came into the cabin and for some reason, that to this day escapes me, he jumped on me and hit me on my left arm exactly where it had been broken, incorrectly set, rebroken in the second surgery and set in a cast that had rubber bands all over it due to the requirements to keep the bones under traction.
In the same sense that I hit the nun in the head with the chalk filled eraser when she made her untimely comment about the death of my Daddy and the thoughts I had that resulted in me almost hitting Father Junkin with a speedball, I found myself, shaving cream can in my hand, putting Brother E in a head lock and hitting him repeatedly in the head. He had several semi circles that were imprinted on his forehead from the repeated hits I was landing on his head. He got away and ordered an immediate return to school where I was to meet with the powers that be to determine what would happen.
Brothers Roberts, Bill and one other Brother that I don't remember, were waiting for me in the football changing room. I figured my ass was grass but was ready to defend my position and the decision I made to pick up the shaving cream can and throw as many blows as I could to defend taking another hit on my arm where the tender area was from last years break..
After many questions from the Brothers were posed and answered by me, there was the unbelievable judgement that I would receive no swats at all. They cautioned me that hitting a man of the cloth was an offense that could lead to excommunication from the church.
Since this was the 4th time I had experienced something of this nature, I said that I would "Quit" rather than wait on the excommunication and that I would have my family communicate with the Pope to explain the situation. After that, and in view of the history with my family, nothing further was said and Brother E never laid a hand on me again.
If I told Momma once, I told her a thousand times that I considered her decision to send me to Morris the first time and again for two more years to complete Jr High on the second tour, was a decision that I considered to be the best she'd ever made about my education and my experiences in life.
She loved hearing that and knew that I was serious. I think the reason she loved it so much had to do with the fact that I left home as a ten year old who had just lost his Daddy and that I needed the kind of supervision that had proven to produce men like Greg's Daddy, my most loved Uncle Charles.
I graduated with good grades and a fabulous background in Algebra and Geometry thanks to Brother Cyprian Hill who was the head master of the school. Greg and I left to go home for the summer and play like crazy till it was time for me to head out for Oklahoma and the great boarding school known as St. Gregory's and the experiences of living in the Indian Nations. Greg eventually graduated from Jesuit but I'm sure no one gave him an ounce of trouble there. Slapping him would have been like hitting a rock. I'm telling you, he would be the last one you would want to pick a fight with.
More to come, be patient.
.
Friday, January 20, 2012
Excuse repetition
I guess I must have been pretty tired when I wrote the previous post because, as I re-read it, I noticed that I had mentioned the "Thatch Weave" twice. I absolutely, positively need to convey many different aspects of my life because it will, later on, be really important for you to understand why I did some things during my combat years. Thanks for putting up with this. Tim Sr.
Post 11 for real
There are lots of parallels that can be drawn when comparing most aspects of life to boarding school. Whether it's raising kids in the city, being a kid in the city, being in the Army, focusing on your career, being in school, learning respect for your parents, neighbors or authority figures, boarding school is a wonderful platform for developing those skills and the conduct that so many seem to have trouble with.
Greg and I took to parts of it like a duck to water. We worked in the dairy with Brother Victor and learned early on about milk production, hay farming and the somewhat shitty duty of composting all the manuer from the cows as they were being milked. Pardon the pun but for a guy who at one time, was referred to as "The King of the compost pile", I just had to say it.
Brother Leo was in charge of the kitchen where meals were prepared 3 times per day for all 109 students and the Franciscan Brothers who lived and worked at Morris. We liked the kitchen work because Brother Leo and Uncle Charles had known each other for decades and he more or less took us under his wing and showed us how to bake sweet rolls for that many people....from scratch.
Brother Ferdie was in charge of the "Junior Dorm", potato peeling and wine making. Long after graduation, Greg and I used to say that "if they decide to cremate Brother Ferdie, he will NEVER go out". We were of course referring to the never ending taste tests that he went through when making his wine. He was, by no means, a drunk but he always smelled of wine and potatoes.
Brother Robert, Brother Bill and Brother Giles were always around the gymnasium and the 3 of them shared the duties of keeping the swimming pool, the basketball court, the football changing room, the concession stand and bathrooms in the gym, in clean working order. Gym duty was pretty cool, too.
Brother Giles was a different sort of Franciscan. He had been in World War II and he smoked like a chimney and clearly suffered from combat fatigue, shell shock or whatever you want to call it. He was a good guy and I liked him even though he was, at times, very strict about our conduct.
Brother William, not Brother Bill, was in charge of the "Senior Dorm" and in that respect, was Brother Ferdie's counterpart. He was also the Prefect of Discipline like Father Junkin was at Jesuit, but these two guys appeared not to be from the same planet.
I can go on and on about each of the departments Greg and I worked in when time for chores arrived. I guess it's fair to say that we liked the farming and dairy operations so much that Greg and I stayed one summer for hay season. Brother Gabriel drove the tractor for the hay production and then drove the truck when it came time to collect the bales of hay that we would put away for the winter.
If you scroll down to the bottom of this page you will see a picture of me and Greg leaning against Aunt Grace's Pontiac as it is parked in front of the gym. It wasn't far behind that building that I administered Saparito's lesson regarding bullying the kids. In any event, neither Greg nor I were power lifters and bailing hay and throwing them up to the flatbed elevation of the hay truck was a work out that exceeded anything I'd ever done. Even though I was two years older and a bit taller than Greg, he was stronger than I was.
If you read all of this from the introduction and then Part 1 to here, you might remember that Greg's Mamma, my Aunt Grace, is Uncle Raymond's sister and Uncle Raymond was a Golden Gloves boxing champion and a guy that could more than handle himself.
In any event, we liked most of it and especially liked the outdoor parts where we went camping at Letona Bluffs, squirell hunting, mountain climbing, tubing down the White River and hiking all over the country side.
All went well that year except for the last week of school when I fell off of the basketball goal where I had climbed for some unknown reason. I broke my left arm and was taken to Searcy to have it set and unfortuanately, the doc set it incorrectly and I had to be transferred to St Vincent's Infirmary in Little Rock to have it rebroken and reset. Momma and Aunt Nell came for all that and after I was released, we went home to Shreveport for my summer rehabilitation.
When I think back to that particular year I have to mention that I discovered the library and history. I managed to read every book in the library relating to World War II and I did so while sitting on one of the benches near to the Saparito Instruction spot.
I studied every fighter group including the 356th. As an 8th grade kid, I knew who Dick Bong was as well as Butch O'Hare, Joe Foss, Gabreski, Gentile and a number of other pilots of great fame during the War.
I thought about Joe Messina alot and wondered if I would ever get to see him again. More than anything, I really woke up to the part of combat aviation that had to do with strategy. You can google "Thatch Weave" and see what I mean much easier than I can explain it here.
I even knew who Saburo Sakei was and some of his Japanese counterparts like a bomber pilot named Nishizawa. Saburo was the highest scoring Ace in the Imperial Air Force.
As a side note, in the early 80's I had the great historic fortune to communicate with his office at Saburo's Mueseum in Tokyo where they were attempting to rebuilt the famous Japanese Fighter Plane, the often feared Zero.
They were on a world wide search to find an engine for that type and, having flown combat missions just north east of Saigon where a Japanese Zero had crashed on the side of a mountain, I knew where one was.
The Japanese Imperial Navy had a Base in "Nha Be" which was adjacent to the Saigon River that flowed to the South China Sea at Vung Tau. It was also used as an airfield and was located on the southern outskirts of Saigon where they would primarily refuel, re-arm and repair Destroyers.
The airstrip there provided aviation fuel that would allow a solo flight to the next stopping point which I think was Hong King and from there, many Zeros flew back to Japan.
One year, a Zero Pilot was returning to Japan but the monsoon season was in full force and his Zero and his life ended on the side of Signal Mountain which was on the east side of Xuan Loc where Fire Support Base "Mace" was located. "Mace" was my forward operating base when I was flying Nighthawk Gunship Missions for the 199th Light Infanty Brigade between May of 70 and September of 1971 when the entire Brigade was shut down and returned to the USA.
Chief Warrant Office Terry Femmer (rip) showed me the Zero one day and I longed to go hiking up the mountain to inspect it or even arrange a sling load to get it off the mountain, but that was never to be.
In any event, despite my connection to the historical aspects of the Japanese Empire during the Second World War, I thought about Joe Messina alot and wondered if I would ever get to see him again. More than anything, I really woke up to the part of combat aviation that had to do with strategy. You can google "Thatch Weave" and see what I mean much easier than I can explain it here.
I guess it's fair to say that, as an 8th grade kid, I emersed myself into every aspect of aviation, strategy, the strategy of all sides and how the constant changes in strategic methodology brought about different results. I even managed to use some of those strategies in life at boarding school where Greg and I managed to stay out of trouble...............for the most part. More coming later. Stand by.
.
Greg and I took to parts of it like a duck to water. We worked in the dairy with Brother Victor and learned early on about milk production, hay farming and the somewhat shitty duty of composting all the manuer from the cows as they were being milked. Pardon the pun but for a guy who at one time, was referred to as "The King of the compost pile", I just had to say it.
Brother Leo was in charge of the kitchen where meals were prepared 3 times per day for all 109 students and the Franciscan Brothers who lived and worked at Morris. We liked the kitchen work because Brother Leo and Uncle Charles had known each other for decades and he more or less took us under his wing and showed us how to bake sweet rolls for that many people....from scratch.
Brother Ferdie was in charge of the "Junior Dorm", potato peeling and wine making. Long after graduation, Greg and I used to say that "if they decide to cremate Brother Ferdie, he will NEVER go out". We were of course referring to the never ending taste tests that he went through when making his wine. He was, by no means, a drunk but he always smelled of wine and potatoes.
Brother Robert, Brother Bill and Brother Giles were always around the gymnasium and the 3 of them shared the duties of keeping the swimming pool, the basketball court, the football changing room, the concession stand and bathrooms in the gym, in clean working order. Gym duty was pretty cool, too.
Brother Giles was a different sort of Franciscan. He had been in World War II and he smoked like a chimney and clearly suffered from combat fatigue, shell shock or whatever you want to call it. He was a good guy and I liked him even though he was, at times, very strict about our conduct.
Brother William, not Brother Bill, was in charge of the "Senior Dorm" and in that respect, was Brother Ferdie's counterpart. He was also the Prefect of Discipline like Father Junkin was at Jesuit, but these two guys appeared not to be from the same planet.
I can go on and on about each of the departments Greg and I worked in when time for chores arrived. I guess it's fair to say that we liked the farming and dairy operations so much that Greg and I stayed one summer for hay season. Brother Gabriel drove the tractor for the hay production and then drove the truck when it came time to collect the bales of hay that we would put away for the winter.
If you scroll down to the bottom of this page you will see a picture of me and Greg leaning against Aunt Grace's Pontiac as it is parked in front of the gym. It wasn't far behind that building that I administered Saparito's lesson regarding bullying the kids. In any event, neither Greg nor I were power lifters and bailing hay and throwing them up to the flatbed elevation of the hay truck was a work out that exceeded anything I'd ever done. Even though I was two years older and a bit taller than Greg, he was stronger than I was.
If you read all of this from the introduction and then Part 1 to here, you might remember that Greg's Mamma, my Aunt Grace, is Uncle Raymond's sister and Uncle Raymond was a Golden Gloves boxing champion and a guy that could more than handle himself.
In any event, we liked most of it and especially liked the outdoor parts where we went camping at Letona Bluffs, squirell hunting, mountain climbing, tubing down the White River and hiking all over the country side.
All went well that year except for the last week of school when I fell off of the basketball goal where I had climbed for some unknown reason. I broke my left arm and was taken to Searcy to have it set and unfortuanately, the doc set it incorrectly and I had to be transferred to St Vincent's Infirmary in Little Rock to have it rebroken and reset. Momma and Aunt Nell came for all that and after I was released, we went home to Shreveport for my summer rehabilitation.
When I think back to that particular year I have to mention that I discovered the library and history. I managed to read every book in the library relating to World War II and I did so while sitting on one of the benches near to the Saparito Instruction spot.
I studied every fighter group including the 356th. As an 8th grade kid, I knew who Dick Bong was as well as Butch O'Hare, Joe Foss, Gabreski, Gentile and a number of other pilots of great fame during the War.
I thought about Joe Messina alot and wondered if I would ever get to see him again. More than anything, I really woke up to the part of combat aviation that had to do with strategy. You can google "Thatch Weave" and see what I mean much easier than I can explain it here.
I even knew who Saburo Sakei was and some of his Japanese counterparts like a bomber pilot named Nishizawa. Saburo was the highest scoring Ace in the Imperial Air Force.
As a side note, in the early 80's I had the great historic fortune to communicate with his office at Saburo's Mueseum in Tokyo where they were attempting to rebuilt the famous Japanese Fighter Plane, the often feared Zero.
They were on a world wide search to find an engine for that type and, having flown combat missions just north east of Saigon where a Japanese Zero had crashed on the side of a mountain, I knew where one was.
The Japanese Imperial Navy had a Base in "Nha Be" which was adjacent to the Saigon River that flowed to the South China Sea at Vung Tau. It was also used as an airfield and was located on the southern outskirts of Saigon where they would primarily refuel, re-arm and repair Destroyers.
The airstrip there provided aviation fuel that would allow a solo flight to the next stopping point which I think was Hong King and from there, many Zeros flew back to Japan.
One year, a Zero Pilot was returning to Japan but the monsoon season was in full force and his Zero and his life ended on the side of Signal Mountain which was on the east side of Xuan Loc where Fire Support Base "Mace" was located. "Mace" was my forward operating base when I was flying Nighthawk Gunship Missions for the 199th Light Infanty Brigade between May of 70 and September of 1971 when the entire Brigade was shut down and returned to the USA.
Chief Warrant Office Terry Femmer (rip) showed me the Zero one day and I longed to go hiking up the mountain to inspect it or even arrange a sling load to get it off the mountain, but that was never to be.
In any event, despite my connection to the historical aspects of the Japanese Empire during the Second World War, I thought about Joe Messina alot and wondered if I would ever get to see him again. More than anything, I really woke up to the part of combat aviation that had to do with strategy. You can google "Thatch Weave" and see what I mean much easier than I can explain it here.
I guess it's fair to say that, as an 8th grade kid, I emersed myself into every aspect of aviation, strategy, the strategy of all sides and how the constant changes in strategic methodology brought about different results. I even managed to use some of those strategies in life at boarding school where Greg and I managed to stay out of trouble...............for the most part. More coming later. Stand by.
.
Part 11, You should have seen this coming
This is just a test to see if the new format that I now find staring me in the face, actually works. Stand by..
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Part 10, You should have seen this coming
I need to make a correction that I failed to do when editing Part 9. I didn't go to Morris 3 years in a row. After the first year was completed, I wanted to come home and Momma sent me to Jesuit High School In Shreveport for my 8th grade year.
I knew a lot of kids there as most of them had either gone to St. Josephs where I did or were coming from other families that attended either of several Catholic Churches in the area. In any event, there was no bullying and I was among some friends that I had known my entire life.
Right off the bat, despite a comfortable student body population full of my friends from childhood, I had a run in with the infamous and hated Prefect of Dicipline, Father Junkin. It happened in the basement concession area where all the coin operated vending machines were located. As a normal and daily activity, we bought candy bars during break time, woofed them down and returned to class ready to get back with the program.
One day shortly after the beginning of the school year, "Punkin Junkin" was in the concession area. I bought a candy bar that morning and pretty much put the hole thing in my mouth after only 2 or 3 bites to reduce it in size enough to chew and not have to take the bar still in the wrapper, back to class.
Junkin saw me do that, came over to me and slapped me in the face harder than I had ever been hit in my life. I stood up to answer his question of "What are YOU doing".
When I told him I was trying to get the candy bar down so I could return to class and not be late. About that time he pointed his finger at me and said: "Butler, if you are ANYTHING like your brother, we don't want you". He told me then to report to his office after class. I did so but I don't remember what he said as I was too focused on hitting him in the face with a base ball or simply running away from this red cheek, drunk looking, sorry ass example of a priest. At that point in time, I simply decided that I would start skipping school to get kicked out.
Leland was with Uncle Raymond and Aunt Glade in Crowley, Louisiana, going to school down there and I was using his 1958 Cushman Eagle to get to and from school. Whem Momma redeived my report card and saw the number of days I had skipped, despite knowing about the Father Junkin episode, she took away the Eagle and made me ride the bus. I intentionally did things to get kicked off the bus whenever I had one of those days when I wanted to set fire to Father Junkins' pants or hit him in the head with a baseball.
At the end of the 8th grade year, my report card came out as a "CONDITIONAL" promotion to the 9th grade. The condition surrounded a mandate to go to summer school at Junkins house of hell, OR repeat the 8th grade. I asked Momma, NO, I begged Momma to let me go back to Morris School in Searcy, Arkansas. Again, another great decision by Momma even though I would have to repeat the 8th grade as part of the deal. I didn't care because I knew I was going to do something a hell of a lot worse than throw a chalk filled eraser at Junkin if I had to go back.
The fighter in me had been hatching for years, but he was born the second Junkin hit me. This wasn't the last time I had a run in like this but it was only going to happen one more time.
In any event, having missed a full year at Morris while I was attending Jesuit, I returned and saw many of my former school mate buddies still there. I also saw Saparito, a kid from Chicago who tortured me every week during my seventh grade year.
He never really beat me up but he would walk by, double up his fist, extend his middle finger, slightly bent at the middle knuckle joint, and make what he called a "frog". He would walk up to you and hit you in the back, in the ribs, the arms and occassionally, if he could get a free shot, he would hit me in the chest. It hurt like hell.
Brother Robert Desmond, who had coached boys basketball, saw that I had grown like crazy and was now 6 feet tall instead of the 5'9" example that I was as a 7th grader. I liked him as he was a square shooter and he liked me and my family, all of whom he knew. He was glad to see me back and said, as I approached him on my first day back: "Finally, a 6' center for the Morris Mustangs basketball team". We shook hands and I agreed to play on the team.
Later on the first day, I went out back to the tennis courts where the swing sets and picnic tables were located. Before long, Brother Robert, who was not far from where I was sitting, watched Saparito approach me as I was still sitting on the picnic bench.
Not being able to see the additional height and weight I had added in the year and 3 months since he'd seen me, Saparito approached me with that "frog" and a shit eating grin that usually announced a bad time for his victim.
Before he could administer the first hit, I got up, and now, towering over him and out weighing him by 15 pounds or so, a look of shock came over his face. Before he had time to close his mouth, I had a head lock on him and, as I spun him around my outstretched leg, I threw him on down on his back and, as he was laying in the dust, that "Oh my God" look came to his face as he knew there was payback in the air.
I began a speech to the effect that today was pay back day. I began hitting him with the frog on every square inch of exposed body including his head. "Hows that feel", I yelled? I added: "Remember how many times you hit me in 7th grade?", and I'd keep peppering that frog all over his arm, head and chest.
He was squeeling, begging and promising to never to pick on anybody again if I would just let him up. Well, as it turned out, since Brother Robert had seen Saparito pick on so many of the smaller kids, (including me) he took his time meandering down the hill to the tennis courts as I continued with what I called a mortal ass whipping.
I stopped when Brother Robert arrived and I let Saparito up. Brother Robert asked him to remember how many times he'd told him to stop picking on the smaller boys. Sap just said he would never, ever, ever do it again. Needless to say, I had a bully free year from then on and not one little kid in school had anything to worry about from the bully department.
Greg, my first cousin, was already somewhat familiar with the lay out as his daddy, my Uncle Charles was a graduate of Morris as was his brother, Greg's Uncle Joe.
Greg and I always were close and after that good ole fashion ass whipping that I gave Saparito, I told Greg that if any of the bigger boys gave him the least amount of trouble, simply let me know and I would handle it. He reciprocated by offering to take care of the little ones who sometimes liked to get the bigger, faster, stronger boys in trouble....................for any reason at all.
In any event, that's how my first day back at Morris started. They were thrilled to see a 6' center to assist Joe Murray, another Chicago boy who could play round ball like no body's bidness and they were beside themselves to see Greg who would be a second generation Morris student.
All things considered, we were thrilled to be back in the mountains where over night camping by the river at Letona Bluffs, with all it's caves, was a sure thing and squirrel hunting was an annual rite of passage and a custom that had been in place for many years.
It allowed us to raise the "pinkies" until their eyes opened and we could put them in our shirt pockets while we fed them milk from a barbie doll milk bottle. Soon, we could put them on our shoulders and walk around campus with them staying in place like all well trained squirrels should.
8th Grade was cool for me. Greg and I were both crazy glad to be back in the Ozark mountains/woods, especially with guys like Brother Robert leading the way. He was an outdoorsman to say the least and, later in life, gave classes to mountain climbers in Colorado.
Things went down as they should have and the year sailed by with a few highlights when Greg and I got to ride the Continental Bus home for Thanksgiving and again during Christmas. We are still in touch with one of the Brothers who is now a priest and a couple of the students that came there. I speak to one from Cuba at least once a year.
More coming, stand by.
.
I knew a lot of kids there as most of them had either gone to St. Josephs where I did or were coming from other families that attended either of several Catholic Churches in the area. In any event, there was no bullying and I was among some friends that I had known my entire life.
Right off the bat, despite a comfortable student body population full of my friends from childhood, I had a run in with the infamous and hated Prefect of Dicipline, Father Junkin. It happened in the basement concession area where all the coin operated vending machines were located. As a normal and daily activity, we bought candy bars during break time, woofed them down and returned to class ready to get back with the program.
One day shortly after the beginning of the school year, "Punkin Junkin" was in the concession area. I bought a candy bar that morning and pretty much put the hole thing in my mouth after only 2 or 3 bites to reduce it in size enough to chew and not have to take the bar still in the wrapper, back to class.
Junkin saw me do that, came over to me and slapped me in the face harder than I had ever been hit in my life. I stood up to answer his question of "What are YOU doing".
When I told him I was trying to get the candy bar down so I could return to class and not be late. About that time he pointed his finger at me and said: "Butler, if you are ANYTHING like your brother, we don't want you". He told me then to report to his office after class. I did so but I don't remember what he said as I was too focused on hitting him in the face with a base ball or simply running away from this red cheek, drunk looking, sorry ass example of a priest. At that point in time, I simply decided that I would start skipping school to get kicked out.
Leland was with Uncle Raymond and Aunt Glade in Crowley, Louisiana, going to school down there and I was using his 1958 Cushman Eagle to get to and from school. Whem Momma redeived my report card and saw the number of days I had skipped, despite knowing about the Father Junkin episode, she took away the Eagle and made me ride the bus. I intentionally did things to get kicked off the bus whenever I had one of those days when I wanted to set fire to Father Junkins' pants or hit him in the head with a baseball.
At the end of the 8th grade year, my report card came out as a "CONDITIONAL" promotion to the 9th grade. The condition surrounded a mandate to go to summer school at Junkins house of hell, OR repeat the 8th grade. I asked Momma, NO, I begged Momma to let me go back to Morris School in Searcy, Arkansas. Again, another great decision by Momma even though I would have to repeat the 8th grade as part of the deal. I didn't care because I knew I was going to do something a hell of a lot worse than throw a chalk filled eraser at Junkin if I had to go back.
The fighter in me had been hatching for years, but he was born the second Junkin hit me. This wasn't the last time I had a run in like this but it was only going to happen one more time.
In any event, having missed a full year at Morris while I was attending Jesuit, I returned and saw many of my former school mate buddies still there. I also saw Saparito, a kid from Chicago who tortured me every week during my seventh grade year.
He never really beat me up but he would walk by, double up his fist, extend his middle finger, slightly bent at the middle knuckle joint, and make what he called a "frog". He would walk up to you and hit you in the back, in the ribs, the arms and occassionally, if he could get a free shot, he would hit me in the chest. It hurt like hell.
Brother Robert Desmond, who had coached boys basketball, saw that I had grown like crazy and was now 6 feet tall instead of the 5'9" example that I was as a 7th grader. I liked him as he was a square shooter and he liked me and my family, all of whom he knew. He was glad to see me back and said, as I approached him on my first day back: "Finally, a 6' center for the Morris Mustangs basketball team". We shook hands and I agreed to play on the team.
Later on the first day, I went out back to the tennis courts where the swing sets and picnic tables were located. Before long, Brother Robert, who was not far from where I was sitting, watched Saparito approach me as I was still sitting on the picnic bench.
Not being able to see the additional height and weight I had added in the year and 3 months since he'd seen me, Saparito approached me with that "frog" and a shit eating grin that usually announced a bad time for his victim.
Before he could administer the first hit, I got up, and now, towering over him and out weighing him by 15 pounds or so, a look of shock came over his face. Before he had time to close his mouth, I had a head lock on him and, as I spun him around my outstretched leg, I threw him on down on his back and, as he was laying in the dust, that "Oh my God" look came to his face as he knew there was payback in the air.
I began a speech to the effect that today was pay back day. I began hitting him with the frog on every square inch of exposed body including his head. "Hows that feel", I yelled? I added: "Remember how many times you hit me in 7th grade?", and I'd keep peppering that frog all over his arm, head and chest.
He was squeeling, begging and promising to never to pick on anybody again if I would just let him up. Well, as it turned out, since Brother Robert had seen Saparito pick on so many of the smaller kids, (including me) he took his time meandering down the hill to the tennis courts as I continued with what I called a mortal ass whipping.
I stopped when Brother Robert arrived and I let Saparito up. Brother Robert asked him to remember how many times he'd told him to stop picking on the smaller boys. Sap just said he would never, ever, ever do it again. Needless to say, I had a bully free year from then on and not one little kid in school had anything to worry about from the bully department.
Greg, my first cousin, was already somewhat familiar with the lay out as his daddy, my Uncle Charles was a graduate of Morris as was his brother, Greg's Uncle Joe.
Greg and I always were close and after that good ole fashion ass whipping that I gave Saparito, I told Greg that if any of the bigger boys gave him the least amount of trouble, simply let me know and I would handle it. He reciprocated by offering to take care of the little ones who sometimes liked to get the bigger, faster, stronger boys in trouble....................for any reason at all.
In any event, that's how my first day back at Morris started. They were thrilled to see a 6' center to assist Joe Murray, another Chicago boy who could play round ball like no body's bidness and they were beside themselves to see Greg who would be a second generation Morris student.
All things considered, we were thrilled to be back in the mountains where over night camping by the river at Letona Bluffs, with all it's caves, was a sure thing and squirrel hunting was an annual rite of passage and a custom that had been in place for many years.
It allowed us to raise the "pinkies" until their eyes opened and we could put them in our shirt pockets while we fed them milk from a barbie doll milk bottle. Soon, we could put them on our shoulders and walk around campus with them staying in place like all well trained squirrels should.
8th Grade was cool for me. Greg and I were both crazy glad to be back in the Ozark mountains/woods, especially with guys like Brother Robert leading the way. He was an outdoorsman to say the least and, later in life, gave classes to mountain climbers in Colorado.
Things went down as they should have and the year sailed by with a few highlights when Greg and I got to ride the Continental Bus home for Thanksgiving and again during Christmas. We are still in touch with one of the Brothers who is now a priest and a couple of the students that came there. I speak to one from Cuba at least once a year.
More coming, stand by.
.
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Part 9, You should have seen this coming.
Momma and Daddy had a pretty neat schedule for a house with 4 kids. They would have their breakfast in the morning before we were up, and then, when they were finished eating, Daddy would go get ready for work and Momma would get our breakfast ready.
Usually, in the middle of our breakfast, Daddy would come in to tell us goodbye. He would walk through the kitchen with his hat on, coat, tie, wing tip shoes, socks with 30's style garters and NO PANTS. He would say "Bye kids, Daddy has to go to work" and we would scream: "DADDY, WAIT. YOU DON"T HAVE ANY PANTS ON". We fell for that a million times.
They both were heavily involved in St. Joseph's Catholic Church and were charter members. Mom eventually became the girls coach there as there were no athletic activities for girls. She coached girls soft ball and volley ball. Her girls were very competitive and showed their strength during the annual "Field Day" when all the kids had potato sack races and such as that.
Daddy was not to be out done and showed up one Field Day with his Ford 8A tractor pulling his utility trailer that was typically used to haul lumber or foundation framing to house sites that were too muddy to hold up the delivery trucks of those things.
Daddy had the trailer cleaned off and had it filled with bales of hay to provide the kids with a hay ride. He drove it there from the subdivision he was building, a distance of 8 or 10 blocks. We loved it and so did all the kids at school including the priests and nuns.
One day Daddy showed up and loaded up a ton of kids to take them on the hay ride. They were jumping for joy when Daddy had them sit down and be careful as he drove off with them for the several block long ride. When he returned, Father Gremillion was there to greet him. He told Daddy how much he appreciated what he and momma had done for the school. He also told him that he would appreciate it if Daddy would WAIT until Field Day to come by and pick up the kids and not do it on a regualar school day. We got a million miles out of that one, too.
One day, Daddy came home for lunch around 11 o'clock or so. He began to have chest pains. He took his tie off, wrapped it around "Jock's" collar and told him to go to St. Joseph's and get momma. Jock, the coolest Standard Poodle ever, ran to the school with Daddy's tie around his collar and Momma knew something was bad wrong as it was Daddy's favorite tie.
She immediately went home only to find him dead on the floor of the master bedroom, gone from a heart attack. That was December 4th, 1958, only one month to the day after my 10th birthday.
It was a nightmare for us and it only got worse for me.
When I went back to St. Joseph's after the funeral, one of the nuns made a comment that was the wrong thing to say to me at the wrong time. I don't remember specifically what the comment was but I took it to mean that having a crazy kid like me around probably had something to do with his death. That was a life changer and I immediately went into the attack mode.
I picked up a chalk dust filled eraser, ran after her as she was leaving the classroom and threw it at her as hard as a ten year old kid can possibly throw. I can close my eyes and see the atomic bomb looking mushroom cloud that came when the dust filled eraser hit her square in the head. Try to imagine the after effect of that by picturing the "Black" habit and white brim cap that was a part of the nun's daily wear. Her entire world turned chalk grey as I escaped down the stairs to run home and hide.
Shortly after that I remember business people coming by to do whatever had to be done to handle Daddy's estate. Momma was upset and Leland sensed it. I don't recall if Leland got the bb gun or I did but I remember the situation where both of Daddy's boys became very protective of our mother.
In June of 59, six months after Daddy died, I left for a summer camp at a Catholic boarding school in Arkansas that was named "Subiaco". I was home sick but I liked being in the mountains of Arkansas. Shortly after that, in one of the smartest things my Momma ever did, I left to attend my first year at Morris School in Searcy, Arkansas, just above Little Rock.
Unbeknownst to me at the time, my Uncle Charles and his brother, Uncle Joe, had gone there as kids during their elementary years. I started there in the 7th grade until graduation from the 9th grade 3 years later. As a great comfort to me was the fact that my first cousin Greg, Uncle Charles' boy, attended there the last two years I was there. He's like the little brother I never had and remains so to this day. We were pretty much like partners during the whole thing.
There were kids there from Cuba, Venezuela, Mexico, Costa Rico and all over the U.S. I'll never forget the first day I was there when I walked into the boys bathroom to find a 16 year old 9th grader named "Falici" shaving in one of the lavatories. I can remember thinking that these were really old guys and this guy was actually SHAVING.
Great escapades from there which I will tie up tomorrow. Sorry I missed a couple of days but I needed the rest. Stand by for more of the transition from little kid pilot to little kid fighter.
Usually, in the middle of our breakfast, Daddy would come in to tell us goodbye. He would walk through the kitchen with his hat on, coat, tie, wing tip shoes, socks with 30's style garters and NO PANTS. He would say "Bye kids, Daddy has to go to work" and we would scream: "DADDY, WAIT. YOU DON"T HAVE ANY PANTS ON". We fell for that a million times.
They both were heavily involved in St. Joseph's Catholic Church and were charter members. Mom eventually became the girls coach there as there were no athletic activities for girls. She coached girls soft ball and volley ball. Her girls were very competitive and showed their strength during the annual "Field Day" when all the kids had potato sack races and such as that.
Daddy was not to be out done and showed up one Field Day with his Ford 8A tractor pulling his utility trailer that was typically used to haul lumber or foundation framing to house sites that were too muddy to hold up the delivery trucks of those things.
Daddy had the trailer cleaned off and had it filled with bales of hay to provide the kids with a hay ride. He drove it there from the subdivision he was building, a distance of 8 or 10 blocks. We loved it and so did all the kids at school including the priests and nuns.
One day Daddy showed up and loaded up a ton of kids to take them on the hay ride. They were jumping for joy when Daddy had them sit down and be careful as he drove off with them for the several block long ride. When he returned, Father Gremillion was there to greet him. He told Daddy how much he appreciated what he and momma had done for the school. He also told him that he would appreciate it if Daddy would WAIT until Field Day to come by and pick up the kids and not do it on a regualar school day. We got a million miles out of that one, too.
One day, Daddy came home for lunch around 11 o'clock or so. He began to have chest pains. He took his tie off, wrapped it around "Jock's" collar and told him to go to St. Joseph's and get momma. Jock, the coolest Standard Poodle ever, ran to the school with Daddy's tie around his collar and Momma knew something was bad wrong as it was Daddy's favorite tie.
She immediately went home only to find him dead on the floor of the master bedroom, gone from a heart attack. That was December 4th, 1958, only one month to the day after my 10th birthday.
It was a nightmare for us and it only got worse for me.
When I went back to St. Joseph's after the funeral, one of the nuns made a comment that was the wrong thing to say to me at the wrong time. I don't remember specifically what the comment was but I took it to mean that having a crazy kid like me around probably had something to do with his death. That was a life changer and I immediately went into the attack mode.
I picked up a chalk dust filled eraser, ran after her as she was leaving the classroom and threw it at her as hard as a ten year old kid can possibly throw. I can close my eyes and see the atomic bomb looking mushroom cloud that came when the dust filled eraser hit her square in the head. Try to imagine the after effect of that by picturing the "Black" habit and white brim cap that was a part of the nun's daily wear. Her entire world turned chalk grey as I escaped down the stairs to run home and hide.
Shortly after that I remember business people coming by to do whatever had to be done to handle Daddy's estate. Momma was upset and Leland sensed it. I don't recall if Leland got the bb gun or I did but I remember the situation where both of Daddy's boys became very protective of our mother.
In June of 59, six months after Daddy died, I left for a summer camp at a Catholic boarding school in Arkansas that was named "Subiaco". I was home sick but I liked being in the mountains of Arkansas. Shortly after that, in one of the smartest things my Momma ever did, I left to attend my first year at Morris School in Searcy, Arkansas, just above Little Rock.
Unbeknownst to me at the time, my Uncle Charles and his brother, Uncle Joe, had gone there as kids during their elementary years. I started there in the 7th grade until graduation from the 9th grade 3 years later. As a great comfort to me was the fact that my first cousin Greg, Uncle Charles' boy, attended there the last two years I was there. He's like the little brother I never had and remains so to this day. We were pretty much like partners during the whole thing.
There were kids there from Cuba, Venezuela, Mexico, Costa Rico and all over the U.S. I'll never forget the first day I was there when I walked into the boys bathroom to find a 16 year old 9th grader named "Falici" shaving in one of the lavatories. I can remember thinking that these were really old guys and this guy was actually SHAVING.
Great escapades from there which I will tie up tomorrow. Sorry I missed a couple of days but I needed the rest. Stand by for more of the transition from little kid pilot to little kid fighter.
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Part 8 1/2. Taking off a day or so.
Hey everybody, Just wanted to tell you that I've taken a couple of days for me and haven't yet rec'd enough confirmations to continue with this. Tim JR took me shooting yesterday and I had a blast.
I will continue with the next post very soon, maybe as soon as tonight. Hang in there.
Tim
I will continue with the next post very soon, maybe as soon as tonight. Hang in there.
Tim
Sunday, January 15, 2012
Part 8, You should have seen this coming.
In the summer of 1955, Daddy took me and Leland to work with him. He was building houses on Anderson Island which, at that time, was in the boon docks. There was an old hanger there that was the home base of a crop dusting outfit and I clearly remember the smells of the fertilizer, aviation fuel and the dope they used to cover the fabric on the bi planes that they used to do the spray work.
He took us to the corner of East Washington and Bolch Street where the construction was underway and we had to walk 3 or 4 houses northward to get to his job site. As a coincidence, this was only a couple of blocks away from Doles Street where Robert and Ginnell moved to when they left our garage apartment.
There was a bayou there and it had to have a culvert installed to finish the street, and that required a bulldozer for clearing work. Leland and I found a German Shepard momma there with a new litter of pups that had nested under a fallen tree. Daddy wouldn't let us have them as he said they were too young to take away from their momma.
He took us from there to look at a new bridge that was under construction. It would cross the Red River to Bossier City and go right into the West Gate at Barksdale AFB. The approaches to the bridge were already finished and had 1955 put into the form to show which year it was built. From there, we could see the red brick of the hanger that held the crop dusters as it was not yet demolished to make room for the new subdivision.
We sat at the western approaches to the bridge and watched huge Cat scrappers and bulldozers clearing the land for North Louisiana's first and only shopping mall. Daddy told us that he wanted us to see it because it would mark a change in Shreveport like no other change before it. He said that the clothing industry was more or less monopoliized in the down town area and that the "shopping mall" would change all that. He said that people from California were coming to work in a big plant somewhere and he said that would change things too.
Not long after that, Daddy took us to the airport again for another visit with Joe Messina. I'm not sure if Leland was there but someone was because I sat in the back seat of his Pipler Tri Pacer which was completely different than the Piper Cub that Linda and I flew our first flight in. The Tri Pacer had a radio in it and a speaker in the ceiling that was loud enough for all to hear.
During the flight, some garbled radio call came in and Joe made mention of the "idiot" who made it. He said that is "Herman Hesllinger", a German immigrant that Joe clearly did not like. When the tower asked him to repeat his message, in an extremely heavy German accent he said : "This is Hairrrman Hezzlinger, Cross Lake for landing Downtown".
Joe banked the Tri Pacer and headed toward Cross Lake to see if he could find Haiiiirman. Shortly after that we landed and my second introduction to flight was completed. I began, at that time, to see and accept that there was a common dislike of immigrants that was held by most of the combat veterans of World War II. To some, even the thought of buying anything foreign was totally out of the question.
In any event, I now had two flights under my belt and I was hooked forever. As a suggestion, you may google Piper Tri Pacer and take a look at the beautiful control yolks and the instrument panel. In it's day, it was fabulous. You can also google earth and go to the corner of East Washington and Bolch Street and probably see the old bayou that made Anderson Island an island.
That will do it for today as I'm really tired and full of meds that make you want to lay that head down and fall asleep on the couch. The point of all this, up to this post, is to demonstrate to be true, how those of us who arrived as baby boomers, GREW UP with a certain degree of hero worship of World War II veterans and a certain amount of SUSPICION when it came to aliens or immigrants.
We had nothing to base those suspicions on except for the fact that those men that fought the War, felt it, showed it and had already proven themselves to us as men of impeccable character and wisdom. It was only logical for us to be like them as they were the pillars of society as well as the greatly admired foundation of my own family.
"You should have seen this coming" is turning out to be a pretty good title, don't you think!
He took us to the corner of East Washington and Bolch Street where the construction was underway and we had to walk 3 or 4 houses northward to get to his job site. As a coincidence, this was only a couple of blocks away from Doles Street where Robert and Ginnell moved to when they left our garage apartment.
There was a bayou there and it had to have a culvert installed to finish the street, and that required a bulldozer for clearing work. Leland and I found a German Shepard momma there with a new litter of pups that had nested under a fallen tree. Daddy wouldn't let us have them as he said they were too young to take away from their momma.
He took us from there to look at a new bridge that was under construction. It would cross the Red River to Bossier City and go right into the West Gate at Barksdale AFB. The approaches to the bridge were already finished and had 1955 put into the form to show which year it was built. From there, we could see the red brick of the hanger that held the crop dusters as it was not yet demolished to make room for the new subdivision.
We sat at the western approaches to the bridge and watched huge Cat scrappers and bulldozers clearing the land for North Louisiana's first and only shopping mall. Daddy told us that he wanted us to see it because it would mark a change in Shreveport like no other change before it. He said that the clothing industry was more or less monopoliized in the down town area and that the "shopping mall" would change all that. He said that people from California were coming to work in a big plant somewhere and he said that would change things too.
Not long after that, Daddy took us to the airport again for another visit with Joe Messina. I'm not sure if Leland was there but someone was because I sat in the back seat of his Pipler Tri Pacer which was completely different than the Piper Cub that Linda and I flew our first flight in. The Tri Pacer had a radio in it and a speaker in the ceiling that was loud enough for all to hear.
During the flight, some garbled radio call came in and Joe made mention of the "idiot" who made it. He said that is "Herman Hesllinger", a German immigrant that Joe clearly did not like. When the tower asked him to repeat his message, in an extremely heavy German accent he said : "This is Hairrrman Hezzlinger, Cross Lake for landing Downtown".
Joe banked the Tri Pacer and headed toward Cross Lake to see if he could find Haiiiirman. Shortly after that we landed and my second introduction to flight was completed. I began, at that time, to see and accept that there was a common dislike of immigrants that was held by most of the combat veterans of World War II. To some, even the thought of buying anything foreign was totally out of the question.
In any event, I now had two flights under my belt and I was hooked forever. As a suggestion, you may google Piper Tri Pacer and take a look at the beautiful control yolks and the instrument panel. In it's day, it was fabulous. You can also google earth and go to the corner of East Washington and Bolch Street and probably see the old bayou that made Anderson Island an island.
That will do it for today as I'm really tired and full of meds that make you want to lay that head down and fall asleep on the couch. The point of all this, up to this post, is to demonstrate to be true, how those of us who arrived as baby boomers, GREW UP with a certain degree of hero worship of World War II veterans and a certain amount of SUSPICION when it came to aliens or immigrants.
We had nothing to base those suspicions on except for the fact that those men that fought the War, felt it, showed it and had already proven themselves to us as men of impeccable character and wisdom. It was only logical for us to be like them as they were the pillars of society as well as the greatly admired foundation of my own family.
"You should have seen this coming" is turning out to be a pretty good title, don't you think!
Friday, January 13, 2012
Part 7. You should have seen this coming
Playing in the back yard was suddenly interrupted by the familiar sound of Daddy's work truck coming up the drive way.
The horn was repeatedly honking, so we knew something was up. We all ran out of the back yard to the back patio to see what was going on. It wasn't Daddy, it was Cecil Carter, the job superintendent that managed all of the construction work Daddy had going on at the time.
He was a mess. He had on khaki pants and shirt and was covered from head to toe with something black like oil and grease. As he got out of the truck he was jumping up and down, waving his arms through the air, yelling: "Nora, we're rich, we're rich, we hit it, the well hit and it's a good one".
When he began to explain that the oil well had "come in", momma said: "What oil well"? Mr. Carter's face suddenly went blank and he said: "We've drilled an oil well and it came in this morning". I remember that he was looking around and asked: "Where's Leon"?
Momma turned around, faced us, and told us to go in the house. We knew something was up but didn't really have a clue what it was. Not long after that, Mr. Carter left and Daddy came home. He was clean as a pin and in fact, was wearing his coat, tie, 50's vintage hat and was dressed to the nines as he always was.
I'm not sure what the conversation was about, but the next day, momma came home in a brand new, 55 model Oldsmobile Rocket 88 and we all went for a ride. The following day, Momma came home in a brand new, baby blue, 4 door Caddy with every conceivable accessory including a "wonder bar" radio that only had to be "touched" to change stations. It also had electric windows and air conditioning.
The day after that, Momma showed up with a new mink stole. I can imagine the conversations between Mom and Dad that prefaced the new, improved situation for Momma. She wore it to church that Sunday and many a compliment was received by all the ladies at the church.
Of course, later on, we discovered that Daddy and his lawyer had invested in some drilling operations in Oil City and the first well was a winner. Many years later as I was going through some of Daddy's papers, I found an income statement that declared $18,000 and some change as his income from "Cottage Builders". It had nothing to do with additional income from the oil field but in those days of 15 cent per gallon gasoline, I think 18 grand was huge.
Not long after the oil well episode, something happened that was one of the coolest things I'd ever experienced in my life. Daddy took Linda and me to the airport and introduced us to a locally famous World War II pilot named Joe Messina. Joe had flown C 46's over "The Hump" in the China, Burma, India Theatre and was well known throughout the aviation community as "The Man".
Joe had made it back from the war and had purchased a couple of Piper Cubs from the military when so many planes were put up for sale as excess inventory. He brought credibility and expertise to Shreverport in the form of the first professionally run flight school.
Many of you know how small a Piper Cub is but for those that don't, it was a tandem seat, single engine, high wing plane that had room enough for one in front and one in back. Linda and I were so little, both of us fit in the back seat. Joe put us in the back with Daddy's assistance, fastened our seat belt and sat in the pilot's seat up front to prepare for flight.
Before we could quit diggin the smells and the look of things inside the Cub, he'd started the engine and was taxing toward the runway for take off. In less time than it takes to tell it, we were circling the field, looking down at the hanger and could see Daddy there, still standing where we had been parked in the Cub.
That clearly marked the first day in my life where I had the yearning to fly. I had no thought at all about helicopters and in stead, thought about fighter planes, bombers and the big four engine airliners of the day. In short, my flying career was the result of a real cool Daddy and a World War II pilot who knew how to introduce children to flight without scaring them to death. It was a wonderful flight.
Joe's picture, complete in his WW II flying suit, is framed and hangs in the first spot among the Hall of Fame at the Downtown Airport in Shreveport. I've had the priveledge to talk to young kids staring at the picture when I told them about Joe and the story above.
That's going to be it for today as I don't want to get ahead of everybody. More coming. Stand by.
The horn was repeatedly honking, so we knew something was up. We all ran out of the back yard to the back patio to see what was going on. It wasn't Daddy, it was Cecil Carter, the job superintendent that managed all of the construction work Daddy had going on at the time.
He was a mess. He had on khaki pants and shirt and was covered from head to toe with something black like oil and grease. As he got out of the truck he was jumping up and down, waving his arms through the air, yelling: "Nora, we're rich, we're rich, we hit it, the well hit and it's a good one".
When he began to explain that the oil well had "come in", momma said: "What oil well"? Mr. Carter's face suddenly went blank and he said: "We've drilled an oil well and it came in this morning". I remember that he was looking around and asked: "Where's Leon"?
Momma turned around, faced us, and told us to go in the house. We knew something was up but didn't really have a clue what it was. Not long after that, Mr. Carter left and Daddy came home. He was clean as a pin and in fact, was wearing his coat, tie, 50's vintage hat and was dressed to the nines as he always was.
I'm not sure what the conversation was about, but the next day, momma came home in a brand new, 55 model Oldsmobile Rocket 88 and we all went for a ride. The following day, Momma came home in a brand new, baby blue, 4 door Caddy with every conceivable accessory including a "wonder bar" radio that only had to be "touched" to change stations. It also had electric windows and air conditioning.
The day after that, Momma showed up with a new mink stole. I can imagine the conversations between Mom and Dad that prefaced the new, improved situation for Momma. She wore it to church that Sunday and many a compliment was received by all the ladies at the church.
Of course, later on, we discovered that Daddy and his lawyer had invested in some drilling operations in Oil City and the first well was a winner. Many years later as I was going through some of Daddy's papers, I found an income statement that declared $18,000 and some change as his income from "Cottage Builders". It had nothing to do with additional income from the oil field but in those days of 15 cent per gallon gasoline, I think 18 grand was huge.
Not long after the oil well episode, something happened that was one of the coolest things I'd ever experienced in my life. Daddy took Linda and me to the airport and introduced us to a locally famous World War II pilot named Joe Messina. Joe had flown C 46's over "The Hump" in the China, Burma, India Theatre and was well known throughout the aviation community as "The Man".
Joe had made it back from the war and had purchased a couple of Piper Cubs from the military when so many planes were put up for sale as excess inventory. He brought credibility and expertise to Shreverport in the form of the first professionally run flight school.
Many of you know how small a Piper Cub is but for those that don't, it was a tandem seat, single engine, high wing plane that had room enough for one in front and one in back. Linda and I were so little, both of us fit in the back seat. Joe put us in the back with Daddy's assistance, fastened our seat belt and sat in the pilot's seat up front to prepare for flight.
Before we could quit diggin the smells and the look of things inside the Cub, he'd started the engine and was taxing toward the runway for take off. In less time than it takes to tell it, we were circling the field, looking down at the hanger and could see Daddy there, still standing where we had been parked in the Cub.
That clearly marked the first day in my life where I had the yearning to fly. I had no thought at all about helicopters and in stead, thought about fighter planes, bombers and the big four engine airliners of the day. In short, my flying career was the result of a real cool Daddy and a World War II pilot who knew how to introduce children to flight without scaring them to death. It was a wonderful flight.
Joe's picture, complete in his WW II flying suit, is framed and hangs in the first spot among the Hall of Fame at the Downtown Airport in Shreveport. I've had the priveledge to talk to young kids staring at the picture when I told them about Joe and the story above.
That's going to be it for today as I don't want to get ahead of everybody. More coming. Stand by.
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