Other Friends

Some of my other friends at the time (when attending Menard and LSU-A were: Jack Lewis, who came to Menard I think in his Junior year. He remained my friend for a long time and maybe still is, don't know. Also, one of my friends at the time of high school is Randy Beasley. Randy is still with us as of this writing. He has Diabetes and other bad ailments, sicknesses and had to have part of a leg amputated. He now lives about 7 or 8 miles from me but I have not seen him for awhile. We occasionally talk on the phone or email. We "ran around" together as teens. We cut grass yards and picked up coke bottles in order to get money to go on dates with our favorite girls at the time. Later, we went out to favorite night spots together. Randy was also a "ladies man" and had no trouble at all "picking up" fly-by-night dates (if get drift). When I was in the military, Randy married another friend of mine, Anita Hebert and they had two children together. The kids were twins (boy and girl) and they raised them well, I think. Later, Randy and Anita got divorced when the kids were around 14 or so. Randy Jr. is now an Engineer living in the Dallas area and the daughter (don't remember her name) is a teacher in the local area. Anita went on to get her master's degree and became a teacher and later a higher level of education. I have not seen her for awhile. The last time I saw Anita was in a store when she told me she had just beaten cancer. I hope she is still well!
Another friend was and is David Devine. He knew Randy before I did because they had a mutual friend/cousin in Jonesville where Randy grew up. I visited Randy's old house where his Mom still lived many times in the past. She has since passed away. Randy and I went rabbit hunting numerous times and skinned the rabbits in his basement on the plantation house. Randys folks had a lot of land, including oil land. I'm sure it is worth a lot today.
Anyway, David was and is also a good friend. We hung around a lot, even though he went to Bolton High School and I was at Menard at the time. All three of us, Me, Randy and David went out together and did various things, like hunting, fishing, etc. David spent about 20 years in the Air Force, got married (his wife passed away many years ago), got married again and adopted a boy who is now grown. One of David's friends in high school was Nancy Lyons who became my girlfriend for awhile. I liked Nancy a lot but we were of different temperaments. She later got married to another one of my friends, Tom Kennedy and I think they are still married. The last time I saw Nancy was in a animal food store. I saw here, went over and hugged here, but she seemed very "cold" (not interested to see me), or maybe it just seemed that way, don't know. Nancy also had a friend, Charlene Ezernack who also hung out with us. I liked Charlene a lot and talked to her on the phone sometimes. I heard that she later got married, moved to Idaho or some such place, and had lot's of kids. I am very happy for her! More about friends and LSU, etc. on the next post.

LSU

I started at LSU-Alexandria shortly after High School graduation in 1965. In those days you had to either be sneaky or be caught when you were an entering freshman because upper-classmen hunted you down to cut your hair. Unfortuneately, I was not sneaky enouugh. I had a brand new crew cut when I left for home the first day. You had to have good humor in those days! The hair grew out again! Anyway, I signed up for courses thinking that I was going to enjoy Journalism right away and newspapers and magazines would be knocking down my door to get me to write articles for them. Didn't work out that way!
I met many new friends at LSU-A, one of them was Richie Laird. He was very interesting to me because he graduated from a high school in Okinawa. His dad was in the Air Force, a member of the clergy, I think. Anyway, we became fast friends and started hanging out together. Richie was a great ladies man. He was tall and some would say good-looking, so the ladies loved him. He was a great guy to hang out with for that reason and many others. He was a nice guy and easy to get along with I think. More about Richie and other friends in the next post.

Soda Jerk

I don't know if I mentioned this before, but I spent a few years (ok, maybe one year?) as a Soda Jerk at Gravel's Drug store, which was about 3 blocks from my house where I grew up. I used to go to Gravel's just about every day when I was a young boy (maybe between 8 and 14) just to get a soda (coke, Dr. Pepper, etc) and read all the comic books I wanted (for free)! I reallly enjoyed being there and met lots of terrific people. I probably got my first love of reading there too. Before I started reading comics, I was probably considered a slow reader...but caught up very fast, mostly because I was very interested in the content. Most of the content was based on adventure and science fiction which I still love (though SF not quite as much).
Well, eventually I grew up some and asked for the Soda Jerk job when someone else quit. I got it and began my work life (other than throwing newspapers). It was a part-time job (of course) but I got a lot of enjoyment out of it. Of course "old man" Gravel was not easy to work for but I got through that ok. He had 2 sons working there and they were good to me. I still see Alfred (the oldest son) on occassion. The last time I saw him he told me that Mr. Gravel's youngest son (Paul) passed away of cancer. The best thing about the job, of course, was free milk shakes and I could basically read as much as I wanted when things were slow.
One thing I remember very well about my trips to and from the drug store was; one night I was headed home. I was about 14 or 15 and, for some reason I got a little scared of the dark. I started running and got home in seconds flat. What I remember most about that is that I was not winded at all. Must have been in terrific shape!