I’ll Never Forget the Taste of That Clear Blue Water
When I was eighteen, I ran away from home. Yeah, I’ve always been a conservative. I’d come to Texas from Shreveport in 1962 at the age of eleven. Culture shock doesn’t even begin to describe my transition from pine trees to no trees. Oh, Central Texas had a form of tree. Not enough to form a windbreaker but larger than a mailbox. And they were predominantly cedar. Not the “cedar of Lebanon” mentioned in the Bible but a first cousin to scrub oak. Each spring it would develop these pods that would burst in the Texas heat, putting this kinda blue haze in the air. If you had allergies it would fill up your nose. If you didn’t have allergies it would fill up your nose. Cedar is the only tree that would carve it’s initials on YOU!
I spent my years of school dripping snot on my desk. And that was just the beginning. Back in Louisiana I’d started the first grade in Lake Charles. At five years old. My birthday was September 11th and the rule was you had to be six years old to start school, but I got a pass. What did it matter? I couldn’t understand anyone anyway. South Louisiana back in those days was French. Not real French but some bastardized version called “coon-ass.” And all the kids in my first-grade class spoke it. “I’d like say, “Hi! My name is Billy,” in the school yard to which some little “red bone” would respond, “Je vais te botter le cul!” FYI: That’s French for, “I’m gonna beat your ass!” And he’d just beat my ass. The very reason I was in Lake Charles in the first place was Hurricane Audrey. My dad was a roofer and after the hurricane Lake Charles didn’t have no more roofs. Dad brought us to South Louisiana to make his fortune and he, well, didn’t. In time we ended up back in Shreveport. The end result for me was being the only “Yankee” in Lake Charles Elementary and all my classmates would beat my ass, even the girls. “So, this is sex!”
I don’t remember the exact day I returned to Shreveport, but I think it was somewhere between the first and second grade. We didn’t actually live in Shreveport but across the Red River in Bossier City and I went to Bossier Elementary there. Most schools in Louisiana back in those days weren’t named for noteworthy Louisianans. I suppose that was because there couldn’t be more than one Huey Long High School per town. There were pluses for going to school there. Everything was provided. Pencils, paper, lunch, everything but an education courtesy of the late, great Huey Long whom all the men removed their hats for whenever his name was mentioned. I didn’t know anything about all that. I was too busy playing with my friends in the Red River. You caught that, huh? Second graders playing in the Red River! I can’t remember a one of my friends ever being drowned. That is the main difference between Baby Boomers who floated makeshift rafts across the Red River and Zoomers who don’t know if they should squat or stand.
Eventually we moved back across the river to Shreveport. My school experience didn’t change. Just the kids. My arch nemesis was a kid called Vance. Every morning recess he’d take it upon himself to beat my ass. Why, you may ask, didn’t the teachers put an end to these shenanigans? Don’t ask. First off, they weren’t there in the school yard. They weren’t worried about us. We swam in the Red River! The smart ones lived!
Vance was a first-class bully. He didn’t even have any presentation. He’d just saunter up and start beating. Then one night I was watching my dad and some of his friends taking in a boxing match on TV and made note of something that intrigued me. The next day during recess when Vance made his appearance, I hit him smartly in the nose, whereupon he fell down, bled a lot, soiled himself and I made a point of doing that to him every day until I brought a note home from school and my dad beat my ass!
As previously mentioned, I came to Texas in 1962. Again, dad got a roofing contract, this time at Fort Hood when it was making the change from Camp Hood and the army was renovating the barracks. Again I had to make a cultural shift at which time I discovered two things: my Vance technique did not work on Mexican kids and Mexican girls were born fully grown. Anglo girls looked like Olive Oyle and Mexican girls, well, did not. They had additional parts. Accordingly, I picked up Mexican quicker than I had French. And that’s Mexican! Not Spanish. Only if you are from Texas will you understand the difference, so I won’t elaborate. But Mexican girls didn’t mingle with an Anglo boy so there was that.
I won’t bore you with all the in’s and out’s of finishing high school because I had no way with girls and there were no in’s and out’s until I got married. As I said when I began this article, I took it upon myself to return to Shreveport at eight-teen, moving in with my rich uncle, Truitt Salley. Living with Uncle Truitt was nothing like my formative years. His childhood was a lot like mine except he wasn’t stupid. He, his father and brother started the Salley Grocery Company down on Market Street. His dad secured the money to operate, his brother making sales to all the mom and pop stores in North Louisiana and when I asked Uncle Truitt what he did he told me somebody had to knock the cows in the head. I got a piece of sage advice from Uncle Truitt one day while painting a cabinet in his pool room.
First, let me explain his pool room. Olympic swimming pool in a room in his house. Told ya’ll he was my rich uncle. Why did you think I went there in the first place? Anyway, to live with him you had to do chores around the house. He did have staff but couldn’t abide sloth. My job was to sand and stain a cabinet in the pool room. He wanted thirty-two coats to give them a sheen, therefore I was suitably employed.
The girls in Papa Truett’s neighborhood were fantastic! Rich, spoiled, and adventurous. I remember one, Sherri, who showed up at a pool party in a newspaper dress. I’m not kidding. A dress made of copies of the Shreveport Times! As luck would have it, she slipped and fell into the heated pool that quickly dispatched the dress, and I had an impure thought. And I had a BOATload of young, viable cousins. Hey! It was Louisiana, ok? And each morning I’d take a bath in the pool. Uncle Truitt kept a supply of Ivory Soap in one of those cabinets I was charged to paint. The soap that floats! And if a girl had stayed over for the night? When in Rome do as the Romans do.
So there I was, staining a cabinet when the side door opened and this young lady made her appearance. Uncle Truitt saw that neighborhood girls all had a key to that particular door so they could drop in whenever the mood was upon them. I remember she had a yellow bikini. I’m at a loss for words even after all these years but I think stunning adequately describes her.
She kicked off her slippers and began to practice from the high dive. She could slice through the water without disturbing it. She also could control time and space because as she leaped from the diving board she went into slow motion. I was mesmerized. She swam to the edge and smiled at me as she jiggled her ear lobe, draining it of water before returning to the board to perfect her technique. I was fantasizing that she would perhaps dive herself out of that bikini and as a gentleman I would help her retrieve it.
Suddenly a heavy hand rested on my shoulder. I looked up at all three hundred pounds, thirty-two Masonic Degrees of Big Daddy Truitt staring down at me.
As I looked up, accepting my death he said, “Just remember, money won’t buy everything.”
True wisdom. Indeed! I’d never have enough money to impress Miss Yellow Bikini. All I could say was, “I understand.”
He looked back at her, climbing the ladder up to the high dive and slipping through the air into the water. Uncle said, “But you remember something else, boy!”
Drawing upon all the respect I could muster I said, “Yes sir?”
A slight smile came to his face, he gave my shoulder a little squeeze and said in his Louisiana drawl, “You make enough money boy, and you can get some of dat!”
Her name was Desiré.
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