After leaving Sabine Pass, Texas, that Christmas, I returned to college to finish my first year of Pharmacy School. I have somewhat of a confession to make here. I had found a new girlfriend that fall. She was nice looking, very small, and she did not have much of an appetite. She did, however, have a meal ticket at the school cafeteria, as did I, but she rarely ate more than a couple of bites of each meal. I would gobble down my food, and then begin working on what remained of hers. That stretched my budget almost two fold, and I managed to feed myself for nearly three years in that manner. Somewhat shameful, but I only did what I needed to do to survive! My final year, I jilted her for another woman! As shameful as it sounds, it is nothing less than the truth.
The next summer, I resumed working for Kerr McGee. This would be the end of my oilfield career. That summer I worked in the Morgan City Warehouse, or the "Nerve Center " of the Gulf Coast for Kerr Mac operations. This was not at all a bad assignment, the business office was up front, and al of the same type operations that the remote bases provided were conducted out of the so-called "Warehouse". Here, there was no need to contend with J.A. Layne's unnecessary paperwork, and most of the men that I worked with did so in a very reasonable manner. The "Warehouse" business was quite a bit more reasonable, and there was no need to work around the clock.
Most of the permanent guys worded days, evenings, or nights on a regular basis, and I was flexible enough to work all of the shifts with all of the permanent base operators. Days were not too much fun, Badeaux was an old "Cajun", set in his ways, and not a very dynamic personality. He got the job done, but offered no excitement such as I had become accustomed during my tenure with Kerr Mac! However, there was Charlie Landry, Guy Gilmore, Kearney Breaux, and Leroy Mire to take up the slack.
That year I was able to live at home in Franklin, and just commute to Morgan City from there. Charlie and I made the nightclubs I Morgan City when I was working days, and I found a girlfriend or two that worked in the front office. So, the social life was not at all bad! Guy Gilmore was a great friend, and he and I enjoyed working together when he alternated with Badeaux while working days. He had a great imitation of a Berry Brothers hand that had a stuttering problem. When we had to call him to do some work in the yard, he would answer the telephone with "Heellloooohh"! Gismo could emulate him almost precisely, and we would break out into laughing spells not unlike two school kids who just had to look at each other in class and laugh about a private joke.
Leroy got transferred to the front office that summer. He had returned from Sabine Pass in the spring, and I think he laid down an ultimatum! I think it was the decision of management to move him up rather than lose his services completely. He never did like Sabine Pass for some strange reason, I never could quite figure out why!
One night I was working the 11:00 P.M. to 7:00 A.M. shift with Kearney Breaux. It was his custom to get on the phone and call his home soon after he got to work. He was suspicious that his wife was fooling around, and he would call to see if she would answer the phone. This particular night he made his usual call, got no answer, and asked me if I would mind taking care of things for and hour or so. I, of course, said "no problem"! Well, about 3:00 A.M. someone called me from Lakewood Hospital with a message from Kearney. He requested that someone go to his home to pick up the company truck, it seems that he had been shot by his wife's boyfriend, and he had no way of returning the truck. He missed quite a lot of work that summer, and since that was my last summer there, I really do not know the rest of the story!
The 11 to 7 shift was usually a breeze, because the radio operators usually found time to sleep through most of the early morning hours. However, that particular summer was a bit different. Kerr Mac had hired a new drilling engineer, Frank McPhearson. He was quite obviously extremely knowledgeable, and a work-a-holic to boot. He lived in a company house next door to the front office, and he would sleep for an hour, and then talk to one of the rigs for an hour. This was repeated every night as he spoke to every rig in the Gulf! I was not too surprised to learn, some years later, that he had become chairman of the board! I even saw him ring the opening bell in Wall Street on morning on television! Patching calls for him was about as close to fame as I have ever been in my whole life!
My last two years of pharmacy school were really pretty easy. I had gotten into the groove of studying, i.e., I learned how to study! I did not need to waste time studying things that would be of no benefit to me on exams. Therefore, there was much more free time to do other things such as fishing and socializing. The fishing part was fairly innocuous, but the socializing ultimately got me into trouble.
I had dumped my meal ticket girl friend in lieu of a gorgeous dark brunette from
New Orleans. We spent countless hours lying on the banks of Bayou DeSiard just talking about life in general at first. It soon progressed to a more intimate relationship and before I knew it, she told me that she was pregnant! Now, as I said before, I was an honorable and responsible young man, and I was prepared to do the responsible thing. Louisiana law would not allow us to marry without the consent of her parents, she was several years younger than was I. So we made a quick trip up to Hamburg, Arkansas, in order to get the required blood tests, etc. She then called her mother in New Orleans to tell her of our plans. Her
mother convinced her that we should be married in the church in Algiers on the west bank. Before I knew it, all the plans had been made, and I did not have the "guts" to chicken out! Of course, in the interim, the purported pregnancy turned out to be a false alarm. So, I was under no real obligation to follow
through with the wedding, but I guess I did not want to face the embarrassment of doing what I really felt was the right thing to do!
Between the first and second semester of my fifth year in school, I took the plunge, and we tied the knot in a
Presbyterian church in New Orleans. I was forced to make a small student loan for the very first time so that I could support my new bride and myself for one semester. Things were not really
that bad while we were both in school at Northeast, however that was the calm before the storm!
After I graduated in the spring of 1967, we moved to Lafayette, and she enrolled at USL. I drove 100 miles each day back and forth to Franklin and continued to work at Aprill's Pharmacy for about a year. I then worked at Jefferson Drugs in Lafayette, until 10:00 P.M. Mondays' trough Fridays'! Saturdays' and Sundays' were a breeze. I did not drive to Franklin, and Jefferson Drugs closed early, 8:00 P.M. on those two nights!
It was here that things began to change dramatically. She got involved with a real "Hippy" group of people, and probably every drug known to mankind!
This contrived marriage lasted, off and on, about two years. The majority of the time we spent estranged! She talked me into having a baby, which I thought was an absurd idea, but the procedure was not unpleasant, so it
happened! We had a daughter in May of 1968. During this timeframe, I purchased new appliances, a car for her and one for me and all the necessities for maintaining a household. All of this was bought on credit of course, and I began the process of paying monthly notes! This is the point in a person's life when time begins to fly! Prior to that time, life just has a way of moving at a snail's pace, but when you begin making monthly payments, time has a way of taking on wings!
I also had the responsibility to pay her way through college, and I had the privilege of paying for a baby to boot! When the baby's first birthday came around, I made a trip to Lafayette to attend the birthday party. I had moved out and rented a place in Franklin by then. This was long before the days of yard sales and garage sales, etc. Upon arrival, I learned that she had moved out, with the baby, and left Lafayette for California with some guy who was involved in drug trafficking! No one would tell me who she had left with nor where exactly they had gone!
There was also the matter of a few "Hot Checks" that required my attention! I have never laid eyes on her ever again, nor have I spoken directly with her! It was not until shortly after Suzonne's 18th birthday that I received a letter that began, "Dear Mr. Stirling", when that chapter of my life was revisited. she wished to learn something about who I was. By this time Joan and I were happily married and were living on Bayou Teche in Centerville, Louisiana. We arranged a visit to our home with her. She was an attractive young brunette, however, not nearly as attractive as her mother! She was pleasant, and we had a fairly cordial visit. I also found out that her mother was also living in Baton Rouge; small world after all! I think we may have had two visits in all, then she moved to Los Angeles. It was from there that she wrote to me saying that she needed some Zantac and she did not mind paying wholesale since she could not afford the retail price. I packaged up 60 Zantac 300mg tablets and mailed them to her with no bill. Several months later, same story! This time I included an invoice billing her my exact net cost. About six weeks later, the package came back to
me with a note enclosed stating "false alarm"! I have never heard from her again; So much for that!
Not too long after my first divorce, I met another divorcee and married again. This one would prove to be very, very costly! Probably the biggest mistake of my entire life! However, I will get to that in greater depth a little later.
Summer, page 1 | Summer, page 2 | Summer, page 3 | Summer, page 4
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