dnsmith

Sometimes on the weekend Papa would take the family to a place called Doe Run Creek or Grey Hampton to go swimming. These were coldwater creeks with rock and gravel as the bed. Grey Hampton had a dam with a shale bluff just above the dam for diving. The sides of the creek there were very high, just perfect for climbing, and making a mother's hair grey. Sometimes we went to Doe Run Inn, an old and historic place next to the creek, for fried chicken. I remember huge platters of what ever was your favorite piece. Mamaw, Mama's mother who lived with us, liked the upper joint and livers. I liked the leg and gizzards. Mama's favorite was the back.

Years later, my wife Elouise and I went back for chicken during a trip through the area. We camped at the Brandenburg, Kentucky Coast to Coast and discovered that the Inn was just down the road from our campsite. Needless to say the chicken was not as good as I remembered it from childhood. We ate on the porch overlooking the creek and enjoyed it never the less. My sister Marian was born while we were in Vine Grove. Anita was a little disappointed because she wanted a white rabbit instead. Boots, our collie, was particularly good to Anita. She would herd her around the yard, leading Anita with her tail. We were all heart broken when we were unable to take Boots home with us when we went back home. Papa went overseas to India and Burma and we went to Opelousas. There were many times when no one was around that I would get in the closet or under the bed to cry because I was afraid something would happen to Papa and he wouldn't come back. I remember one summer that I went to spend some time with Carlos and Jean Mayeaux in Hamburg, Louisiana. Most of the time was very occupied with horseback riding or other wonderful exciting things, but still, when I had a little slack time I crawled under the bed to hide while I worried. Allen Key and I would go to New Roads, Louisiana to stay with Memere and Papaw for two or three weeks at a time. While there we would go swimming or fishing in False River. There was a pier in back of the Riverside Cleaners. Memere's nephew Alton Gaudin, owned the cleaners and let us use the pier any time we wanted to. One time I dug some worms in an old leaf pile in the back of Memere's wash house and went fishing. I had five or six nice bream on a stringer when I noticed that there was what I thought to be at least one fish missing. I caught another and when I pulled up the stringer one more fish was gone. The next time I started to put a fish on the stringer a half of a fish was gone. Then I saw the culprit, a large turtle was having dinner on my fish. I went home and got a single shot 22 rifle that belonged to one of the uncles and went back to kill the turtle. Unfortunately, with no more stringer full of fish he didn't come back and I didn't kill him. I was about eight years old then and didn't even consider the possibility that I may be too young to do any of these things. I knew I could do it so I just did. Papaw worked in the bank on the main street of town. On each of the corners of the block on which the bank was located was a drug store. Each store carried a different type of ice cream and I liked them both. It was not at all uncommon to get a nickel from Memere and go to one drug store for an ice cream cone, then go to the bank and get another nickel from Papaw and go to the other store for a cone of the other brand of ice cream. When I was about eight or nine years old making a pop gun or a rubber gun was the fun thing of the day. A pop gun was a piece of straight elderberry about three-fourths of an inch in diameter cut to about six inches long. The pith was removed leaving a cylinder about three-eighths to one-half inch diameter hole the length of the cylinder. A piece of broom stick about nine inches long was cut and approximately five and a half inches of the broom stick was carved such that it was just a little bit smaller than the hole in the cylinder and just a little bit shorter then the length of the cylinder. To make it work one would force a chinaberry into the hole of the elderberry cylinder and push it all the way through to the opposite end. Then a second china berry would be forced in and when sufficient air was compressed by pushing the second berry through, the first berry would be fired out with a loud pop and would be a formidable bullet for eight or ten feet, stinging like the devil when striking the rear end of the kids on the opposite team in the war. The second berry became the next bullet and would be forced out in the same manner when a new berry was forced through. A rubber gun was nothing but a pistol shaped piece of wood about fourteen to fifteen inches long with a cloths pin strapped to the back of the hand grip. A rubber band cut from an old inner tube would be stretched over the front end of the gun and secured by the clothespin. To fire the gun all one had to do was squeeze the clothespin and the rubber band became a stinging projectile for a short distance. Popgun and rubber gun wars were the order of the era and provided many hours of innocent fun. There was never a question of danger because we all knew better than to shoot above the waist or near the face or head. It was about this age that on the way home from school I found a dud aerial bomb (fireworks). I brought it home and tried to light the fuse that was left. Apparently the moisture and time during which it sat in the field caused the fuse and powder to become unstable. When I applied the match the whole thing exploded instantly. It almost blinded me. If I squint my eyes in a lighted area I can still see the scarring on the surface of my eyes. Needless to say this was just one more patch of gray hair on Mama's head. Unusual was it the kid who did not have a BB gun. Again, like the earlier weapons I talked about, every one of us understood the consequences of misuse or dangerous practices. The only live targets allowed were pest birds and predators such as blue jays. To kill a mocking bird or other songbird brought swift and terrible retribution. Speaking of retribution, when Allen Key or I did something, which justified punishment, we were usually given a choice, a week in the Chinese or Russian army, or a spanking. We always chose the spanking because the former was unspeakably terrible. It was restriction to whatever part of the yard or garden that needed the most work and the accomplishment of significantly more than our normal chores would be. The only problem with the spanking, which was always three licks with a switch, was that we had to go out and select and cut our own switch. This was worse than the licks because we knew if we got a puny one which broke we would have to go cut another and start over, or if it was too stout the pain would be much more severe. Oh the torture of selection! One time when I had followed or otherwise aggravated Allen Key he came chasing me around the house with a broom. As I rounded the back door and turned into the garage he threw the broom. Horror of horrors, it sailed past me into the glass door of Mama's new Bendix washing machine breaking it. Allen Key had to wash clothes with a washtub and board until the new glass could be ordered, come in and be replaced. There were times when Allen Key was justified with the anger and times when he wasn't. One of the times that he was justified was when I cut the lower bar out of his bicycle to mount a motor to make a motorbike. My bike was shaped differently and the motor wouldn't fit no matter what I did. Needless to say I didn't get very far and the motorbike never became a reality. One occasion that he wasn't justified was when he tried to listen to my radio with headphones. He didn't realize that the headphones were wired into the high voltage circuit and that when he tried to adjust them it was necessary to be careful of the terminals on the back of each earpiece. He caught quite a shock and blamed me, but it really wasn't my fault.

The swimming pool in Opelousas was in the park across the street from the civic center where I went to kindergarten. During the summer the pool was free for children below the age of eighteen. Unless I was sick or away I spent every morning of the summer in the pool. It was my forte. I could swim from the time I was six or seven and with just about any stroke I had seen. We had a garage built on one end of the house. It opened to the rear so to park a car in it one had to pull forward past it on the side driveway and pull over a little, then back in. Papa had left such a short space in front of the garage it took major gymnastics to get a car in. I don't remember the car ever making it all the way. That was okay! We played there in bad weather. During firecracker season, which was almost anytime we could afford them on a child's allowance, we would fire them off in the garage because the noise would echo and sound louder. Of course Mama would get mad and make us stop. Then it was out to the park just in back of the yard. We would bury a cracker, preferably the 2inch variety, up to the fuse and imagine we were digging for gold. We also sent many a can flying into the air. Unfortunately, after the first two or three flights the can would frequently disintegrate. Back to the garbage can! Allen Key and I got bows and arrows for Christmas one year. These were very nice bows and had about twenty-five or thirty pounds of pull. Allen Key shot an arrow straight up to see how high it would go. It came down nextdoor, right in the middle of Hershel's chicken yard hitting one of his young hens. The arrow went all the way through the chicken and into the ground pinning the chicken in place. The arrow didn't kill the chicken, and the sight of that chicken running in place was about the most hilarious sight I ever saw. Allen Key told Hershel, who came out without being judgmental, killed the poor animal, cleaned it and gave it to Lily Bell for dinner. I can't put my finger on my age when the opossum incident occurred. I found what I thought was a dead "possum" on the side of the street in front of Al Hinson's house. He and his wife Lil lived next door to us on the other side of our house from Hershel and Lily Bell. I put the dead animal in the shed where Allen Key and I worked on our respective hobby projects expecting to cut it up later to see what it looked like. The shed was part of the building attached to the hen house. To my surprise, and later chagrin when papa found out, the opossum woke from his concussion and killed several of the chickens. I don't believe he ate any, just killed them. Hershel gave me an old gas powered rotary mower. The engine ran after I cleaned it up and changed the spark plug. The mower was all steel and was very heavy but it cut well and it seemed easier than our old push mower. Then Al Hinson, the neighbor on the other side of us, gave me an old reel mower with a plate to mount a gasoline engine. I learned all about leverage and pulleys as I experimented with different sizes so that I didn't have to run behind the machine. When I finally got it fixed right I started cutting Al's yard for $2.00 a week. The part of our yard that we cut was about 1/2 the size of Al's and I was responsible for 1/2 of it. Allen Key sometimes wanted some extra money for his models and he then mowed my part of the yard for $.60 if he could use my mower. This worked out for a couple of years until I overhauled the engine once too often and didn't tighten the connecting rod to the crankshaft properly. After a few hours of running the connection came loose and the engine threw a rod. That was the end of the lawn mower era! I think my best brainstorm was the perpetual motion go cart. I built a cart to roll down the hill at the end of Bertheaud Avenue near the gully. It was so hard to pull the cart up the hill that I got an old car battery, starter motor and generator. The idea was that the battery would run the motor, the motor would run the cart, the cart would run the generator as it rolled, and the generator would charge the battery. Voila! The only problem was that the only time it worked was going down hill and now it weighed about forty pounds more and was even harder to pull up hill. Allen Key and I both made and flew model airplanes. He was far better and more serious about it than I. I always had a fear of the propeller hitting my finger, so I took an old electric motor and clamped a piece of heavy rubber hose to the shaft. When pressed against the propeller it would turn it fast enough to start instantly. The only problem was there usually was no electric power where we flew the planes. Charles "Sonny" Durio was my best friend when I was in grade school and high school until we left for a couple of years in 1952. He and I used to ride our bikes out to the trash dump looking for any and everything. On one such expedition we found some steel cable, the kind the power and phone companies used to support their poles with. We got several roles with the large clamps used to secure them and carried them home on the handlebars of our bikes. I took mine and with the assistance of another friend, Sylvan D'Avy, installed cable slides in my back yard. One was clamped about fifty feet up in our oak tree and was extended over and clamped to Hershel's oak tree about twenty-five feet up. We threaded a pipe onto the cable and with a long wire tied to the pipe (the wire was used to pull the pipe to the high end of the cable) we would retrieve the pipe, grab hold, and slide to the lower end of the cable. That was a fast trip. The only problem was if your feet missed the branch at the far end before the end of the cable one would hit the end so hard it was difficult to hold on. We solved the problem by introducing some slack into the cable causing us to slow down before hitting the clamp. We also took a cable and clamped it to a branch about twenty feet up our tree and ran it to a pipe rammed into the ground about fifty feet out from the tree. With a pipe threaded on the cable we had a quick ride to get out of the tree. This was easier because as soon as we were close enough to the ground our feet would touch and we hit the ground running. Papa was so concerned that some kid would fall and hurt himself and that he would be liable, he made us take them down. Our poor old tree! I cut the top out flat so that I had branches strong enough to hold me while I looked out of the top. The view was breath taking, literally. I constructed a large cross, about twelve feet high and six feet across, and wound copper wire from an old electric motor, also from the garbage dump, from the top of the cross to the end of the cross piece and so on until it looked like a giant spider web, making a loop antenna. I nailed it such that the large loop was completely out of the top of the tree, running copper wire out to the next tree eventually ending up at the house. This made a great antenna for my crystal radio. Of course all I could get was the local station until it went off the air, but this device entertained me for years. Papa told me many years later that it finally rotted and fell out of the tree. It had stood there while the tree grew up around it completely swallowing it up some twenty years later. Another project that Sylvan and I got involved in was our telephone system. We acquired some old heavily insulated telephone wire (from the garbage dump of course). We strung the wire from tree to tree between his house and ours. The only problem we had was crossing the street. The city objected to the wire hanging across the street even though it was every bit as high as the real telephone wires. One night Sylvan and I took a pick ax and gouged out all the tar between the two sections of concrete (the expansion joint) in the street. We forced the cable into the resulting crack and re-melted the tar and poured it on top of the cable completely concealing it. The cable was not found until the city repaved the street long after Sylvan and I had moved on. We had two old crank phones that we used whenever the impulse hit us. Wilson's woods was located about two miles south of town. We spent many a day roaming those woods and digging clay out of the small bayou (creek) running through the property. If one walked far enough south there was "the cable". This was nothing more than two cables stretched between telephone poles that were located in a low swampy area. The cables were about four feet apart and situated such that one could walk on the lower cable while holding onto the upper cable. It was great fun risking (or imagining that we were risking) life and limb to walk on the cable. Actually the cable was only about four or so feet from the ground. The ground could barely be seen through the reeds growing up in the wet soil.

The sawdust pile was the remnant of an old saw mill which had been shut down and removed. To climb and jump into this huge pile of sawdust was a great pastime. All one had to do was be careful to remove all the sawdust from his pockets so Mama wouldn't find out. For some reason or another she was afraid we would be swallowed up by the sawdust. In the early 50’s Papa took a leave of absence from the extension service to take a job with the United States Department of State. It was an agriculture aid program to India. His job was to assist the Indian agriculture officials set up a program of extension agents and to assist them in training farmers to use more modern agricultural procedures and higher yielding varieties of food crops. Papa's specialty was rice and grain. We had hardly arrived and were still in New Delhi when I found out about an American school run by an alliance of many Christian Missions. The school was Woodstock High School and was located on the first ridge of the Himalayan Mountains near Mussoorie, about twenty miles up a narrow winding road from Derha Dun the nearest rail head. This school was mentioned in several of Pearl S. Buck's books. I was sixteen and had just completed the first half of my junior year at Opelousas High. The counselor decided that if I would do self-study for one course and take half credits for some I had not finished, that I could fit into the senior class. I had to take a heavy load of courses. Considering that we couldn't leave the premises except on weekends and that there was enforced study hall every evening between dinner and bedtime I didn't have too much trouble passing and graduating. I graduated on November 22, 1952, my seventeenth birthday. Woodstock was a marvelous experience! On Saturday we would go in groups to Landour and Mussoorie for recreation. Mostly I went with Jerzy Pajuk, an older Polish youth who lost much of his opportunity to go to school during World War II. His father had left Poland before the war and operated a textile mill in Kabul, Afghanistan. Jerzy and his mother were trapped until after the war and were very lucky to escape the Russians after the war, joining his father in Kabul. Jerzy was one of the very few Catholics in the school and we bonded very early on. We would stop at the first restaurant in Landour on Saturday and eat either mutton or chicken curry. We usually met others for a movie and later went to Kwality in Mussoorie, an English restaurant chain for sandwiches and ice cream. My favorite was a ham banjo, (ham, lettuce and tomato on toast), and peach melba. This was the only place we could drink the milk. It was canned but not as bad as the surplus WW II powdered milk we got at the school. One had to continuously stir the powdered milk to keep it from separating. I wrote many times to the family about how nasty the food was at the school. Mama always contended my only problem was my unwillingness to accept a diet different than at home. That is until the family came for my graduation. Mama says ever so often that if they had not come stocked with cheese, crackers and other snacks the family would have starved to death. They absolutely could not eat the Woodstock food. One of the courses I took at Woodstock was Indian Sociology. We took two trips, one to Hardwar and one to the Maharajah of Patiala's home and farm. Hardwar is a holy Hindu city on the Ganges River. We watched the ceremony of the candles. This involved people who would light a candle and place it on a leaf in the river. According to legend, if it were to reach and pass a certain bridge across the river without capsizing, the prayer or petition of the individual would be granted. The city and its temples are beautiful. The Maharajah's farm was primarily a huge orchard of orange and grapefruit trees. The fruit was used to manufacture a product called squash. Squash is a form of bottled concentrate to which water is added to make a drink similar to fruit juice or an ade drink. During spring break I joined the family in Naini Tal, another mountain resort. The heat on the plains was so oppressing before the monsoons hit in late June, almost everyone who could afford it went to the mountains. I caught a ride with a family named Collins. We stopped one night on the way in a Dak bungalow. This was one of many that the English built and the Indian government maintained after independence. We arrived in Naini Tal the second night after a very long and grueling ride over many miles of terrible (karab) roads. It was in Naini Tal that I had my first real experience with too much to drink. Davis Manawar and several of his friends and I went out one night. For whatever reason I do not recall, I was able to buy liquor, though the others who were Indian and older than me could not. I remember asking about rum, which I had never drunk. It was somewhat sweet and I was told that it was similar to wine. I knew I could drink a pint of wine without much effect so I got a bottle of XXX Rosa, 180 proof rum and proceeded to drink it with coke. We were in a small party room in the back of the liquor store. I felt fine while we were there but as soon as we left I passed out. Maybe it was the cool air or maybe it was just the time had passed to have the rum soak in but I don't remember anything until the next morning. I was sick for days! I have not been able to drink rum since. After graduation I joined the family in Lucknow. We lived at A2/2 Riverside Drive. We were about two blocks from the Gomati river (I remember calling it the Jumna) and across the street from the Back wall of the Residency. The Residency was the British Army garrison during the colonial days. The Residency was a principal location of the Mutiny in 1857. A rumor circulated among the soldiers, most of whom were Muslims, that the cartridges were lubricated with pork fat. The type of rounds used required that a paper retainer in front of the projectile had to be removed. The fastest and easiest way was to bite it off. This angered the Muslims and became the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. There were many grievances that fueled the rebellion, but this seemed to be the immediate trigger. After quelling the Mutiny the British changed many of their policies to improve the lot of the Indian soldiers and people but there was still a great deal of exploitation which lasted until Independence in 1946/7. We had many adventures in the Residency, exploring the old ruins and standing buildings. It had been turned into a huge park and was a virtual botanical garden and zoo for the local wild life. There were peafowl, monkeys and many small animals living unmolested (sometimes fed) within the walls. On one occasion Mama witnessed the funeral of a Rhesus monkey that had died. A procession of monkeys preceded the four monkeys carrying the body and a cortege followed. Periodically they would put the body down and cry, pick it back up for a distance, then repeat the procedure many times until it was over. Anita and Marian and I would chase the monkeys sometimes, until they banded together and chased us. We learned that they were quite capable of defending themselves as small as they were. Our house was a two-story masonry structure. We had a "swamp" cooler (bound reeds made into a thick curtain with water running through it and the humidified air pulled through and blown into the main part of the house. This worked a little before the monsoons but not at all when it was humid. We had one small room with an air conditioner. We would sit there for hours talking or reading because it was just too hot to do anything else. Sometimes we would take a large bath towel, dampen it in cold water, and lay on the bed with the towel over us under the ceiling fan. This was cool until the towel dried out. Then we would do it again. I rode my bike all over Lucknow, but especially to the Manawar's house. I visited Davis, Muni and Choti as well as Mrs. Manawar.I called Mrs. Manawar "Baby Bear" because she just loved a joke I told about the three bears. We all became very close. On one occasion we had a bar-b-que on the roof of our house. We had many people there including several Muslims. One of the big hits were the roasted hot dogs, until one of the visitors read the label and discovered that there was pork in them. The Muslims became physically ill when they became aware of the pork they had eaten. This was probably the most embarrassing experience we had. We did a great deal of hunting, not just for pleasure, but for food. Cows are holy, thus no beef. Pigs are unclean to the muslims so no pork. Most buffalo are too tough to eat even if they are properly slaughtered and stored. The goats were terrible tasting. That left us to fill the freezer through our own efforts. We hunted and ate wild chicken (jungle fowl), peafowl, grouse, antelope, deer, and wild hogs. We also hunted tiger and leopard. In 1952 and 1953 the big cat population was such that as jungle was cleared to house the homeless refugees there were too many cats and thus many were reduced to eating people, their cattle and other domestic stock. The government encouraged hunting and maintained a network of preserves with large bungalows for the hunters to use. Papa and I both killed a tiger. My first deer was a Kakar, a barking deer. It is a miniature variety weighing about twenty-five pounds fully grown. I sat in a tree near a water hole and it came out soon after I was settled on the branch.

The largest deer I killed was a Chital. Chital are spotted deer, even when mature. They are also known as Axis deer. My shikar and I parked the jeep near a dry slough (pronounced sloo). We walked down it for a few hundred yards until it curved to the left. We crept around the curve and there was a herd of Chital. I shot at the biggest one. They ran immediately, including the one I thought I had shot. The shikar told me to chase them as the buck was with a herd of doe and he would stop ahead to make sure that they were safe. Sure enough we caught up with them and I shot again. They ran and we made chase again. We caught up to them. This time I lay down on the bank of the slough and got a solid prone position about 75 yards away. I squeezed off a round, sure that I hadn't missed this time. Sure enough they ran again. My shikar was disgusted. I knew I shot better than that so I marked a big ant hill and carefully zeroed the rifle. The sights were fine so I resigned myself to just having missed. Since the deer had curved around to the left, to get back to the jeep the most direct route was to follow where the deer had run. About halfway back, we walked upon the carcass. When we examined it we found that all three rounds had hit within two inches of one another, almost completely obliterating his heart and lungs. What determination! The horns were very close to being a record, stretching thirty-five inches from the base to the end of each main frame. For several months during early 1953, I spent time at Kashipur colonization project with Mr. Mukerjee, a friend of Papa's. The projects were large community farms created by the clearing of tracts of jungle and the building of row housing. The houses were small cinder block units with one large room, built side by side using common walls. Most of the groups of houses had common bath and toilet houses built nearby with one water well in front. Some were more advanced and had a single spigot in the kitchen area and a walled off corner inside with a concrete hole in it with another spigot to wash the individual and flush the sewage down the hole. Most of the refugees moving in had never seen anything so convenient in their lives. One day I walked from the room we stayed in, with my shikar (baby sitter). Within 200 yards we came upon a small herd of Black Buck. I shot one and we hung it in a tree to protect the carcass from predators and walked on. After rounding a corner of jungle we came upon a large prairie of grass. I climbed a tree and spotted another herd of antelope. We crept up to about 300 yards and I shot another. We trussed it to a pole and were carrying it back to the project when we spotted a large Nilgai (a blue bull, another variety of antelope that weighs about 500 to 1,000 pounds). I shot it in the neck with a 180 grain soft nosed 30-06 round. It dropped on the spot. When we approached it we found it was still alive, which made my shikar very happy. Because he was Muslim, meat that he ate had to be hallowed (I'm not sure of the spelling), that means to cut the throat, bleeding the animal while praying over the meat. The Nilgai was too large to carry so while the shikar waited I walked back to the project and Mr. Mukerjee arranged for some of the new residents to pick up the kills with a bullock cart for a share of the meat. Actually for their help they got the Nilgai skin, about 300 pounds of meat and we had a big bar-b-que for all the villagers in the area. Incidentally, when the Nilgai was skinned we found that the bullet had only penetrated the outer skin (which was about 1 1/2 inches thick) and was only unconcious. Part of the meat was smoked and dried for later as there was no refrigeration. Mr. Mukerjee had the rest of the meat packed in ice and shipped to Papa in Lucknow. On one hunt that Papa and I went, we found out that there was a large female tiger with two grown cubs (a male and a female over 8 feet long weighing about 250 pounds each). Mr. Kaven, one of Papa' associates, and his boys had cornered one of the cubs near a swampy area with a lot of elephant grass. The wounded cat escaped into the grass. After a lot of shooting one of the shikars braved the grass and found the dead tiger. That evening we staked a buffalo calf in a dry streambed and tied a charpoi (a wooden frame cot with heavy cord woven so as to make a strong surface to sleep, or in this case sit on) into a tree for a stand. I was supposed to wait for the tiger to come that night and kill it. On the way to the stand riding on an elephant, we saw one of the tigers. I shot it and we managed with difficulty to have it loaded out. The elephant was scared of it so we had to hang it and get hold of a cart. Later we went back. My shikar and I climbed up into the tree for what was the longest night of my life until then. At about 10 PM the large female approached the area. She rushed in suddenly and slapped the buffalo on the back of the neck. The neck broke and the buffalo died instantly. The tiger lay down and started to eat. I had a double barrel 12 gauge shotgun with rifled slugs loaded in both barrels. There was a light mounted on the gun with a switch on the front hand guard. All I had to do was aim, squeeze the switch, adjust my aim and pull the trigger. It was a bright moonlit night. I was afraid that if I turned on the light the tiger would run away. So I, in my infinite seventeen year old wisdom, aimed with the moonlight and shot. The tiger jumped straight up and then fell hard on its back. It then got up and ran away. We spent the next eight hours with the knowledge that a wounded tiger was in the nearby jungle with us only about twenty feet up a tree, an easy jump for a grown tiger. We heard screams, growls, scratching on the tree and just about every other frightening jungle sound there was. At daylight we checked the area, then climbed down. We found evidence of porcupine (the scratching), peacock (the screams) and screech owls. I tracked the tiger for about fifty yards in the sand of the dry creek bed. It turned into a slough, leaving some fur under a log across the slough. When I stopped to think how easy it would be for the tiger to jump on me from the bank of the slough, I left at a run. My shikar and I waited until Papa and the other shikars came up on the elephant. After their hearing the story, we dug up all the sand around where the tiger had been until we found the slug I shot, proving I had not wounded the tiger. If the slug had not been found we would have been tracking tiger until she was found and killed. In the spring of 1953 the family travelled to Agra for sight seeing. We visited the Taj Mahal on a bright sunny morning. The white marble reflected back the light to such a degree it was hard to hold one's eyes open at first. The flowers around the grounds and fountain were beautiful. There were Black Buck (Indian Antelope) with their long twisting horns everywhere in the garden. I had little to do for a while so I went to visit friends from Woodstock who lived in French Indo-China. They were missionaries who ran a hospital for the indigenous people (mountagne yards) of the area. I worked with them in the hospital for several months until I had to return to India. When it was time to leave for school I left Lucknow by train and traveled to Bombay. There I caught the USS President Monroe. En-route to New York, we stopped in Karachi and Aden. Then we sailed up the Red Sea and through the Suez Canal to Alexandria, Egypt. While there the ship's doctor took me under his wing and escorted me sight seeing. We went to Giza to see the Pyramids and the Sphinx. We climbed up and went into all the corridors open to visitors. That night we went to the grand bazaar and had dinner then went to a club for drinks (I was limited to two) and were entertained by a belly dance floor show with several very pretty and limber young ladies. Our next stop was Marseilles, France. We arrived on the 4th of July, just in time for a communist demonstration attempting to degrade the U. S. We let off cargo and took on more, then we went on to Genoa, Livorno and Naples. While in ports in Italy I toured Pisa and Pompei.
It was at L. S. U. that I met Elouise. It was November 14, 1953 after the homecoming game with Ole Miss. She had come to the fraternity party on a blind date with Ronald Sands and I had cavorted around with my tiger skin. Needless to say I didn't make a very good first impression. It was several weeks later that I went to Newman Club and Elouise was there with my cousin Marian Coons. Marian convinced Elouise I was really okay and we started to go out together. We dated for the rest of the school year. Since we had very little cash available, most of our dates were simply "go to Baker's for a piece of pie and a drink" which we usually had to split. Most of our dates were Dutch-treat (we shared the bill according to who had the most money) or spending no money at all. We saw each other almost every night.

During the summer 1954 I hitchhiked to Idaho with Sylvan D'Avy. We were supposed to get a job with the U. S. Forestry Department but that didn't pan out for me. I stayed in a small town hotel in Cambridge for $1.00 a night. When I ran out of money the hotel owner let me stay and loaned me $1.00 a day for food. That bought me three hamburgers and one milk shake, which held me over quite well. After about a week a farmer named Melvin Lindsey from Indian Valley, a small community nearby hired me as a farm hand. I earned $60 a week and room and board. We worked about ten hours daily, Monday through Saturday. During our trip in 1993, Elouise and I stopped by and visited. Melvin had died and Scottie, who was an eight or nine months old red headed baby when I was there, had started to farm the place with her husband. One Sunday I walked down to the Little Wieser River, which ran through the farm. There was an old man near the bridge with a homemade harpoon, single tined gig. He was waiting for a salmon to come by and rest in the deep pool near the bridge. He didn't wait long before he had a nice four or five pound fish. I was fascinated and he showed me how to do it and even helped me make a harpoon out of an old hoe handle and a steel nail. We hammered the nail into the end of the handle, then, we heated the head of the nail red hot in the forge and hammered it almost flat on an anvil. Then with a file we shaped it into a nice sharp barbed point. On a Sunday soon after, I finally got my salmon. I brought it in, cleaned it and Ruth cooked it. Melvin said nothing until after supper. He asked me how I got it and I was happy to explain. That was when he told me Old Joe was an Indian and he could catch as many salmon as he wanted, whenever he wanted, and any way that he wanted; but I couldn't, it was against the law. That summer I cut, mowed, and stacked hay until I didn't want to think of hay again. All the time I was gone, Elouise and I wrote frequently. When I got back to Louisiana it became clear that Elouise was not going back to L. S. U. She had taken a job at Prudential Insurance Company, Mortgage Loan Division. I decided to transfer to Loyola University of the South. Loyola was located on St. Charles Avenue, about twelve blocks from where Elouise lived. I got a room in a rooming house across the street from her, in the home of Mrs. Kopp, a long time neighbor. Needless to say Granny was not thrilled at the proximity and she limited the number of times a week we could visit, go out or talk on the phone. At mid term it was clear that I could not continue with school, expecially organic chemistry, so I withdrew and got a job. I made so little I had to move to a boarding house to make ends meet. I stayed in New Orleans until spring semester registration and returned to L. S. U. By March Elouise and I decided that the separation was too much to bear so on March 9, 1955 we borrowed my Uncle Bubba's car, drove to Woodville, Mississippi and got married by the Justice of the Peace. On the way home we stopped at St. Agnes Catholic Church and talked to the priest about getting married in the church. He made us call our parents immediately, telling them what we did and the plans we were making. After a lot of sanctimony, the date was set and we were married in the church on March 29, 1955. Mama and Papa had been married in the same church years before. David Jr. was born December 25, 1955. He was a great Xmas surprise. He was due January 1, but came a little early. I worked for Life Insurance Company of Georgia. Before I started to work there, we passed the building several times and Elouise had remarked that the office building was pretty. This made little impact at first, but when we were in New Orleans some time later she said the same thing about the office building in which the United States Rubber Company was located. It was not too long after that I found myself working there too. We have joked about this for years and Elouise has stopped remarking about how pretty commercial buildings are anymore. We moved to New Orleans in 1956 and lived there for almost 2 years. We moved to Monroe when I was given the North East Louisiana territory for United States Rubber Company, Footwear and General Products Division. Vicky was born Feb. 8, 1959. We moved in 1960, spending a brief time in Bogalusa and then on to Baton Rouge where Michael was born June 24, 1960. I worked for McGraw Edison Co, Voice Writer Division, moving back to Baton Rouge for a while and then returning to New Orleans in 1961. Steven was born July 13, 1961 and I was drafted Sep 9, 1961. I went to Ft. Benning, Ga, and then on to Ft. Gordon, Ga. for basic training. After basic I bought a car and we pulled a trailor to Ft. Sill for my advanced training in Radio Maintenance. My first permanent station was HQ and Svc Company, 5th Guided missile Bn at Ft. Bliss, TX. While there, Theresa was born, Dec. 31, 1962 and we went through the Cuban Crisis and then the Kennedy assassination. In Sep. 1964 I went to Ft. Gordon again and went through Avionics school. On Dec. 17 1964, the last school day before Xmas vacation, Julie was born. From there I went to Vietnam the first time in Jan 1966. Altogether I spent 2 1/2 tours in Vietnam. Coincidently my first tour was in Ban Me Thuot, where my friends lived and with whom I volunteered and worked in 1953. Jan 1966-67, Aug 67-Feb 68, and Feb 1970 to Mar 1971. In between the second and third trip to VN we made our first trip to Germany and spent 18 months in Hanau and 6 months is Hoescht. In July 1970 I was promoted from SFC E-7 to WO1. It was in 1970 and 71 that I made two trips to Australia for R&R, and fell in love with it. Our second trip to Germany was Manheim in Mar 1971-Sep 73. Ft. Bragg is next until Nov 1975. We spent two + years in Madrid, Spain. In Oct of 1978 we made our first trip to Ft. Rucker and went back to Germany, this time Stuttgart, in July 1980 after I completed my BS at Troy State. We were there until Sep 1983 and went back to Ft. Rucker. I was in the tactical ATC repair unit until mid 1985 when we went back to Germany for the last time and spent the better part of 3 years in Pirmasens at what was the old Signal Depot,now called Pirmasens General Support Center. I think that this was my finest hour in the Army and throughly enjoyed the job and the people as well as the fine times we had there. This was our first tour in Germany with no children left at home so we really did a lot of traveling and I enjoyed the skiing. I retired Feb 29, 1988. After retirement we bought a motor home and travelled for 4 months around the US. It was on this trip that we finished our goal of seeing America. We finished our interim goal of travelling in all 48 contiginous states, returning to Ozark and moving back into our home at 1112 Rosemary Lane. I sold real estate for a while and went back to night school, earning my Masters Degree in June 1990 and my Education Specialist Degree in June 1994, both in Counseling and Psychology. While finishing the EDS, I had a heart attack, July 3, 1992 and had a quadruple bypass. That delayed my completion of my research project and I did not finish my thesis until early 1994. I did my internship with the Department of Alabama Vocational Rehabilition Services for one year as the Houston County School System, Vocational Rehabilition Counselor, working mostly with high school students. In the summer of 1993 we made an RV trip to Chicago to see Sister Adelle, on to Glacier Natl Park and Alaska, return via ferry on the Alaska Hwy system waterway to Prince Rupert and then drove down the Fraser River to Washington and then diagonally back across the country to Opelousas and on to Ozark. In Feb 1995 we went to Hawaii, thus finishing our final goal of visiting all 50 states and as well, 5 provinces in Canada. While in Hawaii, we went on to Australia and I renewed my love for Sydney and surrounding area, showing Elouise what I had visited in 1970 and 71. In Oct. 1996 we took a tour of Turkey, a cruise of the Greek Isles and a tour of Athens, Greece. In October 1997 we went to India and toured Delhi, and did a driving trip visiting Mussoorie, including Woodstock, Haridwar with its temples, Lucknow including where we lived and the Residency, Agra and the Taj Mahal, Fatehpur Sikri with its abandoned ruins, Sawai Modhipur and the Rathambore Tiger Preserve. We went on to Jaipur and then back to Delhi. While in India we visited with several of my classmates, TZ Chu, Ricky Mehta Talwar, Ajay Agarwal, and Lila Berry. Also in 1997 we flew to Claremont, CA for my class 45th reunion and I visited with 18 of my old classmates. Our class is planning our 50th reunion to be in India in Oct 2002. In 1998 we drove the new RV to Chicago to visit Sister Adele again and also went to the Woodstock reunion in Beloit, Wisconsin. We have attended the reunion every year since except the 50th, which became impossible because of health. Cruises to Antarctica Jan 2000 via Ushuaia, Argentina and Europe leaving Italy with stops in North Africa, France, Majorca, Cadiz, Gibralter, Portugal, UK, Germany, Denmark, Russia, Estonia, and Holland in 2001 rounded off our major traveling. We had now been to all 7 continents, most of the countries in Europe and all 50 states in the US as well as many provinces in Canada and Mexico. We have lived on Rosemary Lane, Ozark with absences only for a tour in Europe and other traveling. We now have an expanded family of 6 children, 15 grandchildren and 6 greats – all of whom delight us to no end.