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.











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