Another Installment of 100 Things About Moi

Here I go, once again submitting yet another installment of this quest of explaining who I am in One Hundred Steps. Thanks to all who are reading this installment and to all who have read any installment. Kudos to those who have managed to stick it out through all I have written to this point in my word journey.

Fifty-One

I did not know one thing about football when I joined a little league football team during third grade. All I knew was that my father liked football. I sometimes sat in his lap on Sunday's as he watched a game on our old black and white television with its rabbit-ear antennas. I could not make head nor tails of what I was watching, but I was with him while he was doing something he enjoyed. Thus,the motives of my nine-year-old mind in signing up for football were quite evident.

Before the end of that first season, after learning a bit of the game and experiencing the teamwork and competition, my motive had changed. From that time on through early high school, my years were centered around football season.

Fifty-Two

Having the classic "endomorphic" body shape, I was slow. To add to my deficits, some years I may have been average size for my age, but most years smaller. Given these facts I was relegated to playing offensive line, usually guard or center. Oh, how bad I wanted to play linebacker.

From third through seventh grades I played in a league sponsored by the city's parks and recreation department. In spite of my lack of speed and size, I managed to be a starter for three of those years and played frequently in games in the "off" years. Except for one very long and winless season, we were always at the top of the league.

Beginning in eighth grade, my peers and I had passed the age of city league play and joined our school's team. What an eye-opener. Because many of my former teammates went to other schools, I had never played with many on the school's team. Spoiled by wearing the nice colorful jerseys provided by our "sponsor" each year, it was quite a shock to be handed a very faded, solid blue jersey with holes on the day before the game. Once again a starter on the offensive line, I was happy to be active during the game, even though winning was difficult...no, it was impossible that year.

Ninth grade changed things a bit. A new coach., one who knew the game and wanted to be a part of it, came to our school and was somehow able to wrangle new uniforms for the team. Once again, I was in the starting line-up and the season was a mixed bags of wins and losses.

Fifty-three

High school began for me in tenth grade. Moving to a new school meant the loss of teammates and learning new names and faces........and bigger, faster, more talented bodies. I had peaked in height and weight while most others kept growing. High school ball was a different animal. Practices were unrelenting, discipline was demanded, competition for the starting line-up was waged by a larger number of players. I did not make it. It was easy to accept the fact that the starters were bigger, faster, some more talented. But none worked harder. The fact that we had a dominant team that season made watching from the sidelines a bit easier. However, the blood, sweat and tears of practice to play for three or four downs a game seemed a high price to pay.

The phone rang prior to the beginning of my eleventh grade classes. I was told to report for my physical in preparation for two-a-days under the hot South Louisiana sun. Just as every other year, I was excited to begin, yet something was different. I found myself weighing the work versus the reward. As I stepped into the locker room at the appointed time, the scene before me stopped in my tracks. One of the assistant coaches was talking with two of the biggest guys I had ever seen. I quickly realized they were beginning there first year of Junior Varsity. My mind raced. If my chances were slim to begin with and guys like these are coming in, my three or four plays a game would evaporate. It was the moment the cost exceeded the reward. My passion was slowly quenched during the preceding year, spying the two young hulks was its death blow. As it turns out, one of those two hulks standing in the locker room that day eventually went on to play running back in a short career with the Pittsburgh Steelers. I think I made the correct choice.

Fifty-Four

Only in recent years have I learned details of what my father's childhood was like beneath the tight and brutal reign of his alcoholic father. Having seen the effects of alcohol, my father, as a boy, swore of any and all liquor. With that decision he had made a major dent in the cycle of abuse that is often passed down to subsequent generations. What my father could not have known was that, in spite of the change he had made, their were scores of other unhealthy behaviors that he retained.

My sister, who is nine years my senior, bore the brunt of my father's heavy-handed child-rearing. My brother who is six years older than me also caught his share. By the time I happened into the scene that was my family, my father had learned from some of his mistakes, turned some of the lesser disciplinary duties over to my mother, and, finally, he had simply mellowed.

I saw flashes of the younger man as I grew. I also saw the terror in my older siblings' eyes toward my father. Though I never experienced the brand of discipline they had, I bought fully into their fear of the man.

Fifty-Five

Just as I joined my first football team to please him, I developed a myriad of ways to assuage my father's imagined wrath before it began. Thus, I became a perfectionist in all I attempted. Unlike my brother who rebelled and wanted very little to do with my father, I became his companion. However, avoiding his wrath, their was also the simple motivation of enjoying our time together, and a love of many of the activities we shared.

Fifty-Six

From an early age, and from the humble and serene starting point of a small pond tucked back in the woods on my Grandmother's place, I fell in love with fishing. Though my father fished mostly for Large-Mouth Bass, he took the time to teach me how to fish for all species of perch. Months of days during my early childhood I spent with my father, cousins, friends, and many days alone, I circled the shores of that small pond perfecting my angling abilities.

At some point, I saved enough money from birthdays, holidays, and redeeming coke bottles to purchase an open-face casting reel like my father used. Suffering through many backlashes, lures hung in bushes, and other assorted difficulties, I graduated to bass fishing.

For several years my father and I would borrow an uncle's boat to fish on local rivers and lakes. Once we acquired a boat of our own, we spent many evenings and nights on False River, an ox-bow lake that was once part of the Mississippi River channel. Using plastic worms, we fished for bass around the piers and seawalls of the camps that lined the lakes edges

Venturing further we fished several different locations within the vast and beautiful Atchafalaya Swamp. There we fished along the bayous, man-made canals, and large lakes that were interspersed throughout the lowland area. Simply spending the day amidst the cypress trees and palmetto fronds and catching a glimpse of a white-tailed, deer, American Bald Eagle, or alligator in the largest "river swamp" in the nation, was a vacation unto itself.

We finally began making annual and semi-annual forays to fish the waters of Toledo Bend Reservoir on the Louisiana-Texas border. We found it to be our ultimate bass fishing destination. Our number of trips increased. Shortly after his retirement my father moved there and still lives there today.\

Fifty-Seven

Though we both obviously love to fish, my father and I also enjoyed hunting. The honing of my hunting and gun-safety skills began very early in life on the same piece of ground where I learned to fish, and many other similar plots in the area where my mother and father were raised and my love for the "country-life" was born.

In the days of my youth, there were no whitetail left in the area. We hunted gray and fox squirrels, rabbits, and swamp hares. Almost as a right of passage, I owned my first shotgun around the age of seven.

Around the age of ten, I accompanied my cousins and uncle deer-hunting near Oakdale Louisiana. From that point on I had a passion for the sport. Over the subsequent years my father accompanied us on what become an annual trip. My father eventually located a group of firefighters and police officers who had been granted permission to deer hunt on a large tract of land just north of St. Francisville, LA,, not far from the grounds of Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. From that point on, given the choice to fish for bass or hunt for deer, my father would have the boat hooked up in no time. On the other hand, give me my rifle and wake me up way before daylight.

It has now come to the point where neither of us now enjoy our favorite of the two.. Because of health reasons my father can no longer fish. As for my deer-hunting, in Southeastern, Louisiana, unless a hunter owns a large tract of land (or has permission to hunt there) or attempts to hunt one of the few over-crowded and over-hunted State Wildlife Areas, the sport is now exclusively in the hands of those who can afford to lease hunting land as an individual or in groups. The cost of such has kept me rifle safely locked away for several seasons now.

Fifty-Eight

I have owned three motorcycles in my lifetime. My first, when I was in my very early teens, was a Honda CB 100 given to me by my parents as a Christmas Gift. Around the age of sixteen I purchased a Honda CJ 360 T from my brother. The last I owned was a Yamaha 600 that I purchased in the mid to late Eighties.

As offshoots of this hobby, I have two long-held dreams. The first was to own a Harley-Davidson (Years before they became all the rage.). Prior to my current marriage, I even had a "Harley Savings Fund" to make that dream a reality. That sum of money was

melted into what became the down payment on our home

The second dream is to ride around the great U.S. Of A. on a motorcycle. Here I could list all the reasons why that particular dream will probably never reach fruition, but I would probably get misty-eyed in the process.

Fifty-Nine

Music has always been a major part of my life. As a child, the radio in our home and car were always tuned in to a country-music station. Because my siblings were older, before entering school, I spent days at home alone with my mom. To occupy myself, I would sneak into my sister's room and head to her prized "Hi-Fi" record player which she had declared in no uncertain terms, off-limits to me. There I would spend hours, a lone pantomime, memorizing the lyrics of The Beatles, Paul Revere and The Raiders, Elvis Presley, my Mom's Dean Martin albums, and my Dad's, Hank Williams' LPs. This outlet resurfaced during the lonely years of junior and senior high school as my introversion and I spent evening after evening alone in my room

Sixty

At one of those pivotal points in my life, when circumstances combine with a love, a personal passion, and burning desire to be part of something, to create a synergistic explosion, I became the lead singer in a garage rock band (Am I detecting a few grins out there???). My brother's passion was playing lead guitar. He has a large dose of God-given talent. He was allowed to take formal lessons at my parent's expense, in spite of his constant head-butting with my father, especially over the once, oh-so-grave-matter of getting a hair cut. To my brother's credit, he added to the talent and lessons a great deal of practice time. He became a pretty good player.

By my senior year in high-school, my brother had gathered together a few different combinations of guys to form bands. Occasionally, they played a gig or two around town, but all ended up doing much more practice and preparation than actually performing, before something pulled one or more of them away, thus returning him to square one.

I suppose he finally reached a point of desperation that forced him to approach his "baby brother" about singing in his band. The very same "baby brother" who, in earlier days he constantly chased out of his presence, especially when hanging out with his friends.

I jumped at the opportunity even though I had a panic attack thinking about singing at our first practice. Our first real "gig" was a spot in the line-up at the fledgling "Jambalaya Festival" in Gonzales, Louisiana. My anxiety was nearly overwhelming. My stomach rebelled against me and my bones were as jelly. In spite of it all, using an age old trick I had learned during those hours alone with music, I pretended I was someone else....I played head games with my own head to get me through.

To revive some memories, during the set we did songs of The Doobie Brothers, The Commodores, The Eagles, America, Bad Company, The Charlie Daniels Band, Creedance Clearwater Revival, and more.

In all,I think we played half-a-dozen times where we actually got payed for our performance. However,like all those before, we ended up as "Dust In The Wind.(Kansas)"