(L to R) Paul, Lanty, Hazel
My Story
By Lanty H. Wylie Jr.
Unpublished Work: Copyright © 1994-2017 by Lanty H. Wylie, Jr. This
book, titled "My Story" and included attachments are protected under
the Copyright Law of the
DISCLAIMER
Every now and then, I take pen (computer) in hand and jot down a few memories. If I have used a phrase or statement of someone else's, it was not intentional and I apologize. If I have described any person, place, action, thing or occurrence that you do not agree with, I am sorry. This is the way I remember the experiences in my life. HOWEVER, if you DO like these efforts, or if you DO NOT like these efforts, I do not want to hear from you. Find your own therapy.
THE WYLIE CLAN
"One observer described the Wylie clan as "the same as the Indians," The Wylies were illiterate, "wonderfully ignorant" and as full of superstitions as their feeble minds were capable of, believing in Witches, ghosts, Hobgoblins, Evil Eyes... they did not farm, had no fences round their shanty habitations and appeared to have lived a roving, rambling life ever since the Battle of Bunker Hill when they fled to this wilderness." Used by permission: Harper Collins, copyright 1991 by Paul Collins. The Birth of the Modern", World Society 1815-1830, ISBN 0-06-016574-X
Note:
Wylie’s in Bunker Hill Battle
Robert
Wylie: Born 1n 1747 at Boothbay, ME; Died there
June 7 1815 .Robert was a private in Capt. Timothy Langdon’s
Company. Eugene Cushman Wylie also in the Bunker
Hill Battle was the great grandson of Robert Wylie.
CHAPTER ONE
My Beginnings
1932
Mother and Dad met at a dance party and the next day Mother left her husband Sam C. Parker, took Hazel her daughter and moved in with my Dad and his four sons. My Mother had married Parker February 12, 1920.
My father, Lanty Hill Wylie Sr., was married to Artie James in 1909, when Dad was about sixteen years old. They divorced six months later. My Dad then married Fanny Grace Cunningham and she bore him Fred E. Wylie, Grady E. Wylie, Clyde H. Wylie, Fanny Mae Wylie and Cloys Paul Wylie. Fanny Grace Cunningham died in 1928 with some form of childbed fever. Her religious beliefs and her family support for those beliefs sped her untimely death.
(About 1915)
Lanty Wylie Sr., Fanny Grace Cunningham Wylie, Fred Wylie (Baby)
After my Mother's divorce from Parker was
granted, she married my Dad in Benoit,
When Dad met my Mother, Dora Lucile (Gentry) Parker she was married to a Mr. Sam C. Parker and had one child, Hazel. Hazel was five years old at this time. Mr. Parker was fifteen years older than my Mother. Mother said that she was encouraged to marry him by her friends, but she never loved Parker. Parker was a sharecropper and I think it was working Mother to death in the cotton fields. From photographs of Mother while she was married to Parker, she looked withdrawn and unhappy. Looking back, I think Dad told Mother that she would never have to work in the fields and she didn't, after her marriage to my father. Hazel never got over her Mother leaving her Father (Parker). Later Mother told Patricia, my wife, that it was a terrible thing to leave someone (Parker) that cared as much about her as he did. Mother was happy with my Dad throughout the marriage. She missed my Dad very much after his death. My Dad was ten years older than my Mother. There were very few arguments and disagreements between them.
Even though my Mother didn't work in the cotton fields, there was plenty of work to be done around the house with my Dad, his four sons, from a previous marriage and her daughter, Hazel, from my Mother's marriage to Parker. I was an adult before my Mother told my Wife, Patricia, that her first name was Dora and that she dropped it early on for her second name Lucile. Mother said "I just didn't like Dora," that was the way she did things. Before that, I only knew her as Lucile Wylie. She had kept this a secret for years.
Lucile Gentry 1926
Dad told me he was named Lanty (A nickname for Lancelot) after Lewis Lancelot Johnston, (Bn. about 1828 in Willimson County, Tennessee.) My Great Grand Father. Lewis L. Johnston was 34 years old in 1860 according to the census. He married Emiline Merritt (Bn. 1833) on August 7, 1856. Lewis and Emiline had a child Annah E. Johnston (bn. Dec 20, 1857.) She married Andrew Thomas Wylie, my Grand Father, November 22, 1877. Lewis Lancelot Johnston was killed, in Tennessee, during the War of Northern Aggression, 1862 at Shiloh. He was in McKoin’s 55th Regiment, Tennessee Infantry. The reason I go into my genealogy is to develop the path of my name, Lanty. My family, on both sides, was from Tennessee and had deep feelings for the South. My Dad told me he was about 18 before he saw a black man. That is the reason Dad never had a prejudice against black people. He had not been raised to have a prejudice against them.
L-R Angie Jernigan Russell (Aunt) & Huldah Jernigan (G. Grand Mother)
People at this time, back in the hills of
My oldest brother, Fred, worked in the mechanical and blacksmith shop on the plantation. He assisted Dad with the job of overseeing the plantation. Fred paid Dad one dollar a week for room and board. Dad made twelve dollars a week for running the plantation. He rode a blind horse named Dan. Many times Dad has told me how he could guide the horse by applying a certain pressure to the horse's neck and with verbal commands.
Most of the labor on plantations was done by Negroes. They were not much better off in 1932 than they were as slaves. My Dad was riding old Dan when he saw this Negro laborer stop his plowing and start talking to this Negro lady chopping cotton. The conversation went on for some time and Dad went over and told him to get back to work. The laborer started to unhitch the mules from the plow. I don't know what words were exchanged, but Dad hit the laborer over the head, with a crescent wrench. Several of the other laborers saw this and started after Dad. Dad took old blind Dan by the bridle and swatted him on the side with his hat. This made old Dan go around and around, keeping the men at bay. Fred saw this and came over to help Dad. Dad told me that this was the only time that he forgot to take his pistol to work. Later that day, the laborer's household goods, furniture, clothes and everything else, was moved out of the plantation house where he lived and set by the road. He was out of a job and a place to stay. When one of the plantation workers killed a Negro, the law would try you on some trumped up charge and punish you with a small fine. Most of the time there would be no charge at all brought against you. There might be a small two or three line mention of this in the newspaper, near the back.
Fred and Grady, my brothers, were the first
to leave home. Fred married Ada Smith from
My half sister, Fanny Mae (Wylie) Utley lives
in
After Dad's second wife, Fanny Grace
(Cunningham) Wylie, died, Dad got into the bottle. Working as deputy sheriff,
Dad was making moonshine whiskey in a cave. This did not set too well with the
city elders. Here was my Dad deputy sheriff, making whiskey with four small
children to support. Making whiskey was an eternal right at this time in
My brother, Fred E. Wylie, died on a pipeline
accident, Friday July 12, 1962, somewhere in
Grady E. Wylie died in
Grady was an excellent mechanic on trucks, farm equipment and heavy diesel equipment. Grady was 12 when his Mother died. For some reason, Grady cooked for my Dad and his brothers. This was before Dad married my Mother. So, until Grady died his nickname was Cook. Grady and Dad never really got on that well and it all came to a head when Grady was 16. Grady was chopping wood with an ax and Dad was standing nearby. It is easy to aim your chips, most of the time, when you are chopping wood. Sometime the chip takes off on its own. Anyway, a chip from Grady's chopping, hit Dad in the back of the head. Dad took off his belt and proceeded to beat Grady so bad that Fred came over and told Dad to quit. Dad regretted this whipping and Grady never forgot it.
Clyde H. Wylie is living at this time, (1994)
in
Cloys Paul Wylie: Paul lives in DeQuincy, Louisiana. (1994) Paul is very intelligent and very set in his ways. Paul can take a book on any radio or TV problem and figure out how it works. He was involved in Amateur Radio for several years. Amateur call sign WA5FHP.
Paul died July 31, 2007 the cemetery is
located behind Boxwood Church of Christ in
In 1970, I would get to
I got home from work Wednesday the telephone
was ringing, it was from Paul. We discussed the transmitter. He wanted to bring
a pickup truck and I told him it was not large enough. A pick up and a U haul
would not be large enough. It would take a two and half ton flat bed to haul
this monster. The next Friday night Paul and one of his friends came and stayed
the night. Early Saturday morning we went to
Back in DeQuincy, Paul built an Amateur Radio Shack out behind his house, got the electric company to wire in three phase 240 volts and moved the transmitter in. Of all the people I knew in Amateur Radio, Paul was the only one that, for certain, would get this transmitter working. I understand he has spent many hours talking to other Amateurs around the world on this transmitter. That monster transmitter was capable of 10,000 watts of radio frequency power, from 3 to 30 MHz.
Mary Lee (O'Keefe) Wylie, my only whole
sibling, is living near
Hazel (Parker) Guest, my half sister on my
Mother's side is dead. She is buried in
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My Dad was raised in Tennessee, where he quit school at 9 to be the water boy in a sawmill making ax handles out of that Tennessee Hickory. Later on Dad worked in a Blacksmith shop where he learned the trade. My Dad never talked about his Mom and Dad, my grandparents. It was only after I started compiling the Wylie family genealogy that I knew their exact names and where they were buried. Dad broke off relations with his parents when he was about 19 to 20 years old. The reason for the estrangement was never revealed to me.
Dad was turned down for military service in World War1 because his toes pointed straight down and he was flat-footed. At this time the chief business of a blacksmith was shoeing horses. When you take a horse's hoof and hold it just above your knees, between your legs, scrape, fit, measure and finally nail down the horse's shoe, you point your toes down as if to grip the ground. The horse tends to be anxious about this procedure and move around some, while the blacksmith tries to hold him still. After years of this, Dad's toes pointed down. When he quit shoeing horses, his toes looked like anyone else's toes.
My Dad was a walking farmer for years and his
flat feet never bothered him. In the black lands of Mississippi, on Sam
Speaks’ plantation there were about ten Negro families. Most of these
families were sharecroppers. Most of the farming was done with mule teams and
human sweat. Tractors were expensive and labor was cheap. After a while, Dad
did not get on well with the owner and we moved on, except Fred, to
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There was land to homestead in Arkansas, so
by the time I was eighteen months old we were in the woods of Arkansas. After
my Dad and brothers built a log cabin, Dad had fifty cents to start a crop and
try to make a living for the first year. During the time, in
My childhood was a happy time. I had my Mother, Dad, three brothers, and sister to spoil me. I was the baby. When I got old enough to work in the cotton fields, I really came to grips with the reality of life and my economic status in this life.
Dad and Mother had very few arguments or disagreements with each other. I have only the fondest memories of my Mom and Dad. Farming in the late 1930's was a difficult way to make a living. You had to make a living or starve. There were no government handouts, the government was broke. Most people were too proud to take welfare if it had been available.
Looking back from 1997, people had more personal pride in them and their families, in the 1930's, than they do now. There was no crime and no one ever locked their house.
In
Every family had a water bucket in the kitchen. When you wanted a drink you took the dipper and drank from it. It was a family way to drink water. The water was at room temperature unless it was fresh from the water pump. Usually the dipper was a metal device that held about a cup of water at a time. At one time, we had a gourd that was fashioned to drink water. As far as passing on any illness by sharing a common way to drink water; the first time I was ever sick was when I was about 12 years old. That was two times, in my young life, the doctor saw me, once when I was born and when I was about 12 years old.
After we started getting some money from the homestead, Dad got a car. Now he could stop by the beer joint while in town. It had been raining for some time and a bridge washed out in the road leaving a big hole. Early one morning, Dad was returning from the beer joint and could not stop in time for the washed out bridge. Someone from town came out and told us that Dad was in the doctor's office in bad shape. The doctor said that if Dad had not been drinking he would have been killed. I do not know the logic that brought him to this conclusion. Dad had some broken ribs and hurt feelings. Mother seemed to take it all in stride.
One of our neighbors was named Lum Russian and like the rest of the farmers, he was homesteading his land. Lum didn't make the proper quota for clearing and planting so daddy signed up for his homestead. Paul and Hazel were walking to school one morning and saw Lum and his daughter clearing land. Paul went back home and told Dad. Dad grabbed his shotgun and lit out for a confrontation. When Lum saw Dad, he slipped over, picked up his double barrel shotgun and shot at Dad. The birdshot scattered around and did not hurt anyone. Dad quickened his pace hit Lum over the head with his single barrel twelve-gage shotgun, before Lum could reload. Lum went to the hospital and Dad to jail. After the story was told, Dad got out of jail and Lum stayed in the hospital for two weeks. Everyone thought he was going to die. Dad was placed under a peace bond not to see or contact Lum. When Lum came home the peace bond was lifted. Dad straightened his shotgun barrel and used it until he died. Grady got the shotgun after Dad died.
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Mother and Dad had gone to town and Paul was playing with that same old shotgun, in our log house. He was making believe a squirrel was running across the room. He said, "There he goes" and squeezed the trigger just as the gun was pointed at the cook stove chimney. . He didn't know the gun was loaded, but when the loud noise came out of the barrel he knew for sure. My brothers got together and swapped the bad piece of tin chimney, over the cook stove, with the good piece in the loft. This was a good idea until Mother started a fire in the cook stove. Smoke poured out in the loft and my brothers had to confess their deed to Dad.
In today's environment, it is hard to imagine
the difficult life we faced in the
My Dad and brothers had to saw down trees then dig the tree stumps up to clear the land for farming. We had a garden for vegetables, a cow for milk, chickens for eggs and meat, and hogs for meat. Ninety percent of our animal protein came from the small animals we hunted in the woods. The largest part of our diet was pinto and navy beans with a little hog fat thrown in. I was in the Air Force before anyone ever told me he didn't like a certain type of food.
About this time I took my first drive in an automobile. Our car was parked facing the log house, about ten feet away. I had seen Dad press the started button on the floor and this would make the car go. While my family was eating dinner, I got down in the floorboard of the car and pressed the starter with button with my foot. The switch was not on so the car would not start but it would move as the starter turned the motor over. There were no automatic transmission cars in those days. The car ran up against the house with starter power. Everyone came running out of the house to see about me. From then on I just sat in the car and made believe I was driving. From then to now, this is the most fun I have ever had driving a car.
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Some lady came over to keep Hazel and me while Mother went to town. Mother had told her to keep me out of the road that ran by our house. She was afraid that I would get run over. Well, this lady was rougher than my Mother was as she tanned my tail for getting in the road. I guess this was the first spanking for me. I do not remember the spanking. Mother told me about this. My Dad never spanked me as such. He did hit me once and slap me once. Mother hit me one time for cutting a hole in a sack of flour with my new pocketknife. Dad was rough as a cob on by brothers, but he let me get by with just about anything. Looking back, I can see that this lack of discipline was one of the reasons that I resent any authority over me. However, by being able to do anything I wanted to do, I think, this helped my imagination develop, without restrictions.
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The rain came down and the Mississippi River
left its banks and consumed our
Paul stayed well and during the day he would take his rowboat and paddle around the flooded farmhouses collecting chickens from the trees. The chickens roosted in the trees to get out of the high water. Paul would sell them at the local grocery store and give the money to Dad. The chickens would probably have starved anyway and this was a good source of income.
After the flood, Dad decided to move from
this rich farmland to something better. Dad was from
Looking back on life, most of the time you are money ahead to stay with a project if there is a glimmer of hope for completion. There is not a problem on earth that you cannot run away from and there will be few success stories. Anyway, I think my Mother's father, John Byrd Gentry, influenced my Dad to sell and move. Mother told me that Grandpa got to talking about how much the land was worth now that the homestead was completed.
Life was hard on every one. Farmers and their wives, people we knew, died when they were about 50 years old. They just wore out. That is the reason exercise programs never caught on with me. If you really want some exercise, find yourself about 180 acres of timberland, clear it with a mule team and start farming. You will have all the exercise you will ever want in your whole life. But, I changed my mind in my 60's. I started exercising daily. Makes you feel better, you have more energy.
At this time, my brothers were in their teens
and early twenties. Sometime a plow would get stuck in an old tree stump; they
wouldn't have the strength to pull it out. They would have to unhook the mule
team and re-hook to the rear of the plow and pull it out of the stump. When the
plow would cut a tree root, as you were plowing along, you would have to jump
quickly, as the piece of root flying back would take a shot at your shins. I
decided early on this would not be my life's work. During WW2, these were the
tough farm boys that brought back victory from
Dad sold out our farm in
CHAPTER TWO
Leaving
1937
We loaded all our earthly possessions on two Model T trucks, which Dad purchased and were on our way to the Promised Land that Grandpa had spoken of in Louisiana. Grady drove one and Dad the other. We camped out on the roadside every night of our trip south. Listed here is an inventory of the land and equipment sale.
State of Arkansas, Located in Osceola District County of Mississippi - to Mr. A.J. Florida 36.35 acres more or less, and 40 acres more or less. 5th Day of June 1937. $3.100.00. Less $1,908.75 to Drainage District #17. Including: 1 Black horse mule named John, age 10 yrs. Weight 1250#; 1 Grey mare named Maud, age 10 yrs. Weight 1300#; 1 Blue horse mule named Lou, age 12 yrs. Weight 800#; 1 Black mare mule named Kate, age 10 yrs. Weight 800#; 1 Yellow Jersey cow named Calf; 1 Trailer wagon; 3 Gee Whiz;1Turning Plow;1 Planter; 4 Sets Harness; 1 single Stock; 1 disk Harrow; 1 Link Harrow; Records filed 4th day of August, 1937 at 2:40 P.M. and duly recorded the same day in Record Book 69 at page 385.
My Mother's brother, Edward Earl Gentry was
living in
Now, we had 180 acres of old worn out farmland. Dad later lost 20 acres of this land for nonpayment of $100 against the $500.00 borrowed. The 20 acres are described as: The S ¸ of SW · of NE · of Section 17,T.23 N.R.11 East, containing 20 acres, more or less, situated in the Parish of West Carroll, State of Louisiana.
Later
Our home place was located, 32-58-59.75N, 091-22-01.15W. I remember the old house we lived in. It is where xxxxxxx Wylie has her house now (1994). There was a front porch and on the left side facing the house, there was a big grapevine. Dad, Mother and some friends were setting on the front porch playing cards when lightning struck a tree nearby. Mother said it burned the hair on her arm. She would never play cards after that.
Later, xxxxxxx sold her farm and moved into Kilbourne. The house was about 2 1/2 feet off of the ground. I would play under the house in the dirt. Around back we had a smokehouse. Dad would make pork sausage. He would put it in thin cloth liners and hang it up in the smokehouse with the hams and shoulders. A small fire would be lit under this and the grease would keep the fire going. The meat would keep, due to the lack of moisture and the seasoning Mother would put in it. We would salt away the rest. It would keep up into the next summer. I still like well-prepared salt pork. What you have to eat as a child you will probably like to eat as an adult.
About this time I threw my last fit. One Saturday Dad, Mom and I went to Oak Grove. While Dad was shooting pool, I went with Mother as she shopped and looked in the store windows. In one of the stores I saw this pair of bright chrome roller skates. I told Mother I wanted them. She told me the nearest concrete from where we lived was in Oak Grove, which is 12 miles away. I started crying and carrying on. After all, this had always worked before when I wanted something. Mother told me when I got through carrying on, she would be down the street. She went about 2 stores down and looked in the window, as if she didn't know me. I cried and got down on the sidewalk, just about the thing a 5-year-old would do. When I saw this was not going to sway Mother, I quit crying and told her I was ready to go. She said, "Are you through, Son?" I told her I was. That was my last fit. The realization had set in, I knew there were things in life that I would not have. Some things I would have, but none of them I got by throwing a fit.
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I remember when one of the farmers, which lived nearby, bought a radio. He invited all the neighbors around to come over on Saturday night and listen to the Grand Old Opry on WSM Nashville, Tennessee. We hooked up our mule team to the wagon and went visiting. Dad didn't like to use the mules for visiting after they had worked in the field all week. This was the one and only exception I remember him making in that regard. I remember the steel rim wheels on our wagon making harsh sounds on the gravel road and how the sound would change when we turned off on a dirt road or the different sounds they made when crossing a wooden bridge. On the way back I lay on an old quilt in the back of the wagon. I could tell how far we were from home by the sounds the wagon and mules made on the road. The sounds and scents of the country never leave your memory. The fresh cut hay, the smell of rain, a fresh plowed field, a fire place on a cold winter night, the way a horse makes a little noise deep in its throat as it nears home, these things are worth remembering.
The radio, batteries and antenna hookup had
been moved to the farmer's front porch. Most of the farmers set around and
talked. The women visited together and the children played. There was very
little attention paid to the Grand Old Opry. The next year, when we sold our
crops, Dad got a battery-operated radio from Thompson Hardware and Furniture
Store, in
Now, I would listen to the Lone Ranger, The Shadow, Gangbusters and other far away sounds. We would all set around and listen to the news every night. My mother kept every piece of paper and mail we ever received in her old trunk. I can dig through this treasure and recall those farming days of my life.
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Our old house was drafty in the winter. Heating in the winter was never considered a problem; no one expected the whole house to be warm. The fireplace would only get one side warm at a time. Only one room was heated by the fireplace and the cook stove heated the kitchen. At night the bucket that held our drinking water would freeze over at the top.
I remember and will never forget the bone-chilling cold getting into bed. I would turn the covers back, quickly throw off my clothes and jump in bed. I would get in the fetal position and as I warmed up, cautiously extend my legs out. By the time I quit shaking from the cold I would be asleep. In the winter all the ponds would freeze over so we could slide on them with our regular shoes. I had never seen an ice skate. It never seems to get that cold now. The ponds never freeze where they will support your weight.
During the winter months, Dad and all my brothers hunted for squirrel, rabbit, duck, and just about anything Mother could put in the frying pan to eat. When we got the long guns out, the dogs would go crazy, barking, and jumping, getting ready for the hunt. It is really something to watch as a pack of dogs get on an animal’s scent and work their way through the woods for the kill. I know that to some, killing an animal is revolting, but remember any time you eat meat, an animal has to die. It really depends on how hungry you are. Anyway, as we would go through the woods, the dogs would surprise a rabbit and the race was on. The dogs would usually win. Unless the rabbit went in a hole, the dogs would get the fresh meat instead of us.
In the summer it was back to raising something to take to market, like cotton and a few cows. We still raised most of what we eat. When Deer season opened, several of us would go back in the swamps and hunt deer. It was really a something if the Williams boys invited you to hunt with them. All of the Williams boys made it through WW2 without getting a scratch. I can still remember Glen Williams giving me a lecture on gun safety as he did any new kid on the hunt. We would hunt all day, listen to war stories late into the night and be back hunting at daylight the next morning. Dad told me those Williams boys could sneak upon a ghost in the woods; they were that good at hunting. Not anyone I talked to was surprised they came back from the war without a scratch. I asked one of the Williams' how you survived a certain island invasion. He told me he just found a place to hunker down on the beach and smoke a cigarette, until the big guns did their work. I never really got that much out of him.
After the dogs had chased deer all day, we would round them up for feeding and bedding down. It seemed strange to hear them yelping as they moved around the next morning. Those old tired sore muscles were giving them pain. It didn't take long for them to get ready for the next day’s hunt. I have never seen a dog that was not instantly ready for a hunt.
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One day, at school, the teacher told us about a government program that would help us. They wanted to give us food. She gave me some papers to fill out and return to her. I was real excited about this and told Dad when I got home. He said that he didn't want anything to do with the government. He did not want them coming on his land, for any reason. A few days later the teacher asked me why I had not returned to papers. I told her that we didn't want any government food. Someone finally came out to the house and we signed up. They gave us a piece of brass about as big as a silver dollar. Our number was on this brass tag. Dad got an old feed sack and tied the brass tag on it. Then once a month, Mr. Dawson would come by with his truck. Dad would give him a quarter and he would bring back the sack with government commodities in it. We got cheese, prunes, rice, beans and things like that. The local grocery merchants did not like this project at all. For us, it was like Christmas every month. Dad always said that you never got something for nothing. He was right about that.
We were able to purchase a canning machine, cans and a pressure cooker under some government program. Every year as our vegetable garden was harvested, we would break out the canning machine, cook and can just about everything we could think of to see us through the winter. During the winter we would butcher several goats and make chili out of them. We canned a lot of goat chili. Chili was my favorite food that we canned. We never did try to can any pork. I remember Dad saying that pork is difficult to can. Anyway, it is real security to have food stock piled for the winter. We would all pitch in for the yearly vegetable canning. The food was cooked then put in cans that were not sealed. The cans were then placed in a pressure cooker. This process would kill the bacteria and sterilize the cans and lids. After the pressure cooker, while the cans were still real hot, they were placed in the canning machine, and one by one the metal lids were sealed on the cans. As the cans cooled they would pop, and the lids would be sunk in slightly. If, in a certain can, the food should spoil, the can would bulge out and it was thrown away. The cans were opened and saved. There was an attachment on the canning machine to cut the very top off and we used the can again.
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Some company had built a sweet potato canning plant in Oak Grove. Now, all the farmers around were planting sweet potatoes. Dad and I decided to give sweet potatoes a try. We would buy the sweet potato slips, the small plants and plant them in the moist soil. The weather was warm enough for me to go without shoes. I was loading the new plants on our planting sled. During my trips back and forth, I would slide my bare fee on the wet soil. A piece of glass found my left foot and slit it open from toe to heel. Mother took care of it, washed it out with kerosene and we went back to work.
The next day, while the dew was on, Dad and I we went down in the pasture to look at our cows. I got my foot wet and Mother bandaged it. The next day I was chopping cotton, it was difficult for me to walk, as my knee was stiff. Daddy came by with the mule team and put me on one of them to ride home.
The next morning I had a bad infection. There
were red streaks running up my leg from by ankle and from my knee to my hip.
This sounded the alarm with Dad and he took me to a doctor in
My leg was stiff after it started to heal and I could not straighten it out. For several weeks I hobbled around, just touching my toe to the ground when I walked. I was on my back in the bed one night and Dad came in, set down on the bed and placed his hand on my raised knee. He asked me when I was going to straighten it out. I told him I was trying, but that it hurt. Without saying a word he mashed by leg straight, I said a few words, it hurt like hell. It was all over; my leg was and is in good shape.
Dad was a powerful man from all the years of
blacksmithing and farming. When he was young, every time he got into a fight he
broke his right hand. Dad had always smoked a pipe and when he got mad he would
bite the pipe stem into. He would say "aw hell." When I asked him
what was the matter, he would say, "I bit my damn pipe stem in two."
When I was very young, he would let me fill up his pipe with tobacco and light
it for him. Dad would buy
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I had started to the first grade when I was 5 instead of waiting until I was 6. It was the parents' choice in those days. That winter I came down with the mumps and stayed home from school for a week. Dad was killing hogs for our meat supply. He would shoot the hog with a twenty-two rifle, cut its throat and hang it up to bleed. During this time he would build a big fire to heat a tub full of water. After the hog had finished bleeding, it would be soaked in the hot water for a moment to loosen its hair. Our bacon with the rind on, or the Cracklings would not have pig hair on it. Dad was cutting some old worn out truck and car rubber tires for the fire. His double bit ax always had one real sharp blade and the other blade was dull for chopping wire and things of that nature. As he was going to cut up the old tires, I can still remember him looking at his ax and choosing the dull blade to use on the tires as they have wire around the rim edge.
Dad was a powerful man and as he hit the tire with the dull side, the ax rebounded and struck him with the sharp blade in the head, cutting a vertical gash from his forehead to the inner corner of his right eye. He pulled the ax out of his head. I could hear the creak of the bone letting go. Dad set down and took his shirttail and held it up to his head to stop the bleeding. Mother was there with bandages and tape to dress the wound. Dad set there for about thirty minutes. Mother made a pot of coffee and after we finished drinking that, Dad got up and finished killing and dressing hogs. From then on when he worked hard and would sweat, the sweat would run in that scar to his right eye. It was difficult to see the scar, unless you were real close. After Dad died, I saw him lying in the coffin; I saw this faint scar and remembered the day of the ax. True grit is hard to find anymore.
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Looking back at my childhood, I began to realize what a social event that coffee played in our lives. If you went visiting you must drink the coffee that is offered to you. Anything that happened from funerals to good news, bad news, reading the mail, feeling bad, anything was a call to get that coffeepot going. The coffee was boiled and very strong. You would normally get a half-cup and sip it, like whiskey. My Mother would fix my coffee in the mornings just like she fixed her own, two spoons of sugar lots of cream.
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When I was in the fourth grade at Kilbourne, they started building a lunchroom next to the school. This project was finished during the summer and by the time we started to school, it was ready to go. Up until this time, I had to take a lunch to school. Most of the time it was a biscuit with bacon, sausage, ham or egg on it. The new lunchroom was a big event in my fourth grade experience. The cost was five cents a meal. Everyone was encouraged to purchase a monthly meal ticket. They said the nickel was for the milk. For those that couldn't afford it, the nickel was not required.
The school hired some of the local women to do the cooking. I sure did fatten up. They had rolls instead of biscuits. After I would finish my meal, I would eat five or six rolls with butter and honey. One of the girls in my class told the teacher that I sopped my biscuit in the honey with my hand, instead of using a fork. I told the teacher it was my nickel and I would eat any way I wanted to. I was in trouble most of the time at school. The whippings from the teachers were not that bad, but the principal could really set your rear end on fire. I heard one of the teachers tell the principal that L.H. Wylie would be in prison before he was grown. Looking back, if I had lived in an abusive home, I would have had trouble living under the rules of society. The whippings at school made me meaner at school. The fourth grade was a lot of fun anyway, for me.
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At this time, brother
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At the beginning of our farming adventure in
There was another sharecropper family that
had two boys about my age, Hillard and Edward Frith. Their old man would make some kind of solder paste
and a device for holding a coal oil lamp chimney in place. I would go, miles
around, with those boys while they sold this stuff to the neighbors. Brother
Paul married Verna Mae Frith, he was seventeen years
old and she was younger. The Frith family didn't do
well farming and later moved. Last I heard they were in
I had plenty of mechanical things to play with in Dad's blacksmith shop and farm equipment. I learned how to entertain myself. I think my motivation to succeed and learn in life developed from getting praise and approval from my parents. When I was small, I would always try to learn something or do something constructive for their praise and approval. I did very few things to incur the disapproval of my parents. When Dad would go to town, Mother would let me take her sewing machine apart and sometimes the battery operated radio and record player. I was always able to get them back together and working before Dad came home.
We finally got electricity in our house. There was no electric meter. The electric company billed you a flat rate. When a storm would come, sometimes we would be without electricity for several days. I would take the carbon rod out of a dry cell batter and use it with one hundred ten-volt electricity to burn holes in metal things. By that time I could wire up light sockets and outlet plugs. I read everything I could find. Science Fiction Stories and the Readers Digest were my favorites. It was still a popular belief that too much reading would make your eyes weak.
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We were walking farmers at this time. No tractors, just mule teams. It was my job to pump water for the mules at noon and at quitting time. When the mule teams were real thirsty, I could see the water in the trough go down with each swallow the mules would take. When I would stand and pump, I would think of ways to hook a motor to the pump that might do the work I was doing. The device was never built, but it would have worked.
When farm animals work they have to have consideration. Dad always had a deep feeling for animals, that they be well fed with grain, watered and rested. We would leave the fields at 11:30 A.M. so the animals and humans could be refreshed. We would return to the fields at 1:00 P.M.
We had this old mule; it must have been twenty years old. As the mule got older we only used it to plow the garden. Then we retired the old fellow. It got fed and everything just like the rest of our live stock. One cold winter morning it didn't come up for feed, so we went looking for it. During the night it had just laid over and died. We were all sad.
CHAPTER THREE
World War 2
1941
Everyone was talking about the threat of war
in Europe, with
The farmers in our area were not too happy
with the Jews around. All the Jews lived in town with stores and I guess all of
them lived a much higher standard of living than anyone I knew. I remember
several of the farmers talking, saying that Hitler had the right idea about
getting the Jews out of
It is always in the economy. When the economy is real bad people turn on each other, then industrious people are always being pulled down by the lazy. It makes no difference what their religion or race.
The war effort was catching on, even in our remote area of the country. One day Dad was plowing, with our two mules, close to the public gravel road that ran by our farm. I had taken Dad some cool water to drink, and he had positioned the mule team under a shade tree for them to rest for a few minutes.
This car pulled up, stopped and a man wearing a suit got out. Wearing a suit to visit our farm did not put you in a good light with my Dad. This man climbed over our fence and approached us. He introduced himself and asked Dad if he wanted to fight. Dad reached in his toolbox on the plow frame got a big crescent wrench, and said, "You damn right." This guy knew he had said the wrong thing as he moved closer to the fence and safety. Then he bolted over the fence, for the safety of his car.
The guy, through an open window, tried to explain that he wanted Dad to fight through the purchase of war bonds. Our biggest investment was in eating from day to day. He never came back.
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During WW2, some of the local farmers were
going off to different places to work for the war effort. There were jobs in
manufacturing plants, for the taking. We were in contact with Fred and Grady,
who were working in
Finally, Dad decided to give it a try and off
he went to
One day we got a letter from Dad that he had
been robbed. Mother didn't think Dad was robbed, he just got drunk and spent
his whole paycheck. Mother always said that my Dad was really a good-time
person. I supposed this means that he always wanted to party. Most of the time,
on the farm, the only time we had any liquor to drink was in the fall when we
sold the crops off. Sometime we would take a calf to the auction in
I was very glad to get the farm behind me. I
don't remember the bus ride to
My brothers lived close by and later on Paul
would come for a visit on his way to the
We had brought quite a few cans of goat chili
from the farm. Some of our friends in
I would usually sit with Mother and sometime watch Dad play. If I walked up to Dad while he was winning, he would say, "Come here boy, stand here and bring me luck." If Dad was losing, he would say, "Go sit with your mother you bring me bad luck". It was a lose, lose situation for me because Dad eventually lost, every time.
There were lots of friends, fights and fun. I learned how to swim and saw my first airplane up close. Someone had taken a bunch of us kids to the public swimming pier, when a military seaplane made a forced landing in the lake. As the wind pointed it our way, I started swimming toward it. The motors were not running so I climbed on one of the pontoons. I was amazed by all the knobs, switches and gauges. This image is locked in my mind to this day.
This was a good experience for me. My model airplane building took a turn up after this. Later on I got to see a shot down ME109 German plane. The airplane was on display at a war bond sales promotion. Every one commented on the quality work of those German engineers, I agreed. I built several ME109 models from kits. If I knew I had only one more day to live, I would like to spend it flying a ME109 around this beautiful country.
I was not impressed with the school system in
Helen
Fred and his wife, Helen, were having
trouble. This was normal, most of the time they had trouble. On morning Fred and
Helen really got in to it and that evening, when Fred came home, Helen was over
at Mr. Bass's house. Mr. Bass owned the trailer park where we all lived. Fred
went to the back door of the Bass home and called for his wife. (Remember we
were in
Dad went and got a lawyer and got them out of
jail. At that time in
Dad told me about this. One night Fred and
Helen really got into a big shouting match and Fred slapped her. Fred was a big
powerful man and I am sure that Helen got the worst end of this. Anyway, Fred
had been drinking and after a while went to bed. The next morning when Fred
woke up Helen was setting on his chest with a straight razor against his
throat. She told him, :You son-of-a-bitch, if you ever
hit me again, I will cut your god damned throat.” Fred never hit Helen
again. (Just a side note for any gun-grabber reading this – in my view
the straight razor left a greater impression than a gun would have.)
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My Mother's brother, Earl Gentry, lived and
worked in
CHAPTER FOUR
Move
to
1943
Dad decided to move to
Somewhere in the
Those kids in
My school years were a little more difficult at this time, most of the kids in school knew everyone else since birth and I was an outsider. I got a weekly paper route delivering the Saturday Evening Post. This was a good experience for me, it taught me people would turn down the radio and quit talking in the house when you come to collect for the month. It didn't take long to eliminate the deadbeats from my route. Dogs were another problem that took some getting use to. Just keep the bicycle between you and the dog. For the more difficult cases, I got a big nut off of a plow bolt, tied it to a string. I would twirl it above my head and down in the direction of the dog. The dog could not see the device and when contact was made the dog would never get close to me again. The dog could not see what had hit him.
The decline of my Saturday Evening Post delivery business came, one evening at dusky dark. I was hurrying to get through with my route. I was coming down a big hill too fast. A big rock in the gravel road sent me over the bicycle handle bars on to the rocky road. When I came to, Mother and Dad were rushing up to me as I lay in someone's yard. A little neighbor girl and her Mother were nursing me back to reality. In the Western movies, when someone gets knocked out and comes back around, they jump up and start fighting. Don't believe it. After you are knocked out, you are weak and confused for about an hour. The doctor said I was in good shape.
The next day I repaired my bicycle and was able to ride it, bandaged hands, black eye and all. The rest of my problems came, at school, when I was running back to catch a ball. I fell backwards and caught myself with my right arm then it snapped just above the wrist. It was a clean and simple fracture of both bones. There was no pain until I tried to move my fingers, then it never quit hurting. Mother had Mrs. Arp, the lady that owned the trailer park, drove us to the doctor. Dad met us there. They put me to sleep and I threw up the chili I had for lunch. The next morning, my hand was turning blue and hurt like hell. Dad took me back to the doctor and over the doctor's objection, the doctor loosened the cast. Dad told the doctor that if he didn't loosen the case he would. Dad got his pocketknife out to cut the cast off, when the doctor said that he would do it, but would not be responsible for the outcome.
I was glad that Dad was there. It is still
that way, when something on your body turns blue, get it fixed, quick. The
There were rumors, because everything was so
secret, but it was common knowledge that the project was to make some type high
explosive. Dad had a 1939 Chevrolet that he purchased in
CHAPTER FIVE
Farming
in
1946
All the money Dad had saved was represented by a Mercury car. He sold the car to purchase an Allis-Chalmers tractor for us to farm with. I know what the slaves felt like as I planned my escape. My brothers were working on the pipeline, making excellent money, I knew this was for me.
Farming is hard work. You don't ever get caught up. You might take off and go fishing in the summer when the crops are laid by, but you don't get caught up. You can't make any money, by the time you are harvested, you can just about pay back what you borrowed to make the crop in the first place. I can look back and see that we could have managed better, but anyone can look back and see mistakes in any life.
In the summer, Dad and I would cut logs in the woods and haul them to the saw mill. These logs would be cut for cross ties and sold to the railroad. The saw mill would get half of them for sawing them up and we would get the other half. When you use a crosscut saw, there are two people, one on each side of the log. You make a measure and start pulling the saw back and forth until the log is cut in two. I was always the smallest one and I survived by lifting up on the saw as it came my way and pressing down on the saw when the other guy pulled. It is hot and humid in the woods in August. You just sweat until there is not any more. As you get too hot, the sweat seems sticky at first, then you sort of quit sweating, your skin feels hot. By this time you don't have a good grip on what is happening around you. I have seen people just wander off in the woods, not having the slightest idea of what they were doing. Someone would give the guy a couple of salt pills and lots of water. After the salt pills take effect, it seems like a cool breeze rises from inside you. Farming, and later on the pipeline there was always salt pills by the water cooler.
Mules do real well at pulling things that they can get started moving on the first try. Sometimes, in the logwoods, you may have to give it several tries to get a big log moving. A mule will give up, sulk up and lie down. I have seen Dad raise up a mule's eyelid and spit tobacco juice in it to get them going. This may or may not work. What will always work is to cover up their nose with your hands. The old mule will quit trying to breathe for just a minute then jump up with a wild look in his eye and snort real loud. You can tell when a mule is pulling by the way the double tree that they are hooked to is positioned. When you hook mules up as a team, there will be two mules connected to a heavy oak timber about five feet long, (The double tree), with one bolt at the balance or pivot point. When both mules are pulling the double tree is balanced. When one mule is slacking off, the double tree moves back. That is the one to encourage. Some mules learn that if they lean forward and grunt they can fool you into thinking they are pulling. So if you see a mule driver encouraging one of his mules, he knows which one to encourage by looking at the position of the double tree.
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Grady was working on the pipeline in
Mary Lee Wylie was born in 1947. Dad and I were clipping the pasture for weeds when it all started. We got the doctor to come out and deliver her. By the time Mary Lee was eight months old, she would ride on the tractor with me until she went to sleep. I would drive the tractor up by the house, race the motor and Mother would come out and take Mary Lee from my arms, still asleep.
Grady's wife, Ruth, would keep their 1937 International pick up truck while Grady was away on an out of state pipeline job. She could not drive, so I would take her for groceries and anything else she needed. I would keep the pickup at our house. I have many fond memories of that old truck. When the starter finally played out, I would jack up the left rear wheel, no fenders, put the truck in high gear, turn the switch on and give the wheel a turn. It always worked for a starter. I would take it out of gear, remove the jack and away I would go. I did not have a driver's license, very few people did in those days.
During the winter, my brother Grady would always stop by our house on his way home. If it was night, he would leave a cigarette on a certain fence post for me. I would go out later and get the cigarette to smoke later. Dad and Mother never knew about this. I never worked with Grady on the pipeline.
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Beside the back door, in the kitchen, Dad had cut a square hole in the floor for the cat to go in and out. Most of what the cat eat, the cat had to catch. Sometime Dad would feed the cat while he was eating. The cat would stand on his hind legs and place it's paws on Dad's leg and beg. Dad would get a morsel from his plate and give to the cat. This worked well for Dad and for the cat. When dad got to talking, he ignored the cat. The cat did not want to be ignored and would extend his claws into Dad's leg. Dad would turn his knife around so the handle extended down and peck the cat between the eyes with the knife handle and say, "You son-of-a-bitch quit clawing me." Then the cat would run through the hole in the kitchen floor. Most of the time the cat got fed, but sometime the cat got a peck on the head. Dad loved that old cat, but this routine was played out many times at our dinner table.
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There was this deaf and dumb guy that lived down the road. He had an old beat-up Servi-cycle. That is a motor bike. The motor bike had been in a storage shed for several years and would not run. I swapped a sow pig for it, over Dad's objections. Actually it was my pig, but when it came to swapping it off, Dad wanted a say in the deal.
I piled all this junk just outside by bedroom
window. Nothing material I have ever had meant as much to me as that pile of
junk. I spent every spare minute working on it. The original two-cycle motor
was shot. It would be cheaper for me to find another motor than fix up the
original one. Power lines were new in that part of
Going to church was a chance to see all the
local girls and maybe get to walk one home. Every summer, at every chance, I
would go swimming down at the Head of The Lake in
When I came back from Korea, the Corps of
Engineers had drained and destroyed over one thousand acres of this pristine
lake-forest area. Even now when I see the
My first working experience was helping my Dad in the blacksmith shop. Dad would sharpen plow points, and repair just about anything else on the farm. I would usually make a fire for him in the forge and pile the black coal on. When the fire would get going, I would turn the blower to make the fire hotter. My job was to hold things while he hit it with a hammer. Usually I would jerk something out of the fire and place it on the anvil for him to hit. Other times I would be holding a chisel for him to hit. You would have to hold things exactly level with the anvil or the shock would just about take your hand off. I knew that someday I would be a boss or supervisor and you would never hear me yell and holler and take on with people that worked for me. I never have.
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One winter, J.V, Shaw and I went over in the black land to pull cotton. When it rains a lot on cotton, the leaves fall off and the cotton balls get rotten and you can't pick it. You can pull the complete boll off and send this rough cotton to the gin. It is worth something. The owner will hire workers to pull the bolls instead of picking them. The cotton gin will run this through a couple of times and clean it up. It will then be sold as a lesser grade of cotton. We paid one dollar a trip to the cotton fields to ride in the back of a covered pickup truck. The work was hard and the pay was cash each time we weighed our sacks. During the ride to and from the fields and at lunch, Shaw and I would play odd man with coins. A game where three people flip coins. The odd man gets the others' coins. When everyone gets the same, that is all heads or all tails, a tie, you flip over. We would decide between us who would take heads and the other would take tails. Most of the time you can control the way your coins land, so either J.V. or I would win most of the time. We made more money this way than we did working. To my utter amazement, no one ever caught onto our scam.
West Carroll Parish (County) is dry, God
fearing and bible-thumping. We had to go over into East Carroll Parish, to
We were going about forty miles per hour down this country road as I made my move. I was over the stake bed of the truck when we hit a bump in the road and I sailed off into the black night, to God knows where. I landed on my back in the not so soft grass, with the wind knocked out of me. My mind wandered back past the whiskey to logic, I tested my legs and arms and raised my head. I still had a death grip on that bottle. Everything moved, nothing hurt. When I got to my feet, I saw the lights on the truck as they turned around and heading back to get me. They jumped out and checked me over, put me in the front cab for the rest of my ride home. I didn't wake anyone, at home, on my way to bed. The next morning when I opened my eyes, being sore and stove up took on a new meaning for me. I couldn't move. At school Monday, I was a hero, the girls seemed to think the whole thing was silly, but they enjoyed hearing about it. I still had one more lesson to learn from the demon rum.
My next trip to
Another Saturday night at
I always tried to make it home at night or tell Mother I would be home the next day. She worried about me and I didn't realize how much until the Korean War.
Grandpa told me, when he was bumming around during the depression, he would ask the local Sheriff to let him spend the night in his jail. You would get one meal and you could prove where you were if something happened in the town, during the night. Then, he told me, the second best place was the graveyard.
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After we had the crops planted and plowed, it
was time to wait for them to mature. This was called getting the crops laid-by.
It was mid-summer, hot and humid. There was plenty to do on the farm, but
everyone was ready for a break. During this time, my old buddy, J.V. Shaw and I
would go fishing. We would bicycle as far as possible, hide our bicycles in the
woods and walk into the swamps. It was not unusual for us to stay four or five
days without seeing anyone else. Salt, frying pan, corn meal, cold biscuits,
fishing poles and guns.
That is all we needed.
I found out that after about two days without a bath, the mosquito wouldn't
bite you with as much enthusiasm as they did before. Old trees would break off
and fall in the river, making a log jam or drift. That's where you catch
catfish. The catfish were big and mean. You can ease up on a catfish real
quiet, rub him on the belly and as he settles down, ram your thumb in his lower
jaw, the fight is on. I have had some of the big ones take the hide off of my
hand and leave my shoulder sore from the struggle. Snakes were a problem. If
you take a switch and swish around in front of you, walk slow to give him time
to get out of the way, they don't want you around anymore than you want them
around. It's been said that snakes can't bite under water. Water snakes would
starve to death if they couldn't bite under water.
These trips to the swamps were lots of fun. We lived off of the land, with plenty to eat and lots of fun exploring the area.
In 1963 when my wife and I lived on
(James V. Shaw, August 29, 1931 – June 5, 2013)
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One fine August day, several of us, including Tommy Wylie, my brother Grady's boy was helping my Dad and me bale hay and haul it to the barn. The first step in this process is to cut the hay and let it lay in place for a day or two so that it will dry out and not spoil. If it rains while the hay is cut, it will ruin and the cows and other animals are reluctant to eat it. The next step is to rake the hay into rows, then push the rows of hay to the bailer. Workers with pitchfork feed the bailer as it chomps up the hay, packs it into bales. My job was to poke and tie the wire that would hold the finished bale together. At this time the hay bailer was fixed in one place in the hay field for the bailing process. One of the neighbors had a bailer and we paid him so much a bale to process out hay. This procedure has changed as equipment became more refined, then the bailer could be pulled behind a tractor and pick up the hay as it went and spit out the finished bales in the process. Later in the day Dad would assign me to drive the ton and half truck to pick up the hay bales and take them to our barn. He had hired some of the local black kids, about my age. We really had a good time. It was hard work, but as kids we made it fun. Then I asked one of the guys a question that sticks with me to this day. I smile every time I think of it. I asked, "What do you find different about white folks?" One of the guys told the oldest not to tell me, then he finally did. He said, "When you white folks sweat, it smells just like a wet chicken." I have told this story many, many times to point out the different perceptions people have with each other and every time, it reminds me of the great times we had hauling hay that hot summer day. This was one of the hottest jobs farming. It was done in the hottest part of the day after the dew had evaporated from the hay. So you couldn't get an early start in the cool of the morning. At noon we went to the house for lunch. Mother had some sweet potatoes in the oven. I could tell they were ready by the sweet sugar looking sap oozing from them. There is nothing better to eat than opening up one of those hot potatoes and laying on lots of country butter.
Tommy reached in the oven and grabbed a potato. It was hot and he was juggling it from hand to hand to keep from being burned. It was obvious he was losing the battle as he danced around keeping that steaming potato in the air. He told me to open the kitchen door, I did and he pitched the hot potato out in the yard. Our big old rooster saw the potato in the air and when it landed he sunk his bill, up to the eyes, in that hot potato. He withdrew quickly and started flapping his wings and crowing. From then on, until he died, when someone threw anything out the back door, that old roster would start flapping and crowing.
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I still have fond memories of coming home for lunch. I would pass by the garden and pick a big ripe tomato, warm in the noon sun. I would slice it up, salt it down and make me a tomato biscuit sandwich. When you work hard, eating becomes very important.
Chapter Six
My Lowest Point
1948
This was the lowest point in my life. I
really didn't have any interest in anything. Looking around me, there was not
much of a future, working night and day and not getting anything out of it. I
still get depressed when I go back and visit the folks in
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For several years my reading habits had turned to science and electronics. My dream was to get an Amateur Radio license. In any science class, in school, I would always get an A. The other subjects did not interest me, so I quit school in the ninth grade and started farming full time. Later on, in the Air Force, I got my GED for high school and then went to college.
I started smoking regular about this time. It
seemed this was my year of mistakes. Dad was not in good health, aches and
pains of all the long years of working too hard and long. Lots of people died
around 50 to 55 years at that time in
Our Allis Chalmers one-row tractor had
someone in the driver's seat all summer, as we tried to make a living in this
poor
As I drained the water from the radiator and purged the fuel tank, it occurred to me that I was out on that limb. If one of my brothers had to come by and help me, that would be awful. I carefully wrote down each step, with diagrams and notes as bolts, clamps and screws were removed and placed in a pan of gasoline for cleaning. The cylinders in that tractor moved up and down in removable sleeves. I fashioned a block of wood and pounded each sleeve out. The water seal rings around the sleeve had to be perfect when they were driven back in the motor block, or the radiator water would leak into the oil pan. While this operation was on going, my brothers would come by to visit and we would talk about my project. They did not offer, nor would I have accepted their offer to help in the actual overhaul. After everything was back in place, water in the radiator, oil in the pan and fuel in the tank, I was ready to pull the starter through. This tractor had to be started by a crank, it did not have a battery or starter, never had one. Black smoke, for just a second out of the exhaust and the engine settled down to a solid purr. I was very pleased with my accomplishment. This tractor farmed for many years and the engine was never torn down for overhaul again. When Mother died, I went by and visited the little yellow tractor for the last time. I have a large painting hanging in my den today, of the old home place and that little yellow tractor, out in front, where it should be.
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Dad was not able to make the payments on the
20 acres, where we lived. The bank took it back. We moved across the slew, to
an old run down, three-room house. The old house was located on the 80 acres
that Dad was able to pay on. This was a frame house in the extreme. It had a
corrugated tin roof, a back bedroom, a middle room and a kitchen. 1 x 12 inch
planks covered by tarpaper was the outside of the house. The same exposed 1 x
12 inch planks, with the exposed 2 x 4s were the inside. As you can see, there
was no insulation. Even this was better than the log cabin in
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I was ready for a change from the farm. There was too much work and not enough opportunity. One of my responsibilities was to make sure we had enough firewood for the cook stove and heater. Only the front room and kitchen was heated. After meals were prepared, the kitchen reverted to the outside temperature real quick. Dad would start a fire in the wood heater each cold morning. Mother took care of the fire in the kitchen. I cut the wood. During the winter, every evening, I would cut and carry into the house enough cut fire wood to carry us over until the next day. This was a regular job that you didn't forget. I had a Buck-Saw, that is a one boy saw, a rack to stack the wood on and a tractor to pull the raw material from the woods. I would try to get the mix of green and dry wood just right so the fire would start quickly and last a long time. After I went to work on the pipeline, Dad got a kerosene burner for the main heater and cook stove.
Sometimes Grandpa Gentry would come to visit
us and stay until he and Dad got into it over something. My Grandpa Gentry was
pretty smart and loved that bottle. Grandpa started out in life to be a doctor,
then a pharmacist, then a bar tender, but he couldn't leave that old demon rum
alone. He would drink just about anything, but gin was his favorite tonic. When
we lived in
One morning, just before breakfast Grandpa
was unlocking his combination lock from his trunk. I asked him if I could see
it. He handed it to me locked. By the time we were in the kitchen I handed it
back to him unlocked. He thought I had seen him unlock it and that I knew the
combination. Such was not the case. The old locks of this type could be felt to
click at the right place, when pressure was placed toward the open position.
Anyway, Grandpa got mad and stormed off through the woods. He returned at dinnertime.
After three of four days Grandpa was not feeling well, so he hitched a ride to
Dad passed the word to Mother that Grandpa was to shape up or leave. Well, Grandpa was sick and getting worse. He was drinking up the vanilla extract, antiseptic and anything else for the alcohol content. Dad said no more booze in the house. The big talk between Dad and Grandpa resolved their differences, if Grandpa wanted to stay, no booze in the house. Grandpa was to sign his welfare check over to Dad each month. Grandpa recovered super quick and packed up. We went out on the front steps and waved good-by to grandpa as he walked toward Kilbourne with his scissors grinding case in one hand and his traveling trunk in the other. My mother had told me about a whipping she got from Grandpa when she was just a teenager. She had scars on her back until the day she died from that whipping.
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When we were in the middle of our farming season, I would spend most of my time on the little yellow tractor. On day I turned over a levee with the cultivator attached, the tractor, high centered and stalled. Dad got real mad and hit at me over the back seat of the tractor with his hand. He said a few words, now I cannot remember what it was. I got down and went home. I told Mother to tell Dad that I didn't mind working like a slave but I was not going to get beat up in the process. I headed for town to do some thinking. When I got back, the next day, everything was O.K. between us, and it was never mentioned again. I was even more determined to leave as quickly as I could get a job somewhere. I was really getting tired of school and farming. It seemed there were so many things to do that were more interesting. I could make more money working on the pipeline than the High School Principal was making at Kilbourne. As I look back at my report cards, the science grades were good and the things I didn't like were bad. I hated to do homework and everything. It seemed that going to work on the pipeline would solve all my problems. My interest in school was gone. I had just turned 16.
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One cold winter morning we were all setting
around the wood heater in the front room trying to keep warm. I heard someone
turn on our access road that was always muddy in the wintertime. It was brother
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Brother Paul moved back to
When I go to visit the folks in
Chapter Seven
The Pipe Line
1949
I was seventeen years old in November and
determined that my farming days were over. I sent off to
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It was my job as swamper
to keep the backhoe clean, properly greased and keep the engine in good shape.
My job outside of the Back Hoe was to keep the machine out of overhead power
lines, measure the ditch and set stakes so
You would move, find a new place to stay, about every six to eight weeks. Very few locals were hired. We were like a band of gypsies, everyone knew everyone else. About the time the local bar maids knew you, you were moving to another town down the road. I can remember standing on a hill and looking back through the deep green woods at that forty-foot wide swath we had forced through this beautiful country, just as far as you could see, up one hill and down the other, the pipeline marched on. The pipeline, we were placing in the ground, would terminate somewhere far up North. The natural gas it would carry would keep those Yankees warm in the cold winter months.
One morning, from my vantage point, I could see a wisp of smoke rising among the pine trees ahead of us. There was an unmistakable odor of fresh corn mash cooking. Our pipeline was headed that way. The right-of-way gang is the spearhead of the pipeline. They cut the trees and brush out of the way to make a clear-cut path forty 40 feet wide across the land. They build rough bridges for the heavy equipment to follow and fences to keep peoples' livestock from getting out. They were the first to run into the moonshine still. I was in the ditch gang. We followed behind the right-of-way gang. It was our job to cut a ditch 4 feet wide and up to 14 feet deep through swamps, up hills, through rock and to bore under roads. If the big ditching machine couldn't do the job, the backhoe or dragline did. No matter what, the ditch got dug. Like an electric charge, the news traveled to all of the crews and to our warehouse in town. I knew something was up as the supervisors were going up to the right-of-way gang. Usually when this happens, it is the local law trying to stop us from crossing some farmer's land.
The word and three gallons of moonshine whiskey came back to us, so we all got together and had a few snorts. This was good stuff, it was aged in wood. I poured some in an ashtray and it burned a light blue flame. The operator that runs the ditching machine assigned one of his laborers to carry the moonshine in the ditch. When anyone wanted a drink, they could jump in the ditch. By afternoon the main ditch was getting crooked, when the general superintendent came by and shut the job down. He told everyone to take the day off and get in shape, that anyone caught drinking on the job tomorrow was fired. The only reason there is a law against moonshine whiskey is the lost tax dollars. The last time someone died of lead poisoning, from moonshine, was about 75 years ago.
Saturday night, some of us would look for
that special beer joint. News about the best place to howl would be passed by
word of mouth all over the job. There was a special place beside the highway
that went to
One of the oil drillers was watching our little Cajun friend drop his beer bottle from the cast-encased hand to the good hand, a drop of about eight inches. The driller he was talking to never looked down. When the Cajun missed the catch, the beer bottle hit the floor. Just as the driller's eyes looked down at the fallen beer bottle the Cajun hit that driller across the mouth with the cast on his broken arm. The driller slid across the floor. I held the front door open.
There were other licks passed as we escaped
in my brother
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After the pipeline job in
Around the pumping station, the big compressor engines ran day and night to pump gas north. The loud rumbles of the motors were even felt in the ground you stood on. December 4, 1950. We were helping terminate some new pipelines in the plant when the roar of the engines changed and we saw a big black cloud rise from the direction of the Greenville Bridge, where it crossed the Mississippi River. We knew the lines had blown out. There were three high pressure natural gas lines on the bridge, from 36 inch diameter to 26 inch diameter, with about 750 fifty pounds per square inch pressure on each line. Two other utility welders and their helpers were working on the Mississippi side when a leak and spark set off the explosion.
At the
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The most dangerous task for a pipeline welder
is to weld a saddle-tap on a pressurized gas line. A backhoe would remove most
of the dirt from the existing pipeline and laborers with a shovel, (an ignorant
spoon) would remove the remainder. The pipeline would be under pressure of
about 750 pounds per square inch and from 26 inches in diameter on up. The
welder's helper would clean the tar and fiberglass off of the pipe, until it
shined. A saddle tap would be placed over the pipe and the welder would start
to weld it on. The welder has to get the pipe hot enough to bind the saddle
clamp, but not hot enough to weaken the pipe. If he makes a mistake, you have a
blowout and everyone is killed instantly. Not me, I watch from a distance. When
the welding was done, a cutter and a tap-off line is welded on the saddle
clamp. The cutter handle is then turned until it cuts into the original
pipeline. With a swoosh and sigh of relief, that it
did not blow up, another town along the way has natural gas. My last job with
TGT was operating a small side boom TD14 International tractor. It was just
like a Caterpillar, except it was made by International Harvester Company. My
first task was to unload a freight car with some 20 Inch pipe, 7/8ths inch
thick. This was too much weight for my machine, but I was determined to do the
task. I had to keep my boom straight up so as I lifted the pipe, the weight
would not turn me over. I told my swamper to stay
clear, if I started to tip over, I would drop the load. With my hand on the
down lever, just in case, I unloaded all the pipe without mishap. I then
settled into routine tasks, moving pipe or holding pipe or valves for the
welder to weld. Most of my time was spent just waiting for someone else to do
something. I was classified as a Heavy Equipment Operator now. I was getting
tired of working at a pumping station, so I quit and went home to
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The next spring, we went to
A local farmer's cows broke in the dynamite shed and ate some of the dynamite one night. The cows didn't die they just stood around and looked sad. I supposed their blood pressure was very low with all that nitro glycerin in their system. Dynamite fuse will burn under water just as good as in the air. This fact makes dynamite excellent for fishing. Take a quarter stick of 40 percent dynamite, stick a cap with a fuse in it and you have something better than the best fishing pole. Tie the charge to a rock, light it and toss it into the river. Someone will have to be down stream in a boat or ready to jump in the water. The fish will float to the top, ready for the picking. Do not get in the water until after the dynamite goes off, or it will do to you what it does to the fish. This was my first experience with fishing with dynamite. The law couldn't tell if we were blowing stumps or moving rock, but most of the time, in the river, we were fishing. I had a chance to work for the explosive gang. We called them powder monkeys. I turned down the job offer. I was getting smarter. Later on, the powder monkey got his hand blown up from a dynamite cap.
A dynamite cap, for a fuse, looks like a large twenty-two bullet, without the lead. These caps are extremely dangerous. You gently poke the heat fuse into the cap and crimp it with the crimping tool. One handle of the crimping tool is sharp, so you poke a diagonal hole completely through the dynamite stick and a small hole in the end of the dynamite stick. Run the fuse through the hole in the dynamite stick and poke the cap with fuse attached in the hole in the end. Make a looping knot with the fuse, to stabilize the cap. Now, you can hold the complete charge by the fuse and not pull the cap out. This charge will set off any quantity of dynamite if it is placed in the same hole or taped together. Dynamite is pretty safe, unless it has set too long on the shelf.
The powder monkey would set off charges to dig a ditch through rock, by timing the explosion with primer cord connecting each charge. The explosion would look like an unseen plow going through the rock. No one uses old dynamite. With age, the nitro glycerin settles to the bottom, and then heat or shock will set dynamite off. An electric dynamite cap is about the same size as a fuse cap, but with two wires coming out of it. In all cases these wires have their bare ends twisted together. If you see one, don't pick it up. When a lot of dynamite is being used in an area, the fumes will give you a headache. It must drop your blood pressure.
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The Pipeline Company was going broke, they
didn't realize the cost of laying pipe in rock.
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It was getting wintertime in
One of our neighbors, R.T. Layton, came running down the road with the news that Grady, my brother, was burned real bad. R.T. Layton was one of the strongest men around. One day he got mad at his mule, walked around hit the mule with his fist and knocked it down. Today, he was on the way to Kilbourne, three miles away for the nearest telephone, to call an ambulance for Grady.
I ran about one and one half miles to Grady's house. When I arrived, Grady was setting on the bed. Ruth, his wife and their children were in the back room. He did not have on a shirt. His skin was red up to and including his neck and there were big water sacks of skin hanging on his chest from the burns. He was in terrible pain. He had been trying to thaw out a water pump. He thought the fire, from his previous attempt to thaw it, was out. He sloshed some more gasoline on it from a five-gallon gas can. This caught fire and the can blew up on him, sending gasoline into his clothes and flesh. He rolled in the snow to put out the flame. In a situation like this, the victim does not want to hear you talk, they want to talk to you and sort things out. He was burned real bad, but not in shock with lots of pain. He wanted me to shoot him to get him out of his pain. He would get cold and I would try to make him comfortable with blankets, then he would get hot and want the door opened. I just responded to his request. I helped him stand when he wanted to and we waited. I assured him the ambulance was on the way.
Later, Grady told me his saving grace in this
accident was putting his left arm up over his mouth when he knew it was starting
to explode. This action kept the flame out of his lungs. The ambulance came, in
about an hour, about two hours after he was burned. We headed out for Oak
Grove. His wife Ruth would have gone, but she had several small children to
take care of.
I damn near froze. It was dark and cold when
we got to
The third day, Grady was going wild. He could not stand to lie in the bed; he said that his skin was itching. There was no skin to itch. I would get him up to stand beside the hospital bed and blood would drain out of the bandages and pool on the floor beside him. The nurse called the doctor. The doctor asked the nurse what medicine he was taking. She told him Phenobarbital. The doctor said "Well we got to get him off of that, he is allergic to it." I was impressed.
My stay with Grady in the hospital was an education for me. They kept Grady on the critical list so he could have a visitor all the time; that was me. Every time the head nurse would want to get rid of me, the doctor would take care of it. I helped out on the ward, there were only two private rooms, that I remember, and they were for isolation. I went for fresh oxygen bottles, went to the store for anyone. I knew who couldn't get what kind of snacks, due to surgery or special diet or something.
At night if someone died, the nurse on duty
and I would take care of it and I would roll them down to the morgue. This was
the hospital of last hope of the many that came here, they came to die. There
was always an extra tray or two of food, at mealtime, for me. Coffee was
available any time in the nurse's station.
There were no orderlies on duty from midnight until four in the morning. The hospital didn't like to leave dead people on the wards. It seemed to depress everyone. I was asleep in one of the empty beds, when the nurse shook me awake. It was about three in the morning. She wanted me to help her get a dead man ready for the morgue. The man must have weighed two hundred pounds and she couldn't manage him. She wanted me to help her roll him over on his side. I got one arm and pulled across the bed and he rolled over. This guy let a moan and I almost lost it. I learned later that the air in the lungs compress and pass the vocal cords and the moan comes out. She then took a big pair of tongs, with some gauze in it and poked it up his rear end to keep anything from leaking out. We tagged his big toe and rolled him up in a sheet, head to toe with tag. Then we rolled him over on a gurney. I got the keys and grabbed the elevator. The walkway was covered to the morgue, about 400 feet from the main hospital. I kept looking back for comfort. I unlocked the morgue, found an empty locker, the same height as the gurney and slid the guy in. This was unpleasant. The only time this really bothered me was when I took a kid about six years old down. I knew this would not be my life's work.
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Grady had a lot of problems with his burns. At this time the doctors had some type of insect that they would put under your bandages. The bugs would eat the dead flesh and leave the healthy flesh alone. Now here is Grady in bed. I had straightened out a coat hanger so he can scratch under his bandages. I thought he would quit smoking after he was burned so badly, I was wrong. The bugs would change into some type of flying bug and leave his bandages. This was something to see. Grady was scratching away with the coat hanger when this little insect comes out of the bandage, wiggles its wings and flies off. There was silence for just a moment then he let out a yell that the damn bugs were eating him up. The doctor explained it to him, but from then on when he was in pain he blamed it on the bugs.
Late one night a young man, about 23 was admitted, next to Grady's bed. He had asthma, diabetes and bad heart trouble. From the nurses, I learned that he would get off his diet and medicine from time to time and the charity hospital would have to pull him back from death's door again. On the morning rounds, the doctor chewed him out about his lack of concern for his health. They started the medical process for his recovery. His Mother came to see him at every visiting hour. This was her only son. This was a teaching hospital and the doctors had just changed floors the night he had a real bad asthma attack. By the time the doctor got there, the nurse had the oxygen flowing, but I could tell he was in distress as his skin was real pale. The doctor ordered a shot and the nurse ran to get it. When she came back, she repeated the medication name to the doctor and handed him the needle. The doctor quickly found a vein and popped him. Within one minute, the victim turned real red and quit breathing, his heart stopped. We carried him out to the morgue.
There was a big uproar about this. The nurse was elected to be the fall guy but after they talked to Grady and me, it was obvious the doctor was the one at fault. She had repeated the medication to the doctor, when she handed him the needle. I don't remember exactly what the shot contained, but the nurse told me that they never give this to someone with a heart problem. In regard to the doctor, Grady told me, "Keep that son-of-a-bitch away from me."
By now, Grady was dependent on drugs. Six months had gone by and he got drugs whenever he had pain. As part of the treatment the doctors were going to take him off drugs. I found out about this one day when I saw the nurse fill up a syringe with sterile water and give it to Grady as a shot for pain. It works; Grady would pop off to sleep without a pain in the world. The doctor explained it to me after I caught on. For six weeks they had been giving him sterile water for pain, and it worked.
Just before he was checked out, the doctor
took his chart and proceeded to show him that for six weeks he had received no
pain drugs. Six months after we checked in, Grady and I checked out of
Fred was more laid back to work for than
The next morning, I was examined by the company doctor and had a job with Houston Contracting Company. My job was an Oiler (swamper). We were cutting approaches to road, river crossings and whatever for the pipeline to cross. Koontz was the operator, a very easy going, nice person to get along with. I stayed with Fred and Beulah. They didn't charge me very much for living with them. They knew I was sending money home to Mom and Dad.
We were cutting down the Red River bank for a
pipeline river crossing. Koontz would back up, with the bull dozer and push
dirt out of the way. The bank had to be cut down to river level, the pipe would
be put in a ditch in the river, with weights, and the riverbank would be built
back. This back and forth goes on and on for days. He would let me run the
bulldozer from time to time. One time when I was pushing dirt, I would have to
back up so the bull dozer tracks were almost hanging over the river, stop and
start pushing dirt. This time when I pushed the clutch in it broke off in the
transmission. I applied both brakes and shut the throttle down. We almost lost
the bulldozer in the
We called Fred, my brother, on the two-way radio. He was the master mechanic for the pipe line company. We helped him fix the problem. The master mechanic on a pipeline hires all the heavy equipment operators. If they don't take care of their machines, he runs them off.
There was one Back-hoe operator; we called him "Foots." He had huge feet. Another thing that stood out was his huge front teeth. From a short distance, it looked like he was foaming at the mouth. He never caught on as to why so many people would stop and watch him dig with that Back-hoe.
When there was an opening for a Tow Tractor
Operator, I got the call. This was the best job I ever had on the pipeline. I
had four welding machines behind the TD14 tractor. When the welders would make
their hot pass on the pipe, I would pull up four joints of pipe and wait on
them. I was sending Mother and Dad about $100 per month. I knew this would help
out. I felt guilty about being so young and having such a good job. My oilier
was a veteran from WW2 and, later, I found out he had been shot up pretty bad
in that war. My brothers got me the job and I was glad to have it. There were
two pipeline companies working on this pipeline route. We were building
pipeline north and another company was building pipeline south. When we met,
our part of this job was over. Fred, his wife Beulah and I went to
That Dry Year
© Lanty Wylie, 2012
You know, it never rained on that dry year.
The crops burned out in the hot sun, and
we saw
our sweat only for a moment.
I pulled a cross-cut saw as the trees fell.
We took the timber to Dawson’s saw mill,
he cut
them into cross-ties for the rail road.
Dawson got half of them for the saw mill and
the rail
road man never paid very much.
My Dad said that it rained on the just and un-just.
I would settle for half way in between.
We got up early that morning to watch the first
cool
breeze blow in. The Korean War blew in instead.
You know, I never saw a Jay Bird on that dry year.
Chapter Eight
1951
The Korean War was picking up steam and war
was in the news every day. I knew that sooner or later I would be drafted in
the Army. Most of the boys around Oak Grove were being called up for military
service. It was around the first of November 1951 when Beulah gave me Mother's
letters, a draft notice was inside, it had finally happened to me. I went to
the local bar, had a few drinks and did some deep thinking. I did not want in
the walking Army. I told Fred the next morning I was going to drag-up, that
means quit in Pipeline lingo. I got my last Pipeline check then caught a bus,
heading home for
I told Mother and Dad that I was going to
join the Air Force. They didn't seem to show any interest one way or the other.
The military recruiter at Oak Grove was in the Army. He gave me a big line of
bull about the Army, but I wanted the Air Force. I took the written test and
told me I passed, no one ever failed. I was to report November 26, 1951 for a
bus ride to
The first thing you learn about the Military
is, you never know what to expect. The bus was waiting, the Sergeant called
roll, gave one of the guys some papers to carry to the induction center and we
were off to
At the induction center we were told what to
do and when to do it. The instructions were mainly, which line to wait in. The
doctors gave us a going over, from end to end. The last test was when we went
to the psychologists. He asked us if we liked girls and wanted to see a picture
of our girlfriend. At that time I was going with a young lady that was the
sister of one of the nurses at the Charity Hospital Grady was in. Later, in
Later on, I found the two enemies of the Air Force were Communists and Queers. One of the guys, in our group, had a picture of a calf he had raised as a 4H School project. When the psychologist asked him for a picture of his girl friend he only had a picture of that calf. I have always wondered what the psychologist entered into his record.
November 27, 1951, the United States Air Force got my body and soul for four years then 4 years reserves. This was a good decision on my part. Everything considered, the Air Force was a good stepping-stone for me into my future occupation. I was examined and sworn in. They advised us that if we did not show up at appointed times we would be hunted down as deserters. With these words of encouragement the Air Force then took over full responsibility for me. They gave me meal tickets for food and tickets for lodging that night. I had my first night as a Private on the town. Later a Private would be called an Airman Third Class. All persons in the military service have some type of rank classification; I was at the bottom.
Early next morning, with blood shot eyes, I
reported in and was on the Katy Flyer, a slow train through
After our first real Air Force meal, our Drill Instructor opened the door and screamed us out into the street. We were lined up according to height, in four lines. All this time the Drill Instructor was screaming and cussing, stomping and general fear inducing demonstrations. He challenged anyone to fight. This was something to behold. As we tried to march off, the DI would go to different individuals marching along, get next to their ear and scream. It was a pitiful mess. All along the march all the other Air Force guys would laugh and holler at us. They had on starched khaki uniforms, they had been through the rite of passage and that is what we wanted. I didn't know how to march or what to do or I would have done it.
We arrived at supply and drew our bedclothes. As always, reminded that if we lost anything we would have to pay for it. If we sold anything we would be put in jail. There were about 40 acres of tents. Your tent was in a certain area. If you forgot your area, you were very lost. Two guys from your area were on guard patrol. They gave you a stick, a whistle, and a white helmet. Your primary responsibility was fireguard, no smoking while reclining, no fighting allowed and no one out of the bunk at night except to go to the latrine, then you were to keep people from fighting. If you blew the whistle for help, five big Air Policemen came to help you.
I had been on my own for two years and knew it was a good idea to drop your wallet in your shorts while sleeping. This paid off, the first night someone raided our tent. There were only three of us that didn't get robbed. The Military Police searched our stuff, I had a toothbrush and shaving kit. We were interrogated and they found nothing. I had about $400 in cash on me at the time. This was a problem, I had to explain where I got it, still had my last check stub. I had a book, a murder mystery. The officer asked me if I was planning to kill someone. The word dumb took on a new meaning for me.
The military operates with a wide gulf
between the officers and enlisted men. I think this is the best way. I know of
no other way an army power structure would work. The armed services were completely
integrated when I entered the Air Force. With my Southern background this was
different, but I had no problem with it. We had Blacks in all of our operations
and no one thought anything of it. We did nothing for one week as Lackland Air Force Base,
My first week in the United States Air Force.
In basic training it is all mind control. They let you know that you are less than worthless, but as you progress and accomplish each task, you become full of confidence. Marching gives you a sense of pride in your unit and you respond to any command without thinking. The military keeps you busy all the time so you cannot dwell, or reflect on your problems. Looking back on this, I realize this is what was missing in my life, a sense of discipline. In the barracks someone is always on duty in each bay from lights out until we were blasted out of our bunks.
While I was on fireguard, I have heard several of our inmates cry themselves to sleep. No mention was ever made of this by others or me, when their time came to pull fireguard. The Air Force was really eat up with the white helmet and stick. This was the official guard equipment. After marching all day some of the guys would get cramps in the leg. While on guard duty you would be walking through the dark line of beds on both sides, when suddenly someone would raise up, grabbing his leg and hollering. You would grab his toes and bend them back to relieve the cramping muscle. Most of the time the guy would never remember it. You can sure get tired marching all day.
When we had to pull outside guard duty, it
was the middle of winter in
Taking shots was my biggest fear about joining the military service. After I was in the military, taking shots was my least concern.
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December 24, 1951, our Flight (Group) was
scheduled to pull late KP. We went to work just as the evening meal was
completed and worked until breakfast was served the next day. I cleaned
everything, floors, tables, walls, all the dishes and hauled out garbage. Steam
rose from the dishwasher in clouds, as I sweated to get everything clean.
You do not sweep the floor in the mess hall with food exposed. TB was spread
this way. Most people with TB would spit on the ground; folks would walk on it
and spread it by tracking it around. I think of this when eating at the Cracker
Barrel as they sweep the floor.
I got through with all the chores about 1:00 P.M., and was allowed to catch a nap on the floor. All that steam, sweat and the chilling effect of sleeping on the floor brought on a real deep cough. About 3:00 AM we started breakfast. I was beat when they let me go about 8:00 AM, Christmas day. I hit the sack. I woke myself by coughing. I felt bad and could tell I had a fever. Brown looking stuff and blood was coming up with each deep cough. I started taking aspirin.
The next morning in formation, I reported out
for sick call. I had no fever because I had taken aspirin all night. The doctor
didn't put me in the hospital, just X-rays and a big shot of penicillin. I went
back to the barracks and went to bed for two days without an excuse from duty.
No one said anything. On my first day out with the flight, a runner came for me
to report to the doctor. After a civilian doctor looked at the X-rays, he knew
I had pneumonia. Now they wanted to put me in the hospital. I was feeling much
better, just weak. I told him my assignment for
I was over my problem except for an ache in my right chest, which remains, off and on to this day. They gave me another big shot of penicillin and I was ready to leave. My medical records and X-ray disappeared from my file. Damn, don't you just love socialized medicine?
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Most of us got promoted one grade for passing basic training. It sure felt good to sew that lone strip on my sleeves. The drill instructors changed in their attitude toward us. They seemed to admire us that we were going off to school. They were stuck in the same old crap. In any event, I didn't change my attitude toward them.
I had three days to clear the base and
prepare for shipping out. I got some rest and wrote some letters. One fine
morning I got on a C46, an old contract air carrier and was off to
Keesler AFB was nice, after
We had Morse code, theory of radio, operation
and typing. I enjoyed the school. We were on the second school shift, from 6:00
P.M. to 1:00 A.M., 6 days a week. They really needed us in
Thirty five percent of radio students washed
out. The high wash out rate was from Morse code. Practice is the only way to
learn. The Air Force never did develop a reliable aptitude test for potential
radio operators. We had very little time off. I went to
Morse code was something you couldn't just memorize and repeat back. You really had to learn by doing. You learn the sound patterns of each letter. The instructors told us several times, not to count the dots and dashes. When we reached the ten words per minute speed, all the code counters went to supervised study. The code counters that couldn't adjust went to Air Police or Air Force Cook's school.
My code speed was acceptable until I got to 18 words per minute. I hit a snag. I went on supervised study for a one-week interval and copied code until I dreamed about it. Eighteen words per minute had to be passed to graduate. All my effort was going into this project, with little signs of success. One of the instructors told me I was trying too hard and had a mental block.
I stopped by the Club one night, before school, and had a big schooner of beer, then on to school. We practiced for about 30 minutes, then we all took the test. I passed the first time and was ready to leave, when the instructor came over and told me to take the master's test. By this time, I was feeling no pain.
Before I left school, this night, I had passed 18, then mastered 18 and passed 20 words per minute. From then on, until graduation, I only had to go to the practice room for code class. By this time I was knocking away 30 words per minute.
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During my
I relieved the two other guys who had done
nothing and they went back to the general population. The word was out, it was
up to me to pick my crew. My assistant was R.W. Bachelor from
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We were required to have a class picture made. This was the last official act of the training school. I had to get up early. This day is still fixed in my mind. I was a United States Air Force Radio Operator. After all those weeks of listening to Morse code, Radio Theory and all the other stuff, I had moved up one notch in the scheme of things. It sure felt good to move from student to Radio Operator status. After our class picture was made, I waited around for the new troops to march by. I wanted to salute the Flag when it came by. The band playing, the troops in perfect step, the glint of sun on the starched kaki uniform, the sharp snap as everyone in uniform snapped to with a smart salute. The new troops were just out of basic training and marching was fresh in their mind. This was the last time I saw real precision marching drill in the Air Force. I still enjoy hearing a good marching band.
Chapter Nine
The Korean War
1952
Word spread quickly, in our group, that
shipping orders were being posted on the bulletin board. My name was posted to
report to
From Keesler AFB, I caught a bus by way of
There were very few cars on the road that
night. I listened to KWKH in
Everything at home had changed. It seems that
after you once leave home, things are never the same when you come back. I
could feel the tug of wanting to go and be with my friends on our adventure to
I caught a plane from
Every night at 6:00 PM, I would go to the area office and answer the telephone. I had runners to look for individuals that had emergency and other telephone calls. The files would tell me if they had shipped out, or the location of their bunk. New arrivals would come in from time to time. If they were AWOL and reporting in, I would leave an alert message for the company Sergeant. About 10:00 PM the calls would taper off. I had a cot next to the telephone to sleep.
All my friends were pressed into service as
runners as the other guys shipped out. We got a weekend pass for our trouble.
We went to
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It was time to go. Early to rise and chow,
then the trip, by barge, to the loading docks in San Francisco Bay. The Red
Cross was there handing out cookies and coffee and the band played. I got
aboard the USNS Sultan in the afternoon. The first thing you do on an ocean
going ship is have an abandon ship drill. On a Navy ship, you keep doing it
until the Captain thinks you are doing it right. After a while, the Captain was
happy with our efforts. I went on deck and as darkness fell, we sailed under
the
I could smell that Navy chow being served up
below. Before we got in the cold, on our Northward sweep to
The reason the Navy calls a toilet a head, is that it traditionally is in the front part of the ship. There are other toilets on the ship, but they are all called heads. One day, as a friend and I were exploring the ship, we stopped at the head on the front most part of the ship. The waves we were going over made this part of the ship rise and fall about twelve feet, for each wave. This old Sergeant was sitting on the john and puking in the next john over. He was sea sick, bad. It was coming out of both ends. I started laughing and couldn't stop. A small crowd gathered and joined in. I know the poor guy was miserable, but it was so funny, he was so helpless.
One of the guys that bunked in my area had a
mandolin. I was able to learn the basic musical cords and pick out the song
"Wildwood Flower" by the time we docked in
After 14 days, of living head to toe, I was
ready to get off this ship. On October 13, 1952 at 16:10 hours
The Sergeant found out there were
Our Sergeant for this trip was a Ground
Controlled Approach ("GCA") operator. During his tour in
After a quick briefing on parachutes and life
jackets, we left for
It was near dark when we arrived in the
In the dark, with no shooting to be heard, we
boarded a truck for a bombed out university somewhere in Seoul. I drew
bedclothes and a cot from supply and went underground to stay the night. This
was quite a busy day for everyone. I was asleep before my head hit the pillow.
I realized that we were never trained for a combat zone. We had the basic rifle
training, but this was a real combat zone with people shooting at each other. The
Air Force is geared toward the technical side of things. Looking back, if it
were up to me, all members of the armed services would go to Marine Corps basic
training, then on to their respective services. The next day we were processed
in and split up to different assignments in all parts of
We were herded to the barbershop for a real close hair cut. You can find the lice easier in short hair. It was then I realized how thin my hair was. I waited for a supply truck to Kimpo.
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The main bridge over the
KIMPO
– AACS TENTS – HOME FOR ONE YEAR
Late one afternoon, I climbed in the back of
an army truck, for Kimpo Air Force Base. There is no worry in riding in an army
truck. You can't see where you are going and you don't know when you get there.
Finally some one comes around and yells for you to get out. We got to Kimpo
after dark. I reported to the Charge of Quarters. The first stop was at supply
for a combat issue. Then I went on to my tent assignment. It was an 8-man tent
built on a wood foundation. It had a kerosene heater in the center that would
work with jet fuel. My bunk was on the center, left side with a footlocker. Our
tent was next to the fence that enclosed the base. In the summer, the tent
flaps would be lifted for any breeze. In
Down Town Kimpo AFB
When I opened the tent flap, of my new home, I was greeted by old looking guys that needed shaves, smelled bad and looked dirty. I promised myself that if I stayed over here for two years I would never fall into that rut. How wrong I was. They needed Radio Operators at Kimpo. I was the first replacement radio operator they had seen in a while. They were glad to see me. In a combat zone there is never enough personnel, I worked all the time. Everything is dirty, you always have mud on your shoes. The hot water was turned on once a week for showers. Unless you got to the shower early, you took a bath in cold water. In the winter, icicles would be hanging from the rafters in the shower. When the base laundry was working, the clothes smelled bad when they came back. Some of the time you washed out your underwear in your helmet. Most of the time you said "To hell with it."
My Bunk (left)
October 24, 1952, my new address is, 1993
AACS Mobile Communications Squadron, Operating Location 14, APO 970,
Base Operations
AACS Radio was in Kimpo Base Operations. You can see the poles in the photo that supported our antennae.
The radio Morse Code call sign for Kimpo was
AIK66. We had security measures to prevent unauthorized traffic on our CW
network. In communications, if the base is bombed or attacked, you do not leave
your post. Communication is the heartbeat of any combat operation. When
communications are shut down, you are isolated. When the North Koreans bombed
our base and the shooting started, we just hunkered down and hoped the sandbags
kept out the shrapnel. We never thought we would get a direct hit. I have sent
the Morse Code signal ZUF2 many times. It means Air Raid in progress. We
communicated in Morse code with all the Air Force bases, in
J K & K O Homer
An aircraft landing at Kimpo to the South would come in over our Radio Beacons, radio call sign JK or KO in Morse code, at a certain altitude and direction. The GCA operator would pick him up on Radar and give directions to land. If the pilot follows the GCA operator's instructions, he would not have to look outside the cockpit to land. I have been in GCA operations when the fog was so thick, that after the plane landed, he could not see to taxi off the runway. In referencing my letters home, it seemed several airplanes crashed into the mountains around the base. I don't understand why, we had the best GCA units in the world.
Snooper & Weather Operating Position
During my year of service in
One night, about 10:00 PM, the sirens sounded for a Red Alert. This was no drill. I got up and dressed. House boys were not allowed on the base after dark, but our house boy usually stayed over in bad weather. He made coffee. The loudest noise you can ever imagine happened, when the shooting started. I had just poured a cup of coffee in my canteen cup. As I opened the tent door for a look-see, all the guys in our tent bolted for the door and pushed me out. We jumped in the foxhole next to our tent. The sky was alive with tracers, the noise was terrible. The army had placed a pom-pom gun just below and behind our tent. This is a gun on a half-track with two barrels. The army had a 2x4 placed so the gunner wouldn't shoot out the top of our tent when he shot our way. You can imagine the noise of these shells going over our tent with the gun 20 feet away. The house boy had been using our foxhole for a toilet and we were standing in it. B. Wood from 2 tents down, had done a belly flop in the foxhole, when the shooting started.
After a while you get use to the racket and take a peek out, light up a smoke and start talking. About this time, we realized we didn't have our weapons or any of our combat stuff with us. One by one we slipped out and got our combat stuff together. You could hear the concussion of small bombs hitting our base and some small arms fire around our fence area. We had our area to guard and make sure no one came over or through the fence. At night just about every tracer you see, in front of you, looks like it is coming straight at you. They curve as they approach you. The one that hits you, you can't see. Sometimes bed-check-charley as we called them would drop antipersonnel bombs on us and sometimes just over-fly the base. I went over one morning where they had hit. It just cuts a tent to shreds and the people in the tent. The North Koreans used small, single engine, planes for this. They tried to wake us up every night at bedtime.
I set my camera on the top of our fox-hole, opened the shutter for a few seconds and caught this. I should have kept the shutter open longer as the sky was lit up from the shooting. Keeping my head down was more important than picture taking.
The Air Force would scramble jet fighters to
try and intercept bed check but, the jets were too fast and bed check was too
slow. When I was on duty at our
After about 6 months, the Navy took over. The
Navy had some slower propeller planes in service. They solved our problem with
old bed check. Even though they had the worst food, according to my experience,
they got some real tough pilots. Back to my story of B. Wood. Well, after he
belly-flopped in the foxhole, he had crap all over and smelled real bad. After
the alert, no one would let him in the tent. One of the guys in his tent threw
him some clean clothes and he bathed in his helmet. Happy 20th Birthday in
Korea, November 6, 1952 another reason for a party. November 27, 1952 in my
letter home, I tell my family the Air Force does not censor letters from
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Several of us got a Hillbilly band together
and played for drinks at the club. The GI's would buy beer and place it on the
stage if they liked your performance and they would throw it at you if they
didn't. My last night in the band was when I got a Dear John letter from a girl
I knew in
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My cousin Lucy Lee Gentry in
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The USO established a unit at Kimpo to
entertain us. They had a Korean band come in from
There was laughing and giggling from the trucks and comments from the GI's as they passed by. The Base Commander had told us that there would be no fornicating with the dance girls.
The band got situated and struck up a tune. It sure is different seeing a Korean band play and sing American music. Anyway, the girls could not dance, as we know dancing. We were all in combat boots and fatigue clothing, the girls in traditional Korean dress, weapons stacked in the corner. Beer was flowing as if it came from the rafters of the building.
The base sirens started screaming, a Red Alert was on. Bed Check Charley was back to drop those nasty little bombs on Kimpo.
Every light on the base went out. It was as
dark as the bottom of a well. You could hear the thump, thump of combat boots
running in the night, a scream, a cry, a giggle. I thought about how I used to
hunt rabbits on our farm in
At this point I was more interested in my
safety than anything else. I made my way back to my foxhole beside the tent. At
daylight, Army trucks were loaded with Korean dancing girls then they headed
back to
Wild stories floated around for weeks after this, I believed every one of them. This was our last experiment with dance girls at Kimpo.
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All of us were wound up pretty tight from the things that were happening, all the time. My letter home, December 4, 1952. "There is this boy in our tent that really hates cats. A new boy moved in and brought this cat with him. This other boy was sleeping and the cat crawled up on the bed where he was sleeping and curled up at the boy's head. The boy woke up and grabbed his bayonet and had done killed the cat before anyone knew what was going on, damest thing I ever saw."
Every once in a while we would go out in the
local area, to see what was going on around the base. On this trip with me was
Wood and another guy from the state of
One of Many
We took a different way back. As we rounded a small hill, I heard this thud and whimpering. I was up front, so I signaled the other guys and they spread out. There were two Korean huts in some small trees. An old Korean man had a dog hanging in one of the trees and was beating him with a stick. There was a woman and a couple of kids that I could see.
I had heard that they believe if the dog suffers the animal meat is tenderer. We were on him before he heard us approach. I was about 6 feet from him with the barrel of my M2 Carbine pointed at his chest. He threw the stick down and said something in Korean, which I did not understand.
Wood was cutting the dog down and the old man
started toward Wood. I raised my Carbine and took aim, the old man stopped.
We kept the dog in our tent for some time,
but he eventually disappeared. In view of the living conditions in
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Every tent had a Korean house boy, a Korean boy about 9 to 15 years old. It was his job to keep the tent clean, shoes shined and the bunks made. He would take our laundry and get it done. This was nice, if your tent didn't pass inspection, the house boy got chewed out.
Each tent had a tent chief. All disputes were settled by the tent chief. The tent chief did not have to have the highest rank in the tent. This was unusual for the military and to some hot shots a real down to earth experience. The tent chief interfaced with the house boy as to pay, etc. Some GI's tried to make their house boy their personal slave, but this did not go over well with the tent chief or our first sergeant.
When our house boy decided to go and finish school, he got his cousin to come and interview for the job. We all gathered around waiting for the new arrival. In comes this skinny Korean kid, nine or ten years old, smiling and scared to death. Here were all these round eyed GI's looking at him. There was never any doubt that he would be the new house boy.
I found a Montgomery Ward Catalog, measured him, got the total money amount and told everyone how much they owed. The mail order was sent out the next day. Then to the PX for a tooth brush and toothpaste and all the junk food we could find. It was our job to fatten him up. I think he had diarrhea the first two weeks.
House Boy
After payday, the card games would go on for several days, until most of the money was redistributed. My most profitable venture was to keep the house boy over for the night and stake him in the game. I would give him a percentage of the winnings. The house boy was better at black jack than I was. Some of the GI's would grumble about playing against a Korean. I would sit beside him when this happened.
December 23, 1952. About half way through my
tour, the president of
We were not allowed to take pictures of him. Only the news media that paid him were allowed to take his picture. I calculated that with all the foreign aid the United States was giving South Korea the government could have bought each and every citizen a new Buick automobile. A lot of them were near starving. Where was the money going?
From my letter home, December 23, 1952; they
had a Squadron party the other night and everyone got drunk. The Commanding
Officer came in our tent and sang while I played the guitar. He got drunk and
raised hell. The First Sergeant fixed him up with some Korean woman. hope he
gets the clapp, and so is life in
My letter home, Christmas 1952, Kimpo Radio
AIK66, (our Morse code Station) received 23 Merry Christmas messages from other
bases in
We are now having the coldest weather of the winter. It is 5 degrees and snowing. We now have two heaters in the tent going strong. That old North wind is till blowing through the tent. I feel sorry for those Army guys about 12 miles away, I can hear the artillery. Sound travels very well in this cold.
The South Koreans were given the job of guarding the North Korean POWs, below us, to the south, on the Korean peninsula. The UN or the United States Government made the President of South Korea mad and he ordered the release of all the North Korean POWs. It was supposed, the North Koreans would try to make it back north, to their home. If this happened, they would be coming through the Kimpo area.
The station chief got us up late one night and we received instructions on how to burn and blow up our equipment in case we were ordered to. Things got real tight on security. If you went to work or anywhere at night, you would be challenged by the roaming guards. They would ask you who you were and where you were going. Their dog would be about a foot from your leg, showing his teeth. From that time on, we had Thermite Bombs at our radio operations and in our tent, just in case. I went to supply and checked out all the ammo and clips I could carry back to the tent. Several of us loaded clips and talked about the worse. We were going to head out South and hope for boat to Japan. As it happened, the North Korean POW's had it so good in their camp down South; they didn't want to go home.
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After I got my third stripe, one stripe away from being a real Noncommissioned Officer, (NCO). I was the newest shift supervisor, with four men under me. Our station chief called me in one day and asked me if I could get several of the screw-ups in line. It was their last chance, if I failed there would be a court marital and they would be sent back to the states in the brig of some ship and then to finish out their sentence in a federal pen.
My friends really gave me a lot of kidding about being in charge of the leper colony. It was a challenge. The rubber band theory has never let me down in life and I applied it here. Did you ever put a rubber band on your wrist and a few hours later it had worked its way to cut off the circulation? Well, this works with people. Just apply a constant pressure, take up all the slack, and you have got them. My hardest problem was this guy that wet the bunk every night. I had to let him go once a week to see the doctor, that wanted to be a shrink, but the rest of the time he was mine.
He called going to the shrink, one of his
"Life can be beautiful meetings." In the military you are never,
never late for work. This was a real problem. You are responsible for getting
to work yourself. You can sign the wake up log with the Charge of Quarters and
he will wake you up and make you sign the log. Well, this guy would sign the
log and go back to sleep. My plan was to make him work double for any time he
was late for work. Once he came to work, he was mine. I could keep him until
hell froze over, no chow, no rest, only latrine breaks. There was an attendance
roster that I used to keep up with him. The first day, he came dragging in when
the shift was about over. Then he worked nearly two shifts. He soon saw the
light, I heard that before he left
The new radio operators were arriving. We were glad to see their happy faces. Those of us scheduled to rotate out, worked like hell to train our replacement. I was relieved of my radio operator duties and put in charge of support for our remote homer site. I was processing out, but there was about 3 weeks of work left in me and they intended to get it. I was authorized to drive a 6x6 out the gate hauling anything. Anytime day or night I might have to go near the front lines hauling radio equipment, supplies or whatever. My first trip, I was scared to death.
By myself, I started out for the KO Homer
site to pick up their spare radio transmitter for repair at Kimpo. The gravel
road wound around a mountain, then through farmland, then back up a mountain
road, to the homer site. In the spring the Korean farmland is beautiful. The
deepest green I have ever seen. Among other things,
I would have to slow down to get the truck wheels on the bridge and the same to get off on the other side. On this trip a Korean soldier standing by the bridge, when I slowed down, he jumped in the back of the truck. By this time, I was on the bridge, and I hit the brakes. He slid on his knees to the front of the truck, where I was. This was an open truck. There is no barrier between the driver and back of the truck. When he slid forward I had the barrel of my 45-cal. automatic about two inches from his nose.
The last time I looked back he was still running the other way. The Marine checkpoint was about two miles from the homer site. I did a lot of trading with them. When we had lots of coffee they would be out and things like that. One time I drove the Captain up to the Homer site in his jeep. I saw the Marines in the rear view mirror and told the Captain we had better stop. He wanted to know why and I told him that the guy waving the 45 was not trying to sell it.
The Marines were alerting us to some North
Korean stragglers in the area. We made the trip without incident. As I close
this chapter, I realize that only the surface has been touched of my stay in
Chapter Ten
Shipping
Out -
1953
February 1, 1953. Mother and Dad received the first allotment check from the government. They took the $40.00 out of my pay. The government didn't contribute anything. I don't know if my brothers contributed anything to Mom and Dad. I knew how rough it was trying to make a living on that farm. Along with this I was sending Mother money orders home every month with any extra money to save for me. I wanted to buy a car when I got back to the States.
My shipping orders came through. Three of us
were going to Carswell AFB,
The military issues its own money for us to use. It is called GI Script. Once in a while they change it out for new Script. The morning of Script change is secret. Our base is closed and no one leaves or enters for that day while the change is taking place. All the Koreans that have taken the old Script are broke. The old Script is worthless. The military does this to control the black market.
The great morning came at last. I caught the
shuttle truck to
On the plane trip to
I was assigned to the advanced party for the long voyage back. I had to board the boat early and start baking bread. For the trip back, except for Saturday and Sunday, it was up a 2:00 AM and bake bread. I got off around 7:00 AM and was free to roam. Always, in my four years in the Military, when you work in food service, you get all of everything they have to eat. The Navy food at this time was the worst. They were cooking scrambled eggs that were from WW2. It was quite awhile after this trip before I could eat scrambled eggs again.
Our boat trip back was just more of the same. Everyone had to take an anti-malaria pill before meals. After a couple of days, the work in the ship's bakery was not that bad.
With a band playing, we pulled up to the dock
in
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I enjoyed being home again. Everyone was glad to see me. It is much better to be seen than viewed. Dad and my brothers wanted to hear war stories, but I was burned out on that. Things were starting to change; my interests were on other things. I never realized how my much my Mother had worried about me until now. She would hear about the bombing and other war actions at Kimpo, AFB on the radio and was very troubled by it. Until you have children of your own, it is hard to understand this worry process.
The snow was on the fields in
I promised Mother my visits would be more often. My feelings about the military had changed, I no longer looked forward to the adventure, and I looked forward to getting out. Back on the Greyhound bus to Fort Worth, Texas, and a taxi to Carswell AFB. It was Sunday, my sign-in date was Monday, and so there was a little time to listen to the rumors. I was scheduled to somewhere on a project.
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I was assigned to an open bay barracks. I
reported to the barracks chief and he assigned me a bunk. The first person I
saw near my new bunk was Danglade from
After sign-in Monday, I was alerted for
shipment to
Fifteen radio operators, from our group, were to go and help provide radio communications support for the project. We filled out security papers, were investigated and received, what they told me, was a Class Q clearance from the Atomic Energy Commission. I have no idea what this clearance means. When you are in communications there is not much that they can keep from you.
Dad was worried about all the people around home investigating my background. He thought there was trouble with the Law. Mother wrote me that there were strangers asking the neighbors' questions about me. I assured her that this was for a security clearance. Just the fact that I was going to Eniwetok was classified, our travel orders were classified secret. News of my investigation spread fast in the farming community.
All of us had just come back from overseas.
The request for personnel was for experienced C.W. (Morse code) Radio
Operators. I was tired of being overseas and now I was on the way to a rock in
the
We caught the train in
The club car was where we stayed most of the time. Old Neal loved that grape. One morning when I woke up, Neal was not in the upper bunk. I went down to the club car and there were drunks asleep all over the place. I got them up as the porters were trying to turn it into a dining car. All of us were overseas veterans and we could party with a dedication.
I was back in
Radio operators use a Morse code key to send
out the messages. I had a Morse code speed key that I purchased in
The weather was very humid. An electric light bulb in our clothes locker kept away the mildew. It seemed strange leaving a light on all the time in your clothes locker. It rained every day. Anywhere you were on the island you could see ocean water on three sides. Personnel were kept at a minimum because of the limited space. There were no trees at all. I found a washed up coconut and planted it. It responded nicely. It was good to see something green besides army green.
Our job was to handle all communications on the island and to the outside world. Our primary communications building was, as usual, a sandbagged Quonset hut behind base operations. We started out with the usual guards around everything, until they realized everyone had a security clearance, then the only time we locked down was during an atomic shot.
We had IFF scopes for aircraft identification and a PPI radarscope for intruder aircraft. There were some Russian fishing boats out there, just beyond the coastal limit, watching us and monitoring our communications. One time we thought we had a UFO as the object on our scope looked as if it was traveling three hundred miles an hour then made a sharp 90-degree turn. The Russians were playing electronic games with us. Anyway we scrambled our fighter support only to find there was nothing there. The fighter group was run by the Navy. They fly those planes with dedication. If their commander tells them to go out and shoot something, they go out and shoot something. You want something done in the military, just go to the guy that has this job, push his button and it's done.
The weather is very important on an atomic
shot. There are all kinds of weather gathering and reporting systems. If there
were changes in the weather, they would ask for repeats and checks from our
observation posts. If the weather changed unexpectedly after a shot a lot of
people could suffer. This did happen on Bravo Shot.
The first shot for this series was Bravo, the
first scheduled shot did not happen. The morning Bravo was set to go I went
down to the water edge to see this thing. A big orange ball formed on the
horizons and just kept getting bigger as it burned and burned. Then I looked
almost straight up to see the mushroom cloud form. By this time the big orange
ball was covered by the stem of the mushroom cloud. A big shock wave came over
and as it compressed the air, you could see the shock wave. As the air was
compressed it became a warm wind. As the water vapor in the air was compressed,
it could not hold the moisture and it started to rain. This was like a warm
weather front rain. I went back in Base Ops to the Radio Room and thought about
this for a while. All our equipment was useless for any Radio Frequency
communications as Bravo Shot had filled the air with free electrons. All you
could hear was static. I remember this shut us down for about 30 minutes. We
had no EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse) that I could tell as all our equipment
started working again.
When we stood down from a shot, it was very laid back. One night we set up a Teletype link around the world. You could push a key down and in a few seconds later the printer would print the character from its trip around the world. Sometimes on shift we would have chair races. Two chairs with GIs in them would be pushed by two GIs for chair race from base operations to the back door of our radio room. Every other week, at the club, the band would alternate between hillbilly and popular music. Without fail, when the hillbilly music time came, there would be fights and more fights. We played blackjack, poker and dice. The army runs the base and didn't care. They had some of the best overseas chow I ever had.
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Someone got it into his head to send us to
Kwajlein is a navy version of
I had another bad experience with the Navy's scrambled eggs. What bad food. Be watchful of Navy-scrambled eggs; they might be older than you are.
Some of my best rifle training was from the
Marines on Kwajlein. We ran over the sand dunes and played warrior. I was just
back from
Chapter Eleven
The Bombs
March 1, 1954 a 15-Megaton bomb, BRAVO, was shot near Bikini on a sandpit
off
March 27, 1954 an 11-Megaton bomb, ROMEO, was shot near
April 7, 1954 a 110-Kiloton bomb, KOON was shot near Bikini on the surface
of
April 26, 1954 a 6.9-Megaton bomb, UNION, was shot near Bikini on a barge in the lagoon off Iroij Island.
May 5, 1954 a 13.5-Megaton bomb, YANKEE, was shot near Bikini UNION Crater.
May 14, 1954 a 1.6 Megaton bomb, NECTAR, was shot in the Eniwetok Lagoon Eugelab on a barge in MIKE crater. (The MIKE shot was on a
previous test series and was the first Hydrogen bomb ever exploded.) Everyone,
not on duty, was formed up in the outdoor recreation area with our backs to the
shot and head down.
(Eniwetok is about 22 miles from Eugelab)
The Atomic bombs we dropped on
The newspapers were about a week old by the time I got to read them. There was always a lot of information in them that we were not supposed to talk about, the weather, shot times, expected bomb yield and things of that nature.
As usual our AACS unit provided all communications, including aircraft. There were flight plans and information of that type. When the radio teletype net went down, quite a bit, we handled all the administrative traffic to our base. The Navy had their own communications group on board ships. There were weather reports every thirty minutes from all over the shot area. On the day of a shot, things would tense up quite a bit. If there was going to be a foul up, it was not going to come from the AACS unit. A deep sense of unit pride was in every one I was ever assigned with in AACS. Those that didn't share that sense of unit pride didn't last long in any sensitive job.
The BRAVO shot exceeded its projected yield, plus a wind shift brought the
nuclear ash over the
About three weeks later, just before the ROMEO shot, I was scheduled to fly to Rongerik to send the weather reports back from observations and assist the MPs in getting the narcotics from the medical safe. There would be less exposure if troops were sent in before each shot, rather than having a permanent station.
We boarded the seaplane for Rongerik. There was myself, one motor pool guy to start the power unit, two weather guys and two M.P.'s. The sea was mostly calm with a little chop, when we landed in the lagoon.
We put out two rubber rafts in the water and away we go to shore. It is very difficult to get a rubber raft on to the land from the ocean and equally difficult to get the rubber raft back in the ocean from the land. We would paddle in toward shore and the swells would take us back out. There was not a sailor among us. We decided to let the swell develop under us, then paddle like hell toward shore. We tried this twice with no luck, then this motor pool guy jumps out and pulls us on shore. The raft went right over the top of him and was he was dragged over the coral. We patched him up and walked in to the weather station.
I helped the motor pool man get the generator started, and then I fired up
the transmitter and contacted
It was getting late and it was decided that I could send out the weather from the airplane's radio just as well and we would be in route back. This was one good idea.
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I went spear fishing every spare moment. The spears had surgical rubber bands on a five-foot spear. Actually we went looking around the boats sunk during WW2 rather that fishing. The spears were to ward off or kill big fish that might attack you.
The lagoon had several old rusted-out ships setting on the bottom. You really have to overcome your fear of the unknown to swim inside one of those. Every fish I saw had teeth and would fight. There were no accidents that I know of. One of our guys had to go to the hospital to get his rubber earplugs removed, as a result of a deep dive.
This extreme isolation was hard on some of the guys. I think everyone was pretty strange before we left. We called it getting rock happy, that is setting on the beach and hitting two rocks together while you looked out over the ocean toward home. You had this urge just to be alone and that was hard to do on a small island. No one wore a uniform, just a pith helmet and khaki shorts, no shoes. There were no insects on the island. You could sleep out on the beach if you wanted to and nothing would bother you.
Our shift chief went by the club after work one evening and really got plastered. Back at his tent, after the club closed, he got all of his clothes and placed them on his bunk. Then he proceeded to get on top of all this and start crying and hollering that he was ready to go home. By this time several of us had arrived to see what was going on. The OD, Officer of the Day, arrived and proceeded to lay the psychology on him by asking him what the trouble was, etc. It was easy to see the trouble was the Sergeant wanted to go home.
The OD told the Sergeant that it was time to go to bed and that he needed to put his clothes back in the locker. Well, the Sergeant asked the OD to help him up. The OD came over and started to help him when the Sergeant bit the OD on the shoulder and hung on. One of the MP's standing nearby gave the Sergeant a sharp crack on the head and he let go. They carted him off to the stockade as a stopover to the funny farm and then home.
As I look back on things, it really was tough on the married guys on these isolated tours of duty.
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The shots were completed and we were getting ready to ship out. We were
assigned a flight. I was in base operations with my duffel bag and code key.
This was a two-hour wait, so I walked back to my old radio operations to talk
to the new guys. I felt sorry for them, as this was their permanent station for
one year. There were about five flight plans to be sent. The best I remember,
you had about fifteen minutes to send a flight plan after the pilot filed it. I
knew some of these flight plans were hours old. I thought that if the plane we
were going out on was not filed, they might take a day or two to look for us if
we ditched somewhere. I told the new guy to move over. I got on the net and
sent out the backlogged flight plans. He looked the way I must have looked my
first radio shift in
The plane ride back was as tiring as the first. Flying from
Chapter Twelve
Back to Carswell
1954
My second trip overseas was complete. For the first time in my life, I had a deep dark tan. Every one stateside looked pale. This was strange.
I caught a Greyhound bus at Travis AFB the same day we arrived. It had been about 7 months since I had gone over 25 miles an hour. When the bus got up to 70 miles per hour, it seemed like we were going 150. I had to quit looking out, until I got use to this again.
An American Indian Airman was on the bus with us and he wanted a drink. The
first place the bus pulled into would not sell him any alcohol. The next time
we stopped, we chipped in and got a couple of fifths to pass around. This
Indian turned into a different person; he was picking fights and just acting
bad in general. The bus driver pulled over at a small town in
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Carswell AFB in
I needed some transportation. A car was out of the question as I was sending $35 a month home out of my check beside the $40 allotment. With the money I had saved overseas, I purchased a 1952 Harley Davison Model 74. Dad was on Social Security now, so I stopped the allotment that was coming out of my check.
A radio operator named J.R. Polson from Dumas,
When Polson knew that I was seriously interested in purchasing the
motorcycle, he gave me a demonstration ride. We went to River Oaks, near
Carswell Air Force Base and had a big barbecue dinner. Polson chewed tobacco,
so before I loaded up behind him, for the ride back, he got a big chew in his
mouth. While we were riding along, when he would talk to me I would lean
forward and turn my ear toward him. This time, however, he filled my ear and
face with tobacco juice. He got to laughing so hard, we had to stop. I bought
that Old Blue Harley Davison and had a lot of fun with it.
James Robert Polson died March 21, 2015. He was 83 years old. James was born
February 22, 1932.
Our operations center was off the
Especially in the mornings, I could check in with the Airways Station in
In the
I have learned that you always brief someone before you let then on a
motorcycle or in an airplane, if you are the pilot. We had this black WAF and
one-day she wanted a ride with me out to work. This was in the 1950's. To me
this was normal, as I worked with her. She was just one of the troops. As we
were going out
This really caused uproar. Here I am, the white guy, with a black female person on the same motorcycle. We were in uniform and we each had an M2 Carbine over our shoulder. What they thought and what they did was two different things. There were some loud threats and things, but we never replied to any of this and they never got very close to us.
We got our hamburgers and left. I thought some of them were going to follow
us to our work area, which would have been a big mistake. When I was on duty at
our
Luck saw me through my motorcycle phase and later I purchase a 1950 two door, straight eight Buick. This was a real good car.
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My twenty-second birthday left me feeling the effects of three years in the Air Force. The two trips overseas, the life of parties, bars and chasing around had lost its glitter. My idea of a good time now was a movie, a Mexican dinner, and a good book.
The barracks at Carswell were divided up so that there were four men to a
room. Edwin Walliser bunked in my room and we became friends. Ed did the chores
of squadron clerk. He was from
One afternoon Ed wanted to know if I wanted to go on a double date with him and his girl friend. Ed didn't have a car, I had the 1950 Buick. I was to have a blind date with his girl's friend. I really didn't want to go, all my blind dates had turned out bad. Ed would pay for the gas, so off we went.
I went to a little hamburger stand in Haltom City where I met my lifelong companion Patricia B. McLemore. She was so young, just 16 years old. I don't remember where we went, probably to a movie. I do remember talking to her for several hours.
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At this point in my life, I needed some nice wholesome person to talk to. I
was carrying a lot of emotional baggage on my shoulders, from my
Before I met Pat, I had decided to go back overseas with some international
construction company. This would not be a good life for a married man, so I
decided to go to
There was another radio operator in our group that was interested in this
school. Early one morning this guy showed up with his wife and we headed for
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Pat and I were spending all the time we could together. I would pick her up
where she worked at Motts five and dime in
My military duties were not very demanding at this time. I left the operations area and went into our squadron office as the unit training NCO. I was a real Staff Sergeant now. This gave me the opportunity to expand my horizons quite a bit. My task was to help out with the various tasks in the squadron office and to make sure all units performed their training assignments. I went to a school for Training NCOs in Wichita Falls, Texas. I had a teaching schedule for three areas, Morse code, Radio Theory and ABC warfare. (Atomic, Biological and Chemical.)
Soon the United States Air Force would only be a memory. My enlistment was up.
Chapter Thirteen
1955 - 1956
On November 26, 1955 my separation from the Air Force was official. I had the feeling of a boat being left to drift from the Mother ship, it was my intention to pick my own course and row like hell. While in the Air Force, I went to every school available to me, getting my high school problem passed and out of the way. I had passed the Air Force Radio Operators and Intelligence Operations Specialists school. For now, I had to worry about my next meal, where I would sleep, and those other things taken for granted in my 4 years of Military service.
----- I had Enlisted November 27, 1951,
----- Discharged from Active Service November 26, 1955,
----- Discharged from Inactive Reserves November 1959.
I went back to
1956
January 1956, late one foggy night, I arrived in
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I found a job at a corner Texaco gas station, as mentioned earlier, for 50 cents an hour and felt lucky to get it. I had inquired at all the local places for work. It was tough getting a part time job so I could go to school. I worked from 6 to 10 every night and all day Saturday and Sunday. I was busy. This was a real step down for me. I had been in charge of a communications center in a war zone and for an atomic bomb test; now here I was, working for 50 cents an hour in a Texaco service station. Best deal I ever had, I was going to school.
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June 9, 1956, I walked down the aisle with Patricia B. We had a nice wedding
at the Free Will Baptist Church in
My boss at the filling station gave me a 50-cent an hour raise. That made a dollar an hour for my labor. On Sundays the local kids would drive up for a dollars worth of gas, check the tires and clean the windshield. In those days the customer would never be allowed to pump his own gas. During all the night work, I was never robbed. There were some shifty characters hanging around sometimes. I carried a 12-inch crescent wrench in my back pocket, so if someone started anything, I was going to give them a permanent part in their hair.
I was studying hard trying to get through and pass all my FCC tests for those licenses. Pat helped me study by reading the technical questions to me and I would answer them.
Just about the time Pat found a job, we found out that she was going to have
a child. I really did not want her to work then. This was additional motivation
to hurry up and finish school. Pat wanted to be in
The
Time was moving fast for us as we had an urgent deadline. Our new baby was
due in the spring of 1957. The time came, Pat and I went to
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With all the humidity and pollution in
Now this quitting smoking takes a while. Just because you don't puff the stuff any more, your body keeps yelling at you for several months. I got real nervous, my heart beat real fast all the time, bowel trouble and the whole withdrawal deal. Back to the doctor for some calm-me-down pills, that helped some. The best deal was LifeSavers candy. When the craving got bad, just eat a few LifeSavers, that helped. One of the best things I ever did was quit smoking. It is hard to realize how something can get a hold of you. After one year the craving finally went away. Looking back, it is hard for me to realize that I used to pull smoke in my lungs and that it was pleasing to me.
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We packed up our 1950 straight eight Buick with every thing we owned and
headed for
Years later, when I worked for Airsignal International, I had some free
time, while in
Chapter Fourteen
Looking For A Job
1957
We arrived in
I could have gone to work for Circle Communications, but Jack Proctor said
he would not pay overtime. A radio station in Mineral Wells,
Starting out, I had four years Air Force radio experience, one year at
Knights Communications was located down town
The taxi drivers would park in the several taxi stands around town or hold in a certain area of the city. When a call would come in, over the telephone, to the dispatcher, the taxi would get the call over his radio. The driver would respond to the dispatcher and go pick up the person for transport to a destination. It was very important that the two-way radio worked and worked well. Most of the radio complaints from the drivers would be to turn the power up so they could get a faster response to the dispatcher.
At this time the most modern radios were vibrator-powered receiver and dynamotor powered transmitter. With the six-volt system in cars, at this time, the vibrators and dynamotors really took a beating. When you pushed the transmit button on your microphone, it took about three seconds for the dynamotor to start and speed up so you would have transmitter power. You had to time your vocal response to the dynamotor producing power. If you talked into the microphone too quickly, nothing came out of the radio. The Taxi drivers would watch the red transmit light when they keyed the transmitter. The power drain on the start-up to transmit would make the red light weak, and then as the power came up the red light would burn a normal brightness. There was plenty of work to be done in this business. It would take about 1 full time technician to maintain 300 two-way tube radios at this time.
Knights Communications had the radios on a maintenance contract. The less work and parts we used, the more money Knight made. The most expensive parts were the vacuum power tubes and the vibrators that produced the receiver power. You would try to fix the problems the best you could with the least parts.
In the wintertime, the cab company would purchase new cars for some of the taxi cab fleet. When the body shop got through putting on the signs and trip meters, we would install the two-way radio. This was real labor intensive. One person could install about three cabs a day. The only way to be more efficient installing radios is to take all the tools and parts you would need for each phase of the installation with you. If you didn't, you would spend the whole day wondering around trying to find something. In other words, if you were working under the hood, you would have everything you would need, parts, tools, etc., at that position.
My next big step was working on the base station transmitter. After that, Knight felt free to take his extended vacations.
It took me about three years until I could fix any communications problem you could bring in the door. From then on it was still a learning process, but more of a honing my skills.
I think the most important phase of any repair or service job is to listen to the complaint. Then you can make a decision on what to do. Diagnose the problem with the complaint, confirm the diagnosis with facts from the equipment then effect a repair. You must know what reading to expect, on your test equipment, before you touch an electronic probe on a piece of equipment. In other words, if you put a meter probe on point "A" of a circuit board, you must know what reading to expect, otherwise you are just wasting you time.
The basic process to fix anything electronic is "INPUT-OUTPUT". If a transistor, integrated circuit, relay, or whatever has an input but no out-put, with the proper voltage and ground, change the part. If the part or circuit in question, has an input and proper out-put, go to the next part in the sequence.
Don't fix anything that is not broke. If you work on something all day, you should not have introduced any other problem in the system.
Install
Antenna on top of
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Pat and I moved into an apartment on the Fort Worth North side, on
We did not know anything about babies and got very little help from the
in-laws. There was not any help from my side of the family as they lived in
Every night I would rock her to sleep. She would turn her head down under my arm, put that little hand on her blond curls and twirl them until I rocked her to sleep. When sound asleep, I would try to put her in bed without waking her. This became more difficult as time went on. She wanted someone to hold her all the time. You don't really know if your kid is crying from some real distress or just spoiled for attention. I finally decided Laurie had us out smarted, so I tanned her rear end and let her cry it out, until she went to sleep. The guilt almost overwhelms you. You don't know if you did the right thing or not.
Looking back at how other people's kids turned out, I know Pat and I did the right thing. After the spanking, we couldn't wait for her to wake up the next morning to see if she was OK. She was. Now she would go to bed without crying to be held. When she did wake up, we would check her for diaper problems, fever, hungry, thirsty and all the things kids need. This worked much better than being at her beck and cry.
As Laurie got older, she was still a baby, Pat decided she needed a brother. Pat got pregnant again, this time with Lanty Marcus. She decided to call him Mark. Well, Mark added the final joy to our life and completed our contribution to the world's population.
Mark came into the world wide-awake and hungry, August 28, 1959. It was so good to see a kid eat with such enthusiasm. Mark never did enjoy being rocked to sleep. He wanted to get down and play. There was nothing that could stand in the way of him playing until he fell over asleep. Laurie, just a baby herself, now she had some one to baby.
One night for supper, Pat had fixed up some chili. Mark was in his high chair beating his spoon on the tray and eating canned baby food. I could tell that he smelled the chili, by the way he reacted to eating the baby food. I started feeding him chili and crackers. That kid loved it and still does. Pat said, I was going to kill him feeding him chili. After the chili, Mark would eat anything, the full bottle of milk was just to get to sleep. Pat was really in her element, here was a kid that loved to eat. He really put on that baby fat as pictures of him show. Laurie was sick, with colds when she was a baby. I think this was because we kept the house too hot. I thought she was cold all the time. It seemed that if we kept her warm she would be O.K.. Little did I realize that babies don't need all that warmth. We discovered the error of our ways.
I sure enjoyed playing with the kids. If there was something to fix in the house, I would bring my toolbox in, while I was working away, Laurie and Mark would take everything out of my toolbox. They would play and I would work, then when we got through, they would put everything back in but not in order. They were learning. Mark would take my shoelaces out every night and very patently try to relace my shoes. I would have to relace my shoes and redo my toolbox before I would go to work. I would think about those little hands and minds being developed through these play actions.
Pat found us a house to rent in River Oaks, just North of Fort Worth on
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Years later when Laurie was grown and married, she enlisted Mark's help in
delivering a used window air conditioner to the local animal shelter. Laurie
always helped the local animal shelters with her time and any thing she could
give them. This air conditioner would help keep the animal shelter cool on
these hot
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We were able to purchase, on credit, a swamp box for cooling. This is an
evaporative cooler with a large fan sucks air through water-filled pads and
cools the house. This type of cooling will drop the temperature about 18
degrees on a hot dry
That old 1950 Buick was a good car in its day, but it was wearing out. We needed another car. It took just about everything I made to support my family. I believed that if I could get together a good down payment, we could afford a car.
I found a night job at
I was really busy, teaching every other week at night and on call the rest of the time. I was determined to get that down payment. Most of my students were ex-military going to school on the GI Bill. There were several Indians from some reservation going to school as a ward of the United States Government.
My partner and I did the very best teaching job we could. There were some of the students only interested in appearing and getting that government check. Those that wanted to learn got my full attention.
In electronics, you have to learn the basics. You cannot start your education in electronics in the middle and learn outward.
I taught through two semesters and saved $800.00. This was the end of my teaching phase. I found this 1957 Blue Buick and paid down on it.
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There are several principles, I feel, that Pat and I developed in our effort
to raising our children. We treated our children like they were little people
and not a possession, or someone we owned. When we moved into our home at
When each child, in turn, got their drivers license, I had a key made for each car we had. We trusted our children and were never disappointed. I got both of them an American Express Card. I told them in case of an emergency to use it. I was never disappointed.
Chapter Fifteen
Two Deaths in the Family
1963
General Dynamics in
This was the first funeral in our family. Fred's kids came from
This was a circus, with two sets of Fred's kids that had never seen each other. This was a really sad time. Daddy was unable to go to the funeral, because of his health. Daddy worried about this until his death. I realized that one of the worse things that can happen to you in this life, is living longer than your children. Fred's wife at the time of his death was Beulah. Reflections back on the good times Fred and I had together and the way he helped me on the pipeline, seemed to make his passing easier. He was good to Mother and Dad.
Beulah gave me Fred's Baby Gibson Guitar. I still have it. This trip gave
Pat and I four days away from the kids and time to talk. This was our poor
time. During this time when we went to
Pat started to college. She wanted to be a teacher. The first two years she
went to
The plan was when Pat and her friend came into our house from whatever shopping trip, if the phone rang and it was the mystery caller, then Pats friend would run next door and use the telephone to start down the list. Whoever was calling, their telephone line would be busy and we would know the mystery caller.
The stage was set, when Pat got home one day the phone rang and Pat told her friend to go next door and start the elimination process. Surprise! Pat could hear on the phone her friend pounding on the next door neighbors door, "Let me in I want to use your telephone." We knew then, that it was the next door neighbor that was making the calls. After this was brought to her attention, the phone calls never did start again.
Laurie, Mark and I went all out to help Pat make it through. There were many
nights I would see Pat fall asleep with a book in her hand. She was determined
to make it. This was truly a work of determination and I know our children got
some direct motivational inspiration from watching their Mother work so hard to
get an education. Finally Pat was through school and looking for a job. As
September drew near,
Pat had a 1967 Firebird Pontiac to drive through all that Dallas Traffic. At
least with that car she could out run most of them. As one year turned into
another, Pat found a lady that lived in
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My job at Knights was very demanding. Every other week for years I was on call at night to fix any two-way radio equipment that broke down when the shop was closed. We maintained General Dynamics Security, Carswell AFB Security, Police Departments, Taxi Companies and others that demanded 24-hour radio repair service.
During the summer months the concrete delivery trucks had to be maintained late in the evening. These trucks worked late, and then I would have to wait at the plant to repair them when they arrived. This would make me late getting home for supper, night after night.
One time at Carswell they were having a problem with their security radio at the bomb storage area West of General Dynamics. I was called to go out there. The bomb storage area is protected by high fences and guard dogs. They push a button to let you in the fenced in walkway. Then you show them your pass. They let you in to work on the broken equipment. Before they call for radio repair they are supposed to call Carswell Base Communications and Base Communications is supposed to call the weapons storage police and tell them who is coming out to repair their radio. They keep atomic bombs at this location.
I pushed the button, they let me in. I was carrying all the necessary
equipment to repair their main radio transmitter, which was broken. I showed
them my pass and ID. The Sergeant pulled his 38
I was getting tired of Knights Communications. Pat was bringing a pay check
home and this took a lot of financial pressure off of me. Bell Helicopter, in
By 1970, the income I saw pass through the company, in my opinion, could not be found in the company records. By 1972, I found out that Knight had set up a parallel corporation call Worldtronics, Inc which Knight and his wife owned exclusively. Worldtronics, Inc now owned all the equipment that Knights Communications, Inc., use to own and Worldtronics, Inc leased this equipment back to Knights Communications, Inc. This made Knights Communications, Inc own only the accounts receivable and spare parts inventory. I am sure everything Knight did, in regard to this corporate structure, was legal. It is my opinion, that I had the short end of the stick and that I was doing more than my share of the work. With this learning experience, I have never been screwed again in a business deal.
It was time for a change.
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I started to school at
The radio paging business was just starting to bloom. There were about 700
to 900 pagers in the
Paging technology was increasing very rapidly and one day Airsignal
International called us. Airsignal was the largest paging company in the world.
I was going to install the first automatic AMCOR Radio paging terminal in the
After reading the installation manual and studying the problem, I installed
the AMCOR on
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I joined the Handley Lodge 1140 and was raised as a Master Mason. I completed 32 degrees of the Scottish Rite and joined the Moslah Shrine. This has been a great pleasure in my life and a reserve of strength when I need it. Now I understand why some organized religions talk against Masonry. There is no mind control in Masonry. It is a direct opposite to the mind control of some organized religions. As Martin L. King Jr. said "-- lord I'm free at last.
After moving to
Scottish Rite of Freemasonry
Tyler Chapter 24 R.A.M. Tyler,
Tyler Council 13 R. & S. M.
Tyler,
Ascension Commandery # 25
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On March 5, 1964, Dad died. He was 72 years old and is buried at
To draw a parallel, grandpa Gentry would struggle out of bed every morning,
even after a drunk, put his clothes on, get a bowl of oatmeal and glass of
goats milk and make the day. Grandpa was 85 when he died. He is buried close to
Dad told me years before when we were farming to make sure when he died that
he was really dead. It was his fear that he might be buried alive. Where Dad
was raised in
Chapter Sixteen
Work, Work, Work
1966
In the summer of 1966 Tom Freeman and I found a radio tower that was almost new,
but not being used. It was a Rohn 25G type tower. I had always wanted an
Amateur Radio station at home. Probably just to relive my radio days in
One Saturday afternoon, as I was building the tower, I could see from my high vantage point that several of the neighbors were setting in their lawn chairs watching me. I later asked the Police Sergeant that lived across the street, why everyone was watching me construct my tower. He told me that if I fell he wanted to see it. That Police Sergeant was Larry Barnett, he has been a good friend all these years. Larry's wife, by a previous marriage, had a little boy about 3 years old. No one could understand him as he jabbered away.
I had an empty money sack that I liberated from a radio installation on an
armored truck. It had "The Federal Reserve Bank of
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I did not expect Laurie or Mark to be or work in some profession that Pat and I would choose. They were free to chose, Pat and I would encourage them. There was no infraction of rules that would prevent them from receiving a reasonable allowance. That is all they would get each week and they knew it. Of course, when we went on vacation, they got a bonus amount. I hate to see a child have to beg for money from their parents. If they get a reasonable allowance and that only, they will learn how to manage money.
When Mark was about 13, he would go with me to the barbershop and we would get our hair cut. At this time, long hair was the style for young boys and Mark wanted his hair to be long. While Mark and I were waiting our turn for the barber, another young man was getting his hair cut. His Dad was giving instructions to the barber for the child to have his hair cut short. The young man was protesting in vain for the barber to leave most of his hair long. As the barber cut the child's hair, big tears were running down his cheeks. That Dad lost something that day and what is so sad, he probably would never realize it.
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Another story about Mark. Mark was living at home and going to college. He came home one day just after our little dog Niki had bit the cleaning lady. Niki is a 12-pound dog with an attitude problem. He does not want anyone to pick up anything off of the floor that belongs to him and he has the teeth to back it up. The cleaning lady thinks Niki is the cutest and best dog in the world, even though he has bit her several times. Anyway, after Niki had nipped the cleaning lady, Mark picked up Niki and took him in the other room and told him in a serious voice, "If you keep acting like that you won't have any friends." This was the maximum discipline he could bring himself to inflict on Niki.
The most important, for last, we love our children. The company I worked for,
Knights Communications worked on taxicab and other two-way-radios in and around
On
We now live, (Year 2000) near
Chapter Seventeen
John W. McLemore
1969
My farther and mother in-law lived at
John worked as a machinist and Muriel was a homemaker. In October of 1968, John developed problems with his balance and was running a low grade fever. When he perspired on his clothes, it was a yellowish color. The local doctor diagnosed an inner ear infection and he was treated with antibiotics for this condition.
Within two weeks his condition had not improved and was getting worse. It seemed that any loud noise would make him nervous. An appointment was made with a neurologists - Pat and I drove him to his appointment.
Tests were run and there was nothing that could be done to stop or correct the progress of his illness.
In December of 1968 John was admitted to
An autopsy was performed and a diagnosis was made of Creutzfeldt - Jakob disease. The Doctor, Clayton M. Smith, told us later his brain was the worst he had ever seen.
John McLemore as many people eat cow and pork brains with scrambled eggs. This was a common dish on the farm. Little did anyone know, at that time, it could be a dose of death.
State of
Chapter Eighteen
Air Signal International
1973
I had just about completed the management course at
I quit Knight Communications, Inc., of which I owned 40% of the stock. This was an association that got worse and in looking back, a very wise decision.
Air Signal International, Inc., was to be my employer for five years. I was able to put some of my college training to work. When I went to college at night, by the middle of the semester, half of the seats would be empty. I was amazed at the knowledge available and the few who really decided to make their lives better.
Knight was going on vacation in
I called my new boss, Bernie Pilz, to see if Airsignal would let me go to
work two weeks early. I could use the money. His answer was yes and on
Wednesday morning I reported to work. My wages were the same, plus I had
hospitalization and life insurance and they gave me a car allowance. Bernie's
boss, Ted Muczynski lived in
Bernie was telling Ted what a good job I was doing, so when the Paging
System in
Jim Beckett, the local station manager, met me. We loaded up the test equipment and off we went. I had never met Jim before, but had talked to him on the telephone. He was interested in the latest company gossip, so we went through all of that on our way to the company office. I checked out the AMCOR paging terminal, then on to the transmitters.
Airsignal leased a spot on an antenna tower that was located at a concrete plant. I remembered concrete plants from my Knights Communications days. The Airsignal transmitter tested so badly, I thought my test equipment had been damaged in shipment. I tuned my test equipment to another transmitter in the room and what-do-you-know, everything fell into the normal range. This meant that the Airsignal transmitter was so far out of alignment that I had doubted my test equipment accuracy.
Airsignal had 5 transmitter sites in
Then one thing I always did when a job was completed, I asked Beckett if there was anything else he needed me to do, or anything he needed that I could get for him. He was very happy with the maintenance results on the paging system. We went over exactly what would be on my trip report to his boss, Ted Muczynski. There would be no surprises for him or me.
My next task was to get the Fort Worth/Dallas paging system in tiptop shape. The less it broke down, the less work I would have to do. The AMCOR paging terminal offered a challenge. I was use to vacuum tube technology. This thing had no vacuum tubes, only integrated circuit and its technology. The AMCOR factory school helped me a lot in the technical area and it was nice to meet the factory personnel. In my spare time you would find me studying the AMCOR technical manual.
Bernie's boss, Ted Muczynski, was well pleased with
The
Bobby Kelm was Airsignal's station manager in
That AMCOR paging terminal in
Shortly after the
The next week Ted Muczynski was in
At this point in time, the paging business was so good that Airsignal still made lots of money, in spite of themselves. There were two types of pagers for us to market, the voice pager and the tone only pager. Everyone wanted the voice pager, but we were limited by the amount of pagers we could put on a channel, about two thousand. The tone only pager was hard to use. Every time someone paged you, you would call a certain number, so in effect only one person could know your telephone number. There were certain variations on this, but not much improvement. There was competition on the horizon, a digital pager was in development at Motorola.
We had a waiting list for voice type pagers. When a user would cancel a voice pager, we would look at our waiting list and call the next person in line. If they didn't come in that day, the next person on the list would be called.
I went to
After a while, when an Airsignal AMCOR paging terminal had a real nasty
breakdown anywhere in the
I arrived Saturday night, March 15, 1980. With the spare circuit cards I
brought with me, I had most of the Paging Terminal back on line within five
hours. By Sunday noon it was in good shape. I got a call from Scott Davis. He
wanted me to be in
Chapter Nineteen
Page-A-Fone
1980
I called Jack Proctor. I had known Jack Proctor, president of Page-A-Fone,
Page-A-Fone hired me without a job description. I had no idea of the job
they had in mind for me. Monday morning, April 14, 1980 was my first day
working for Page-A-Fone. My assignment was to get the
I got squared away in my new office and proceeded to design a doorbell. I went to Radio Shack and got the parts and installed a trip switch over the front door and a doorbell in the answering service. When you opened the door, the bell sounded. The answering service lady said, "What in the hell did you put that thing (bell) in here for?" On this note I started my career at Page-A-Fone.
My contact with the city was Captain Noel Pryor with the police department. There were two problems. The two-way radio system had to be made technically correct and the users had to have confidence in the system. I know that having confidence or not having confidence in a radio system has no effect on its operation, however, if a group has confidence there are less frantic calls for help. There will be only routine calls for help.
There was a mix and match of Motorola and General Electric Radios in the
Arlington Police system. The base or fixed system was General Electric. Several
years before, Tom Freeman and I had installed this system when I worked at
Knights Communications. The base stations were located to give the required
transmitter range in each section of town. The receiving system was rather
complicated with a receiver-voting panel in the dispatch office. The receiver
voting system was necessary for the hand-held portable units to access the
dispatcher anywhere in
This refit, repair and alignment went on for about a week. The big day arrived and I announced to Captain Prior, the system was 100%. During the day, I could hear the Police checking out the coverage with different portable units, with very good results.
About 10 PM I got a call from Captain Prior to the effect the Chief had chewed him out, the Arlington Police system was dead. Nothing was working. Captain Prior was meeting me at the Police station. The Police units could hear the dispatcher, but the dispatcher could not hear the units in the field. The receiver voter was dead. I unlocked the main cover and not one indicator light was on. The main power fuse was O.K., but the unit was unplugged from the wall. I plugged the unit in and communications resumed on the system. It seemed the cleaning person had unplugged the unit to plug in the vacuum cleaner. This was her usual procedure, except this night she forgot to plug the receiver voter back in. I thought it would be better for everyone concerned to declare a blown power fuse and that was the way I logged it in the record. It seems this had been a chronic problem in the past. It was known by everyone thereafter, touch the receiver voter and die.
Before I left Page-A-Fone, the City of
Page-A-Fone was in the paging business as a small time operator in the
We met with the lawyers and engineers to plan our new paging system. This was old stuff to me as I had done this many times with Airsignal. When we got back, I did the market and demand study. The sites were next. I always think of what this system should be five years from now and plan for that. The next project was to convince the managers to purchase Quintron transmitting equipment. Jack's first response to Quintron over Motorola was that hell would freeze over before they bought any Quintron equipment. After the license applications passed the FCC protest period, we placed an order for Quintron transmitters and a new BBL paging terminal. As I write this in 1996, those transmitters are still working and making money.
Motorola announced their new digital pager. A person could call a paging
terminal, from a touch-tone telephone, press in his telephone number and his
telephone number would appear on a pager. I really didn't think this would go
over well. I told Jack Proctor we should do some market research on this before
we invested a bunch of money in it. He agreed and I went to
Chapter Twenty
Mobile Phones
The generations of radio mobile telephone systems
Manual Dispatch: This was the first type of mobile phone service where an operator would dial the number for you. When you were in your car, you would pick up the microphone and call the dispatcher. You would have to give the dispatcher the telephone number you wanted to dial. When the number you requested answered, you were connected to it. The connection was full duplex, in that you could talk and hear at the same time. The radio system consisted of 2 frequencies, which made full duplex possible. You would have to monitor the channel and respond to your number if the operator called you. Most conversations with mobile units are mobile to land. That is, the mobile unit makes most of the calls for service. One pair of radio frequencies, a channel, could only accommodate about 30 mobile units. During busy time, you would sometime have to wait for service.
SECODE Mobile Telephone: With this type of service, the operator could dial you and you could dial a call. Only one channel could be used without manually changing channels. This technology was slow in that while you were dialing a rotary dial in the car, the radio channel was tied up. This system eliminated an operator. The conversations of others were difficult to monitor and the radio channel was made a bit more efficient.
IMTS: This was Motorola's Improved Mobile Telephone Service. This was a great leap forward in mobile communications. Your telephone could search several, up to 12, mobile channels. This greatly improved the efficiency of radio channel usage. Now, more mobiles could be accommodated per channel and billing of the airtime, (radio channel usage) was automated. This technology cleared up most billing complaints. However, this technology continued to tie up the radio channel while you were dialing.
RYDAX: This service used high speed switching for dial up and dial out. This was the most efficient use of available radio spectrum, a forerunner of cellular telephone technology developed by E.F. Johnson Company. This technology stored the dialed number, then acquired a radio channel for transmission. Then the dialed number was sent to the switching network by high-speed data. Actually 300 BAUD, but it was high speed at the time. This technology saved 30 to 45 seconds of channel airtime, over past technology per call. You could not monitor the channel to listen to other calls, from a standard mobile unit. The cost of a mobile unit was $2,500 plus monthly air time usage.
CELLULAR: This service has many frequencies assigned and makes excellent use of these frequencies by re-using them over a large geographical area. This was by far the most efficient radio spectrum usage.
In every instance of radiotelephone usage, when a new technology comes out, the lower technology is completely washed out. I saw the usage on DFW's RYDAX system go from $50,000 a month gross revenue to 0 within 8 months of the cellular radio telephone system turn on. The beautiful part of the RYDAX system was that it paid for DFW's applications into the cellular market and paid my salary while I started a Paging Business.
(L to
R) Lanty Wylie & Fred M. Link "Father of
Click Here for Article on Fred M. Link
Chapter Twenty One
DFW Signal
Jack Proctor, President of Page-A-Fone, was up for a new kidney transplant.
Jack rejected the new kidney and was very sick. I went to the hospital in
Jack's death brought a lot of changes to Page-A-Fone. In my opinion, the investors and stockholders lost faith in the management and wanted to sell out.
At this time Page-A-Fone had about 12,000 pagers in service. They sold out to Communications Industries for around $12,000,000. That is $1,000 per pager.
-------
Bob Watkins had just gone through a divorce and he resigned as president of
D/FW Signal, Inc. Bud Forester from
This new responsibility gave my career a big boost. I was traveling to
As the cellular deal came to a close through mergers and acquisitions, I started doing some consulting work on the side. I made some money and had some fun.
Chapter Twenty Two
AACS Communications, Inc.
April 22, 1983
Bob Bell of Bell Communications, Inc of
It had been raining all day and with the frontal passage, lightning had boomed all over the area. This is always a bad time for radio repair people. The lightning gets into the antenna and radio. At this time the radio coax transmission line manufacturers had trouble keeping rainwater from seeping into their coax.
I was dispatched to repair the ambulance radios. Bob was there to repair the sheriff's county radios in the same vehicles. I ran out of parts after a while when Bob came over and talked to me. He offered and I accepted some parts, on loan, to finish up. The next day new parts were returned to Bob. Bob was one of Knights Communications competitors and he was a successful businessman.
After I left Knight's and worked for Airsignal, I always stayed in contact with Bob. Then, when I worked for Page-A-Fone/D/FW Signal, Bob was part owner of D/FW Signal and I was the Vice President so we saw each other at the various business meetings.
While I worked for D/FW Signal, Bob and I met for coffee every Monday morning at Dennys on the South Freeway. We discussed paging and the on going problems of D/FW Signal. Bob developed Pro-Net, a medical paging company from scratch. This company was developed to satisfy a need of the local hospital council. I was trying to set up an agency deal for Page-A-Fone and they could not see any money in this kind of deal. Page-A-Fone wanted to lease the pager to individuals and I wanted to lease paging numbers to Agents that would sell or lease to the end user. Time has proven me right, 90% of pager marketing is done the way I proposed in 1982.
Bob could see the money in this kind of deal and agreed to finance such a paging service. I did not have any money to invest. I invested what money we had in eating from day to day. Bob kept pushing me to get a pro-forma together. He brought in Ray Trott and Roger Crawford, so there would be four stockholders in the new paging venture, AACS Communications, Inc. Later on we bought Crawford out of AACS.
We went into deep, deep debt to get this thing going. The name AACS comes from
my Air Force days. AACS stood for Airways and Air Communications Service. The
Air Force no longer used this name, so we were incorporated in the state of
As AACS, we installed paging systems in
So our Paging Business was started as the least-cost way of getting in
business. I knew Bill Lee, the manager of Radio Relay, a paging business in
Bill promised me that he would lease space on AACS's proposed channel for voice pagers. At this time none of the big paging companies wanted voice paging on a system because each voice page would take 15 seconds of airtime on a paging channel. This 15 seconds of time compares to 1/4 of a second for a digital page to be transmitted. We wanted any kind of paging business, our channel was empty.
When I finally got AACS's paging channel on the air, I bought 4 voice pagers for demonstration units and let Bill try them out. Bill started placing orders with me for paging numbers. By the time Bill went to work for another company, he had placed over 800 voice pagers on with AACS. By this time other people were placing orders for paging service and we were on our way in the paging business.
Bill Lee, Bob Bell and I would usually get together at the trade shows and conventions. We would eat all their food and drink up their whiskey.
-------
My salary was still being paid by D/FW Signal, Inc. I was a consultant for them. This arrangement really helped the bottom line of AACS.
Cellular Telephones came along to market and D/FW Signal lost all its customers. AACS started paying my salary.
Our business model was to lease Air Time in bulk to Agents. These Agents would purchase telephone numbers and the air time associated with these numbers. AACS would not lease or sell any pagers. We were just the Carrier.
We opened up in Houston and Austin. We later sold
By selling Air Time, we did not have the expense of purchasing pagers and sales people to sell them. Just about everything we did, could be done on a computer. I wrote the software for all our access to mainframe, billing and control programs. All we had to do to generate the monthly bills was to hit a certain key on our computer. The bills would be calculated and printed out. We would stuff them in an envelop and in the mail. ( I truly love to write computer programs. )
I did most of the transmitter maintenance and all of the paging terminal maintenance. We got hit by lightning 3 times. Sometime it would take 36 hours non-stop to get the necessary parts flown in and the pages going out again. We had 40,000 telephone numbers terminated in our terminal. As numbers were turned off and on. They had to be aged. That is to say, a pager number when turned off cannot be assigned immediately. It has to be aged, so people will get a, not in service message when they call it. In about 3 months it can be used again. This is the reason that even though you have 40,000 telephone numbers in the switch, you cannot have that many active pagers. The turn over rate for the agents was about 3 percent per month.
Well, we finally have a deal to sell AACS and I am looking forward to traveling and doing a few fun projects in my retirement.
In October of 1996 we made a deal with Teletouch, Inc., out of Tyler, Texas to purchase the Stock of AACS Communications, Inc. Lord, I'm free at last, maybe. I promised Teletouch that I would stay on for 18 months for generous stay bonus. This has given me a space to turn loose of the business. I need that.
AACS quit expanding and we started harvesting the business in 1991. This has been a good business, but now in 1997, it is time to sell.
After Teletouch bought the business, they had to move to a more upscale
office. I found a place in
One day, out of the blue, the Chairman of the Board of Teletouch came by the
office. After touring the place, he wanted a red neon sign placed in the
window, "Pagers for
The best person I ever worked with was Barbara Orso. She was my secretary before the sale and stayed on after the sale to Teletouch.
February 3, 1996, Bob Bell, David Bell, Jerry Marr and I were going to meet, as usual, for a good Saturday morning breakfast at the Paris Coffee Shop. I set the alarm clock for 5 AM. I got up and it was snowing so I went back to bed. At 9:30 AM the phone rang and by the automatic ID device, I could tell it was from Bob's home phone. David Bell told me that his Dad, Bob Bell had died. It seemed he had a heart attack and fell over dead. Bob was taken to the same funeral home where we had first met many years ago, one rainy night in 1962. On February 6, 1996 Bob was buried with full Masonic Honors. I was one of the Pallbearers.
Chapter Twenty Three
Flying
1985
I passed my check ride with an FAA authorized inspector on March 24, 1985. Flying an airplane has always been one of my dreams. This flying was very good for me. You must give 100% of yourself and attention or you could get in a bad situation while flying.
After learning to fly, it is just like turning up the contrast on a television set, you look at life different. You can see things differently, your driving improves. The environment that surrounds you comes into sharp focus. Every sense becomes keen and alert.
My little daughter married Jim McCollum, a wise choice. We got a flyer in
the family. His presence and aviation hobby encouraged me to get my pilots
license. Laurie was going to take a ground school course at
My first flight with Jim was a disaster. On March 29, 1981, in Cessna
150-N60988, Jim and I departed
On August 29, 1983, I went to a flying school at Meacham Field in
The Cessna 150 trainer had to strain in the hot
It was some hot in
We did our preflight and departed to
Jane was accepted as a pilot for the feeder airline. Later on, I found out she got a job with an international air carrier. I don't understand the concern over women pilots. Jane was the best instructor I ever had. One time I took off with her seat belt hanging out the door. This loud rapid banging caused me some concern, but she just said for me to always fly the airplane, if I had airspeed, altitude, fuel and a good engine the problem was not really that bad. If you ever fly on an airline with D. Jane Porter as pilot, I can assure you that you are in safe hands with a very good pilot.
My new instructor was an ex-Air Force Pilot and a good instructor. It was his policy never to pass a student for a check ride without spin training. The week before spin training was scheduled, I got all my affairs in order, accepted my fate and reported in.
Cut the power, lower the flaps ten degrees and start pulling the nose up. The reason you lower the flaps a bit is so you can have aileron control until it falls out of the sky. Just as the nose of the airplane starts to fall, keep holding back pressure on the stick and kick either rudder to the floor, keep it there. Wham bam, you are now looking straight down, with the earth spinning below you. Press the other rudder to the floor and push the stick forward. You have stopped spinning. Both rudder pedals should now be equal, you are in a dive. Move the stick back toward you and you zoom out of the dive to level flight, add power.
The last project was night flying and spin training at night. I was getting
to be an old hand at this by now. It was a moonlit night. My enjoyment was
short lived when the instructor told me to put on the IFR hood. I climbed out
to 3,000 feet on instruments to the practice area. I did a couple of clearing
turns so the instructor could see if there were any other airplanes around. He
told me to close my eyes; he was going to put it in a spin. I knew we were
going straight down, when he told me to bring it out. I could not tell which
way I was spinning. The IFR hood would not let me look for an outside
reference. As we were heading straight down I told him I could not tell which
way I was spinning. The instructor popped it out of the spin and told me, the
next time, look at the turn and skid indicator and every which way the little
airplane in the window was turning, that was the way I was turning. We did
several more spins without any problem and headed for
I did night landings, with landing lights, without landing lights. Night landings, crosswind left and right. I knew what terror-sweat was. There was not a dry thread on me. With this out of the way I was ready for my check ride.
At the test, I felt all my flight knowledge had flown. I sit down with the examiner and he quizzed me about everything on his list. We were ready for the wild blue yonder. The day before, found out who was going to give my check ride, I went to the airports where he usually took students and practiced landings. We went through all the maneuvers and safety procedures. Then he started showing me some of the safety things he had learned over the years. We landed and he signed me off. I am a real pilot.
Chapter Twenty Four
Mother
1988
On January 25, 1988, I got a call from Francis Wylie, my brother
After my father died, Beulah, my dead brother Fred's wife bought my Mother a
trailer house. Beulah wanted her son Tommy Sims to stay with Mother and go to
school at
I thought West Carroll Parish,
After Francis found my Mother, she called the Sheriff and he called the
crime lab in
The first night Pat and I were at the hospital, the investigators talked to
me about some family history. I gathered that they thought that it might have
been someone in the family that beat-up my Mother. They asked me what I knew
about Tommy Sims and Tommy Wylie. Tommy Sims was Beulah's son. Tommy Wylie is
my brother Grady and Ruth's first child. I assured them that Tommy Sims or
Tommy Wylie was not involved in this. I answered their questions. In looking
back, the Sheriff's Department at West Carroll,
Within three days, I heard from family members, that Willie Cooper and his
common law wife, Linda Eugin Cooper had been captured in
Within 15 minutes after Cooper was arrested, he committed suicide. He took off his nylon socks, tied them high on the bars of his cell and hanged himself.
My Mother's neighbor, down the road, provided the lead that tied this with
the
With Cooper out of the way, Eugin was brought to the jail in West Carroll
Parish for trial. The trial was later moved to another Parish. She was found
guilty and sentenced to a long term in the Louisiana State Prison. It is my
understanding that she will be tried in
Mother had a long stay in the hospital in
One day, Pat and I went to Oak Grove and placed her in a nursing home. Frances was very, very helpful in all this process, but there were no other kinfolk to be found. Brother Paul told me he was feeling bad and couldn't make it. Sister Mary Lee also couldn't make it.
Mother never did get on well at the nursing home. She finally died. I contacted Mary Lee and we sort of let the estate thing wait a while. This last act had to be played out, so one fine day Paul and I visited a lawyer in Oak Grove. It is always best to hire the District Attorney or his law partner or his ex-law partner. The attorney I hired was the District Attorney.
It was my feeling that if any trouble arose with the family it would come from Paul. With this in mind, I wanted him to be with me through the whole process. I thought that full disclosure would head off any problem.
I thought to myself that certainly I could manage this, I have taken
management in college, I manage a very successful business. What could go
wrong? Paul and I agreed on everything in the lawyer's office. The necessary
papers were filled out and I came back to
Within a week, I found out, just about everyone in the family, except Mary
Lee, Frances and her kids, had turned against me and what I had set out to do.
However, at this point in my life, I really didn't care. Pat and I had a net
worth that put us in the deep comfort zone and we didn't owe anybody anything.
Sixty acres in
I really wanted Frances's stepson, Bob Wylie to have the land. He wanted it
and I felt that
What I learned: In every real bad family situation, someone in the family, will come along and make it worse. With all my family obligations settled, I am getting ready to contemplate retirement.
Chapter Twenty Five
1998
Pat and I are going to move out of the
January 3, 1998 Pat and I finally located our dream house at
The elderly couple that owned the house needed a smaller place and, due to
his health, wanted to be closer to their son that lives in
February 3, 1998, before we could get away from
We arraigned for a painter to do the complete inside and outside trim before we moved in and had a carpet cleaning company to steam clean the carpets.
March 1, 1998 is my first day of retirement from the Paging Business. I
stayed and worked for 18 months after we sold the business for a generous bonus
from Teletouch Communications, Inc. We rented a U-Hawl trailer about once a
week, packed and moved the light stuff from
July 6, 1998: I had an enlarged thyroid for some time and it was beginning
to grow, so out it came. You read about my assignment in the Atomic Bomb Tests,
previously. In another place herein, find a description of this surgery On July
6, 1998; I had Thyroid surgery at
The GREAT DAY finally arrived, July 17, 1998, we sold
Things that you have no control over seem to happen from time to time. Our beloved Niki died August 4, 1998. We tried several Vets but his heart was just too weak. His illness came suddenly as did his death. He did not suffer at the end.
August 6, 1998, Muriel McLemore, Pat's mother died after a long and protracted illness.
During the summer of 1998, it was difficult to believe that November would finally arrive with the cool welcome rain. Something we must have inherited from the past, this love of several days of dreary rain. We get in our warm place and listen to the rain, and it makes us sleep. It comforts us. The pine needles appear on the grass, yet the pine trees don't seem to miss them. They stay green all winter, those tall pines. The grass will retreat and snuggle under the pine needles during the cold months. The dogwood trees are turning from gold to orange and red as the fall sets in. Soon the leaves will fall as the North wind whistles through.
All the little animals have completed their chores by laying in nuts for the winter months. The squirrels are fat from the bird feeders. They are just rats with big fuzzy tails, fun to watch though. The delicate speedy humming birds have gone, only a lonely wasp visits the sugar nectar feeder. Soon this will be put away for another year. Some of the other birds will be with us all winter. They will find quite an assortment of nuts and stuff in our feeders. Lots of red birds, some woodpeckers work here. They scratch the trees when they can't reach to remove that pesky bug. Then we listen to the wind through the pines. Sometime I wonder what message it brings, that lonesome wind through the pines.
Cool rainy weather signals the Holidays. This will be a good year, our kids will be out to see us. We will set and talk and remember the fund things, eat the good food and drink the best whiskey. As we get older, we remember the times together, the happy times. We always hope for a repeat of the happy times. There are times when business and family pressure makes a get together just not possible, so we enjoy the happy times.
I am writing this August 1, 1999. We have been at
One time we had to have a dead pine tree cut down. I hired a tree company
that had been recommended by my neighbor. After watching the owner climb the
trees and direct his workers, I asked him, "You don't ever get over it do
you." He said, "No, I think of
Most of the time Pat and I work around the house about half a day and spend the rest of the day doing what we want to do. I am trying to read 2 books a week. If it is a technical or science book, it is usually 1 book per week. The two book I try to re-read every year is "Goa Freaks" and "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress", like visiting an old friend.
It was a great day when the Mormon Genealogy Internet Site opened up. I was
able to take my existing records of the Gentry(s) (My Mothers Family) and trace
them back to the Boat Ride over from
The Wylie(s) are proving more difficult. I have hired a Certified Genealogist to help me in this task. The results will be included in this book.
Chapter Twenty Six
Grand Babies
1999
We were very surprised when Mark, our son, announced that he and Sue were expecting a baby in April of 1999. Pat and I had resigned ourselves to the fact that we would be Grand Childless. This good news was truly a blessing.
Pamela Rose Wylie was born in
Then again Mark told us they were expecting another baby in June of 2001. Nicholas Morgan Wylie was born June 28, 2001.
Rose was a very calm and inquisitive baby. Nicholas is really wound up tight, that is to say he is not a calm baby. The least little thing, such as a wet diaper, and he will let you know there is a problem.
At this writing Nicholas is just a few weeks old. We always want to keep Rose for a weekend or just a few days. She is such an easy child to be around. Pat and I have reached the age where it wears us out to keep her, but we love the opportunity.
I know the first time we kept her, we had a new baby bed for her to sleep in. When we put her in it, she cried. We immediately decided that parents might let their children cry, but Grand parents did not. We put her in bet between us and after watching the news, off went the TV and Rose went to sleep. So every time she has stayed over, she sleeps with Gan Paw and Nana.
It won't be long before she will be calling us on the phone.
When Sue was pregnant with Nicholas, we got to keep Rose for a few days. We
went shopping in
We just do not get to see them enough. I know Mark and Sue have busy lives and all that.
Well it is 2003, and we get to keep the Grand Babies some weekends. It really wears us out, but we enjoy it so. We spend all our time playing with them, when they are here. Just before Nicholas' 2nd birthday he called me po paw. He finally got to saying Grand Paw.
Chapter Twenty Seven
The Church
2001 - 2003
Our home in
In our Deed Restrictions and By-laws there cannot be a commercial business operating in Hide-A-Way Lake, Inc., (HAWL).
Our property is located in Unit 24 of the ITT Simms Survey A-1181 Smith
County Texas. This property backs-up to the Spillway between the middle and
third lake.
Original Deed of Conveyance -
New Deed Restrictions Voted and Passed in 1995: Smith County Records: 2007-R00004200.
Hideaway Lake Community Church, with the permission of Hide-A-Way Lake Club, Inc., (HAWL) built a commercial parking lot behind the Wylie’s home. This action was and is against Deed Restrictions. We filed suit against HAWL to cancel the Church parking lot lease. The church demanded to be brought into the suit and we also filed against them.
The first thing to overcome in a lawsuit is, do you have standing to sue. After 5 years we got a ruling from the court in the affirmative. However, the members of HAWL cannot sue the club for violating their own deed restrictions.
See the 114th Judicial District Court of Smith County, Texas.
Cause No. 08-2127-B
More Smith County Justice – it took our Judge 5 years to issue a ruling
if a member of the Homeowners Association had a legal right to sue or not. She
said no. This ruling was overturned in the Texas 12th Court of
appeals.
It appears to me that a high school student count have read the Ski Masters
case and decided for the Wylie’s.
Citation: Ski Masters, et al.
COURT OF APPEALS OF TEXAS, FIRST DISTRICT, HOUSTON
269 S.W.3d 662; 2008 Tex. App. LEXIS 9829
See the 12th Texas Court of Appeals: 12-12-00290-CV
See the Texas Supreme Court: 14-0085 January 29, 2014.
Click on this web site: http://godslittlehoa.com/
Chapter Twenty Eight
Reflections and Comments
I really enjoyed my youth until the farm work got too demanding. My Dad and Mother were always good to me and treated me well. I was not brought up in what is now considered a normal environment. There was too much emphasis on the wild side of life, with little restraints. There was absolutely no direction offered by my parents. I did exactly what I wanted to do, in my youth.
My turning point was joining the Air Force. This was my rite of passage.
This is where I grew up. I am very proud to have served my country for 4 years
and get an Honorable Discharge at the end. I believe the framers of our
Constitution should require a Senator to have served his country in the
Military Service before He or She could be elected. Our Military Forces were
never the reason we lost a battle, our Politicians were the reason.
I have chosen electronics as my life's work. This is something that I truly love to do. It is a constant learning process. You can never get to the point where you know it all. There is always a hill to climb. I have always been able to do just about anything anyone else can do. Learning, for me, is hard work, but rewarding above all else.
If there is something in my work that I don't understand, when I come to work the next morning I will understand it. I will have read the book that night.
The concept of learning:
You can learn to do just about anything if you find someone that is a teacher. I do not want to be impressed with how well someone does a task. Impress me with how well you can teach me to do the task. When learning a new task, first, find out all the different words that will be used. Learn their meaning.
Second, what are the parameters that I must work in. As an example. Landing an airplane, you can land fast, you can sometimes land slow, if you are lucky. You can land high and you can land low, if you are lucky. If the first thing I do is learn how to land that airplane in the middle of those parameters, a normal landing, I can always expand on that. If, however, when I first start learning, the instructor keeps bouncing me around from one type of landing to another, it will be very difficult to know what is normal.
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These pearls of information were given to me by my good friend J.P. Bhagat,
from
As you travel through your business career, you know the difference between right and wrong. Walk up to that line that separates right and wrong. Take two steps back. Make one step back in case your business partner pushes you. The other step is to stop in. In business, if someone wants you to cross over the line and do something wrong, if and when you are caught, your so-called friends will withdraw from you and deny their advice to you. They won't even know you.
Obey the law. If anyone else can be a success in life and obey the law, you can too. A person does not need an anchor around their neck. That is what a criminal record is.
The only other thing about business is that if you don't make a profit, it's a hobby. If you own the business it is an expensive hobby. If it is a corporation, as the president, you are sitting in a spring-loaded seat. If you do not make a profit, the spring goes off and some one else is in the seat.
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It really makes me feel good when someone lets me read a book that they have read and enjoyed.
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I believe in the Scientific Method. If you tell me something, and I can confirm what you told me and get the same result, it is worth careful consideration as being the truth. I suppose my greatest mental struggle is trying to see things clearly, without the mental fog of tradition. The only way, I have found, to pierce the mental fog, is through education, by reading and serious discussion of facts.
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There have been set-backs and hard times, but I have tried not to let them consume me. Each set-back is a learning experience and sometime, an opportunity to open another door.
From my observation point, I have seen people, that after going through a very emotional experience in life will, let their personal life and appearance suffer. This seems to happen more in men than women, as women usually have a support system. In any case, the losers, men or women, get fat, loose their job, neglect their appearance, turn to drugs, (yes alcohol is a drug) and drop out of society. What they are saying to themselves, "I am a looser, don't expect anything out of me, I can't stand the pain of being hurt again." I can assure you that the pain your are inflicting on yourself is worse than anything society has to offer.
When we drop into this world, we compete, we struggle, we survive. As Gen. George S. Patton said, " I wouldn't give a hoot in hell for someone that lost and laughed." Someone once said that they had rather soar one day with the eagles than spend the rest of their lives with the turkeys on the ground.
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If you want to do something important in your life, get a dog. If you are an average person and feed the dog, the dog will like you. If you have any character at all the dog will think you are the greatest person on earth. You will now have the only true friend you will ever know in this life.
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The future:
Technology will someday produce a computer that will become sentient, "self aware."
One should never ask this device to solve a social problem. It might just succeed.
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This Completes My Walk Through Life. In the following pages you will find some of my thoughts on life through poetry and short stories.
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Parole Hearing
REMARKS BY LANTY H. WYLIE JR.
Parole hearing for Linda Cooper, Tuesday, Sept. 16, 1997,
Corrections Facility, Cottonport, La.
A person might get caught up in the influence of another through love, companionship or whatever reason. We might be persuaded to walk down an untried path. But assault and attempted murder? We demand there be no excuse, no excuse at all.
At the first sign of criminal activity, if Linda Eugin Cooper had said, "My God this is wrong", and separated herself from her husband, this predatory killer, I would not be here today .
If Linda Eugin Cooper had said, "I will not help this evil man", and have gone to the proper authorities, she would not be here today. But we are here, the family of Lucile Wylie, my Mother. You have heard the details of my Mothers assault, but there were other old defenseless people murdered by this gang of thugs.
According to the local and national news services, this gang that Linda Eugin Cooper belonged to committed similar crimes in several Southern States.
THERE WERE SIMILAR CRIMES IN:
-----
----- Ponchatoula Louisiana Robbery
----- West Carroll Parish
----- Noxubee County Mississippi Assault & Robbery
----- Foley Alabama Murder
-----
----- State of
----- State of
Lawmen have described the 5 members of this Louisiana Gang as a band of
roving Gypsies who traveled around the South befriending elderly people before
beating and robbing them. According to Court Testimony Linda Eugin Cooper said,
"We went out on stealing expeditions". She said, "I was with
them at one in
These crimes against old people were a FAMILY AFFAIR, A family hunting expedition. It is my opinion that Monsters be kept off the street as long as possible. I humbly request that Linda Eugin Cooper be DENIED PAROLE, for the good and safety of our society. Thank you.
REMARKS BY ROBERT GENTRY
(My Cousin)
OF MANY, LOUISIANA.
Parole hearing for Linda Cooper, Tuesday, Sept. 16, 1997,
Corrections Facility, Cottonport, La.
I want to tell you about Lucile Wylie, the victim in this senseless crime. She was my aunt. She was born in 1901, making her 86-years-old at the time of the crime. Her mother died when she was only six-years-old. From that point on, not only did she have to take care of her own needs, but that of her father and her two younger brothers--one of which was my Daddy.
The times were hard and lean, but she followed her Daddy all over the South as he moved from job to job in the sawmill business. And she did a great job of keeping the family together. It was a hard task--but she persevered and was successful under very trying conditions.
As she grew into adulthood, she married and raised a family. She not only raised her children, but she also had stepchildren, which she gladly helped. She was always a poor person by financial standards, but she was rich in human kindness--she was rich in Christianity--she was rich in helping her neighbors and being a good friend. She was rich in laughter and enjoyed life. She was rich in all the things that are important in life.
After her second husband died and all the children left home--she was alone.
But she enjoyed life to the fullest. She was always in good health. She enjoyed
visiting her son, L.H., and daughter, Mary Lee, both who lived in the
There came that dreadful day--January 25, 1988. What happened to this dear, sweet, kind lady that day should never happen to a dog. My aunt was about five feet tall or so and weighed no more than 100 pounds. Probably the most hurt she ever inflicted in her life was to wring a chicken's neck to feed the family or kill a fly with a fly swatter. She was such a kind and caring person.
When Linda Cooper and her husband, Willie, came to my aunt's trailer that day, she would have probably given them whatever of her meager possessions they desired, if they had only asked. She was that kind of person.
But, these two members of a roving band of self-proclaimed gypsies were not satisfied just taking her meager possessions. They had to do more. They had to beat her within a breath of her life. For all practical purposes, Lucile Wylie's life as she had enjoyed it ended that day. Although she lived on for some months, she was never more the same--either mentally or physically. They--Linda and Willie Cooper--took her life. On that dreadful day in 1988, this 86-year-old lady was severely beaten and left for dead. It was all so useless--all so needless. She was choked. She was kicked. She was beaten.
Linda Cooper was a willing participant in this violent crime. We don't know whether she went in the trailer and participated in the beating--but if she didn't, she stayed outside and served as a lookout. She knew what her husband was there for-she knew what she was there for. Linda Cooper shared in the spoils when her husband and those other bits of scum of society took advantage of old folks. Yes, I said old folks--senior citizens. They were real brave souls--they only chose old folks--folks who normally could not defend themselves--as their victims. That's what they preyed on--old folks. When she was arrested, Linda Cooper was wearing Lucile Wylie's Mothers' Ring. Linda Cooper was a willing participant in this crime.
Apparently Linda Cooper's only occupation has been as a participant in robbing, beating, murdering and brutalizing old folks. This is the only kind of life she has known. If she is released form prison, she likely will join another band of gypsies and be back doing the same thing again within a short period of time. Society has enough problems without putting another one back on the street in the form of Linda Cooper. It is by belief that Linda Cooper is not worthy of ever being free again. I respectfully ask that you deny her request for parole today.
Thank-you.
Note: Several of us went to this hearing and after Robert's eloquent presentation, Linda Cooper was ordered to spend the rest of her sentence in prison.
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This was my first trip to a Board Certified Skin Doctor. My problems were small compared to the multitude of teen agers searching for an Acne cure.
The Final Frontier
A Short Story
Americans spend millions of dollars each year for that perfect thrill. The fad chasers, the sexual experimenters and the drug trade attest to this. There is one area of sheer pleasure that has been sadly neglected. I wish to pay tribute and give equal time to the Final Thrill.
Back from the jungles, the anthropologist found that our monkey cousins spend a great deal of time grooming each other. They will catch fleas, ticks, pick scabs and other such from each other as part of their social interaction. Mankind has not lost this grooming urge, even though it has lain dormant for centuries.
One day our near ancestor was grooming her mate, or whatever, she noticed a blackhead. She, being the kind soul of that day, decided to relieve him of this problem.
The squeezeness of the moment overcame her as the triumphant plop of the blackhead lay gently exposed to light. She wiped the drool from her mouth as her eyes searched for more and more little enjoyments. To hell with pot and other such, let acne prevail.
As humankind became more developed, this calling, from our past, became more of an obsession. The squeezer finds equal satisfaction extracting from himself/herself as well as others. If a squeezer observes a blackhead on a stranger, they become fixated. When the nervous jitters start, the urge to fasten a quick squeeze on a large one becomes almost irresistible.
The enlightened ones have trophy mirrors in their intersanctum. Alone, they watch a blackhead grow and develop to maturity. Then in the last possible moment, a quick squeeze and a thrilling plop. On the mirror there are impact locations and dates of blackheads that have reached the trophy stage, on display, for all to see.
The free enterprise system has responded to the challenge. Several manufactures have brought different versions of extractors to the market. The most noble innovation has been announced by the American Medical Association, The K/H Procedure. The K/H procedure means, Knot in Hole.
This procedure is performed under local anesthetic, where a small nylon string, about fourteen inches long, is implanted into a developing blackhead. The recovery time is about three days. The only visible sign is a small string hanging from a pore.
A K/H encounter group is arranged as a party. All present can be identified by the small, almost invisible, string peeking through a pore. Sometime the string is hidden by clothing.
Drinks and conversation flow freely as the magic hour nears. All watch as the second hand approaches, a signal is given. The strings are pulled out, one knot at a time, as they scream and writhe on the floor in ecstasy.
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Thyroid
Remove Left Thyroid
I arrived at the hospital at 8:00 AM Monday, July 6, 1998. My paper work and blood test were done the week before. Pat, my wife, and I were seated in a booth where a needle was inserted and taped to my right arm. The IV was dripping. My blood pressure and temperature were recorded. We sat watching the hospital employees move in and out, always with little important things, like needles with hoses attached, pills, bandages and such, clutched in their hand. I waited for my turn.
In about two hours I was transferred to a gurney and rolled into the pre-op waiting room. The surgeon and sleep peddler came by and said I would be OK. For the 1000th time I told them my teeth wouldn't come out and I was not, to my best ability, I was not allergic to any medicine. Waiting on surgery is stressful, so as my blood pressure started to climb; I started to pee frequently. At about 11:30 AM, I received a happy shot and at 12:00 I said good by to Pat and was rolled into the operating room. I lay there in a narcotic bliss watching every one float around in the impersonal swath of hospital garb. The sleep guy told me to uncross my legs at the ankle.
I woke up in the surgery recovery room, where some one was trying to put an oxygen mask over my face. He sat with me about an hour and talked endlessly about Satellite TV. Then I was rolled into my room, where Pat was waiting for me. It was about 3:30 PM. Pat stayed about an hour and half then I got up and found the nurses coffee pot and had a cup of good hot coffee. The nurse's coffeepot was behind a closed door, authorized personnel only. However, I could go around the back way and there was an open door to the coffee, without the cursed, "Authorized Personnel Only", sign. I walked around some and went to bed. I had not experienced any pain, just a little discomfort from the bandage on my neck. Anyway, I realized I could not pass water and was feeling some discomfort. The IV was still dripping; I could feel the water building up. Fighting panic, I punched the button and told them I wanted a catheter, SOONER RATHER THAN LATER, MORE RATHER THAN LESS. This was a blessing.
The urologist came by with the usual examination and pills. I was glad to see him though. If there is one thing I have learned in life it is, a urologist can have a rubber glove on his hand quicker than you can blink your eye.
I punched the button for a happy shot and went into the twilight zone. I did not sleep well, just floated between sleep and dreams.
The next day, by 10:00 AM, I could feel all the water parts beginning to relax so I got them to remove the Foley Catheter. I still had a little trouble, but was passing, producing LESS RATHER THAN MORE, SLOW RATHER THAN FAST.
At about 10:30 I got up, shaved, sponge bath, more coffee and talked to the Doctor. I was to spend another day. My desire was to trade my happy shots for a sleeping pill that night. The Doctor agreed. Pat came by and we talked and watched TV then she went home. My kids called several times while I was confined, and it was good to talk to them.
About 9 PM the nurse brought me a sleeping pill, or something, and I slept through the 4-hour blood pressure and temperature checks during the night.
The morning of the third day, I got the IV needle removed from my arm. Now, I put on my own pajamas and bathrobe after shaving and cleaning up. It's good to have on your own clothes. I felt good, I was ready to go.
The Surgeons nurse, a pretty thing with an projection of confidence that set me at ease, dressed my incision, gave me detailed instructions then set me free.
Pat came and got me and I went home to my dogs. As I sat in the tub, that night with the steady throb of the water pump bathing my bones with hot water, both dogs put their front legs on the tub and licked my face. It's good to have two good dogs.
I was hungry and Pat had a bunch of stuff cooked up, I pigged out. I am doing very well with only one thyroid and taking a pill each day. I don't seem as tired as I did before. Every thing they removed was B9. That is Decimal 185. That's it, (This is my last dissertation on operations and things like that.) Lanty Wylie
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To Join
I asked David, "If you were going to join a religion, which one would it be?" He told me that he would join the one that offered the most benefits with the least amount of effort on his part.
What is the flip side? Would it be to join a religion that offers the least benefits for the most effort. A middle of the road approach perhaps? A medium amount of benefits for a medium amount of effort would be good. I know of no sin in looking for the best place to lay my guilt. Well, at the moment I have no guilt or plans along those lines, but I am looking.
"Consumer Reports", should have a yearly addition and list the different religions, their requirements and benefits. We could set down and make a logical choice. Every once in a while, as we near the year 2000, there would be a supplement on Cults. Some of the Cults offer slim benefits, but sometime the requirement is suicide as a maximum effort.
My personal pick would be a Science or Technical Religion. I could really get caught up in that. Hell would be a lack of Electrical Current Flow. Heaven would be a Current Flow with an efficiency of one. The true believers would have so much current flow they would have developed a residual magnet field. When they died their soul would align to the North Pole.
One more Scotch and then to bed. Lanty Wylie
Marthaville
On September 19, 1998, Pat, my wife, and I loaded up the truck, put our
lovely dog Natalie in the Vet and headed out to
We arrived in Many about 2:15 P.M. at my Cousin Robert's Museum, next door
to his pawnshop and newspaper. Robert gave us a tour of the Museum and then he
was off to
This was my first time to go in the Park. Robert had sent us a
The Master of Ceremonies was the former producer of the Old Louisiana
Hayride on KWKH in
A gospel quartet led the singing. They were good and the audience really got into the festive mood. Every one really enjoyed the music. At last the Star, Jimmie Davis, got out of his tour bus and came on the stage. His band, yes he has a band, had prepared a seat for him in front of a microphone. This man is 99 years old. This man sung for an hour and a half those good old songs he wrote 60 years ago. "Green Green Grass of Home", "You are my Sunshine", "Nobody's Darling but Mine", and other good songs. A dozen or more moved down on the grass and made themselves comfortable in front of the stage. They had come to hear Jimmie Davis sing, it was great..
Jimmie Davis was a schoolteacher, then got a Masters Degree in History. He entered Politics and became Governor of Louisiana. He remains the most educated Governor Louisiana, at that time.
After the singing and messages from all the living presidents were read, (I
noticed the most applause was for Ronald Regan's letter), three ex-governors.
One of those ex-governors was Edwin Edwards. The only governor of Louisiana for
4 terms. He made several jokes about the FBI being after him, etc. What really
struck me is the fact that just about everyone there shook hands and had their
picture taken with him. Robert introduced me and I shook his hand. He never
quits working the crowds. People bring their children up for him to pat on the
head. (A blessing, perhaps?) In this realization, if the Government tries to
punish him in
Time to leave, I consulted our map for our escape route. (I should have
known better, you ask someone.) and off we went into the night. Nice black top
road, cool night, up over a hill and BAM we are on a dirt road. I mean a real,
real small dirt road. We turn around and go the other way, finally find a road
to the Interstate and head North to
It is late and we decide to unload at the first motel. Well in Shreveport
ALL motel rooms are already taken on the weekends. The Motel lady asked me
which way we were heading, East or West, I said, "West". She told us
we might find something in
We got on I20 and stopped at Exit 5, Kelly's Truck Stop, aspirin, coffee and
supper brought us to life again. We still had a mindset to stay one night out,
so we stopped in
We had a real good time, miss my Dog Natalie Baby, but I will get her the first thing Monday morning.
Note: The government finally got a conviction on Edwin Edwards. He is in the Federal Pen as I write this entry in 2006.
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Tears
Copyright © 1991-2017
by Lanty H. Wylie, Jr. All Rights Reserved
(These thoughts for Laurie.)
I kept the small leather thing,
with the metal tags,
this proclaimed my good dog.
One night, years ago, it is hard to tie down,
that day as it floats in the mist of my thoughts.
The Vet handed me that leather thing,
It was still warm.
My life times are best counted by all the good dogs I've had.
They were all good dogs.
Years have passed and my life moves on;
As I cleaned out my stuff, accumulated through the years.
I found that leather thing, with the metal tags.
I held it up to my face,
It was still warm.
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The Septic Tank
Our new (new to us) house at
This is an Ideal System for the anal-retentive. You may have to eventually drop it in the commode, but Not To Worry, you can save it in the Septic Tank in the back yard.
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WEATHERFORD
Rambling
Summer of 1998
The sun shines 2 minutes less each day now. That is one hour less each month
that hot
Some where North of Canada, this accumulation of cold will spill forth on us
as the days continue to shorten. When I feel that first North wind, that chill
we thought in this Summer of 1998 would never come, I will go to
This is one place the old west left its memories, a foot print from time
past. Those hardy souls from Lonesome Dove and a Medal of Honor Winner from The
War Between The States, are there, in
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RUNNING WITH A SONG
I was in
I thought everyone in the world liked Hillbilly music until I heard
classical melodies coming from the mailroom. Martin Bomser ran the mailroom.
The Air Force made him carry a 45
It was obvious that to me, hearing a song of melody for the first time brought only a learning experience. If I was to like this piece of music, I had to submit my mind to a specific mind frame and hear the music several times. That was what peaked my interest, the mind frame. It seemed that as a favorite piece of music started to play, I would develop this mind frame, this process of thought that would exactly match the music as it went along. Actually I was starting my own recording, in my mind, that I had developed when I accepted this piece of music as enjoyable. So then I would play my version, in my mind, and listen to the audio version and as they exactly matched, it was pleasurable to me. Actually I was accepting the premise and thought train of the music as the musical story played out, accepting it as my own emotion and thought. This was good for harmless pleasurable music, but what about the destructive emotional music that we are subjected to every day?
When we listen to the emotional drama of broken lives depicted by some hillbilly and rap songs, do we really want to emulate these actions? What, I think, happens is that we condition our minds to consider these actions as normal human behavior. Music has been with us for time immemorial and is constantly changing to reflect our moral and societal thinking. It was interesting for me to delve into my own thoughts on this subject. It is up to each of us to realize this external stimulation can be rewarding or destructive, to further realize that it is not real, in a sense that we are voyeurs into the song writers imagination.
Do we wonder why we are so up tight, when we constantly stimulate our mind with high emotional kinds of music, as we are hypnotizing ourselves in this culture. Do we really want our lives to play out, using this type of high emotional music as a pattern? It is something to consider, another choice you must make, or be carried along with the crowd.
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Puddler Bill Lives Here
At night when I unload the dishwasher and close up the house, Puddler Bill settles in between my chair and the end table. From this position, with head alert, he can observe every move I make.
It is cold outside, so I get my heavy robe and go the front door. I know those two anxious eyes are on me. I ask if he wants to go outside. He breaks and runs for the door. As I reach to pick him up, I always say, "want lift?," he stiffens his body, I pick him up then place him against my chest, bringing the folds of my robe around him. My ten-pound dog is secure. All you can see is his head sticking out just below my chin.
We go out in the cold. Sometime a cold shutter goes through Puddler Bill. I hold him closer. With my hand holding my robe next to his chest, I can feel the beat, beat of his little heart.
Out past the cars, we check for cats around the garbage cans. In the dark his head moves to the slightest noise. I feel him breathe quickly in puffs to scent the cold north wind with that little wet black nose. We stop, I lean my back on the car and enjoy the cold night. No matter how cold, that little warm body is like a heating pad against my chest. After a while, we start back up the walk. Now he wants to get down on the grass and mark his yard. Now others will know, Puddler Bill lives here.
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Forgive
With pen in hand I dread to start,
to write or rhyme a story plot,
that I would write what others said,
makes me mad and very sad.
So, if you stumble through my prose,
by some mistake or just dumb luck,
another's thoughts might have arose,
Please forgive me if I claim,
your thoughts as mine, T's not the same.
If it's your thoughts I write today,
give thanks that I remembered,
yes, cross out my name and enter thine,
the world is right, the sun still shines.
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Groups
The best definition of Management I found was in the United States Air Force literature. getting people to do what you want them to do, because they want to do it." The study of people joining groups and why, is what I will describe, some voluntary and some involuntary.
Why do people join groups? I joined the Air Force to stay out of the Army Draft. So I joined a group; I gave up something in hope of gaining a greater benefit by belonging to the group, the Air Force. I did not get drafted in the Army because I saw by joining the Army I would be giving up too much for too little gain, in my opinion.
One of the first examples of joining a group and then having to give up something, for a hope of a greater good, is in the bible: "Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."
So the two things of organization building is in these passages.
1. What do I give up? I have to consent to the yoke upon me. We know that this refers to a yoke an ox uses to pull objects. So if there is any doubt about joining this organization and it's requirements, just look at the ox. Then to soften the yoke, "my burden is light', still a yoke nonetheless.
2. What do I gain? The sales point, the gain is, "ye shall find rest unto your souls". If the gain is important to you, then joining this organization might be appealing.
So the recruiting plan is laid out, give up something to join the group, gain something by belonging to the group. There is only one exception of people joining a group, not giving up something, not gaining something. The exception is the graveyard. People gathered together in the graveyard have really no rational purpose, and no apparent gain.
Even when people do charity work, with no apparent gain, there is gain. It is called self-actualization, an improving of self worth, feeling good about yourself.
So when you make friends, work, belong to groups, get married, get arrested or any other interaction humans have, these two things never change. Give up something, gain something.
Yes, even when you get arrested by the police, you give up your freedom instead of getting beat up, chased down, or shot. Give up something, gain something.
Committing to a Group and the Gain or result of that could be a difficult choice. A Manager must present a clear case of what is expected in the Group and the reward involved. Give up something, gain something. It is a way of life.
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TELL
ME A WAR STORY GRANDPA
In memory of Lewis Lancelot Johnson my
Great Grandpa
Died April 1862 at Shiloh
We dug in just before daylight,
I could hear them Yanks cooking and moving around.
I would have felt better if old Sam was with me, he took sick.
Daylight came too fast, our sergeant was by with the ammo detail.
I could smell that Yankee coffee.
Up and down the line it got quiet,
we waited.
Small arms fire off to the right, then the earth shook.
Just a little low place for me behind a sweetgum tree, load and fire, load and fire.
The soft pop and whine of death became the rhythm of my soul.
The old man grabbed me with a frantic moment,
"I was there", his voice trailed off to a sob, "I was there".
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Remembering Ruben
My daughter's little poodle puppy, Jo-Jo, was killed by a car.
At that time, Jo-Jo was accompanied by his companion Ruben, a Beagle mix.
Laurie, my daughter, found Ruben on the street, he was a throwaway dog.
Remembering is the "bad day", the day Jo-Jo was killed, through Rubens eyes
Remembering
I don't remember much about being dumped on the street.
Jo-Jo told me about that later.
I remember my master, with the long blond hair.
I missed being taken from my Mother's milk and her warm body.
The old farm road was cold and I was shaking.
I try not to think about it.
There I found my master.
When I got to my new home, I met Jo-Jo.
He took me under his care and taught me everything I know.
We ran so free, in the tall grass, in the warm mud.
Time passed quickly, we explored everything.
The world was ours.
Sometime we would sleep on our master's bed.
The bad day came, the car was too fast, things I don't understand.
As I lay and chew my raw-hide, I think of you Jo-Jo,
I look at my master, she is remembering you too.
Ruben. Epilogue....
Ruben moved to
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The Coke Bottle
A View of Ruby Ridge Through a Coke Bottle
One fine day, two businessmen were setting in Dennys talking over the days events. Coffee was consumed in great gulps as pressing events were discussed and plans made, as in the course of business. Over in the corner a very young lad was crying and demanding attention from parents that were immune to these outbursts. One of the men said, "Give that kid a bottle, that will silence him." Within ear shot of this statement sat 2 Agents from Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms, also discussing the days events. The word silence was noted with great alarm when associated with bottle.
When the businessmen left Dennys, a note was made of their license number by ATF and quickly called in for the name of the vehicle owner and address. Not only could the agents charge off the time at Dennys to investigative work, but there might be a firearms violation here. Silencers are prohibited by Federal Law. After testing, it was determined that a plastic coke bottle placed over the muzzle of a gun will muffle the sound when fired.
The next week an official ATF informant paid a visit to the businessman at his home. The informant rang the doorbell and asked if he could buy a silencer from him. The business man said, "Hell no, I don't know what you are talking about." The informant said, "You know, a silencer from a plastic coke bottle." When the door slammed in his face, the informant left to report to his supervisor. The informant was getting paid in tax money by the hour. He reported to his supervisor that he had seen coke bottles through the open door and knew that he could wear the man down into selling him a coke bottle silencer.
After two years (ATF informants get paid by the hour) of having ATF informants appear at all hours of the day and night trying to purchase a coke bottle silencer the man finally reached the end of his patience.
One Sunday morning, the man grabbed an empty coke bottle and threw it at the informant with the admonition, "Take this and stick it up your ass."
The informant knew he had struck real pay dirt. He had a coke bottle silencer. His supervisor was elated, all these long hours of surveillance with phone taps and observation had paid off. It was obvious this was a Major Arms Supplier as empty coke bottles were seen on the premises. A warrant was issued for the man.
In
By this time,
Late one afternoon the businessman's son, a young lad of fifteen years, about 80 pounds, was playing with his dog in the yard. The dogs ears perked up and he ran for this man that jumped out from behind a tree in their yard. As the dog approached, a well placed 9-mm. bullet took the top off of the dogs head. The boy seeing what happened turned to run to his dad standing in the doorway, with the coke bottle still in his hand. Another shot and as the 9-mm. slug passed through the boy's back, it nearly took off his arm. He slumped down in death, reaching for the door of his home and safety, eyes set in death, they seem to focus to that far off place we all must view. The man raced to his son's side as another shot rang out, making a small blue fringed hole in the mans shoulder, but passing on through. The mans wife standing in the door holding a baby took a 308 cal. bullet and died there.
The operation was a great success. All the plastic coke bottles were placed in a great pile as the press fawned and fawned and fawned. In "The buck stops here place"
As 400 law enforcement agents departed the empty house, it was obvious this
was just a drill, a practice run. There is this religious group in
Note: At this time Richard Jewell was probably unaware that his life would be the center of another purge by our government. Search Richard Jewell on Google.
Another government atrocity is the Donald Scott case October 1992. Search Donald Scott on Google.
Another government atrocity is the Bob Hoover vendetta by the Federal Aviation
Administration (FAA). Several employees of the FAA, according to reports, were
out to get Bob Hoover. Reference search on Google, Clint Boehler, James Kelln
and Glen J. Nelson. The only employee to take the witness stand in support of
Another government atrocity is U.S. District Court Judge Kathleen Cardone in
It never seems to end – Search Google for Senator Ted Stevens.
Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska – Born November 18, 1923 Died August 8,
2010.
Stevens was hounded from the Senate by Gross Prosecutorial Misconduct by the
United States Justice Department.
His indictment and conviction was thrown out by the presiding Federal Judge.
2012 – Case Against Hutaree Milita Thrown Out: U.S. District Judge Victoria Roberts said the members’ expressed hatred of law enforcement didn’t amount to a conspiracy to rebel against the government. The FBI had secretly planted an informant and an FBI agent inside the Hutaree militia starting in 2008 to collect hours of anti-government audio and video that became the cornerstone of the case. Google this for a complete record.
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Puppies All
Over the years, we (I use "we" as the collective humankind.) have bred and conditioned dogs to the point where they no longer mature to full adult dogs, but remain in the PUPPY state through out their life.
Our K9 friends were only copying the behavior of their human teachers. Humans are bred and conditioned to remain in that childlike state through out their life. It seems grown humans still seek to be children as they play the games and worship at the feet of the Sports Industry. We, it seems, have never reached the Adult stage by putting away those childish games of our youth and moving on to the responsibilities of an adult society.
Our government adds to this conditioning by refusing to let people be responsible for their own actions. The government wants its citizens to be dependent on it from the cradle to the grave, never developing those adult skills of personal responsibility and self-determination. WE ARE PUPPIES ALL.
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My Problem
My best guess would put me at 19 years old before I realized that I didn't have a backbone. I had heard people talk about this condition, but I never thought it applied to me as well. I really never missed it.
I was working on a construction job in
The first night I spent in a fox hold hearing bombs go off, I knew then and there I must find my backbone. You can't tell your friends, "Hey, I don't have a backbone. Would you help me find it?" It seems that once you know it's gone, you really miss it. Getting it back is a mental conditioning, learn-as-you-go, do-it-yourself type thing.
I wanted to quit smoking - right, no backbone, couldn't quit. I wanted to study Radio Technology on my own, same thing, no backbone. I called on the spirits, distilled and divine, no help there.
As I struggled with this problem during my year in
At last the revelation came to me as I neared 60 years of age. Having a backbone s not a permanent installation. It's something that requires constant attention. Your backbone builds on every success or can be taken away on every failure of your will to do something, when you do nothing. As all other things in life, it is strictly up to you.
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Last Night
Last night I felt two little paws on the side of my bed.
It was such a dark lonely night and she is such a little dog.
Someone wanted to share this night with me.
I picked her up, she found a good place to dig up the blanket a bit, circle twice and settle in.
I pulled the covers up and was drifting to dreamland
when I felt my little girl dog snuggle up to my back.
It was such a dark and lonely night and she is such a little dog.
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The Pack
When I arrived in
So on this trip, I had Pat concerned about me and Natalie concerned about me. What was this common thread, if there was one? With Pat, I have years of close attachments, experiences and a bond of that very human emotion called love.
Natalie, my very devoted dog, presented a problem. Any assumptions I made would receive no input from Natalie or verification by Natalie, the only one who would know.
So, I must use what I do know to make a leap, ( A Step?) toward this event.
Sex, food and status in the pack is a dogs hierarchy of well being, (Regards to Maslov). Dogs constantly know their status in the pack. In this case, Natalie knows that Niki, our male dog, is the lead dog. She would also know that my attention to her, defined by my position, gives her a certain status in our family pack.
Now then, if I departed and never came back, Natalie would have to reorganize her life as to food provider and attention giver. Her life (Status) would suffer a major unknown change. She waits for my return, to reestablish the status quo and she is happy in that role. As for me, I have no idea.
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Omphalism
After wandering the land for many years, I saw a country not focused on the future and its problems. Instead, its leaders were too busy contemplating their navel. With this fixation no one was aware, no one could even tell you which way the wind was blowing. The pleadings of the people were lost. I must be off, my journey, my truth. A narrow path led me to the foothills of a great mountain range. I could see in the distance a darkness. The top of this great mountain was in a dark cloud and rain. A cold wind whispered questions in my ear for the night to ponder. As I walked into this darkness, I saw a thin streamer of smoke rising through the trees. I approached the village I knew, without words, that few were welcomed, none without knowledge.
I slept, with fits and starts, by the common fire. It seemed most of the villagers passed by for a look during the night. In the morning I talked with the old ones and learned of a cave. There was a cave of wisdom in the higher reaches. Few that trod its path returned of sound mind. I must go.
I left the village on an upward path. My resolve and confidence increased. My soul, my soul, what will tomorrow bring.
The rugged climb and clean air took hold of me and renewed my strength. On
the evening of the third day, I entered the
I entered a room lit through a small hole in the west wall. A bathroom mirror hung in the center of the room. I approached the mirror and saw myself. Mirror, I asked, is it the function of government to constantly erode the constitution, our basic freedoms? The mirror answered, "Yes, it always has been." What happens then?
The mirror answered, "We are at a point where, it is obvious, that the government does not trust its citizens. The source of its power and wealth. It has always been this way to some extent. The government constantly erodes the basic freedom and rights of the citizens, FOR THEIR OWN GOOD, until the citizens overthrow the oppressors. Of course, the government knew this would happen someday and they are afraid."
What started this thing, this slide into chaos?
The mirror grew dark as the light faded, but in a steady voice said, "Every special interest group, over the years, has petitioned the government for its cause. Most of the time those causes have been written into law. (1) These special interest laws weaken the organization pressing for the law as the special interest groups loose their cause, their reason for an existence. (2) The special interest or accommodation laws are enacted on the backs of all the rest of us. We as a group have to fund, support and obey these junk laws." One last question, "What is the future."
The Mirror answered, "My son, everyone, every undertaking, even you, will have a beginning a middle and an end, governments included."
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The Question
Does religion bring happiness and promote well being?
(David) The educated elite in both the Greek and the Roman times did not believe in religion, or were only mild deist. Of course, the elite on our own Western civilization has not believed in religion for about 300 years.
(Mark) My assertion is that all societies throughout history have had an
underling mythology. This implies that the majority of the population must
believe the prevailing myths. The task of the educated elite is to discredit
the mythos. By discrediting the mythos they define themselves as the educated
elite. Ancient
(David) As Marx said, religion is mostly the belief of the uneducated (that seems to be being changed today, since most education today is technical or legal, which is not really education in the traditional sense).
(Mark) Marxist theory caused some of the greatest fiascos in human history!
The old
(David) There can be no doubt that religion has killed many societies. Sociology has evidence that religion increases when social pressures increase, that it's a type of adaptive behavior for men living in harsher, closer, poorer environments.
(Mark) All societies will eventually die. It is lack of a common mythos that
speeds up the process. One of the defining factors of a society in decline is a
lack of morals. Some examples: Greek,
(David) Religion, when it works like it evidently is supposed to, probably make a society more stable, because by burning people at the stake, etc., it provides a common enemy to hate and kill.
(Mark) True, a common mythos.
(David) Certainly the goal of Christianity is not (earthly) happiness, so I doubt that you could say it makes people happier. It does reduce fear and stress and provides the satisfaction of an evil force. Rulers love it, of course (as do priests).
(Mark) The polls I have read show religious people are happier.
(David) I explained Pascal's wager (and refutation) to you years ago. One final point: All societies before ours knew nothing about the world (in a scientific sense). Shall we conclude that lack of scientific knowledge is "necessary for humans to cope or exist in this world?" Note: Blaise Pascal (1623 - 1662) Pascal's reasoning was that since nothing was known exactly, the Christian faith was a good as any other. The gain from such a belief was much greater than the loss for not believing. This is known as Pascal's Wager. (Note: However, Pascal's logic was defective in that he considered only two possibilities, when there are four. Another flaw in Pascal's reasoning it the possibility of choosing the correct religion. This is the number of all known religions divided into one.)
(Mark) Belief in the mythos is outside the bounds of "scientific knowledge." Einstein had one of the greatest scientific minds in the 20th century, yet he believed in God. Note: Einstein said he did not believe in any God.
(David) Just because all societies in the past have believed in superstitions, falsehoods, and religion does not mean that it is necessary, justifiable, or will always be the case.
(Mark) The fact that every society has had myths is very strong evidence that it is necessary part of human culture. What else would hold a society together? I am not trying to justify or predicate anything.
(David) All progress has been the result of replacing false beliefs with testable truths. Shall we defend slavery because all societies until about 100 years ago accepted it?
(Mark) Not all societies have had slaves. Slavery came about in a time when cheap physical labor was needed to accumulate wealth. The industrial revolution decreased the need for labor and slavery disappeared. Myths survived these changes because it is an emotional need. You are comparing apples to oranges.
(David) -- Or that disease was caused by evil spirits or vapors? Religion is born out of man's dreams, nightmares, and ignorance. It has probably caused more deaths and misfortune than any other idea invented by mankind. Only when this kind of magical thinking is dead can man think rationally and freely.
(Mark) It is true myths have caused a lot of death and destruction. Science has provided the weapons to increase the body count. Again, I am not trying to justify myths. I am stating what is.
(David)
(Mark) The point I was making was that there are very intelligent people who believe in myths. Because myths are an emotional need.
(David) I won't defend Marx's political or economic theories, nor did I cite them. But his observation that religion is the opiate of the masses is certainly true, and is a scientifically testable assertion.
(Mark) How can you scientifically test that a belief (myth) will have the same effects on your body as a narcotic? Why don't drug addicts read the bible instead of shooting up? Bibles are a lot cheaper (sometimes free) than opiates.
(David) That people who believe in fantasies, state in a poll, that they are happier is no proof that they are. Psychologists since Maslov have demonstrated in more reliable ways that religious people have more fears, strive to live more sheltered lives, have more difficulty dealing with change, and produce unhappy children than free-thinkers. As your Father has pointed out many times, people who are afraid of flying are almost always very religious. Some comparative anthropologists have suggested that the societies with the least religion are the healthiest.
(Mark) What are freethinkers? Are these the people of the 1960's who were
"free" and crashed and burned on the excesses of dope and sex? If religious
people are so miserable why don't they stop believing? Nothing is forcing
people to believe in myths. If you had a thorn in you side would you pull it
out or let it fester? The greatest societies in the word have had strong myths:
(David) That religious beliefs have hastened the death of societies is a
well-documented fact. To name 2 well-known cases:
(Mark) The cause of the death of
(David) The argument in Gibbon's book is not that
(Mark) The last Emperor (I believe it was Nero) was converted too
Christianity. By all accounts I read, Nero was insane. The fall of
(David) Finally, by using the word mythos, you obscure your argument. Does mythos include the belief that the Earth is flat, that stars are gods, that the creator of a cosmos wants animals killed and bled for his propitiation, that birth control is a mortal sin, etc? Are all these beliefs "outside the bounds of "scientific knowledge?" Other than very general assertions such as there is a god, all other religious beliefs are certainly within the realm of scientific knowledge. Two examples: a virgin birth and a human coming back from the dead after 3 days. You don't think science has anything to say about these beliefs?
(Mark) It's hard to define the mythos. Because the definition changes from culture to culture from time to time. The mythos is dependent on people's emotional needs, and these needs change over time. All myths are symbolic. A virgin birth is symbolic of the birth of a prophet. The Buddha was a virgin birth (born out of his mothers side). Symbols are not to be taken literally.
(David) I propose a draw.
(Mark) I accept.
The notes are my comments.
Copyright © 1996-2017 by Lanty H. Wylie, Jr. All Rights Reserved.
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Comfort Zone
September 23, 2010
After again reading John Dickey’s “Looking for the Buckhead Boys,” and talking to you about the longing to once again go back to Olive Street, these thoughts came to mind.
We tend to visualize most of our actions before we start on a task. We fantasize the task and its outcome. At the start of our day, we think and plan for the days task, ever-so-small or ever-so-large. Some actions we have done before and require little thought or no planning to do again. Common tasks we do are a reflex type action. This reflex action gets some of us in trouble. Take for instance, in the military, we are taught to never put our finger on the trigger of a weapon until we are ready to shoot. If you finger is on the trigger and something startles us, we pull the trigger, a reflex action.
In our youth most of us enjoyed the safety and security of a home life, playing with friends, good food, nice home and other things we enjoyed. This way of life became our Comfort Zone.
All animals seek their Comfort Zone, a place where they are secure and satisfied.
In the pressure of adult life we remember the Comfort Zone of our child hood and wish to return.
We cannot return to the Comfort Zone we fantasize from our youth, it exists no more.
Just think, you are creating a Comfort Zone for your family that some day they will try to recapture.
Then you have succeeded!
Lanty Wylie,
The Elder
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Walking one day in a grave yard, I called forth a ghost from its slumber.
I said to it, "What is it you do?" The ghost replied, "I am dead, the business of being dead is a full time job."
I sat down under a tree, to reflect on this field of death, with its lust for everlasting life.
I could picture in my minds eye the never ending struggle of man and the finality of the grave.
This vast graveyard is a meeting place for all of us.
As a deep sadness came over me, I heard a voice from the heavens say,
"Leave my creation alone. Let mankind do what it does best."
Best
I raise my glass, a toast to you,
The human race so fine,
With faults and hoary calluses,
of love and thoughts divine.
Drink up, my lads, and smile for me,
Good gals and all my friends,
This party we have started,
It seems will never end.
Let's live today, and damn the rest,
We'll do this thing with zest,
We are waiting here till doomsday,
Then - we will do - what we do best.
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The Old Ones
© 2013 - Lanty Wylie
I set and wonder, I feel the echo
that resonates through the cold night.
Somewhere there sleeps Horus.
Shush, make not a sound,
the great eye of Ra sleeps.
Do Gods dream of eons gone by, but never
of what might have been?
The soft splash of an oar to ferry another soul
to the God’s dream.
Don’t wake the old ones; breathe in hushed silence,
all Gods not disturbed are the best dream.
Turn, pull the covers up, let the cold wind blow;
pray the footsteps are not for you.
Finally
Yes, you can take it with you when you go.
All my memories save these written here, I will take for myself.
The world is flat; when you die you can't get back.
The end.