Unpredictable Adventures Blog

I’m not about to start making excuses for being late. I honestly don’t know how I got so far behind. Let’s just move on with the narrative.

While we were in Camp 2, I had my first ‘girlfriend,’ Ann Jorgenson. We met at the playground and liked each other immediately. I don’t know how much time we spent together. The only things I remember are pushing her on the swings and demonstrating my prowess at jumping at the highest point of the arc. Then came the big question. She asked, “Do you want to kiss me?” I answered that I did but I had to ask my parents first. … Talk about a short romance, but I had been introduced to the attraction of girls.

I don’t remember how it came about, but someone invited me out several times on a fishing boat named the DUVA, the Navy’s four letter designator for Guam. We would go out in the morning and cruise the swells until about noon. I loved the motion of the boat as we plowed through wave after wave. The best place to feel the waves was at the front of the cabin, right at the bow. The second best place was on deck at the bow. I think that was my primary reason for going, although I did enjoy being out on the ocean in any case.

I mentioned Stanley earlier. I managed to wrangle a trip for him once. It turned out to be a mistake. He got sea sick while I had a great time. The ocean wasn’t rough, but the swells were large. I took him into the forward cabin to get the feel of the waves. He didn’t last.

As essentially a naval base Guam had almost no commercial facilities at the time we were there. Everything we had convenient access to was run by the military. We sometimes went out for breakfast at an officers’ club at the naval headquarters. That was where I fell in love with Spanish omelet. I still make it every once in a while. At the north end of the island, just outside Anderson Air Force Base there was another club, Agafogumas, where we’d go occasionally for dinner. They had music and a dance floor, and I think they sometimes had live music. A great place for Mom and Dad and, if I remember correctly, the food was good.

For some reason we had borrowed a jeep to get around the island, and this one time we drove it to Agafogumas. As usual we had a good time and stayed until well after dark. When we got in the jeep to go home, the engine started, but the generator didn’t. Dad decided the battery was good enough to get us home — as long as we didn’t use the headlights. We drove some fifteen or so miles without meeting another vehicle and without lights (we might have turned them on when we went by Agana. As I said before my memory of back then isn’t that sharp). In those days the north end of Marine Drive was surrounded by trees so we could keep track of the road by the open sky. For Richard and me it was an adventure. I suspect that for Mom it was a nail biter.

Another time in the same jeep we were headed toward Agana and came on this rain curtain. From a distance it looked as if the road literally stopped at a vertical sheet of rain. When we hit the rain we could barely see. What I remember most though was the abrupt drop in temperature. I felt cold for one of the few times while we lived there.

One Christmas, our last at Camp 2 I think, I got a bike for Christmas. I took it out for a ride on Christmas morning. I rode it up to the perimeter road and started down the hill toward the south end of the camp. When I put on the brakes, to my horror instead of slowing me down they made me go faster (the Japanese were new to coaster brakes at the time). I kept accelerating all the way to the first turn and still managed to make the turn. The next turn was slightly up hill and I made it. The third turn was where the camp ran out. Going straight ahead would have run me into the boondocks, but I was still slowing down – a little. Somewhere in there I figured out that the only way I was going to get out alive was to drop the bike in the turn. Fortunately, I walked the bike the remainder of the way home unscathed.

Next up: learning to drive.

Well, the Broncos weren’t the better team on the 2nd. Wait till next year.

I need to go back to Louisiana briefly. I fell in love with cowboy movies while we lived in Forest Hill. Understand, we didn’t have a movie theater, but on some Saturdays a tent movie theater showed up and either only showed cowboy movies or I only went to them. We saw Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Randolph Scott, William Boyd (Hopalong Cassidy), Red Ryder (I should remember who played him, but I don’t right now), Lash Larue/Whip Wilson, and others. I was hooked.

For movies like Bambi and Song of the South we went to Alexandria. And there was one movie shown at the school that made a deep impression on me, but now I can’t remember its name. Back when I could remember its name, I tried to find it again many times with no success. That may not make much sense, but there was something magical about the movie (that didn’t involve magic), which made me aware of the basic good in people – and it has stuck with me all these years.

Now, back to Guam.

One day when I went to play with Joe 5, a fire truck was parked near his house and firemen were keeping people back. Something had sheared a power line, and it was lying on the ground. I remember it because part of the wire was in a small puddle, and it kept sparking – bright blue sparks that were like erratic fireworks. I watched for a while waiting for the electrical crew to show, but since we couldn’t get close to it, I eventually got bored and left.

While we lived in Camp 2, someone organized a soapbox derby. Most of the race cars were made of a few boards and various kinds of wheels. I’m not sure where the wheels came from but most of them were hard rubber on a solid steel rim. The drivers steered the racers by ropes attached to a pivoting board that held the front axle.

The race course was somewhere near Apra Heights on what is now route 17. The road sloped enough that even the hard wheeled racers made good time. I think some of the racers had brakes that consisted of a board attached to the side that the drive could pull up on, but other than that the drivers had to rely on coming to a flat spot and dragging their feet.

However – One racer had fifteen inch or more diameter balloon tired rear wheels (at a guess motorcycle front wheels) with smaller tires on the front. I think it disqualified from the race because I remember it coming down the hill after the other racers. It was going like the proverbial bat, and the flat spot the other racers had used to stop didn’t even slow it down. It flew past the finish line and was going so fast it couldn’t make the turn farther down the road. Instead, it went straight ahead and took off as went over the embankment. It crashed into a thicket of the boondocks trees and came to a stop. Miraculously the driver wasn’t hurt, but I’ll bet he had to change his shorts.

As far as I know that was the first and the last soapbox derby on Guam.

I feel I need to say something about going to school on Guam. When we arrived, Richard and I went to school on Adalupe Point, where the governor’s office is now. I think we started our second year there, but the school was closed so it could be rebuilt. It stayed closed the rest of the time we were there. Our next school was a temporary one at Apra Heights, a Navy housing area. Or was the second school the one in Agana (Hagatna now). I don’t remember much about either school. At Apra Heights my best friend, Stanley Brown, became the target of a bully or excessive tickling, I’m not sure which. He ended up giggling uncontrollably. He couldn’t stop for over half an hour. I remember two things about Agana: a red pepper plant that just touching one of the peppers released enough oil that you couldn’t touch your face without it burning, and a friend who wrote plays that we performed in school.

I had this ready on Thursday, but I couldn’t make up my mind where to stop.

Next up some more odds and ends about Guam.

I’m going to take a brief break from Guam with this post. Instead I’m going to bring us up to the moment.

A few years back we had accumulated enough hail damage to our roof to make an insurance claim worthwhile. To make hail less of a problem and make the house less vulnerable to fires we put on a metal roof. In general it has been great, but it has one “feature” that I’m not real fond of. It’s slippery. In fact, I couldn’t find any shoes that had enough traction to allow me to feel safe climbing on it.

Fortunately, that hasn’t been a problem until recently. About three weeks back a wind storm blew through and all of a sudden our television reception died. As far as I could tell the antenna had been blown out of alignment. Besides not being able to climb up to it because of the slippery roof surface, nature intervened with a pattern of snow storms – not heavy snow but enough to cover the roof briefly each time.

I took advantage of a gap in the snows to climb out a window onto the top of the garage. I found out that some of my shoes have enough traction for me to climb on the metal – at least as long as I had something to hold on to. I used a long pole to bang the antenna to a new aim. Still no reception.

Things were getting desperate. The AFC championship was coming up and the Broncos were playing the Patriots. My wife Carol invited us to her sister’s house so we could watch the game. Fortunately we were welcome, and the game went to the Broncos.

That meant I had two weeks to solve the problem of the antenna. I considered hiring someone to go up and adjust it, but I didn’t want to risk someone else’s neck unnecessarily. I had found some shoes that worked on the roof. However, those same shoes didn’t seem to work on the part of the roof leading to the antenna. On top of that the drop off was two stories on one side and two and a half on the other, and Carol was adamant about me not taking the risk.

I made one more try from the garage roof. I used my snow boots and had a safety rope this time. To my surprise the snow boots had good traction. On the other hand moving the antenna did nothing to help. I decided to see if the traction was good enough for me to safely climb on the main roof.

When I got up on the ladder, I found that I had been working on the wrong problem. The antenna orientation wasn’t the problem. The cable had become disconnected from the antenna. I had to get on the roof to fix it. Nothing else would work. Still that was a long way to fall. I needed a safer way.

I figured I had a couple of possibilities. I could climb up the roof from the chimney housing. If I got into a slide it would stop me from falling off. Still that was a last resort. The other would be to get a rope over the roof and tie it off on both ends. That turned out to be easier said than done.

I took a ball of heavy twine and attached a dog-toy ball to the end of it. Then I ran the ladder up high enough that the rung I stood on was right at the edge of the roof. I didn’t have a safe place to throw from, so I spun the toy on about two feet of the string and let it go – sort of like a bolas but spun in a vertical plane. I rapidly discovered that torque messed up my aim. I also discovered that the release point had a very narrow window. Most of my throws went left of where I was aiming, and most of them hit the roof before reaching the top. Finally one throw went over the peak. Yay!

Wait a minute. It stopped. Every short throw had rolled back down like it couldn’t wait to get off the roof. Maybe a light yank would get it moving. Oops! The yank pulled it back over the peak of the roof. Here it comes down my side of the roof, and there it goes. After several more tries, I finally got it over again. This time I flicked a wave up the roof to see if that would free the toy. Most of the waves didn’t even reach the peak, and the ones that did didn’t seem to be moving the toy. Maybe more tension would help. Oh, rats! Here it comes down my side again. After a third attempt rolled past me, I knew it was time to quit for the day.

The forecast the next day was for snow starting about noon. I had to get it done that morning or else it was all over. The snow was supposed to continue off and on into the weekend. I tried another heavier ball. I kept having the same result. Then I got one over the peak … and it stopped! Nuts! I gave it a light tug, and it popped over the peak. This time it was too far left and wrapped around the furnace chimney – and stuck. Now what?

I had one more, even heavier ball left. After several attempts with it, I got it over the top. It stopped. I’m not sure what it was that triggered the idea, but something about that last failure gave me the answer. I went up on the garage roof and threw the ball onto the house roof. It rolled down on the far side where I wanted it. I used the long pole to put the string where it wouldn’t snag and pulled the rope over. I tied it off and climbed up to the antenna. My boots worked great, and I even had the right tool with me to screw the cable tightly to the antenna fitting. Success!!!

        This experience showed me that real fear is exhausting. The first time on the garage roof I was holding on to anything I could get a grip on and still couldn’t shake the feeling that I was one slip away from disaster. When I got back into that upstairs bedroom, my legs felt like jelly. I made absolutely sure that cable wasn’t coming loose again in my lifetime.

GO BRONCOS!

Guam has mountains, at least that’s what they’re called. Camp 2 was on the slope of Mt. Tenjo. I really believed that it was 7500 feet tall, but looking on the Internet, I discovered that it is 1001 feet instead. On top of that I thought that Camp 2 was north of the Apra Harbor breakwater. Unless they built another breakwater since we left, that can’t be. Of course that explains one of the reasons I couldn’t find Camp 2 when I looked on Google Earth. The other is that the roads that we had have been almost completely obliterated. Based on the swimming hole, the tank farm, and the small stream that appears to be the one that ran through part of the camp, the old roads have all but disappeared.

Perhaps I should write more about boondocks. The trees consisted of short trees with thin trunks (to me at the time it seemed that the tallest were no more than twenty feet). There were deciduous trees with small leaves and a pine-like tree that we called Australian Pines (They had needles, but the needles were segmented). There were also banana trees, papaya plants, and an amazing grass that we called sword grass. The leaves were long, around three feet. When they were green, they were quite literally razor sharp. When they were dead they lost their edge.

A fairly extensive marshy boondocks ran west of the camp from the perimeter road. One of its distinctive features was a nasty little green bee or wasp. Smaller than honey bees, they tended to swarm. Their nests blended into the background, and they attacked anyone who so much as brushed the plant a nest was in. We learned from experience to watch carefully in certain parts of the boondocks and be ready to run ­– really run.

On the east side of the camp we had a picnic area. Right now I don’t remember much about it other than it had a splendid view of the sunset. Just south of it a small boondocks occupied a space less than one hundred feet in diameter. Less underbrush and better drainage made it a lot friendlier (no bees) than the large one on the west. It was surrounded by a loose formation of sword grass plants. We found from them that if you could get past the green blades, the inside of the tussock was a great hiding place.

The rest of the housing area abutted open grassland. At that time Guam had quail. I have no idea how they got there. The only difference I could see between these birds and bobwhite quail was these were much smaller. On one of my first explorations outside of camp I nearly stepped on a female and her babies. I suspect the brown snakes have totally eradicated them.

You would think that being a volcanic island, Guam would be covered by basalt. Instead, the rocks I remember from the open fields were green and were either degenerating into clay or clay solidifying into rock. Some of the green rocks were solid and some were crumbling. The latter could be mixed with water and became a clay like mass. As a matter of fact, when Joe and I built our little dam, we used that clay as a form that we poured the concrete in. I would bet that dam is still there because it filled up with mud after just a few rains and probably was covered by the time the camp was dismantled.

We had wild papaya plants in our boondocks. One day I decided to bring one home so we could pick ripe papayas right beside our house. I carefully unearthed the roots to save as many delicate root hairs as possible. I dug a hole, cautiously put the plant into it, and filled the hole with dirt. I watered that plant conscientiously every day. It had just begun to look like it would survive, when Richard came running around the house, not looking where he was going, and ran into it, ripping the roots from the ground. There went my first and last attempt at agronomy.

Dad’s supervisor and his wife lived in Camp 2. One of the things I remember about them was they had two cats named Bud and Weiser. The other thing I remember is that once a week they hosted a cook out for all the kids in the camp: hot dogs, hamburgers, and Kool-Aid (or coke). They were well attended and were held at the camp picnic area.

I could go on, but I keep coming up with new things related to camp life. I have to cut it off somewhere, and this is as good a place as any. Next up, the swimming beaches and my introduction to science fiction.

Before I started writing this, I had to look at Guam again. I used Google Earth, and I think I found Camp 2, but boy has it changed. I have a pretty solid memory of the layout on our side of the main road. It may be totally erroneous, but I’m pretty sure it’s close. I remember two landmarks that I think are still there.

The south end of the camp almost abutted on a navy tank farm (oil storage tanks), and I found tanks between the navy housing area (Apra Heights) and what I believe was Camp 2. Joe 5 Lee(, Jr.) and I poured a miniature concrete dam on a run-off creek between his house and the nearest tank. And, yes, his name really included the number 5.

What appears to be the other landmark, a swimming hole east of the camp, stands out even from satellite altitude. I remember the spot for a two main reasons. The high school boys challenged each other by jumping into the stream from the cliff that overlooked it, and I was awed by the cliff. Of course, I was ten at the time. Also the mushrooms that grew there glowed in the dark, and I was fascinated by them.

I don’t recall much about arriving in Apra Harbor. Dad picked us up at the ship and drove us to our new home, a Butler building. Butler buildings had sheet metal sides and roofs. I believe we shared ours with another family, we on the south end and they on the north. I don’t recall a thing about them. I just don’t recollect having a back door. How’s that for deduction?

In fact, I only remember two of our neighboring families, or parts of them. To our east lived Dennis and his dog Tippy. We became friends, but I don’t remember anything about them except that Dennis and Tippy were the same age. Across the street to our west were the Cooks. Russ and Laura became close friends with mom and dad. Their daughter, Patty, was closer to Richard’s age.

One of the neighborhood artifacts was a typhoon shelter, basically a white painted building made of steel plates. It had ventilator pipes instead of windows and a solid steel door. I don’t think we ever went in it. As a matter of fact, about a year after we arrived, Typhoon Allyn hit the island with devastating force. Dad’s company, Brown-Pacific-Maxon, evacuated the entire camp. We spent at least one night and one day at the company offices. But Typhoon Allyn comes later in my tale.

Let me see if I can describe the camp. I’m not sure why it was called a camp. Perhaps it had been a camp for the navy. We got there by driving up a road paved with crushed coral and used motor oil. It climbed up a hill that was part of Mt. Tenjo to get to the camp. It wandered through what we Statesiders called boondocks. These days boondocks equates to backwoods, but for us it meant a woods or forest of small trees and bamboo groves.

When the road reached the top of the hill, the boondocks gave way to the camp. I don’t remember what was on the left side of the road when it reached the camp. I think there might have been a motor pool. Farther up the road on the left someone – perhaps the navy or perhaps the company – had scraped out an amphitheater and installed wooden benches and a movie screen. We saw movies for free, and we could bring our own popcorn. One feature I remember was that next to the theater was a shaved ice machine. We could fill our glasses or whatever with shaved ice before we took our seats.

The housing area consisted of Butler buildings and Quonset huts south of the main road. Three roads lead away from the main road in pretty much straight lines. Boondocks abutted the first road on its west side. The Rec Hall and playground occupied the top of the hill between the first road and the second. The Rec Hall also housed the washing machines, and clothes lines filled the large open space that was the recreation area. About the only thing you could do in it was roller skate and jump rope. The chapel stood near the Rec Hall, I think between it and the first road. Once you got past the playground/Rec Hall the houses started.

The third road served as a perimeter. It ran to the south end of the camp, made a sharp right and crossed the other two roads. Then it crossed a dry wash, made a sweeping turn to the right, crossed the wash again plus the other roads, and teed into itself about halfway down the hill from where it started. Understand, this housing area wasn’t huge. I believe I’ve completely described the roads. I can only guess how many families lived there, and it wouldn’t be accurate.

Getting back to the main road: after you passed the third road, you came to the grocery store on the south side. We’d call it a convenience store nowadays. Next to it was the barbershop. A little farther on a dirt road turned off and led back to the swimming hole. After that the main road came to the houses designated for Pacific Island Engineers. There were only a few of them.

I became friends with a boy who lived there. We frequently played in the boondocks by his house. One of our favorite places was a flat faced waterfall that we climbed up and down. It was covered by a thin sheet of water, but I don’t recall ever being concerned that I might slip and hurt myself.

I could babble on about the camp, and I will later, but for now it’s time to wrap up. According to psychologists your experiences when you are ten have major impact on your development. I was ten when we moved to Guam so you can see why it important to me. You’ll be reading more about it in the next issues.

When we moved back to Forest Hill, for a change dad was with us, so we rented a house just south of town. It was nothing spectacular, but it gave Richard, my bother, and me access to woods filled with pine trees. Sometimes we would each climb a different supple, young tree in front of the house until they bent over and touched. Then we would swap trees. Not exactly the thing Tarzan would do, but for us it was close enough. Of course, now that I have safety officer experience, I would be aghast if my kids or grandkids had tried that.

That Christmas both Richard and I got bicycles. Richard’s had pedals on the front wheels. I don’t think I could ever get the hang of riding it, but he did right away.

Shortly after we got the bikes, we had an ice storm ­– a rare phenomenon in Louisiana. I made the mistake of trying to ride my bike on an ice covered road. I headed up a hill that my memory says was steep (but driving through the area more recently I found nothing resembling the slope I remember). However steep it was, I tried to show Richard how you ride up an ice covered dirt road. The back wheel slipped and down I went. After I landed on a road that was hard as a rock, Richard decided not to try what his show-off big brother had done.

Later I had another accident with that bike. Riding home from the store, I followed the foot path I normally walked to get home. At one point the path crossed a gully by way of a bridge that consisted of a single 2×12 plank. I tried to ride across the plank. Have you ever noticed how you tend to steer toward what you look at? I looked at the edge of the plank until I rode off the edge. I ended up on my back in the gully with the bicycle on top of me. I am eternally grateful that I didn’t break my spine.

I told about this event in a speech many years back so I don’t see a lot of point in writing it from scratch. Only the names have been changed to protect the guilty.

The sheriff was standing there with his hands on his hips glaring at us with a look that said, “You’re in a heap o’ trouble, boys.” Besides the sheriff, half the town had turned out with him. We’d been caught red-handed. I swallowed hard and stuck one leg and then the other out the open window so I could drop to the ground and face the music. My partner in crime, Billy, followed me, and we stood there trembling. The sheriff beckoned us over. He didn’t look happy.

I think this happened between the third and fourth grade. Billy and I spent a lot of time together. This time we were both bored with summer vacation and were looking for something different to do. We decided it would be fun to check out the school to see what had been left behind for the summer. We did this in broad daylight. Back in those days schools weren’t very secure; in fact, ours was rarely locked. There was no reason to.

Whether we weren’t very smart or just weren’t concerned, we walked casually down the dirt road as if we were going to my house. When we got to the school we took a “short cut” through the schoolyard. When we reached the scraggly hedge under the windows, we took a quick look around to see if anybody was watching. We ducked into the hedge to keep mostly out of sight, smugly believing we couldn’t be seen. After all, the school was on the edge of town with a dirt road, an open field, a railroad track, and a highway between it and the nearest building that had any kind of view of it.

We found an open window. Checking to see that the coast was clear, we climbed into what turned out to be one of the fourth grade rooms. The overhead lights were off, but several large windows filled the room with plenty of light. The room had the old wooden desks with lids that were hinged in front so you could access the storage underneath. I looked in one of the desks. Jackpot!

Kids had left everything from erasers to pencils to fountain pens. Billy looked in another: more treasures of the past school year. Each desk we checked seemed to have something of value. We rummaged through several of the classrooms, finding more loot in each. In fact, there was so much we had to start being selective. I don’t know how much time actually passed. It seemed like only a few minutes, but it was probably half an hour. When we had both collected a bundle of plunder, we went back to the room where we had started. Outside, standing on the school lawn right in front of the window, the sheriff and a group of townspeople had gathered. I don’t know who snitched, but we’d been had.

They looked at us and we looked at them. No one said anything. It was a face off. I knew there was no use in trying to hide. They’d seen both of us and knew who we were. Heck, two years before I had lived next door to the sheriff. Reluctantly we climbed out the window leaving our treasures on the desks.

When we had made it through the hedge, we approached the sheriff. He was an imposing man by nature, standing over six feet tall and weighing close to two hundred and fifty pounds, and for two frightened nine year olds he seemed like the wrath of God embodied. He looked down at us and demanded, “What exactly did you boys think you were doing?”

Billy answered first, “It was open so we went in to look around.”

“Did you take anything?” The tone of his voice said that any answer that wasn’t the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth would call down lightning and thunder.

“We were going to,” I whispered.

“What did you say?” The same tone of voice.

“We were going to, but when we saw you, we left it inside.”

“You know that would be stealing, don’t you?”

I thought, “No Sir. It was just stuff that was left behind. During the school year I could take it home any day after school.” Fortunately, I wasn’t stupid enough to say that. We both said, “Yes Sir!”

It would have been so tempting to make an excuse, the same excuse we had used to justify climbing into the school in the first place: it was open and we didn’t plan to take anything that belonged to anybody. But I suspect that would have gotten us into more trouble. By owning up to what we did, we convinced the sheriff that we weren’t really bad boys. Fortunately, we hadn’t really caused any harm, so he let us off with a scolding and a talk with our parents.

I learned a lot from that episode. First, don’t make excuses. They can get you in a heap of trouble. Second, tell the truth. As Mark Twain said, “If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.” But perhaps the most important, if you’re going to do something you won’t be proud of, don’t do it in broad daylight.

One final note about my childhood in Louisiana and we’ll leave the bayou country. We may return as other memories surface, but for now let’s look at the event in the spring of 1948 that changed history.

Dad went out that morning to hunt for quail. He went east, and I went north to stay out of the way. The forest was thick enough that we lost sight of each other almost immediately, but I could still hear dad whistling the come-hither call of the Bob White. I was almost ten so I didn’t have a gun, but I wondered if I could attract a quail. When dad got far enough away that I could no longer hear him, I tried to emulate dad’s quail call as I walked along. I got a response. I eased my way toward the source, calling as I went, and the quail kept responding. Neat, right? Well, not quite. I came to a clearing. As I was looking around, dad showed up on the other side, shotgun at the ready. He had been responding to my call.

I got a lecture on the dangers of luring a hunter, but that was it. I don’t know why, but when he was through, a pile of trash pile of trash in the clearing caught my attention. I checked it out. I found that a large part of the pile consisted of leaflets advertising for construction workers needed on Guam.

Dad was looking for a fresh job so he filled out the included application and mailed it. He was hired and headed off to Guam. The following September the rest of us followed. I’ll save that for the next post.

Dad’s job in the Tioga area didn’t last long. I never knew why he changed jobs so often, but he found a new job with an oil company (ESSO, I think) outside of Baton Rouge. We stayed with my grandmother while he settled in and found a house.

The house was just outside of Denham Springs on a few acres. If I recall correctly, the owner kept cows on the acreage while we were there, but we had the run of the place. It had a stream running through it, and I spent a lot of time there looking for crawfish (real ones) and checking out the other wildlife. One critter I became familiar with was the water moccasin. Seen in direct sunlight, it had the same diamond pattern that rattlesnakes have — just in shades of dark gray. It did make me wonder about wading in the creek.

The creek also provided us with a meal once. It was the only time I remember dad cooking anything. He caught some bullfrogs from the creek and fixed frog legs.

Denham Springs was a pleasant, small town – bigger than Forest Hill but not a lot. One peculiarity was that the county had a lot of farms that grew strawberries. The school schedule in Denham Springs was adjusted to end in early May rather than early June so the farmers’ kids could pick strawberries. Of course that meant that it also started a month earlier.

When we moved there we didn’t have a car. That wasn’t a problem for getting into town, but dad needed transportation to get to work. For a while he had a borrowed motorcycle – a Harley, I believe. One day he went into town for gas and let me ride behind him. While we were at the gas station, I bought a comic book. I was in such a hurry to read it that I started reading on the way home. No hands, on the rear fender of a motorcycle. I trusted Dad that much; however, when he realized what I was doing, I got a safety lecture I didn’t soon forget.

I had my share of mishaps while I was there. The ones I remember weren’t particularly important, but they left their mark. While playing in the barnyard one day, I stepped with a bare foot on a piece of a broken bottle. The curvature of the bottle caused it to rotate and gash my foot just below the ankle bone. It gave me another permanent scar. And then I used my bare hands to catch a rat. That incident taught me that rats are more limber than crawfish. This one turned its head around far enough to bite the web between my thumb and forefinger.

At some point while we were there, we had a really heavy rain that filled all the local streams to overflowing, including the one through the farm. The water almost made it up to the house. It took a while to go down, and the cows were wading until it did. I don’t remember missing school for it, so it was probably the summer after we arrived.

One day when I was walking to school, I saw an Army recruiting poster in the Post Office window. A picture of a spaceship on a star covered background defined my life from then on. The ship was cigar shaped and had multiple rows of lighted portholes, suggesting it was large. That ship captured my imagination like nothing else had. I became determined to be a spaceship pilot when I grew up. Even though I haven’t achieved that, it guided me to where I am now.

We stayed in Denham Springs for about a year – long enough for school to start again. Since I knew we were moving back to Forest Hill before school started there, I showed little enthusiasm for the local school. One day I dawdled all the way to school and arrived very late. My excuse was that what I did in the local school didn’t matter. I would just have to start over when I got home. The teachers and administrators were not amused.

Next, a third installment about Louisiana, such as riding a bike on an icy road and breaking into school while it was closed.

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Mom and Dad were both from Louisiana and my Grandmother Tannehill lived there, so we tended to gravitate back on a fairly regular basis. Dad was drafted during World War II and served in the Corps of Engineers in the Pacific. We stayed with my grandmother in Forest Hill while he was gone. One of the things I remember about that time was that we had commissary privileges, and we lived close to Camp Claiborne (Just north of Forest Hill on the west side of the highway. There is almost nothing left of the camp these days, but I believe it is still federal land.

I have since learned that Dad trained for his job in Ft. Lewis, Washington. And he spent most of his time in the Pacific on Ie Shima (now Iejima). On my last tour in Southeast Asia I flew into Kadena AB on Okinawa. Ie Shima lies just off the northwest coast of Okinawa, and had I known where it was then, I would have arranged to fly over it.

My grandmother was a first grade teacher. I had her for my first year of school, and I think that because of her I have always been enthusiastic about learning. Well, learning about most things anyway. In the second grade we had a course about health. It was so boring that I had a hard time reading it. One night I skipped my assignment entirely. The next day we had a multiple guess quiz. I’ll probably never forget the one question I missed, especially since my answer has since been vindicated. It asked how you should brush your teeth – back and forth, up and down, a combination,… .

That year for Halloween one of the other first graders talked his parents into hosting a party. I was invited. I’m not sure who came up with the idea, but mom and grandmother dressed me up as a girl. I wore a dress with my slacks rolled up underneath. They put a head scarf with a hair piece sticking out the back to give the illusion of long hair. And of course I had on lipstick and rouge. It was effective, No one recognized me. I heard all kinds of comments wondering who that little girl was. Then came the unveiling. Being an introvert I was mortified by the boys’ reactions. I suspect my shame over that incident stayed with me a lot longer than it should have, but strangely enough, no one bothered me about it at school.

Forest Hill was on the Missouri Pacific line back then, and in those days the locomotives were steam engines. I was fascinated by the big, black engines as they chugged through town. I often went outside just to watch them. We had two whole grade crossings, and I can still remember the whistles blowing, spraying out clouds of steam, when the locomotives approached them.

Alexandria was the “big city” for us. We had regular passenger service on the railroad between Forest Hill and Alexandria. For Christmas (1944 I suspect) we caught the train into Alexandria to do some shopping. Almost everywhere I looked, there was Santa. We caught up with Santa at a Christmas tree lot. When I got through making sure he knew what I wanted for Christmas, no one was standing in line. Santa took a break. We hung around so mom and grandmother could talk to him for a while. I still remember being shocked that Santa had a son and he was serving overseas.

When dad got back from the Pacific after the war, he found a job north of Alexandria so we moved to a town nearer his work. Once again our house was next to the railroad. This one ran past my school which was in Tioga. One day, instead of catching the bus I walked home along the railroad tracks. The only problem was that I didn’t tell anyone. I guess the bus driver must have gotten upset about me being missing, because I got home early to an uproar, I didn’t do that again.