Part 2, You should have seen this coming.

If you are just now joining us, be advised that these posts are arranged by date from bottom to top and you'll have to scroll down to start at the beginning. I've decided to label these numerically so you can keep track as this will be a long one and contain many posts unveiling many parts of my life. In any event, I'm glad you're here so let's get going.

If you look at the pictures below, you will see my dad, Jules Leon Butler, my mom, Nora McInnis Butler and my siblings. Leland, who is my older brother, Elaine, the older of two sisters, Linda was the younger sister and that's me sitting in front of mom. That was the Butler clan and I think the picture was taken sometime around 1953.

Daddy was a bulding contractor so I had a great deal of exposure to the construction industry very early on. One of the assets of having a dad in the house building bidness, is a never ending supply of little things a contractor might keep at home. A small bag of powdered cement was one and a few 2x4's was another. We built one hell of a tree house in the next door neighbor's tree and between daddy's stuff and the things that my brass foundry owning neighbor had, we built the best tree house ever.

My daddy's sister Nell, married Woodrow W Crew who was a major stockholder in Colossus Midland Belting and Supply Company. He was a Navy veteran from the second World War. From him, we managed to get block and tackle from the supply house and from that, we began building the elevator we planned to use to get to the tree house.

My neighbor's dad brought home a World War 2 artillery shell casing that they made during the war. It was one of several counter weights we put in a sturdy shipping crate and we used that to propell us to the treehouse when we dropped the box from the second floor. It provided a slow but steady rise to the treehouse platform which was probably only 8 to 10' or so off the ground.

I took the powdered cement and wrapped it in some C-fold paper towels and secured it with scotch tape and rubber bands. I used that as an artillery round that we could shoot across the street at a crabapple tree in the Thornton's front yard. We built a sling shot with old tire inner tubes and could easily shoot the cement across the street and 3 houses down. It was the biggest sling shot that I had ever seen, before or since. We had to do that cause the little red headed girl there did NOT like the members of the BAT CLUB, of which I was a charter member.

That didn't last very long because, when making a direct hit in the crabapple tree, the paper would burst when it hit the limbs and the powdered cement covered everything including their small front porch. Parents prevailed and the Bat Club was not very long lived.

Shortly after we were forced to abandon the tree house, I discovered that there was an underground fortress being built in our back yard. I was too young to remember the how and the who part of that but I did get to go in it and discover that someone, probably Leland, had shoveled away some of the dirt and made two steps that would allow you to go "down" to the basement. In a phone conversation with Leland just a moment ago, he confirms that he did it.

Before long, we discovered that if you dug a ditch to the next door neighbor's fence, covered it with plywood and dirt, we could actually have a tunnel that could only be accessed through the fortress. We could get in the fortress, go down the two dirt steps and crawl through the tunnel to get under the fence and into the neighbor's back yard. I was in charge of lighting the candles that were inset into dirt walls and provided sufficient vision to conduct operations. James Bond was no where around at the time.

Having lost the Bat Club Treehouse but replacing it with the fortress, we were still in cahoots with Denman, our next door neighbor that we called "Bit" as in little bit. As a function of expansion, we decided to build a trap door on the other side of the yard, dig a tunnel under the fence and gain access to the Darby's yard at a point where many bushes were located and therefore, providing sufficient cover so we wouldn't get caught.

As things would unfold, the neighborhood little kid grape vine soon allowed the secret of the tunnels to be compromised. Not long after that, as we were coming out of the trap door in the Darby's yard, there stood one of the girls from our side of the street. After threats of exposing the whole thing to the parents if we didn't let her in, we decided to negotiate an entry fee. It worked and we let her in. Not long after that I learned about strip poker.

In any event, Mom prevailed as I'm sure the word got out that we were up to no good. In today's conversation with Leland, I have discovered that he skipped school one day and decided to spend the day in the fort. When he was no where to be found, Dad came home and discovered that he was in the hide out. One spanking later, the end of the fortress was announced.

Despite that, we developed an income generating enterprise as our next project and began collecting coke bottles that we could trade in to the grocery store for 2 cents each. A case was worth half a buck and in the fifties, that was some real cash for a kid. It only cost 15 cents to buy a ticket at the "moving picture show" as my grandmother used to call them.

When the word about that spread, the bullies showed up and took my bottles one day. I don't know if Leland invented the armored coke bottle wagon but not long after the bullies took my bottles, there it was. It was a fifities version of the War Wagon.

Daddy had a large crate that I recall as a root beer barrel shipping container that he had from the days when he owned an amusement park around Cross Lake. In any event, when you put roller skates under it with a steerable front end that was controlled by ropes, the armored wagon was invented. It came equipped with a bb gun. That's when the trouble began.

I don't know who had the duty to push the war wagon to the grocery store as I was locked inside driving, but I specifically recall a bully from two blocks over showing up before we ever passed the next door neighbor's house. He was huge and probably 5 or 6 years older than me. He took off his big black belt and told me to get out of that cart and give him the coke bottles or he would beat the snot out of me with the belt. The bb gun solved all that as my shot hit him directly in the tit and the entire episode, including the war wagon, ended as soon as it began. Despite that, I only had two more bully experiences in my life and I solved those problems by hand.

As a last note about all this, I will say that the dismantling of the Bat Club and the underground fortress and tunnels, had a very positive result. I'm sure mom had a lot to do with this but my daddy ended up bringing all the rides from the amusement park home and installing them in the back yard. It seems as some little kid fell out of a ride and his daddy threatened to file a law suit against mine so Daddy just shut it down and brought it home to his kids.

We had a gasoline powered train that had two passenger cars behind it so all neighborhood kids could ride. It was a real deal that actually rode on small scale rails and was exactly like the real trains rode and sounded. Daddy's treasure trove also contained an "airplane ride" that was really neat. The steel tower that was the main frame of the ride had many little tiny airplanes suspended from the top by chains and when it was running, the kids could imagine that they were pilots flying around the 360 degree arc that it traveled in. What a cool back yard. It was like waking up at Disney Land every day.

That concludes this portion of Part 2. Stay tuned and I'll keep on going.