Byrd High School, Bras, A Girl's Diary, Another Fist Fight And Terry Bradshaw.

By the time I made it home from St. Gregory's, Cousin Greg had already made it home from Morris and he knew girls, lots of girls. He was dating a girl named Gayle and Uncle Charles had given him a car to use as his own. It was a 57 Chevy. That's right, the dream car of it's time, a 57 Chevy. All you hot rodders out there, eat your hearts out.

Not long after the 57 Chevy came along, he stopped dating Gayle and started dating Margo. I figured, "okay, I'll start dating Gayle". Initially, I thought that was going to be a good deal but as it turned out, she kept a diary and her snooping mother took it from her room one day and read it from A to Z.

To make a long story short, let's just say that I was not only forbidden to even drive down her street, I was worried about being hunted down by the old lady who out weighed me by 100 pounds. It wasn't the father, it was the mother I was worried about. She proved to be the proverbial "Turd in the punchbowl". Since I can't point a finger and Blame it on Bob, let's just Blame it on Greg.

The appropriate nick name came years later from another high school friend, Steve Dupuy. I finally received some benefit of all the years of Latin when he uttered the words: "Summus Gruntlick".

Before you girls get judgmental, I want to remind you that this female breast deal is a natural thing and we boys just can't help ourselves. From the instant we are born, the first thing that happens is an ass whipping. They say they do that to get us breathing properly.

The second thing that happens involves a female breast. I don't know if you want to classify the breast thing as "cause and effect" but I sure wish the female of the species would just accept that this is the way it is and will probably always be (except for rag heads who like donkeys). Deal with it, accept it and know that we wish we had our own set to play with but that simply wasn't to be.

I concluded a long time ago that this breast thing is a very confusing situation and the older we get, the worse it is. It seems perfectly natural to me that boys, when thinking about girls, can't figure out whether we are going to get our asses spanked or have a great time with the breasts of the female persuasion.

They even made a joke about them and said that one day a kid was watching a girl run topless down the beach. Even though she covered her breasts with her hands, the kid yelled out: "Hey Lady, if you're gonna drown those puppies, I want the one with the brown nose". Even little boys have to suffer.

With the advent of breast implants, I kinda feel like women get it because so many of them have those puppies blown up and, for the life of me, the only reason I can see them doing it is because they know that boys love em. That's all I'm gonna say about that. I thought that Gayle was going to be a home  run for me but I learned early on that a girl friend's momma could end up causing you to be ejected from the game.

In any event, I enjoyed my Junior year at Byrd immensely. During gym class, I met Coach Woody Turner and, as the Byrd High Track Coach, he took all the new students and had them run time trials on the 100, 220, 440, 880 and mile run. As it turned out, I was fast and ran a 10.2 hundred yard dash and a 52.8 quarter mile. I went to Byrd's Track Team and had a ball. I met a lot of great guys there and one of them, Dick Brook, eventually became very influential in saving my life but that's a story for my college days and I'll get to that on the next post.

In any event, the track team was the nuts. When I was on the mile relay team, I met Terry Bradshaw. He went to Woodlawn High School and I watched him set a national record in the javelin one day when we had a track meet at Byrd. Terry was Woodlawn's quarterback and despite what you see today on tv, he was a quiet kinda guy and pretty reserved when he was in high school. All of that happened my Junior year. As a coincidence, Tim Jr begins teaching World History at Woodlawn this year.

When my Senior year at Byrd came about, I met Claudia. I was totally smitten and knew by then that I needed to walk a very thin, respectful line with her and her parents. Even though I didn't end up with her as the love of my life, my wife and the mother of my children, I had the respect of her entire family and still do to this day.

Unfortunately, there was a guy who didn't think that way and when he started interfering with my relationship with her, I knew that big time trouble was brewing. It was the kind of trouble that brought about thoughts of a Shaving Cream Can Type of Ass Whippin'.

One day, when I went to school, the bad guy taunted me in the parking lot. He was one of 4 guys in a group that were sitting in a car right outside my first hour class room. To make a long story short, the situation escalated and threats were made by the big mouth kids in the car and I told them to bring it on. He jumped out of the car, squared off with me and the fight began. There was only one punch. I threw it, it landed and off he went to the hospital to get stitches. The other 3 boys didn't want any part of that overhand right and they ran off to get one of the teachers. I found myself in the office and knew that the trouble was just starting. When they called my mother and reported the incident, momma said "He told me he was having trouble with that kid and if he didn't leave him alone, Tim was going to kick his butt". Mr. Ravenna replied with: "Oh, so it was premeditated".

He gave me a 3 day suspension for that but as it turned out, the second day of that suspension was my 18th birthday, the legal age for drinking and one hell of a party ensued when I bought all the beer.

As a side note to all this, I met Melissa who is one of my dearest friends to this day. Her step daddy was Eddie Joyce who was a veteran of World War II and had taken part in the invasion of Saipan and Tinian where the Enola Gay eventually departed with the Hiroshima bomb.  I also met Steve Dupuy, Blame it on Bob and many other guys and gals at Byrd that would be life long friends.

As I close this, I wanted to say that throughout my life, I was surrounded by combat veterans and, with all of the lessons that came from that association, I became a reasonably knowledgeable military historian and eventually, a Nighthawk Gunship Pilot and a Scout Pilot with hunter killer teams that flew in Vietnam and Nixon's Secret War in Cambodia.

Thanks to all the old guys that are now gone from this world. Your influences in my life served me well, just as well as you served your Country during times of war.

College is next so hang tough. Flight School and Vietnam is not far off. After that, I'll give you the T.L Butler predictions from "The Church of The Painful Truth". That's not another blog site. It a division of the Church of What's Happenin Now that  you have to go to when you don't pay attention to the rules.

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