Happy, Happy, Happy (5 page)

Doing things the way they were done while he was growing up enabled Pa to make our farm self-sufficient in many ways—we were still living as people did in the 1800s, although it was a hundred years later. About forty acres of the land were worked with the old mule (and later a gift horse named Dan) and hand plows
to produce a great deal of our food, plus grain and fodder for the horses, cows, hogs, and chickens. The fields and wooded parts of the farm yielded squirrels, quail, and doves; ducks and fish were easily obtainable from Black Bayou, only a couple of miles away. An occasional trip to Caddo Lake produced catches of white perch and bream. Our out-of-pocket expenses were minimal.

Some lagniappe came from a boom in fur pelts. My brothers and I were able to get a couple of steel traps and set them out on the creeks running throughout our land. “There’s a mink walking every creek in Louisiana” was a popular saying at the time, and an extra-large prime pelt would bring thirty-five dollars—a big sum for a youth, just for the fun of trapping. We never made much money with our too-few traps, but we learned a lot about wildlife in our pursuit of mink, raccoon, and opossum pelts.

My developmental years also coincided with Pa’s advancement in the oil fields as he progressed from roughneck, driller, and tool pusher to drilling superintendent for a series of small companies. He was a good hand and in his prime. His skills were in enough demand to allow him to shift from job to job easily. When a company for which he was working idled its rigs, he would go to work for another that hadn’t. But he still suffered occasional layoffs—which were sometimes prolonged enough to cause hardship. Granny complained that he always seemed to get laid off during duck season, enabling him to hunt more. He took
it all in stride. His attitude could be summed up in a phrase he often used: “I was looking for a job when I got this one.”

There were lots of chores on the farm, with my older brothers doing the plowing and tending of the larger animals. Jimmy Frank did the milking, and Harold fed the hogs. The younger children fed the chickens and did the lighter work. Judy did most of her work inside, and the cooking experience she gained would be enhanced later with dishes such as jambalaya and white beans that she learned how to cook while living in south Louisiana.

Granny complained that he always seemed to get laid off during duck season, enabling him to hunt more.

Growing up on the farm wasn’t all work—we learned to have a lot of fun, too, and transformed our land into our own massive playground. In the front yard we regularly spent hours playing a game we devised using a broomstick or a broken hoe handle for a bat and several discarded socks stuffed tightly into one another for a ball. The game was a combination of baseball and dodgeball. Once you hit the sock ball into play, it could be picked up and thrown at you. If you hadn’t reached base or strayed too far from it and were hit with the sock ball, you were out. The rest of the rules were those of conventional baseball.

Jimmy Frank, by virtue of being the eldest brother by four years, was umpire, coach, and general arbiter of play—not without
some objections and arguments from his brothers and cousins. It was he who decided to let me bat left-handed, although I threw right-handed. He made all of my other brothers put the broomstick on their right shoulder.

Granny’s once-attractive front yard, which was surrounded by several mature oak trees with rock-walled flower beds around them, was turned into a beaten-down ball field with fairly large holes in the sandy soil around the bases—the result of years of my brothers and me and our friends and relatives sliding into them. Although my four brothers and I were usually enough for a pretty good game, frequently our friends, such as Mac, John Paul, Marv Hobbs, Frankie Hale, or Kenny Tidwell, joined us. Even Pa, Judy, and Jan were occasional participants.

Our backyard served as a football field—complete with a goalpost at one end, which Jimmy Frank and Harold made from a couple of oak-tree uprights and a sweet-gum crossbar. Remarkably, that football field ended up becoming the proving ground for several North Caddo High School Rebels and later Louisiana Tech University Bulldogs players.

Our football field was bounded by a couple of big oak trees on the east, the log house on the north, the smokehouse and outhouse on the south, and a vegetable garden on the west. It was about thirty yards long and half as wide. We played two-hands-below-the-waist touch football year-round. Jimmy Frank,
who played for the Vivian High School Warriors until it was consolidated into the North Caddo High School, always had a plentiful supply of footballs—old worn ones from his high school team.

Jimmy Frank played center his freshman year, making first string when a player ahead of him quit school to join the navy during the Korean conflict. Jimmy Frank was later moved to guard, then tackle (all 147 pounds of him) during his senior year, where he made second-team all-district. Jimmy Frank played linebacker all four years—players still played both offense and defense during those days—but he really wanted to be a quarterback. Since Jimmy Frank couldn’t do it, he was going to make sure one of us would play in the backfield.

Since we played on a short field in our backyard, each team had only four downs to score, or the ball went over. I remember Jimmy Frank slapping our hands when we missed a pass, and then smacking the ball into our belly and saying, “Catch it.” Everyone learned to throw. I started passing when my hands were so small that I was unable to grip the ball fully and had to balance it on my palm.

My brothers and our friends had varying abilities when it came to football. Tommy was the first to make quarterback, later converting to halfback to make room for me when I began playing for North Caddo High. Passing seemed to come naturally for
me. Harold, who had a milk allergy and underwent two major operations while a child, suffered a broken elbow while playing freshman football and never played in high school. Silas was a hard-hitting defensive back for the Rebels. Tommy and I earned first-team all-district football honors. As a senior, I was named first-team all-state quarterback and first-team all-district outfield in baseball.

When I graduated from high school, I followed Tommy to Louisiana Tech in Ruston, Louisiana, on a full football scholarship. Tommy started as a wide receiver for Louisiana Tech but was converted to cornerback his junior year. I sat on the sidelines my first year, then earned the starting quarterback job as a redshirt freshman the next year.

My brothers and I were intensely competitive, and this trait extended to all our activities, not just sports.

Playing college football wouldn’t have been nearly the same without having one of my brothers there with me. We were all intensely competitive, and this trait extended to all our activities, not just sports. We played for blood, whether it was Monopoly, dominoes, or card games. We showed no mercy, and tenderhearted Jan, who often cried in frustration, was not consoled but ridiculed. In fact, we went out of our way to tease her and make her cry.

Our competitiveness may have reached its peak in the waging
of our “Corncob Wars.” One side took up a position inside the barn, while the other attacked from outside. We used corncobs, of which there were plenty in the barn; feed troughs; and the barnyard during the winter months. A hit from a corncob below the waist rendered a player “dead,” and he had to withdraw from the game. When everyone on one side had been “killed,” the remaining players on the other side had won.

Some little quirks in the game made it noteworthy. Although you could keep playing if a corncob hit you above the waist, you had better not stick your head out from behind cover or you risked a knot on your noggin. You were fair game for a well-aimed cob, whether or not it “killed” you.

Necessity also added another messy detail. In the late spring and summer, corncobs became scarce around the barn, but there were always plenty of dried cow chips. These became legal missiles, too. If you found one that was crusted over enough to pick up but still soft on the inside, you were a force to be feared. We still laugh about a wet patty that got Jimmy Frank full in the face. Luckily, he was wearing his glasses.

We also played a game in which we would wrench old, dried cornstalks from the ground and square off like sword fighters in a duel. One would hold his stalk out, and the other would strike and try to break it. If he failed, the other was required to hold his
stalk out and let it be smashed. Whoever survived with an intact cornstalk, usually after repeated smashes, was the winner.

I guess now I know why my sons are so darned competitive—they learned it from their father. My brothers and I spent our youth competing with each other outdoors; there weren’t any Xbox 360 or Nintendo games to keep us occupied inside. I spent my youth exploring the fields, woods, and swamps that surrounded our home. My time out in nature shaped the rest of my life, and it’s something I wanted to make sure my sons learned to enjoy. Whether it was hunting, fishing, or playing sports, my children were going to grow up outside. They weren’t going to be sitting on the couch inside.

At least they didn’t grow up to be nerds.