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.








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