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My dad's mother, Dora Jane Ruston, better known as "Mama Jim" lived in Merryville most of her life I suppose. She and William had three sons, Buster, Brady and Harry Rudolph "Bill", my dad. Dad was born in Victoria, Texas September 12, 1908. They are all deceased now. After William died Mama Jim married Ed Gerald.
My maternal grandmother was Penelope Jane Ogg, nee Graham and my maternal grandfather was John Ogg. John and Penelope had six children. Jimmy, Ruth, Lena, George, Johnnie Mae, my mom, and one other son who died at an early age. Mom and George are the only ones still living. Mom was born in Newton, Texas June 3, 1918. She lives in Beaumont, Texas.
Penelope and John divorced. She moved to Jasper with her children and they made out the best they could. Mom played the piano and Jimmy played the fiddle. They started a band to earn money. Mom met dad at a dance. They must have hit it off because they got married. Dad and Jimmy started a dry cleaning business in Jasper. Times were hard. This was during the depression. Jimmy had a car and he would pick up and deliver the laundry. Jimmy was the oldest so he handled the money. One day he ups and marries and then goes to live in Baytown, Texas with his new bride. So, with no car, the business folded.
I must have been born sometime during this period. Mom was sixteen. From what I have been told, this is what happened at that blessed event. Mom was in labor and the doctor came to their house. Apparently it was a breach birth and there were problems. By the time the doctor got me out I was blue and he couldn't get me to start breathing so he placed me on the table and started working on mom who was also in difficulty. It is said that my grandmother picked me up, started shaking me, and I finally started crying. Oh well...
Dad went to work for someone in the dry cleaning business in Beaumont, Texas and later became manager of a department store in Franklin, Louisiana. Mom's brother, Jimmy was still in Baytown and talked dad into moving to Baytown. This was during WWII and gas was rationed. Jimmy was a cab driver and apparently cabs were allowed more gas and business was good. At any rate, dad became a cab driver.
We actually lived in Pelly. At that time, there were three towns in that area, Pelly, Goose Creek and Baytown. When it was decided that the three towns would merge, they chose the name Baytown.
We lived at Baytown until I completed the eighth grade (Junior High). Those years were uneventful, just the normal kid stuff. My best friend was Jimmy Everett. He was a year older but we just hit it off. I remember we use to shop lift from the local stores, just five and dime stuff mostly. The most valuable thing I ever lifted was a "boyscout knife", you know, the kind with a bunch of blades and a bottle opener. It was in a showroom case and I had to get the sales lady to open the case and show it to me. I asked to look at a couple of others and palmed one when she glanced away. A friend of ours shop lifted a rod and reel once. I never did find out how he did that.
We had taken some items from a store one time and returned a week or so later. The sales lady at the cash register pointed us out to the manager as soon as we entered the store and said, "that's the ones." He told us to leave the store. After that, we decided to "go straight."
As a youngster, I was always a fast runner. I remember once when I was in about the sixth grade, there was a girl who lived in the neighborhood who everyone talked about how fast she could run. She was a few years older and most of the boys in the neighborhood knew that I was fast so they wanted me to run a race with her. They talked to her and she accepted the challenge. So, we ran a race and I beat her. I was the talk of the neighborhood after that.
A year or so later, when I was in the boy scouts, there was a field day, where all the scout troops in that area met at one of the local schools to have all sorts of field and racing events. They had a fifty-yard dash and anyone could enter the event so all the kids who wanted to run lined up across the football field at the goal line. There were kids from sideline to sideline. The starter shot the starter pistol and everyone took off. At about the forty-yard line I looked to my right there was only one boy even with me. Everyone else was ten or fifteen yards behind. The other boy won the race and I came in second. As it turned out, he was the quarterback on one of the junior high football teams and went on to quarterback in high school and college.
I was able to get a newspaper route and delivered newspapers on my bicycle to earn some spending money. Times got bad. Dad wasn't making much money driving his cab. The war was over so everyone had plenty of gasoline. Dad's brother, Brady, who lived in Merryville knew Jimmy Humble, a man pretty high up with the Louisiana Highway Department, so dad managed to get a job working on an asphalt gang with the highway department and we moved to Merryville. It was possibly one of the best things that ever happened to me.
The first few friends I met there were Mike Fuller and Norman Warren. Norman and I seemed to hit it off right from the beginning.
Robert was manager on the football team and I, as mentioned previously, was a fast runner, so I decided to go out for football. That was where I made many lasting friendships.
Most of my classmates had been through grade school and junior high at Merryville and knew all of the teachers. The only teachers I knew were the ones who taught me in high school. Of course, throughout the years, I came to know other teachers, but never had classes with them. There were a few teachers who inspired me and probably had a great deal in the direction my life took. The ones who influenced me the most were "Coach" A. C. Schiro, Opal Moore, and of course C. H. Watson.
Since I played football and ran track, "Coach" had a lot of influence on me. More than anything else, I guess he taught me not to give up. To keep trying regardless of how bad things got. Believe me, this has served me well throughout the years.
My freshman year, I had straight "C's" on my report card. Opal Moore taught me Algebra and later during high school Algebra II, Geometry and a little Trigonometry. Never, in a million years, could I understand how these subjects would ever be of any use to me. I think I made a "C" in every math class I ever took in high school. How wrong can you be? Since the 60's, I have used every bit of it in my work.
Then, there was C. H. Watson. Of all the teachers, I think he was the most influential, not just to me, but everyone in our class. He made us think. I don't think grades meant that much to him even though I made A's in every class I took under him. When I started getting A's as a junior, I really started studying to keep them. I ended up with a straight A's my junior year and made all A's and B's my senior year.
The job was in Natchitoches, so I had to rent a room there. My parents were in the process of moving to Natchitoches and did so before school started.
I enrolled at Northwestern in September of 1954. My parents had rented a house there so I lived at home and went to college that year.
That had to be the loneliest year of my life. Two or three of the girls in my high school class went to Northwestern but none of the boys went there. Some went to McNeese and others went to L.S.U. I would take my classes and then go home. I never saw any of my high school classmates except when I would see them on the campus. I had no friends and made none. The following year was pretty much the same. It wasn't until my third year in college that I started staying at a dorm on the campus and started making a few friends. I had a part-time job sweeping the classrooms. I also supplemented my income by being in the Reserve Officers Training Corps. (ROTC)
I must have been a junior in college when I instigated a panty raid at Northwestern. I hope the statute of limitation has expired or I should not be telling this.
One morning, I read in the newspaper that Louisiana Tech had a panty raid the night before so I get a brilliant idea. I went to a couple of the men's dorms and put a notice on the bulletin boards, "Panty raid tonight".
Around the campus, during the day, there was talk of a panty raid that night.
Late that evening, a few of us guys were sitting on the porch of Rebel Hall, the men's dorm where I stayed. Rebel Hall was near the field house and several of the women's dorms. No one had showed up for the "panty raid", so I said someone ought to call some of the men's dorms. They said, "Go ahead, you do it". So I did. I called one dorm and told someone there that if they were going to be in on the panty raid, they had better get on over because it was already starting and there were about fifty guys already there. Actually, there were only the three of us sitting on the porch of Rebel Hall. I call one of the other dorms and told them the same thing. Soon after that, a hundred or more students were approaching from two different directions.
Before the night was over, the campus security had called in the local law enforcement, and they, in turn, called in the state police. Many people were in jail. I think the only panties anyone got was the ones the girls threw out of their second story windows as they sat in the window with the screen pushed open and their legs dangling outside while coaxing the men on.
School officials had gathered the athletes and lined them up between the mob and the women's dorms, telling them that if they did not help control the mob they would loose their scholarships. It sure caused a lot of hard feelings between the jocks and the rest of the male students. (Female students too, I expect.)
The summer between my junior and senior year, I had to attend basic training for ROTC personnel at Fort Hood, Texas. It was exactly like basic training for anyone who enlisted or was drafted into the Army. I survived but it was no fun at all.
My senior year, I had a part-time job as a telephone switchboard operator at Prudhomme Hall, the dorm where I resided.
I had intended to be an artist, so those were the classes I scheduled. I later learned that Northwestern's art degree was in fine arts, so I could not see how I would be able to earn a living just being an artist, so I changed my major to sociology. I graduated in May of 1958 with a major in sociology and a minor in art.
After Fort Benning, I was ordered to report to Fort Chaffee, Arkansas, where I served the remainder of my six months of active duty as an executive officer for an infantry training company.
My company commander was a 2nd Lieutenant, who had come up through the ranks and received his commission through OCS. (Officer's Command School) There was a personality conflict between us from the very beginning. I suppose it was because I had received my commission by attending ROTC at college and he knew I wasn't going to be there very long.
I started going to a bar, The Glass Hat, in Fort Smith just about every night. As everyone in our class knows, Beauregard Parish was in a dry and prior to this time I could count the times I had been drunk on one hand. So… this bar life was something new to me.
I met a young girl at the bar. Her name was Carol Hindman. She was sixteen years old. Her grandmother was a full-blooded Cherokee Indian. Of course, I didn't know her age at the time. I guess she was allowed in the bar because her mother, Pat, frequented the place also. I expect that Carol, as most of the other young ladies there, was looking to nab herself an officer and a gentleman. Well, she did. She got me.
I must tell you here that I was not very experienced with the ladies. In high school, I had few dates and did not have that many dates in college. A friend of mine from college, and who also was at Fort Benning with me, and I double dated with a couple of girls from Alabama while we were at Fort Benning. This was the first time a girl ever stuck her tongue in my ear. I didn't even know people did such things.
To say the least, at this time and when I started dating Carol in Fort Smith, I was still a virgin. I can remember only three girls who I dated in high school. They were Lillian Cooper, Nancy Lowery, and Laferne Slaydon. I had one date with Lillian Cooper. Taking her home, I drove past her house and parked to see if I could get a kiss. The car would not start when we started to leave. I had to go get her dad to jump my car off. He was a state trooper. I never had another date with Lillian.
I said "my car". Actually it was dad's car. I never had a car of my own until I bought a used one at Fort Smith, Arkansas.
I noticed Nancy when she was in the seventh or eighth grade. At that time, I really didn't date her, I just visited her at her home.
A few years later, Norman Warren, voted most handsome, took a liking to her. So, they started going steady. Until that time, Norman had been my best friend, but not so after that. Not long after he had started dating Nancy, Norman began seeing Linda Clair Cagel, who had been my cousin, Robert's, girlfriend just about the whole time Robert was in high school. I knew he was seeing Linda Clair on the sly and still going with Nancy. It really ticked me off so I finally told Nancy and they broke up. I started seeing her a few times, took her to a community dance, but we never really went together.
Not long after that, her dad was transferred to Hobbs, New Mexico, so they moved and I never saw her again. I think about her ever now and then.
I started dating Laferne Slaydon my senior year. I liked her a lot and she was really smart. I considered that we were going steady but apparently she didn't. Unknown to me, she was dating a soldier who was at Fort Polk. I never found out about this until I had started college and she wrote me a "Dear Billy". She ended up marrying the soldier.
Back to Carol, and the "Glass Hat". At first, it was just dancing, and then I guess she found out I was an officer. After that, she gave me her full attention. I stayed drunk most of the time and finally took her to my BOQ (Bachelor's Officers Quarters). We "made out" so to speak. Of course, since this was my first time, and I was under the influence, my performance was not up to par.
Soon after that, while frequenting the Glass Hat, I asked Carol to marry me. Of course, I was drunk at the time, but that is no excuse. My friend, who attended Northwestern with me, tried to talk me out of it, and told me I was making a big mistake, but I ignored his warning.
We met at the Glass Hat one night. A friend of Carol's took us to a justice of the peace in some small town located in Oklahoma. We were married and returned to the Glass Hat to celebrate. I spent my honeymoon night in her bed at her parent's home. This marriage ranks as one of the major mistakes I have made during my life. Not the only one, just one of many.
I was an insurance investigator for Retail Credit Company. Actually, my duties consisted of investigating insurance applications, health, and automobile, as to the accuracy of the details on the applications. I would talk to neighbors to verify or disprove these details. Then typewritten reports would be made out for the company.
I guess we had been in Beaumont about a month when one evening, when I came home from work, Carol told me she was not ready to settle down, was going to leave me and go back to Fort Smith. I said she couldn't, we argued and she won the argument. I told her that this was not going to be one of those yo-yo marriages where she would leave and come back and leave again. I told her that if she left it was over. I told her that I would not give her money for the bus fare home and she said her mother would send her the money. Her mother sent her money by Western Union, so the following day, I took her to the bus station, and she returned to Arkansas. I was devastated and embarrassed, not so much for us separating because I knew I had made a mistake, but because I had always thought I would never get a divorce. I was embarrassed about having to tell my parents.
True to my word, the marriage was over. The only problem was that she wrote me and told me she was pregnant.
The man who handled the Orange, Texas office quit, so they transferred me to Orange and the surrounding area. Actually, the office was in the rear of a drug store. I rented a room at a rooming house. After a month or two in Orange, I was transferred to work in the Liberty, Texas area. I rented a house and had my office in my house.
Carol filed for support. The baby was not born yet but the judge ordered me to pay $65.00 a month until the baby was born. He said that when the baby was born the payments would have to be adjusted. It seemed awfully unfair to me that I should have to pay child support and the baby was not even born yet. Not only that, I was not really convinced that the baby was mine.
Right after I finished college, I had taken a civil service examination to work for the Welfare Department in Louisiana. While working in Liberty I received a notice for an interview with the Welfare Department as welfare visitor. The opening was in DeRidder, Louisiana. It was like a dream come true. If I could get the job I would be working only twenty miles from where I went to high school.
I went for the interview, got the position, and resigned from my job with Retail Credit Company. Under Civil Service you are a probationary employee for six months, and then, they determine whether they will make you a permanent employee.
There was only one problem, if you can call it a problem. I was the only man working in an office with around twenty female employees.
The job consisted of visiting welfare clients to determine their continued eligibility and make reports with our findings.
Not long after I moved there, I stopped at a local gas station and was surprised when Laferne, the girl I had liked when I was a senior in high school, pumped the gas for me. You must remember, this was before the "self service era". Laferne's husband ran the station. This was the first time I had seen Laferne since I graduated from high school, almost five years earlier.
I made some friends in DeRidder and dated a few ladies. None from my office though. All of them were either married or too old for me.
My wife, Carol had her baby November 11, 1959. It was a boy, Jimmy Dale Crow. It was about a year later before I first laid eyes on him.
One day, Laferne came by to see me. I got in her car and we just drove around talking. She told me that her husband was a heavy drinker and he was treating her badly. She said that she was considering leaving him. When she took me back to my room, I gave her a brief kiss before leaving her car, and told her if I could help in any way to just let me know.
When it came time for my evaluation to determine whether I would become a permanent employee, Henrietta, the assistant director, told me that they were not satisfied with my work, and were going to extend my probationary period for another three months.
I don't know what the problem was with my work. I thought I was doing satisfactorily. I really think that she disliked men. She was in her forties and had never been married. Of course, it may have been because of my relationship with the boss's secretary.
I had become very attracted to Delores "Dodie" Moses, who was the boss's secretary. She was cordial to me and I had a crush on her. She was a year older than me and was married.
One day at lunch, I told her about my feelings toward her. That afternoon during our coffee break, she and I were alone in the lounge at the office. We were sitting on the sofa talking and I started to kiss her. She pulled back a little, so I didn't.
That night while I was lying in my bed, I was angry with myself for not going ahead and kissing her. It was just a feeling. I knew she would have let me. So, the next morning at coffee break, I did.
After that, we made it a point to go to break at the same time and managed to be alone most of the time. We did a lot of kissing, but that was as far as it ever got. No feely touchy stuff. As far as I was concerned, I was in love with her, but with her being married, I knew it was not to be.
It may have been that our lounge escapades were not as secret as we thought they were.
One day, Laferne called me at the office and asked me if I would meet her at the cafe down town where I usually ate lunch. I said "sure". When I got there, she was parked across the street waiting for me. I got in her car. Laferne told me she was leaving her husband. She said she was moving to Lake Charles and getting a divorce. I told her great and to let me know where she moved to in Lake Charles. Little did I know that this was the last time I would ever see her. Through the years, I have often wondered how things might have turned out if things would have been different.
A couple of years ago, when it was Laferne's Class Reunion, I had hoped to see her but she was unable to attend. I was able to find out her married name and her address, so I wrote her a friendly letter. I really just wanted to know what happened to her and for her to tell me how her life turned out. She didn't reply to my letter, so I wrote another. No reply to it either, so I got the message anyway.
I really did like her, but I also remembered how she had done me in high school.
Ms. Clark called me into her office about the second month into my probationary extension. My wife, Carol had got in touch with the District Attorney in Fort Smith and they had filed papers for child support through the Welfare Department, since she didn't have my new address, but knew whom I worked for. In so many words, Ms. Clark told me I would either agree to pay the child support, or resign.
This was where I made another one of my many mistakes during my life. I knew that in my work as a welfare visitor, part of my job was to see that absent fathers forked over their child support. At that time, I thought my case was different. The way I looked at it, I got married, lived with my wife for about two or three months, she left me for no reason at all except that she wasn't ready to settle down, and had a baby who I wasn't certain was mine. I told Ms. Clark I was not going to pay support and tended my resignation.
The Director, Mrs. Baker, was on vacation at the time, so it was about another week before the paper work was done and my resignation took effect.The following week, I moved in with my parents at Campti.
I really thought I would have no trouble finding employment. After all, I was a college graduate. Wrong.....it took me over two years to find another job.
I started out looking around locally and finally had to start branching out. I signed up with many employment agencies in Shreveport, Lake Charles, Beaumont and Houston, all with no results. Of course, on every application, I had to show my previous employers, the last of which was the Welfare Department. I know I did not receive any glowing recommendations from them, in fact it was as if I had been black balled. Also, Retail Credit Company probably did not give me a very good recommendation either because I left them rather suddenly. Every job I applied for, I was either over qualified, under qualified, or without experience. It was as if my major in college was worthless.
My grandmother offered to pay for an ICS course in Drafting. I had taken a couple of semesters of drafting while in college, so I decided to go for it.
I had almost completed my ICS Drafting Course, so I went to Houston, again seeking employment. I had several interviews with various companies and all of them wanted someone with experience, so after a couple of weeks, I returned home.
I was getting desperate then. My college degree meant nothing and I had no experience at anything. Finally, I decided I had two choices. I took a Civil Service Examination for an Engineering Aide I position with the Highway Department. I did have a little experience at that by having worked a couple of summers for the Highway Department. I also started filling out papers to try and get back on active duty with the Army. I was in the Army Reserves and was required to attend two weeks of active duty training every summer. My memories of the time I was on active duty for those six months were not good. I didn't like the Army, but I knew that if I could go back in as a 2nd Lieutenant and make a career out of the Army, things would be a lot better than they were at that point.
Not long after I returned from my Army Reserve training that summer, (1962) I received a notice for an interview with the Highway Department. It was in Baton Rouge so I went there for the interview. Mr. C. J. Tircuit interviewed me and told me it would be between another man and me and the one with the most mathematics would be his choice. The other fellow had more mathematics.
I reported for work at Minden. I was working statewide. The crews would usually be in a town for a few months at a time. It was not construction surveying. It was staking road centerlines, making ties to all the topography, taking elevations, and locating all the utilities, (above ground and below ground). All this information was kept in field books, and then field rolls were drawn up, showing all the information.
Of course, I was low man on the totem pole. I was a rodman, a chainman and cut brush. Nothing very mental, just a lot of physical work. At that time, we stayed in boarding houses during the week and were home on the weekends. Our expenses were paid for, so much for meals and so much for lodging. I think my paycheck for two weeks was around seventy five or eighty dollars, and as I said we received our expense money.
After completing our job at Minden, we went to Ferriday. By that time, I had saved up enough money for a down payment on a car. I needed something that would get good gas mileage so I opted for a Karmen Ghia, a small sporty Volkswagen.
I guess it was the first weekend after I bought the Karmen Ghia that I stopped by the cafe where Mildred, a girl I had asked out a few times while I was among the unemployed, worked and asked her out again. I had always been turned down before. This time she accepted. I don't know if it was because of the car or whether she had changed her mind. She has always maintained that it wasn't the car, but I don't know.
Usually, our projects at any one place lasted two or three months. Mildred traveled with me and we would rent apartments or mobile homes.
Mildred got pregnant and continued to travel with me until a month or so before the baby was due.
Everything went fine with the pregnancy, but as with just about all Mildred's later deliveries, the labor lasted a long time. The baby was born March 9, 1964. It was a girl. Mildred was still groggy, having been taken to her room from the recovery room. The doctor had called me aside and told me that there were problems with the baby. There was difficulty breathing and they were going to run some test.
After x-rays, etc., it was determined, or thought that one of her lungs had not developed properly, and that there was a hole in the lining between the lungs and the intestines, whereby the intestines were pushing against her remaining lung. The doctor said she needed immediate surgery.
The doctor went into Mildred's room to tell her the news. We named her Faith Angel.
The baby was rushed to Shumpert's Hospital in Shreveport where the surgery took place. The surgery took something like six or seven hours. It was learned that many of her organs had not developed properly. She died and was buried March 11, 1964. It was a terrible blow. The doctors said it was just a rare occurrence and more than likely would never happen again.
At the funeral, I wept like a baby. I also cursed God and waved my hand in the air shooting Him the bird.
When Mildred was able to travel, she was back on the road with me. I felt that the best thing for Mildred would be for her to have another baby as soon as possible, so I began working on that.
On February 24, 1965, we had our first son, David Gavin. He was fine and healthy. If I'm not mistaken, it was snowing when he was born. Again, Mildred was in labor for a long time. I had left for work on that Monday and as soon as I arrived at Slidell, there was a message waiting for me. It said I should return home, the baby was on its way.
As soon as Mildred was able, she and David came to Slidell, where I had rented a mobile home.
Billy Kevin, our second son, was born on August 8, 1966 of the following year. After that, Mildred stopped traveling with me and started staying in Campti, where we had rented a house.
The man who was our party chief, Mr. Bob Winn, ended up having to go into the hospital. He had TB and never returned to work. Baton Rouge hired a man, Randy LaCroix, to take his place. By this time, I had been promoted to the position of Engineering Aide II.
At some point, I don't remember when, we switched to the Location & Survey Department. The main differences were that instead of just doing location work, we also did property surveys; we started staying in Motels instead of rooming houses and had a new boss. Instead of Mr. Jim Doyle, our boss was Mr. Jack Reed. Mr. Tircuit was Mr. Reed's assistant and was in charge of overseeing the field crews. Mr. Reed was eventually promoted and Mr. Tircuit became head of our department.
While working with LaCroix's crew, I decided to try and transfer to Nick Walker's crew. Nick lived in Natchitoches and it was a lot more convenient for me to meet him on Mondays at his house and ride with him in the State vehicle.
The transfer was accomplished. I had been working with them for a few months when I had a talk with Ken McKay, who was a SIT (Surveyor-In-Training) on the crew. I told Ken that I would never be able advance on Nick's crew. The policy of the boss in Baton Rouge, Mr. C. J. Tircuit, was that each crew could have only one person at each position and on Nick's crew there was a SIT, two Aide Threes, (an exception to the rule) me, as an Aide II, and Nick, the Party Chief.
I told Ken that I had taken drafting courses in college, and an ICS Course in drafting, and wished I could work in the main office at Headquarters in Baton Rouge. Our department, Location and Survey, made Right of Way Maps as well as doing the surveys in the field.
Ken said I should write Mr. Tircuit a letter and tell him my situation. So...I did.
The following Monday when I arrived at work; we happened to be doing a survey in Natchitoches, so I was staying at home, Nick told me that Mr. Tircuit had called and wanted me to call him. When I telephoned him, he asked me how soon I could start to work in Baton Rouge. I told him I could be there the following week.
As it turned out, one of the men working in the office as a draftsman was quitting, and going back to college.
I rented a room at someone's house the first week we were in Baton Rouge and the following week we were able to find a duplex apartment in the same vicinity.
So, I began my new career as a draftsman, at first drawing right of way maps and later doing the computations as well as drafting. I had been told that I would be promoted to an Engineering Aide III but learned that according to Civil Service I had to be a draftsman for six months before I could be promoted.
After the six months, I was promoted and then every time I became eligible for a promotion, I took my Civil Service Test and was promoted.
Milded and I eventually bought a home on Winter Avenue in Baton Rouge. I really enjoyed my work and was happy.
Samuel Joseph was born January 11, 1972. He was the only child of ours who was not born in Natchitoches. He was born at the Women's Hospital in Baton Rouge.
Around the time we bought our home, my ex-wife, Carol, who had married and divorced a few more times and who had lived in California ever since Jimmy Dale was around two years old, wrote to me. They had just moved back to Fort Smith, Arkansas and apparently she was divorce at the time. She asked me if I could send some money to help in Jimmy's support.
I started sending her fifty dollars a month.
The following summer, we decided to go visit Mildred's sister, Joyce, and her husband, Jack Burnett. They lived in Falls Church, Virginia near Washington, D.C. I decided to write to Carol and ask her if we could pick up Jimmy Dale on the way and have him go on our trip and then spend the summer with us. Jimmy was twelve years old at the time so this must have been in the summer of 1971.
Carol agreed, so we detoured by Fort Smith and picked him up and continued East toward Virginia. This was the first time I had seen Jimmy Dale since he was about two years old.
Jimmy was to spend the summer with us, so after our trip to Virginia we returned to Baton Rouge. When it came time for Jimmy to return to Arkansas, he said he was not going back, that he was going to live with us. I told him that it was not up to me. I wrote Carol a letter, telling her that Jimmy wanted to stay with us. Surprisingly, she agreed for him to stay and mailed us his birth certificate so he could enter school in Baton Rouge. Jimmy lived with us until he completed high school. I think that if I had known the problems ahead I would have sent him back to Arkansas.
After we bought our home in Baton Rouge, I got a paper route delivering the Morning Advocate to supplement our income. I don't remember how long we did the paper route but I expect it was around six months.
I really didn't think I was eligible. While in the field, I was no more than a Aide II and one of the requirements was that you had to be a party chief for a certain amount of time. I had never run a crew before.
While in the office, I had learned a lot about calculations and by having worked with several land surveyors in the office, I had picked up a lot of information. I decided to go ahead and apply to take the test. What did I have to loose?
I sent my application in and was asked to go talk to one of the board members who worked at the Headquarters Building. He asked me if I had been studying for the exam and I said I had. He advised me to wait and take the exam the next time they gave it and in the mean time I could be studying for it.
I was surprised that they even approved my application in the first place so I was happy to agree.
I stayed at the office after work the next six months studying for the exam and the next time they gave the exam, I took it and passed it.
So, in October of 1969, I became a Professional Land Surveyor. I had transferred from the field to Headquarters in 1965 as an Aide II and became a Land Surveyor in 1969.
We ended up selling, or I should say, giving our house away. Someone just took up the notes. We rented a house in Campti and I commuted back and forth to Baton Rouge during the week. I rented a room in Baton Rouge and stayed there during the week and would go home on Friday and return on Sunday.
I watched it for about four or five minutes and finally it just started dimming and breaking up.
On the way to work, I noticed what appeared to be a formation of ten or so boomerang shaped objects far up in an otherwise clear blue sky. By this time, it was daylight. The objects appeared to be stationary.
The funny thing about it was that when I got to work and bought a newspaper, there on the front page was a picture of the same v-shaped objects I had seen that morning, only the picture was taken in one of the northern states the previous day.
We had already decided that if the baby were a girl, I would get a vasectomy so she was and I did. For most men, I understand that the procedure is not that complicated, but it was for me. I was laid up for a couple of weeks with testicles the size of grapefruit.
So, I was back where I started working, statewide in a surveying crew, the exception being, this time I was the party chief instead of the lowest man on the crew. I received expenses for my meals and motel, so I was a lot better off than when I was commuting back and forth to Baton Rouge.
The party chief of the crew Mr. Tircuit assigned me to had been Aubrey "Doc" Garner from DeRidder. I expected that there might be some hard feelings, but that was not the case. Doc was an enormous aide to me as I began my new assignment.
Doc was overweight and died a few years after I took over the party. He had gone to visit relatives in Texas one holiday weekend and the day I returned to work, I received a telephone from his brother saying that Doc had gone in the hospital for a checkup and died.
One weekend while I was home, I woke up in the night with an unbearable pain in the center of my chest. The pain was so bad that I could not go back to bed. The following morning, I went to the hospital in Natchitoches where they ran a few tests.
The doctor could find nothing. By now, the pain had abated somewhat. It was his opinion that it might have been an ulcer, so I was put on a bland diet.
The pain would come and go, and did so until one night while away at work in Leesville, the pain became so unbearable that I couldn't take it. I called Mildred and she and her sister, Joyce drove to Leesville, picked me up and took me to the hospital in Natchitoches. The doctors at Natchitoches then told them to take me to Shumperts in Shreveport.
By the time I arrived at Shumperts, the pain was so bad that I vomited at the front door. I was admitted and given a shot for the pain.
Test revealed that I had to have gallbladder surgery. Apparently, my gall bladder had ruptured. The next twenty-four hours were like a haze to me. I was rushed into surgery and the next thing I remember, I was in an ICU room with a nurse telling me to breathe deeply. I could not take a deep breath though. I guess I passed out.
The next thing I remember, I was in the recovery room and felt a lot better. I found out later that my blood pressure had dropped to 20 over 10 when I came out of surgery and that since I was bleeding on the inside, the doctors had to rush me back into surgery and tie off or cauterize some blood vessels. Several weeks went by before I was able to return to work.
I started doing private surveying on the weekends and eventually began earning as much money working for myself on the weekends as I was working for the highway department during the week.
We were building a new brick home and I had just bought a motorcycle. My private business was doing great, so I decided to quit the highway department and go to work full-time for myself.
In January of 1979, having nearly seventeen years with the department, I resigned, took all my money out of the retirement system to purchase my surveying equipment, and went to work for myself. Another of the big, big mistakes I will regret the rest of my life. One of the men who worked in my crew with the department also quit and went to work for me.
Things went pretty well until around 1985. When I had started my private business, the only other surveyors in the area were a couple in Natchitoches. Not long after that, a man from Coushatta got his license, and then another surveyor, who had been working for the government, quit them, and went to work for himself in Winnfield.
Our son, David, had gotten married while in high school and he and his wife had lived with us until both of them finished school. After high school, he worked for me. Mildred and David's wife, Debra, started looking at house plans. They bought a half- acre of land from her grandmother and built their home.
I argued with Mildred the whole time telling her it was a bad idea. There was no way I could pay my note and his note since he was working for me.
The economy went really sour. In 1985, it was taking everything I earned to pay my bills, so I was unable to put back enough for my taxes. Come IRS time, I wrote and told them that I just didn't have any money.
Things had gotten so bad that I was lucky if I could get one small survey a month. I just wasn't getting jobs. My income was less than $500 a month. My bills were much, much more.
And there were hospital bills. After I had returned to the field I had gallbladder surgery and later Mildred had a blood clot near her heart and had to have surgery.
So...BANKRUPTCY!!! We went bankrupt and lost everything. My home, David's home, truck, land, everything.
Not only that. David found out Debra was having an affair with her brother-in-law's brother. He had done time for selling dope. It had gone on a while before David found out about it.
I had always thought that they got married too young and felt that it would never have lasted anyway. I think it was one of those deals where Mildred and Debra's mom pushed them into it and the marriage was doomed from the word go. They divorced.
It got really bad, probably one of the lowest points in my life. We actually moved into a house that someone allowed us to live in with the stipulation that we would make repairs on it. I didn't have enough money to turn the electricity on so we cooked with a Coleman Stove and used lanterns. We ate squirrels and deer meat or whatever I could scrounge up. I guess we lived there a couple of months before the owner found a sale for the house and had us move out.
The following week, I received a telephone call from a lady, who thanked me for the request, but said her husband, one of the engineers, had passed away.
I received another call from a Bill Blevins, who said I was just what he was looking for and offered to pay my expenses and get me settled in. I jumped at it. I left Mildred and the kids in Campti and took a bus to Huntsville.
My surveying license was not valid in Huntsville, but I worked as a party chief doing mostly layout work for staking out subdivisions. It must have been around the fall of 1987 when I left for Huntsville.
I rented a room within walking distance of the office since I didn't have any transportation, and out of my check I kept enough for my expenses and sent the rest to Mildred.
My dad passed away not long after I went out there. I returned to Merryville for his funeral.
Just after the first of the year (1988), Mildred and the kids moved out there and we entered the kids in school and rented an apartment in an apartment complex. By the time school ended, they were ready to move back to Louisiana, and did.
Around the first part of September, Mildred mailed me a civil service application for the Department of Transportation and Development (Highway Department.). She had run into one of my old supervisors with the department and told him my situation. He told her to have me fill out the application and mail it to the Section Head in Baton Rouge. It wasn't Mr.Tircuit. I would have tried to go back to work for them a long time before if it had not been for the way I quit them. I really didn't think they would rehire me.
I mailed the application, and about a week or so later, just after returning to work following a visit with the dentist, I received a telephone call from Mr. Willis Grice, the Section Head of the Department I previously worked for. He wanted to know if I was interested in coming back to work with them and I replied in the affirmative.
I had lost all my years toward retirement because I had taken all of my money out of the retirement system. When I inquired as to how much it would cost me to buy back my retirement, I learned that it would be over $30,000 so there was no way I could buy it back. I couldn't borrow money due to my bankruptcy.
I would not be able to retire with the Department unless I had ten years with them and even with the ten years I would only be eligible to retire with 25% of my annual income.
Not long after I returned to work with the Department, the IRS finally decided they wanted the money I owed on my 1985 and 1986 taxes. So, along with penalties and interest, they garnished my paycheck. It took me a year and a half before I was square with them. I never could understand why they waited two years before they went to the trouble unless they just wanted the penalties and interest to grow.
During the first visit, x-rays were taken and when I came back for the lab work they ran an ultrasound on my kidneys as they had seen a kidney stone in my left kidney.
I called the doctor for my report about three days later and the nurse told me everything looked alright except I did have a kidney stone. Blood test also indicated that my PSA was 4.7 which indicated that my prostate needed to be looked at because anything over 4.0 was abnormal.
She made an appointment with the urologist for the following weekend.
The urologist did the digital thing and scheduled me for x-rays and dye on my kidneys next weekend. The following week he ran an ultrasound biopsy.
The doctor did the needle biopsy at his office the following week. Bleeding has always been a major concern with me. I have always had trouble bleeding. When I have teeth pulled, they nearly always hemorrhage. Also, as I mentioned earlier, when I had gallbladder surgery they had to rush me back into surgery to stop internal bleeding.
The drive home was about sixty miles. At home, the first thing I did was go to the bathroom and have bowel movement. It was all blood. After that, I went to bed, but had to use the bathroom just about every hour on the hour. Each time blood poured out.
About 1:00 P.M., I had another bowel movement and started feeling really dizzy, and nauseous. My wife was in the back bedroom so I decided to try and make into my bed. I made it to the door before I collapsed to my knees and almost passed out but was able to crawl to my bed. I had another similar episode just before 3:00 P.M. going to the bathroom and getting dizzy. This time, I just sat on the toilet until I was able to make it to my bed. My wife called the doctor and he said he would check me into the hospital and they could pack my rectum but that he didn't think I was going to bleed to death and that the dizzy spells were because of the bowel movements. I decided to stay home and see how things worked out.
As it turned out, I had no more problems. I didn't have to use the bathroom that night and the next morning the bleeding had for the most part stopped.
The nurse called about 2:30 P.M. on March 6, 1997. The test came back negative. She said I needed to have my PSA checked in about six months. To say the least I was very relieved. I went to work the following Monday, and after bringing my suitcase into the motel, noticed that I had started bleeding from the rectum. As it turns out, I ended up in the hospital hemorrhaging and passing out several times. A gastrointestinal surgeon cauterized a spot that was bleeding and I was released from the hospital after about two days. I took the next two weeks off before attempting to go to work again. The doctors said I almost bled to death. I had an appointment with a doctor, a different one because my HMO had changed, and tried to bring him up to date with my prostate and kidney stone problems. He sent off for my records. This doctor was more concerned about my blood pressure. It was 170/110. He ended up putting me pills for hypertension.
I went on a low-fat diet. I stayed on the diet about four months and lost about forty pounds. I went from 226 lbs. to 185 lbs. That was about a year ago. I have now gained back around 15 lbs. and started my diet again. I would like to stay around 195 lbs.
I have had PSA test done every six months since my prostate problems began and they have all come back normal.
That is my main drawback toward religion. I can't, or at least I don't accept the doctrines or creeds of any one denomination. I think that some denominations may have part of the truth but I don't believe any one denomination has all the truth.
I stay in a constant state of confusion when it comes to my religious beliefs. The more I think I know, the more I realize I know nothing. I tend to disregard all denominations because none of them conform to my own tenets.
I believe in one God and His Son, Jesus Christ, who was the living Word as well as God in the flesh. I do not look at God or the Holy Ghost as people or persons. I think the Bible says that they are spirits. I really don't know if a spirit is a person.
Confused?
The only choice I have is to keep working as long as my health holds out. It will be pretty hard to make ends meet with less that 25% of my pay. I will be able to receive no more than the minimum from Social Security minus whatever they dock you for having another retirement.
In recent years, surveying has become easier physically but exceedingly more technical. Instead of using a transit and chain to turn angles and measure distances, you have total stations, data recorders and computers. With the total station, you turn angles and shoot distances to prisms. The measurements are recorded in an attached data recorder electronically, and when you return to your office you dump the data into your computer where the data is processes.
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