Friends

Logansport Rosenwald School was from Kindergarten until 6^th grade.  Then you transferred and went to the big school.  Logansport High School was from 7^th grade to 12^th.  There really was no such thing as middle school for us, but I will refer to my 7^th and 8^th grade years in that way here, for your convenience and understanding. 

When I went to 7^th grade, I had three best friends.  Sonya had been my best friend since 1^st grade, and would continue to be, until my senior year.  She treated me like dirt.  Courtney was a short, round girl who lived down the street from me.  We took her on vacation with us once, and camping at least once.  Sonya and Courtney were my BFFs for many, many years.

Mary transferred in to Logansport Rosenwald, from the Caddo Magnet program.  She was very smart and very nice.  I fear she thought we are all stupid.  She easily excelled at our school.  Mary was also African American. She and I were one of the first interracial friendships my school had seen.  We hung out together at lunch, and she spent the night at my house a few times.

Stacy, Angela Heartsfield, and Jennifer were also my very good friends.  We all hung out together and ate lunch together.  I called it “holding court.”  I felt all people there were free to speak their minds, and tell any story they wished. 

I will never forget stepping into my new lunchroom.  All the black kids were on one side, and all the white kids were on the other.  They call it self-segregation. So when Mary sat down with me on the white side, which had the only open table, we both got dirty looks.  Mary took a lot of heat for that from the black community.  They often accused her of wanting to be white.  I think that idea just befuddled her. 

Together all of us kind of formed our own click.  We were the outcasts, the weird ones, most of us terribly smart. We were our own Isle of Misfit Toys.  We, as a group, often floated between the jocks, the poor kids and some of the black group, but then again we were also a cohesive group on our own and often stayed to ourselves.  As self-centered as it may sound, I often felt they were my entourage.  I felt I was surrounded and protected by strong, intelligent, beautiful women, but none of it would last very long.

Into our group we added Alison.  She became one of my closest friends.  Her father was the pastor of Maple Springs Baptist Church.  It was right next door to Louisiana Pacific (the log plant) and the creosote plant.  Her father was one of those charismatic leaders.  I would find out later, that when he left town, he owed quite a few people money.  It was to him I posed the question of, “Who are God’s parents?”  He became violent and belligerent towards me, and told me to never ask such things again.

Alison’s church had a choir and you know me, I just love to sing.  We rehearsed again, and again.  We were preparing to do Bette Midler’s, “You are the wind beneath my wings,” about the time my dad told me, I had to quit.  I remember turning in my choir shirt, with tears in my eyes.  I was devastated.  I still don’t quite understand what happened.  My guess is this.

I had made an alter call.  I had for several years been masturbating.  Something I believed I had invented.  Remember no sex ed. here people.  I knew I was going to burn in hell for this.  I felt I could not bring up such a subject up with my parents.  I feel embarrassed and squeamish bringing up such a subject to you even now.  In a generation full of women’s liberation and equality, women’s rights and long after the sexual revolution took place.  My parents never discussed such thing with me.   I would make several altar calls, as several different places, before I would find out what I was doing was healthy, natural, and normal. 

I was also making altar calls about this time, because I had heard other people’s stories of being saved.  Some said they saw light or halos, or that God spoke to them.  None of that had happened to me when I got saved, so I thought perhaps I had done it wrong.

When I made this particular altar call, Alison and her buddies took me in the back of the church.  They told me how proud they were of me, how they had been praying for this and that now I could be saved.  I tried to explain to them that I was already saved, that I had been sprinkled in the United Methodist Church the year before.  They told me that this did not count.  The only way I could be saved was to be baptized.

I had stumbled upon a nasty Southern truth.  Most Southern Baptist churches, don’t recognized a person’s baptism, outside of their own denomination.  I have also known some church that only recognized your baptism, if you were baptized in their church.  Even, for some of these people, if it was another Southern Baptist Church, you had to do it again.

United Methodism is not like that.  You tell us you were baptized on such and such a date, and at such and such a church, we will believe you, as long as we can verify it.  No problems.  You don’t have to be resprinkled or be rebaptized.  We simply call it a profession of faith,  you are then counted as a member of the church, and given what we call a “letter.”

Dad tells me I came home that night, after my altar call, “talking all kinds of crazy shit.”  He knew that the people I was hanging out with up there, were not the people I need to be around.  So he told me I had to quit the choir.  I think I stopped being friends with Alison about that time as well.

My friendship with Alison pushed me to places that I was not comfortable going.  One of the girls in our click was named Stacy.  She is a dear and treasured friend.  Alison convinced me that Stacy needed saving.  She and I brought our bibles to school.  Not a big deal, lots of people did that.  During our 7^th grade English class, we asked to be excused, outside with Stacy.  The teacher said okay.  I believe she knew what we were going to do.  We left the room with our bibles in hand.  We took Stacy outside and proselytized to her, and told her she need to be saved.  We were so adamant, that Stacy started crying, because we had upset her so bad.  I had to stop.  I think I walked back inside. 

I have apologized to Stacy several times, over the years for this.  The fact that I attacked Stacy in this way, on school property, and was allowed to do so, by the teacher, still bothers me a lot.  Stacy should have been free to attend school without the fear of some trying to shove their religion down her throat.  Just imagine, if your kids got accosted by a bunch of Muslims, that tried to force your child in to believing in Ali, while she was at school, and the teacher knew about it.  You would probably be pissed too.  Although Stacy is a Christian, and was back then too, I wonder how many people get accosted like this every today.

Courtney and I, were also coming to the end of our friendship, about that time as well.  I had loved Courtney, as a best friend, for many years.  But she frequently insulted me, and made fun of both me, and of the things, I loved and treasured.  She also would always hold over my head, everything I ever did wrong.  I stopped speaking to her as well.  I often acted as if she was dead or she simply wasn’t there at all.  Not an easy thing to do as we both graduated in the same class together of 47.  Between the time I stopped speaking to her in middle school, and today, I think I have said less than a paragraph to her. 

Breaking up with Courtney had to be as hard on her, as it was on me.  We were continuously urged by both our parents and other friends to fix our relationship, but I refused to budge.  I can be very stubborn when I want to be.  I see Courtney’s Momma ever now and again, and ask after her.  I even ran into Courtney a few years back and spoke to her.  She looked like she wanted to run away from me.  I tried to friend her on Facebook, and make amends but she told me no.  Although I have no desire to be her friend again, as I know how she is, I do want to apologize to her, for the way I behaved towards her, and for not being there for her when her dad died.  I want her to know I wish her all the best that life has to give her. 

 

Ilsa

Conversion

So I want to share with you some memories that happened around the same time.  Please forgive me if they are not in order, jump around a bit or don’t flow like usual.  Hey it’s been 25+years here and I know the memories are there.  They are just stuck on the floppy drive in my head.  I am still trying to give you a since of who I was then and what was going on around me about that time.  So here goes. 

After Oma died Momma tend to Grandpa.  He ate dinner with us every night, and constantly complained how bad the food was, while he steadily shoved it down.  I can still hear him saying, “This gravy tastes like wallpaper glue.”  Correcting me on my table manners, “When you put soup on your spoon, try not to ding the side of the bowl.”  I still think of this when I am nervous at the table.  Nothing was ever good enough for him.

Between the time Oma died when I was 7, and he married Barbara when I was about 12, Grandpa developed cancer.  Well not really.  The Dr.’s never did quite understand what it was, but they treated it as cancer with radiation. They found it during his routine yearly examine.  He had developed some kind of sack at the base of his Medulla Oblongata, or his brain stem.  He had a six inch scar down the back of his head and neck.  We called it his zipper.  The surgery left him with balance issues and he was unable to lift his head to see the stars.  Something he told me he greatly missed.  He had retired from sea life, at this point. I don’t think he could have ever gone back to sea, because of his balance issues, even if he had wanted to.  For the first time, since he was about 17, he was land locked.

The surgery changed him a lot.  So much so, that I don’t think my younger cousins, will recognize the man I have described in this blog.  After his surgery Grandpa was a much kinder man.  I don’t know that he ever beat Barbara, the way that he used to beat Oma.  His demeanor changed.  We used to say they had taken out his meanness with his surgery. 

Grandpa, Barbara, my parents and me all became very active in the Bethel community.  It was a small community outside of Logansport, way back in the woods and we began to attend the Bethel United Methodist Church.  Bethel church had a large congregation and lots of kids at the time.  It was here that both Grandpa, Barbara, and eventually Mom became members.

My best buddy at Bethel was Jennifer.  We used to sit behind my Mom and Dad in church.  We would just giggle.  Then Mom would do that thing, where her head rotated like an owl, her eyes would get huge, her eye brows lift, and she would give us this look of, “If you two don’t shut up.  I am going to beat you within an inch of your life when we get home.”  And then she would turn back around like everything was normal and fine. 

Jennifer was a year younger than me.  We helped put on Vacation Bible School.  I can still hear, “Jesus and you at Camp Can Do,” in my head as I write.  My favorite story to tell of her is that there is an old hymn called, “Bringing in the Sheaves.”  That’s it, some of you are humming it now.  I can hear you, Alto’s in the back.  We had no idea what a sheave was at that time.  So our brains changed it into something we recognized.  I brought in the sheep and Jennifer brought in the sheets.  When we realized this in church one day, we started just busted out laughing.  All I could see was Jesus getting the sheets off the line, just a humming that song. Oh still makes me smile today. 

In the summers made the rounds of Vacation Bible School (VBS).  One week I was at First Baptist, one week at First Methodist, and one week at Bethel.  It was at the VBS at First Baptist that I really heard about Hell for the first time.  The pastor had us hold up our hands, during prayer time, of those of us who were not saved.  I held up my hand.  I was not sure what he was talking about.  He asked those of us who had raised our hands, to stay for a moment before we went to our classes. We did and he explained that if we were not saved, we would go to hell and be burned for ever.  I think he gave us a little tract pamphlet and told us to go home and talk to our parents. 

I did and told my parents that I wanted to be saved.  They were overjoyed.  I now just had to decide if I was wanted to be Baptist like Mom or United Methodist like Dad.  If I went Baptist they would have to find a place to baptize me, as they had no dunking tub at the church.  I knew there was a nasty old pond outside with snakes, and I didn’t want that either.  In the Methodist church I would be sprinkled.  I liked that idea a whole lot better.

I joined Keatchie United Methodist Church the next first Sunday.  Hell seemed to be something that was really talked about more, and emphasized more in the Baptist churches that I attended, then in the Methodist ones.  Yes, from what I understood, Methodist believed in Hell and Satan, but they focused more on Jesus’ teaching.    There was also a lot less screaming, and hell fire and brimstone sermons in the Methodist Church.  I was sprinkled in the Methodist Church August 6^th, 1989.   

About the same time in my life my favorite thing to do, was to go camping and fishing with my parents.  We took my friend Courtney once, but she was not too keen on it.  My Grandpa had about 200 acres down the old Bogle road, where he had grown up on the old family home place.  That land is now all owned by Dow Chemical. 

Mom, Dad and I had started out years before fishing.  There were two ponds on that property, a little pond and a much larger one.  We would borrow Grandpa’s little green aluminum boat and paddle out to the middle of the pond.  Daddy’s job was to put worm on Mom and I’s hooks, and to untangle us when our lines got crossed.  Poor Daddy, I don’t think he ever really got any fishing done.  I never could jab those little worms, so I just wrapped them around the hook and the Brim would just suck them right off.  So I learned to poke them, just a little bit.  Oh I was heartbroken when I found out worms cannot breath under water, and that I had been killing them.  I have yet to go back fishing after that. 

Camping kind of naturally came out of that.  We were working class poor, and Daddy worked all the damn time, so the idea of a vacation, that lasted more than a weekend, was a real luxury to us.  I think I took a handful of those during my school years.  What we did do a lot was go camping.  We mostly liked North Toledo Bend State Park out of Zwolle.  It is a beautiful park and in those days it was cheap and close for us.  We would go several times a year.   Sometimes we would even take Grandpa’s bass boat out.  It was a beautiful dark blue with a glitter finish.  Some of my best memories are of camping with my parents.  My parents spoiled me with the gift of their time.  I encourage you to do the same thing with your kids if you can. 

Daddy would often leave before dawn and come home late after dark.  It was nothing for him to work 60 to 80 hours a week, sometimes for months at a time. Daddy worked in the oil fields as a pipeline supervisor.  But a lot of the time he was on some type of machinery, whether it was dozer or a trackhoe.  Hell he can run them all.  He used to take me on location with him sometimes.   He would put me in the space behind the seat of the trackhoe, and it would go boingy, boingy, boingy and just bounce me up and down. 

He would come home and he had worked so hard he had sweated salt rings onto his shirt.  I always wanted to kiss him when he first came home, even if he was dirty.  He smelled like dirt, and diesel and oil.  Even today those smells excite me and make me think of home. 

Daddy is not an uneducated man.  He was raised on the Dairy at Keatchie, went to Longstreet High School and then went to Louisiana Tech in Ruston.  He was working on his degree in Animal Husbandry when he ran out of money.  He had wanted to be a vet, but there was not a vet school in Louisiana at that time. 

He left Louisiana, and bounced around for a while, traveling to New Orleans, and then Kansas, and finally after that and went to Houston.  His first job there was working as a rigger, for Brown and Root Construction.  He was working on the tops of buildings that were being constructed, walking those huge steel beams.   Brown and Root lead him to work in the oil field and he’s been doing it ever since.  He’s gone from being a hand and running equipment, to pipeline supervisor, to basically being a company man now.  His job is to sit in the air conditioned truck and make sure everyone is doing their job correctly.  The last 10 or 15 years he has had to travel for work going to Oklahoma, Ohio, and South Texas.  But as a child, I was lucky he had work where he was home every night. 

 

Ilsa