We had only one athletic banquet while I was in school, which was held my senior year. Bob Pettit of the St. Louis Hawks was the guest speaker, and he presented the five trophies that were awarded. I got three of them. One was for "Most Valuable Back", one for "Most Valuable Trackman", and the last one was the "Athletic Scholastic Award". So three times I had to go up to this ten foot giant in order for him to nearly break my right hand! As strange as it might seem, I completely lost interest in sports participation after that night. I was invited to run at the "Meet of Champs" in New Orleans, and I said no thanks, I was invited to play in the "North South All Star Football game, and I said no thanks. I even turned down a scholarship to West Point, because they did not have a School of Pharmacy! Just think, that was my chance to be Oliver North, and I just passed it up, pretty damned dumb!
The old football injury I spoke of earlier occurred on a play where right guard, Thonis Buteaux, was assigned to pull down the line on a rollout passing play. He was to block anyone such as the defensive end or the cornerback if either of them were to come after me! The "Bute" did not pull, and the entire right side of the defense came down upon me! My ankle was twisted so badly that it swelled up as large as my knee! I was a lame duck quarterback for the rest of my sophomore season, and basketball was a distant memory. About thirty years later I saw Thonis, and I asked him why he did not pull on that play. He vehemently denied that it was his assignment, but he was not quite sure which play we were talking about. I told him that it was a left 58 rollout pass, but he said it could not possibly have been that one! One would need to know Thonis Buteaux in order to appreciate the humor in what I am saying here!! The "Bute" not unlike the "Doza" was and still is one of a kind! I loved to get him fired up in the huddle, he would bite the shit out of his hand, and come out like a steamroller! I remember all too well, when "Sunk Eye", Jerry Guillotte, was going to box the "Bute" at noon recess in the gym. "Sunk Eye" went all around school telling all of the girls to be certain to be there on the appointed day to watch him whip the hell out of the "Bute"! Well, that fateful day arrived very shortly, and sure enough the gym was packed, and "Sunk Eye" flailed away wildly until he was totally exhausted. It was at this point that the "Bute" began moving in for the kill. He threw straight, deliberate jabs, and before "Sunk Eye" gave up, the "Bute" had nearly killed him!
The first auto accident I was ever involved in happened on a Thursday afternoon after football practice. On Thursday's we just worked out without pads, and we would take our equipment with us after practice so that we would be prepared for the game on Friday night. This particular Thursday, Larry Dupuy and Thomas Barker were riding in the front seat of "Dup's" '53 Chevy, and the "Bute" and I were in the back seat. We had just dropped the "Bute" off at his house near Baldwin, when "Dup" reached into the back to retrieve his duffel bag full of equipment. I was the only one with my eyes on the road. I saw the car going off to the right toward a ditch about six feet deep. I said ,"Dup watch the road", but he kept reaching for the duffel bag! He turned back toward the road just in time to run off into the ditch. Barker had to go to the emergency room to have glass dug out of his face and his scalp. The car was smashed from the roof down to the bottom of the passenger side door. There were no serious injuries, fortunately, but "Dup" eventually taped a piece of plastic over the gaping hole that the shattered window had left. He drove that thing around for two or three years just like that! As ridiculous as it looked, it still served as transportation for those of us who were brave enough to ride in it!
The day after I graduated from high school, I went to work for Kerr McGee Oil Industries. My first assignment was assistant base operator in Leeville, LA. I stayed there the entire summer, and saved enough money to make it through two semesters of college. Had it not been for Kerr McGee? I doubt that I would have been able to go to college at all. I was able to save about twelve hundred dollars every summer, and I saw to it that I did not spend more than I had! I can't say that there were not times when a "Care Package" would have been welcome, but if you want something badly enough, you can hold your breath just long enough to attain your goal!
I can say in all honesty, that I really enjoyed my days and nights with KerMac! I worked with some good people, and established some relationships that I still cherish today! I worked in some crummy places, and did some crummy jobs, but I wouldn't trade that experience for anything else that I have ever done!
As I said my first assignment was in Leeville, LA. which is nothing more than a spot about six inches above sea level and marsh lands visible in every direction. This is the last place called a "community" before getting to Grande Isle. I ate one meal a day, and it was the very same thing everyday! Whenever I find something I like, I rarely ever change! That summer I probably worked eighteen to twenty hours a day, but I was too young and inexperienced to realize that my boss was a paranoid slave driver, and we did so much unnecessary paperwork that it took all day and most of the night to finish! We were the lifeline from the land to the rigs that were drilling in Terre Bonne Bay. The radios signals from the rigs were strong enough to reach our base, but not strong enough to reach the Morgan City Warehouse which was the main office on the Gulf Coast. J.A. Layne, the base operator, and my first boss with KerMac alternated with me so that we could keep the office open twenty four hours a day seven days a week. There were times at two or three in the morning I could get a nap, however, if a rig was having problems, it was all day and all night until things were resolved. I made friends on Bayou Lafourche that summer, the people were very clannish and suspicious of outsiders, but I guess I looked innocent enough for them to accept me as one of their own! Believe me, that is not an easy feat to accomplish!! When that summer came to an end, I had mixed emotions about leaving Leeville behind and heading off to college. But, I made the transition and started my first semester as the University of Southwestern Louisiana in the fall of 1962.
College was not nearly as much fun as High School, it did not take long to realize that I was just another number paying X number of dollars! The instructors we unapproachable, and it was obvious that the textbooks that we had to buy were worthless in their lectures. However, if you did not know both, you were lost! Pre Pharmacy courses were, of course, very boring, and I had trouble staying focused. There was so much trivial "Bullshit" to be learned that I sometimes look back and wonder how I made it through all of that Crap!
The next summer, I returned to my job in the oilfield. This time I had the privilege to live in Venice, LA. Believe me when I say, "If the earth ever receives an enema, that's the place to insert the pipe"! I went to Venice on a Greyhound Bus. I had to make a bus change in New Orleans to make the trip south from there down into Plaquemines Parish very near the mouth of the Mississippi River. I had about an hour to kill while in New Orleans, so I decided to go over to Tulane Avenue to Charity Hospital to visit my brother who was, at the time, doing his internship there. I found him in a ward with about fifty patients. Two of the patients were twins, and they were suffering from a disease that causes premature aging. Each was about eighteen or nineteen, but each one appeared to be at least ninety years old. It made me slightly uncomfortable to see him trying to wrestle and romp with them. What a strange scenario, a young doctor, and two young boys ninety years old. He was aggravating the shit out of both of them by hugging them and grabbing them in headlocks and any other foolishness he could muster up. It was very apparent that they did not feel good, and they certainly did not want to romp and play like a couple of ninety year old kids! However, the more of a negative response he got from them, the more he would fool around with them. Finally, after he was finished cutting up with his patients (buddies), I told him that I had been constipated for a few days. He suggested that he give me 30cc of castor oil. Like a damned fool, I said okay!
Shortly afterward, I boarded my bus that was bound for Venice,LA. The trip seemed long and boring, there was not much to see other than marsh. About half an hour before getting to Venice, I began to have severe abdominal cramping! I thought about the castor oil, and I thought, "Oh No, I am going to Shit all over myself"! I do not know to this day know how in the hell I made the last leg of that trip! When we finally pulled into this make shift bus station, I grabbed my bags and ran like hell to the nearest bathroom! I made it at the buzzer! One more second, and I would have shit through my pants, down my leg, into my shoes, and onto the roadway! I have never returned to Charity Hospital in New Orleans, nor do I plan to visit there ever again!
That summer in Venice was long and hot! Again, I got the luck of the draw, and I worked under J.A. Layne again! Same thing, jillions of hours of paperwork, but I never found a place where I liked to eat. The people in Plaquemines Parish were not like those in Lafourche! Leander Perez ran the parish with an iron hand, and there was no way that an outsider could ever become friends with these folks. One evening about dusk, I left the base in the company pickup truck. I was only going about twenty miles per hour, when a police car behind me turned on his lights for me to pull over. I did so immediately, and when the officer approached the truck I asked him what the problem was. He said, "You have a burned out taillight". I politely thanked him, and told him that I would immediately report it to our maintenance department. That was not quite good enough for this asshole, be proceeded to write me a ticket. Once I figured out that he was shaking me down, I asked if the ticket could be paid right then. "He said No" very emphatically and informed me that It would be necessary to appear in court at Point a la Hatch sometime late in September! When I got back to the base I told Layne what had happened, he said, "don't worry I'll have Oklahoma City take care of it". Yeah Right! It took about two months and damned near an act of Congress to pay that crummy ticket off without me being present in court! I have never been back to Venice, nor am I planning to take a trip there anytime soon! If ever I had any doubt about staying in college, my summer in Venice completely erased any such thoughts!
My second year in college I experienced the unbelievable! I had fallen for a girl, and after a month or two she flat out rejected me! This was the first time in my life that I had experienced such pain! I could not concentrate, my grades were not very good, and I was downright miserable! As I recall it took me two or three years to get over this incredible shock. However, in time, the pain went away, and life went on fairly normally.
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