Part 4, You should have seen this coming

In my recollection process, "Kid Time" was pretty easy to remember. As an example of that, I remember the day we received a new sand box at the kindergarden. It was 1953. I remember Lloyd, the custodian, installing it and bringing the sand in by wheel barrow. We couldn't wait for him to finish it because we could bring little toy soldiers with us every day and play war during recess. I didn't know it at the time but they put the sand box in to stop us from playing war in the dirt and tracking it in the house that was used as St. Joseph's kindergarten.

Daddy had a 4 door, green Packard that was a 1954 and it was really something neat as it had air conditioning. I don't recall ever riding in a car with air condiioning but I do recall the "wing windows" at the front of both doors as we could swing them out and get a big blast of air when it was really hot.

One car that Daddy had came with a round air cooler that you could roll up in the window and get cool air from that. The faster we went, the cooler it was.

I was born in November of 1948 and since the new cars always came out in September of the year, it was easy to recall that I was only four years old with a month and four days to go until my 5th birthday.

My "kinny gardin" teacher is still alive and I visit with her son Mike from time to time. She was my favorite because she migrated from England after the 2nd World War and had the most comforting accent imaginable. For those of you who lived in Broadmoor and went to Byrd High School, she is Mike McCullough's mom.

Somewhere in this time line, the camping trip ended and spring time brought that wonderful weather with it and I was off on my trip to visit Uncle Raymond and Aunt Glade.

I vividly remember the trip. It's 120 miles to Alexandria from Shreveport. Just south of Alex, as we called it, there was a little town called "LeCompte". Local folk lore said it was named after a famous, locally owned race horse named "Lickem Pete". There was a resturant there named "Lee's" and it's still operating today. We always stopped there as we still had another 70 miles to go before we could meet Uncle Raymond and Aunt Glade near Opelousas.

After we left the resturant, the next town, only a few minutes from Lee's, was Meeker where we would turn right and head toward Turkey Creek. Yeah, Turkey Creek. There must have been some sort of a refuge there because there was a sign on the roadway that had a picture of a bear. When we asked Daddy what the sign was about he said that we had to be real, real quite because if we didn't, the bear would get us. That was when nap time came and we either had to try and nap or simply shut up. I guess they didn't use "Mother's Little Helper", Benedryl, back in the 50's.

Once we made it past Turkey Creek, the Lafluer farm in Prairie Rhonde, was not far. Aunt Glade's maiden name was Lafluer and through the years, we went there many times. Doctor Lefluer practised out of his house and he had a small clinic that he built near the entrance to the farm that ended up being so famous, artists painted it as a part of Cajun life in the rural areas of South Louisiana. That picture is common place in several resturants and offices in that part of Louisiana and I always tell folks that I played there as a kid.

The house, to us, wasn't a house. It was clearly a mansion. Larry Lefluer retired, moved back to the farm and is currently restoring it. It is a beautiful place and demands a certain amount of awe as it was quite the "thing" before, during and after World War II.

In any event, we met Uncle Raymond and Aunt Glade and before long, I was off to Crowley to spend time there. I didn't know it at the time but my Uncle Raymond had the same career path that my Uncle Woodrow and Uncle Charles had chosen. The same career path that I took for 37 years. He became a manufacturer's rep and a distributor of industrial supplies, a great way to make a living.

The family used to laugh about my first night I spent in Crowley because, other than Uncle Raymond, I was the only male in the house. There was Glade, Madeline and Andrea, so we were outnumbered 3 to 2. Aunt Glade filled the tub with hot water and told me that she would leave and let me take my bath in private. She shut the door but was unaware that my shoes had double knots in them and I couldn't take them off. I sloshed the water around the tub with my hands to make it sound like I was taking a bath, and after a while she knocked at the door and asked if I had finished. I told her yes. When she came in , there I was with a my shoes still on, dry as they could be. I can still hear her laughing.

The next morning, the Uncle / Nephew trip that I remember to this day, began. Uncle Raymond took me to Rayne and Kaplan, Louisiana where huge rice driers were located. We went inside, met his customers and began a tour of the plant to teach me what it was all about. It amazed me.

After touring two plants, we went back to a machine shop in Crowley that was owned by a Mr. Hoffpaur and located in the garage at his house. I saw lots of rice drier stuff that he made there and that Uncle Raymond sold throughout South Louisiana. Then came lunch, a meal I've never forgotten.

Just south of the Court House in Crowley, on the main street, there was a cafe on the east side of the street. (Winston, it was near the recording studio) It was a very strange place to me as most of the patrons were speaking Acadian French and I didn't have a clue what was going on. Despite that, Uncle Raymond did and he ordered lunch from his waitress.

When the raw oysters came, I thought I was gonna die. It looked like snot to me except it was still in the shell. Uncle Raymond told me that he was going to teach me the most important thing in the world to know about Cajun food. It was the sauce that counted. He took a bowl and began pouring stuff into it that I liked. First there was castsup, then Lee and Perrin, tabasco, lemon juice and then finally, something He called the "Coupey De GrassY'. It was horse radish.

He took an oyster, put it on a saltine cracker, covered it with his sauce and put it away like it was prime rib. He gave me a cracker without an oyster on it, put a dab of his sauce on it and I gave it a try. Even though it had a bite to it, I loved it because I was eating Man Food and it had catsup in it.

Before I knew it, he made me his oyster over cracker special and I went through the oysters like a pro. I've been eating oysters that way my entire life.

After a week of that daily regimen, it was time to go home. I didn't know it at the time but I had been taught by one of the masters, how to tour a plant, observe every component in the plant and store room and how he made a living as a supplier to each and every plant. We didn't know until his passing how financially successful he'd become but he was a winner in every sense of the word.

We met Daddy in Alexandria and before I knew it I was back home and in the kitchen digging out the catsup, horse radish and all the other goodies needed to make the sauce. My little sister Linda and I tested it on crackers and she loved it, too. When Daddy came in from work, since we didn't have any oysters, he broke open the sardines and we went at it like the big people did.

Now, before I close and prepare the next meeting of the Uncles, I want to make a point as it relates to "You should have seen this coming".

The point is this, my Uncles weren't the kind of uncles that patted you on the head during Christmas or family reunions. They were the kind that took part in your life and made sure that you spent as much time as possible with them so you could learn about life, work, family and, unbeknownst to them, war.

I've left out some stuff about Uncle Raymond as it relates to his fight for the Golden Gloves boxing championship, but suffice it to say, he was a man's man and I couldn't see him ever having to ask anybody to help him with "those bullies". He loved my brother Leland and I and this wasn't the last time we spent time with him. It was only the first.

Standby for World War II.




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Part 3, You should have seen this coming.

Shortly after the Bat Club was disolved and the Fortress, with it's underground tunnel complex was de-constructed, Daddy decided that he needed to spend some MAN TIME with his boys. He apparently didn't want to waste any time as picked the dead of winter to plan a camping trip.

Daddy had a 52 Chevy pick up truck that his construction company used on each house they built. It was a really neat thing as it had tool boxes on the side, a head ache rack, a starter on the floor, a manual choke and throttle sticking out of the dash board and more windows that you can imagine. It even had running boards.

I didn't take a friend along but Daddy let Leland bring a friend that went to grade school with him. I think it was Tommy Mayeaux who we recently lost to cancer.

We loaded the truck with a small wood burning stove, a large tarp, food, a large metal water
container and a large load of shingles that apparently were trim pieces that came off of a job Daddy had been working on.

The 4 of us loaded up and off we went. Roughly 40 miles from Shreveport there's a road just north of Castor, Louisiana where my grandmother lived. There's a bridge there that sits atop Black Bayou and that's the spot Daddy picked as our first camping site. While driving south to the camp site, Daddy put me in his lap and let me hold the steering wheel which was the coolest thing I had done up to that time. I will never forget the view out of the driver's window as we crossed the dam at Lake Bisteneau.

We set up camp in a hurry as the weather was turning cool. Daddy put the wood burning stove in the middle of the tarp turned tent and had us bring the shingles inside the tent. They were narrow pieces of shingle that were easy to throw into the firebox through a small opening in the front that you normally put wood into. I recall it as as being a two burner stove with an exhaust pipe that let the smoke and fumes exit the tent at a hole in the top. It was really cool as I was in charge of keeping the fire going. I loved it and immediately fell in love with camping.

Before we settled in, Bogan showed up with his hunting dog. Bogan was Daddy's painter and I think he came from Ringold, Louisiana which wasn't far from our camping spot. Daddy told us to come to the banks of the bayou and watch what Bogan was going to do. He picked up the dog and literally through him into the bayou. After a very short swim, the dog came back to the bank, shook off the water and returned to Bogan.

Bogan had a duck or a bird of some sort and through it into the middle of the bayou. Without hesitation, the bird dog raced to the bank and jumped in the water, swam to the middle of the bayou and retrieved the bird. It was neat seeing how all that worked as I don't think we had television in Shreveport during those days and I'd never seen anything like that. Shortly after the bird dog episode, Bogan left and we played around the bayou and the bridge throwing rocks and such and howling like Indians.

As dark was felling, Daddy told us to come into the tent. He had his picknic basket open and was beginning to serve supper. I can't remember everything we had but for the most part, it was sardines and crackers with some balogna as a back up mandated by Momma.

I wasn't enamored with the sardines but Daddy said it was "man food" and that when I grew up and my taste buds developed, I would like them alot. He told me that his brother, my Uncle Raymond, was a champion in the food eating department because he married Aunt Glade Lefluer, who was a georgeous woman from Prairie Rhonde, a small south Louisiana village close to Opelousas, a short drive from Lafayette.

I didn't know it at the time but Daddy was planning on sending me for a summer visit to Crowley, Louisiana where Uncle Raymond and Aunt Glade lived. I still remember that summer and speak about it from time to time as I'm still in touch with his daughter, my first cousin Andrea.

In any event, as you review the early childhood experiences I've outlined in this post, be advised that you ain't seen nothin' yet. I'll stop at this point and wait until I get a few more confirmations before proceeding further. Leland said it would be wise to wait until then and not impose a deadline on this story or get ahead of the readers. So, there it is so far. I will you give you a hint and say that there's a trip to Uncle Raymond's house next and then, a meeting with all my Uncles at granny's house where I first heard stories of combat in World War II. Standby.

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.

You should have seen this coming!

Before I get into the crux of this post, I want to say something about the title selection. I actually went through a mental selection process to arrive at the title and I decided it was best for me to try and make these posts something like an individual email to each of you.

YOU should have seen this coming instead of "WE should have seen this coming".. seemed to do it for me. Beyond the fact that "YOU" is so much more pointed than "WE", I settled on YOU.

There are so many things happening right now, there's no problem at all in picking an area to start a discussion with any of you who want to participate. As a coincidence to the timing of this post, I have had my head stuck in books and this computer and have accomplished a number of things regarding the understanding of "world security" and therefore, our security.

After rambling on about WW2 for a while, I will get down to specifics and how they effected me throughout my entire life.

As much reading and study of military matters as I've done in my life, even I was astounded at some of the problems we have today that are a direct result of the geographic and political games of the infamous Adolf Hitler.

When I thought about some of those things, I researched Melissa's step daddy's WW2 history from the moment he left Pearl Harbor on the 5th of June in 1944, and steamed off to invade the Island of Saipan. I'll get to the specifics later.

I then did some study of the Israeli's thoughts about 911. Aside from that, I have my own personal combat experiences that I plan on posting. Before any of this continues, I will need to get confirmations from many of you that you were able to open the blog and read the posts without any trouble. I'm really not writing this for me but I do enjoy communicating with all of you that have been a part of life. Be patient, as soon as I can get the confirmations of the blog being okay, I will get back on this. It's midnight and WVirgina just won the Orange Bowl. Imma hit it. g'nite.

Back on Line and trying to get the blog up and goin'

Hey Curt, you are probably going to be the only one following this as no body else knows I'm back up and running. Lots of news here and many other upcoming items of interest. Yeah, it's gonna be political but unlike most bullshit you read, these ramblings will be documented by source. Bare with me.

Long Time No See

Today is January 4, 2012. It's been a long time since I've posted here and many things in my life have changed. I'm still close to the VA hospital in both a literal and spiritual sense. Tim Jr bought a townhouse for me that's only 2.5 miles from the VA.

I want to begin a series of posts that are both reports of my condition and thoughts of the condition of things in our country. I'm not trying to raise a stink but I have certain experiences in life that make me a bit unique and better qualified than the idiots you see writing articles for the newspaper or on the net. Will begin shortly, just want to get started and let everybody know that, with your support and participation, a return to the blog is likely. Standby for combat stories and how that relates to current situations in our country.

Bad sick again

Can't seem to get this stomach squared away. I'm not sick as a result of any chemo but the brain swelling/stroke/siezure preventative medications has literally put me down.

I spent all day in bed the day after Thanksgiving. I have to take 1,000 mg per day or two 500 mg doses doses 12 hours apart.

Doc's are not real happy with me as they told me not to go back to work. They still say I'm in denial about my condition and the things that I've endured such as brain trauma and the loss of some temporal lobe matter. Going to the hospital in a minute to visit with them about that and to see what's up with this anuerism (spelling) in my stomach.

As long as they don't mandate that I MUST stay "IN" the hospital, I will consider today's visit a success. I do not want them to make me retire but I'm pretty much at their command because I can not afford to lose my benefit package that covers the upcoming surgery.

Hangin' tough as I can.

Tim Sr.