Part 15. You should have seen this coming.

The summer between my sophomore and junior  year in high school was an adventure unlike any I had ever experienced before. Instead of hanging out at the pool and visiting with friends from grade school and Jr High, I worked in the warehouse and went traveling with my Uncles.

I met a long list of people from Nacogdoches, Texas all the way to Texarkana, Arkansas. There were many towns that played a big part in the history of Texas and it was like taking a field trip with the history class. Most of those trips were with Cecil Murray and my Uncle Charles with a few mixed in with Uncle Woodrow.

Having had my introduction into the various plants that produced, plywood, dimension lumber, cross ties, paper and other forest products such as wood chips to make the paper, I began to go to other places such as Natchitoches, Louisiana (pronounced Nack uh tish), where I would eventually attend college and be a member of the Kappa Alpha Fraternity.

From there, we went east and northward toward Minden, Arcadia, where Bonnie and Clyde met their end, and then on to Monroe where we had another store. Minden had more sand and gravel plants than I had ever even imagined. They seemed to be on every corner.

There was a company there named "Gifford Hill" They would use a huge drag line to dig the sand and gravel out of a pond and then send it to their sizing plant for classification. There were huge machines there that classified the size of the gravel through "shaker screens" that were equipped with 3 decks of screen cloth that would eject the unwanted stuff and make sure the right size gravel was produced.

Next time you look at any concrete, take a close look and you might see nothing bigger than a rock that would pass through a 1 1/2" screen and nothing smaller than a 3/8" rock that would be retained on the bottom deck by using a 3/8" screen. They still use that specification or size of aggregate to make concrete today. Now, it's called ASTM 57 but then it was "Concrete Gravel".

It was neat to watch and all that rock was very abraisive which made my trips to Minden a regular occurrence. The trips were great fun and the education spanned every imagineable discipline from heavy machinery for mining all the way to simple machinery such as belt converyors.

As a very interesting part of that history, I eventually met some real heavy hitters that worked for Gifford Hill, a company that eventually made the Fortune 500 list. I didn't get to meet Joe Greer that summer but it wasn't long before I did and his story is well worth mentioning as it was very influential in my develpment.

Joe was born in 1899 or maybe 1900, I just don't remember the exact date but I do remember the story of his 12th year as a kid. He was working as, get this: "An Assitant Chuck Wagon Hand on a Cattle Drive". Those were his words and he laughed out loud when he told the story.

During that particular year, there was a terrible dry spell and there were serious concerns by the owner that he would lose it all that season. Joe told me about the huge creek beds that ran through the property that the cattle depended on for water. He said they were dry as a bone.

The owner came in one day and told everybody that he'd read a notice in the paper that the First World War was beginning and the Fort, that was very near the cattle ranch, would be needing alot of sand and gravel to expand and prepare the Fort for the upcoming war and the tens of thousands of troops that would be trained there.

In any event, the owner decided to dig those creek beds and supply that material as a way out of the impending doom of the cattle business that was taking a nose dive from the drought. The most interesting thing to me about that story unfolded when Joe told me who the owner was. It was Mister Hill as in Gifford Hill.

Joe watched the first bucket of material leave that creek bed and throughout his adult life, watched that company hit Fortune 500 success before he retired as one of the first of their employees. .

Early on, I didn't have a clue what a hydro electric dam was nor did I connect the dots between the health of industry and how that relates to the strength of our Armed Forces. The point I wanted to make in telling this story is just as applicable to today's day and time as it was during the prepatory stages of manning up for the Firest World War. It had to do with SECURITY not ECONOMICS.

One is directly related to the other but, under certain circumstances, all the money in the world won't do you a damn bit of good if you lose your security and therefore your freedom. In my life, it has always been Military First and then, fine tune those things that make the American way of life the best on earth.

I'll pull all this together as the posts continue but for those of you who have been here since the introduction to Post #1, I think it's important that you see, read, understand, why I am the way I am and the path of life that brought me to this point.

Stand by. As the story of the summer vacation between my sophomore and junior year unfolds, be advised that I get my drivers license in November of my Junior year and, as part time help at the Colossus, began making those trips by myself and making acquaintences that would last me a life time and serve me well during my 37 year long career.    

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I give up, Which post is this? 12, 13, 14?

Sometimes when I wait too late to start a post, the evening meds take over and make you the stupid person that you can only be when you are STUPID on meds.

It's not like being drunk on beer or anything like that, in fact, it's more like the days of the hippie movement when you could walk into a smoke filled rock concert hall and discover that you're stoned before you get to your seat.

Despite that, I have to tell you that coming home and ending my boarding school career was a mighty sweet thing for me. I immediately hooked up with Greg and was brought up to speed on everything that was going on around the neighborhood and family.

By doing that, I also got to hook up with Aunt Grace, my Daddy's sister, and Uncle Charles, her World War II veteran husband. After Daddy passed away, he was my first of several surragate fathers on both sides of the family.

Uncle Charles had become somewhat of a specialist in his area of responsibility at the Colossus Midland Belting & Supply Company, of which he was part owner. Since Greg and I were his right  hand men, so to speak, both of us ended up working there and doing the clean up stuff and simple warehouse work for kids.

During that time and in line with Uncle Charles's somewhat  unique position as an owner and a field specialist, I got to travel with him and keep him company with stories about Morris and St. Gregorys. He took me to every account he had in the city but one of them was the huge Ralston Purina Plant where all kinds of specialty animal foods were made.

We went there to deliver some magical part that was the only thing left to make one of their machines runable. When we arrived, we went into a man's office, delivered the magic little part, put away the signed delivery ticket and began a conversation.

Uncle Charles knew him very well and it was clear that they had become good friends. After their initial greeting, he motioned me to come closer so that I could meet Mr. Hamp Smith. We shook hands and he and Uncle Charles shot the breeze about one of the systems in the plant. Soon after that short conversation was over, Uncle Charles and I left and went back to his car.

When we got in the car, Uncle Charles told me that Mr. Smith was a World War II veteran but he was a very special kind of veteran. Uncle Charles said that the government called him a Bataan Death March Survivor.

I freaked as I had already read a ton of stuff about McArthur, Stillwell and the entire campaign for the Phillipines. .He told me that I would soon have my driver's liscense and probably be delivering parts to Ralston on my own. He added that I should never, ever, ever mention that I knew about it or ask him any questions at all about it. I promised to keep it secret and away we went, back to the warehouse.

As luck would have it, Greg and I were out of school just in time for taking inventory and breaking in some brand new push brooms that would have to clean 14,000 square feet of floor space. Despite the fact that it was hot as hell, it was kinda neat and instructive to actually put your hand on every part in a warehouse two stories tall.

I also learned that serious industrial supply companies have a magazine rack in the men's room and that they are filled with brochures of every known part you could imagine.

I learned alot about power transmission by rote. I had them in my hand during inventory counts and then I had the brochure that explained all about it and it's application to any specific job for which it was manufactured. No, I didn't spend alot of time in the men's room but when I did go there, I did some studying that was often times followed by taking a brochure home for my bathroom.

As another wierd coincidence, a guy named Cecil Murray showed up for inventory. Cecil was like a forest product specialist but he had been around long enough to where he could go to any plant of any kind and know all about the component  parts of their systems.

He was kinda like the company drill seargent. He would yell instructions to the warehouse employees from an open door of the sales room and expect it to go all the way to the back of the warehouse. The coincidental thing regarding Cecil was his time in the Army Air Corp during World War II.

Cecil was attached to a bomber squadron and was directly involved with the bomb loading end or that team. One year, the Air Corp had a bomb loading competition and it was held at Esler Field, only 130 miles south of Shreveport. He and his team won the competition and was immediately sent out west to begin training on larger systems that the B 25's and B 17's he'd been loading.

Let's just say that there's more coming from that story but for now, I'll just say he was eventually transferred to Tinian just a short time after the Saipan/Tinian invasion where we took it from the Japanese.

What a unique oddity it was that I knew 5 men in that convoy/battle group and 2 were blood kin with one other being a future father in law, the Great General G.E. McGovern ret with the last two being Melissa's step Daddy, Eddie and our own Cecil Murray.

It was really super cool to be working at the Colossus amidst family and friends as well as my mother who had gone to work in the accounting department. If you add to that the fact that I was roughly a 3 minute drive from Joe Massina's hanger which was on the same street the Colossus was,
it was geographic heaven for me. I had all the toys a big boy wanted and they were all right there in front of me, every day.

To top off all of this, Uncle Charles' other partners were my Uncle Woodrow who was married to my Daddy's sister Nell, the one that came to Morris with Momma to pick me up when I broke my arm.

Then there was Daddy's other sister Helen who married a doughboy from the first World War. He was always referred to as Uncle Shirley. His name was Francis Shirley Hebert (Ay Bare) but Shirley was it. Helen was always called Aunt Baby by neices and nephews but "Baby Lee" by her siblings. Don't ask me how that unfolded but that was just the way it was.

In any event, during the first 3 months of that summer, I had ended my years in boarding school, reconnected with my people, had a lot of day trips to industrial plants in the area, met a lot of grown people and was surrounded by World War II veterans.

Uncle Woodrow was alot like Uncle Charles in that he was a specialist, too. He hardly ever went to the plants as his duties pretty well chained him to the warehouse/office building. Despite that, I found out that he spent his time in the Navy teaching something of an electronic nature and was stationed at Great Lakes Naval Station, the same base where Tim Jr took basic training, 7 years ago.

For purposes of point and foundation, you may well fill in the blanks about all the war stories I was made privvy too and how the closeness of the airport continued to influence my mind about being a fighter pilot.

Keep hanging in there, there will be more soon.

Tim    

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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Part 12, You should have seen this coming.

Being a 9th grader at Morris brought with it the status of being a "senior" as the school stopped at the 9th grade. We had decisions to make regarding our preferences for high school but there were two choices for me and I'd already attended one of them when I spent the summer at Subiaco.  The next logical choice for me was St. Gregory's in Shawnee, Oklahoma.

It was a high dollar prep school that had attached to it, a Junior College. Refusing to go back to Jesuit in Shreveport, I began to have discussions about St. Gregory's as the lure of going to school in the Indian Nations was too much for me to turn down.

I agreed to sign up as did Sullentrop, who had an uncle there that was a priest, O'Malley, one of the tough guys from Chicago, and Joe Farris, a kid from Little Rock whose Daddy was a big time building contractor of some wealth and notariety in Arkansas.

I played center for the basketball team and right end on the football team that year. We had alot of fun traveling over that part of Arkansas playing Kensett, Bald Knob and other small towns within a 30 mile area of the school. Those were some hard hitting strawberry pickin' farm boys and we had our heads handed to us more than once. Despite that, I learned early on about team work and travel. It was alot of fun because we were allowed to stop after games and eat hamburgers at a truck stop that was conveniently located on the way home.

Brother Robert took us to Letona Bluffs for our annual camping trip and frog gigging experience. It was great because we got to tube down the White River and explore the cave that was on the bluff overlooking the river. A cave opening overlooked the river and allowed one to stand on a very small outcropping of rock and jump into the river from there. It was scary as the jump was at least 30' off the river. I did it once or twice but Greg must have done it 10 or 15 times. He was a natural swimmer and had no fear of heights.

Brother Robert took us mountain climbing and one kid from Oklahoma named Johnson, fell and had to be taken to the hospital in Searcy which was maybe 20 miles away. Greg and I made it without any problem and were very proud of ourselves as some of the pathways on the side of the mountain made us depend on the next guy's hand in front of us to keep us from making the fall that Johnson did. It was a blast. Greg and I talk about those experiences from time to time as it was so much fun.

As the end of the school year approached and we knew that time was coming when we would be leaving forever, there were lots of conversations about the various experiences we had over the years. In addition to the dairy, hay farm, kitchen duty, potato peeling, and gymnasium work, as we became seniors, we got to work in the boiler room and the laundry.

Brother Bernard ran the boiler room that supplied steam to the laundry and every building at the school so it was a big boiler room. We shoveled coal but did so in the midst of classical music that Brother Bernard had playing all the time. Brother Linus ran the laundry which was next door to the boiler room so we got to visit with him, too. He was much older than most of the other Brothers and would always pat you on the head or back, give you a compliment of some sort and encouraged us to be good and study hard.

All things considered, Greg and I had one hell of an upbringing there and the Brothers who did the overseeing portion, weren't anything like the Jesuits. They were tough as nails but they were fair. We had a well known list of rules that were not to be broken and a specific punishment called "swats" if we broke them. A swat was generally administered through the use of a 2 x 4 that had a bunch of holes drilled in the end of it and a hand carved handle on the other. One swat was good enough for anybody to correct an attitude.

One day, Brother Julian came into the class and made the following announcement in his somewhat unusual voice which was caused by a nasal condition and an extreme overbite of his front teeth. He said:

"The following named individuals will report to the execution chamber after last bell: Baaaaahhtluh , Craaaafts, Caaaaaahill and a few others.

Greg and I knew we were in for it so we reported as ordered. Remembering the announcement and the unique sound of his voice was much easier than remembering the swat. As far as our infraction was concerned, we probably didn't turn our homework in on time or were caught talking in class. Whatever it was, the important thing that I remembered from those occassions were always connected to the punishment fitting the crime. The Brothers knew their stuff and never physically overdid it when a spanking was justified.

Before we knew it, it was time for the senior trip and off we went to a State Park near the Rockefeller mansion and farm that was west of Little Rock. We would climb sugar loaf mountain and generally roam all over the woods. A good time was had.........except for one very unfortunate situation I experienced on the last day at camp.

I won't mention his name as he's still alive but one of the Brothers came into the cabin and for some reason, that to this day escapes me, he jumped on me and hit me on my left arm exactly where it had been broken, incorrectly set, rebroken in the second surgery and set in a cast that had rubber bands all over it due to the requirements to keep the bones under traction.

In the same sense that I hit the nun in the head with the chalk filled eraser when she made her untimely comment about the death of my Daddy and the thoughts I had that resulted in me almost hitting Father Junkin with a speedball, I found myself, shaving cream can in my hand, putting Brother E in a head lock and hitting him repeatedly in the head. He had several semi circles that were imprinted on his forehead from the repeated hits I was landing on his head. He got away and ordered an immediate return to school where I was to meet with the powers that be to determine what would happen.

Brothers Roberts, Bill and one other Brother that I don't remember, were waiting for me in the football changing room. I figured my ass was grass but was ready to defend my position and the decision I made to pick up the shaving cream can and throw as many blows as I could to defend taking another hit on my arm where the tender area was from last years break..

After many questions from the Brothers were posed and answered by me, there was the unbelievable judgement that I would receive no swats at all. They cautioned me that hitting a man of the cloth was an offense that could lead to excommunication from the church.

Since this was the 4th time I had experienced something of this nature, I said that I would "Quit" rather than wait on the excommunication and that I would have my family communicate with the Pope to explain the situation. After that, and in view of the history with my family, nothing further was said and Brother E never laid a hand on me again.

If I told Momma once, I told her a thousand times that I considered her decision to send me to Morris the first time and again for two more years to complete Jr High on the second tour, was a decision that I considered to be the best she'd ever made about my education and my experiences in life.

She loved hearing that and knew that I was serious. I think the reason she loved it so much had to do with the fact that I left home as a ten year old who had just lost his Daddy and that I needed the kind of supervision that  had proven to produce men like Greg's Daddy, my most loved Uncle Charles.

I graduated with good grades and a fabulous background in Algebra and Geometry thanks to Brother Cyprian Hill who was the head master of the school. Greg and I left to go home for the summer and play like crazy till it was time for me to head out for Oklahoma and the great boarding school known as St. Gregory's and the experiences of living in the Indian Nations. Greg eventually graduated from Jesuit but I'm sure no one gave him an ounce of trouble there. Slapping him would have been like hitting a rock. I'm telling you, he would be the last one you would want to pick a fight with.

More to come, be patient.



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Excuse repetition

I guess I must have been pretty tired when I wrote the previous post because, as I re-read it, I noticed that I had mentioned the "Thatch Weave" twice. I absolutely, positively need to convey many different aspects of my life because it will, later on, be really important for you to understand why I did some things during my combat years. Thanks for putting up with this. Tim Sr.

Post 11 for real

There are lots of parallels that can be drawn when comparing most aspects of life to boarding school. Whether it's raising kids in the city, being a kid in the city, being in the Army, focusing on your career, being in school, learning respect for your parents, neighbors or authority figures, boarding school is a wonderful platform for developing those skills and the conduct that so many seem to have trouble with.

Greg and I took to parts of it like a duck to water. We worked in the dairy with Brother Victor and learned early on about milk production, hay farming and the somewhat shitty duty of composting all the manuer from the cows as they were being milked. Pardon the pun but for a guy who at one time, was referred to as "The King of the compost pile", I just had to say it.

Brother Leo was in charge of the kitchen where meals were prepared 3 times per day for all 109 students and the Franciscan Brothers who lived and worked at Morris. We liked the kitchen work because Brother Leo and Uncle Charles had known each other for decades and he more or less took us under his wing and showed us how to bake sweet rolls for that many people....from scratch.

Brother Ferdie was in charge of the "Junior Dorm", potato peeling and wine making. Long after graduation, Greg and I used to say that "if they decide to cremate Brother Ferdie, he will NEVER go out". We were of course referring to the never ending taste tests that he went through when making his wine. He was, by no means, a drunk but he always smelled of wine and potatoes.

Brother Robert, Brother Bill and Brother Giles were always around the gymnasium and the 3 of them shared the duties of keeping the swimming pool, the basketball court, the football changing room, the concession stand and bathrooms in the gym, in clean working order. Gym duty was pretty cool, too.

Brother Giles was a different sort of Franciscan. He had been in World War II and he smoked like a chimney and clearly suffered from combat fatigue, shell shock or whatever you want to call it. He was a good guy and I liked him even though he was, at times, very strict about our conduct.

Brother William, not Brother Bill, was in charge of the "Senior Dorm" and in that respect, was Brother Ferdie's counterpart. He was also the Prefect of Discipline like Father Junkin was at Jesuit, but these two guys appeared not to be from the same planet.

I can go on and on about each of the departments Greg and I worked in when time for chores arrived. I guess it's fair to say that we liked the farming and dairy operations so much that Greg and I stayed one summer for hay season. Brother Gabriel drove the tractor for the hay production and then drove the truck when it came time to collect the bales of hay that we would put away for the winter.

If you scroll down to the bottom of this page you will see a picture of me and Greg leaning against Aunt Grace's Pontiac as it is parked in front of the gym. It wasn't far behind that building that I administered Saparito's lesson regarding bullying the kids. In any event, neither Greg nor I were power lifters and bailing hay and throwing them up to the flatbed elevation of the hay truck was a work out that exceeded anything I'd ever done. Even though I was two years older and a bit taller than Greg, he was stronger than I was.

If you read all of this from the introduction and then Part 1 to here, you might remember that Greg's Mamma, my Aunt Grace, is Uncle Raymond's sister and Uncle Raymond was a Golden Gloves boxing champion and a guy that could more than handle himself.

In any event, we liked most of it and especially liked the outdoor parts where we went camping at Letona Bluffs, squirell hunting, mountain climbing, tubing down the White River and hiking all over the country side.

All went well that year except for the last week of school when I fell off of the basketball goal where I had climbed for some unknown reason. I broke my left arm and was taken to Searcy to have it set and unfortuanately, the doc set it incorrectly and I had to be transferred to St Vincent's Infirmary in Little Rock to have it rebroken and reset. Momma and Aunt Nell came for all that and after I was released, we went home to Shreveport for my summer rehabilitation.

When I think back to that particular year I have to mention that I discovered the library and history. I managed to read every book in the library relating to World War II and I did so while sitting on one of the benches near to the Saparito Instruction spot.

I studied every fighter group including the 356th. As an 8th grade kid, I knew who Dick Bong was as well as Butch O'Hare, Joe Foss, Gabreski, Gentile and a number of other pilots of great fame during the War.

I thought about Joe Messina alot and wondered if I would ever get to see him again. More than anything, I really woke up to the part of combat aviation that had to do with strategy. You can google "Thatch Weave" and see what I mean much easier than I can explain it here.

I even knew who Saburo Sakei was and some of his Japanese counterparts like a bomber pilot named Nishizawa. Saburo was the highest scoring Ace in the Imperial Air Force.

As a side note, in the early 80's I had the great historic fortune to communicate with his office at Saburo's Mueseum in Tokyo where they were attempting to rebuilt the famous Japanese Fighter Plane, the often feared Zero.

They were on a world wide search to find an engine for that type and, having flown combat missions just north east of Saigon where a Japanese Zero had crashed on the side of a mountain, I knew where one was.

The Japanese Imperial Navy had a Base in "Nha Be" which was adjacent to the Saigon River that flowed to the South China Sea at Vung Tau. It was also used as an airfield and was located on the southern outskirts of Saigon where they would primarily refuel, re-arm and repair Destroyers.

The airstrip there provided aviation fuel that would allow a solo flight to the next stopping point which I think was Hong King and from there, many Zeros flew back to Japan.

One year, a Zero Pilot was returning to Japan but the monsoon season was in full force and his Zero and his life ended on the side of Signal Mountain which was on the east side of Xuan Loc where Fire Support Base "Mace" was located. "Mace" was my forward operating base when I was flying Nighthawk Gunship Missions for the 199th Light Infanty Brigade between May of 70 and September of 1971 when the entire Brigade was shut down and returned to the USA.

Chief Warrant Office Terry Femmer (rip) showed me the Zero one day and I longed to go hiking up the mountain to inspect it or even arrange a sling load to get it off the mountain, but that was never to be.

In any event, despite my connection to the historical aspects of the Japanese Empire during the Second World War, I thought about Joe Messina alot and wondered if I would ever get to see him again. More than anything, I really woke up to the part of combat aviation that had to do with strategy. You can google "Thatch Weave" and see what I mean much easier than I can explain it here.

I guess it's fair to say that, as an 8th grade kid, I emersed myself into every aspect of aviation, strategy, the strategy of all sides and how the constant changes in strategic methodology brought about different results. I even managed to use some of those strategies in life at boarding school where Greg and I managed to stay out of trouble...............for the most part. More coming later. Stand by.






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Part 11, You should have seen this coming

This is just a test to see if the new format that I now find staring me in the face, actually works. Stand by..