[INTRODUCTORY EDITORIAL NOTE. I do not intend this home page to be a major repository of Killough family history. Our son Atticus is setting up another site for that purpose. Novelist Yvonne Lehman taught me and others right-brain, let it all hang out, imaginative writing and this was what I produced as my final assignment. No thinking. Not much edited since. Stream of consciousness. So it was. 07/03/2001 TPK]

Shreveport it was. Call it Louisiana. Double Deep Bible Belt. Across the
Red River it lay from Bossier City and the colossal U.S. Air Force's
Barksdale Field, home of some mighty big transport aircraft and strategic
bombers.

It was also headquarters of United Gas Pipeline Company and thither was
summoned my father, James Douglas Killough, in 1940 to put his skills to
work for decades estimating in that pre-computer, slide rule era, peak
demands across the South for gas winter and summer. 

I was schooled for four years at St. Vincent's Academy, did a two year detour at Deer Park School near Houston and returned to Shreveport to enter 7th grade at St. John Berchman's College Prep School on Jordan (pronounced JER-den) Boulevard. I returned there for the first time in 25 years last June (1998) -- en route somewhere else, I might add. During our flying visit my wife Mary took a number of photos of me in and around the old school premises.

In "my" time, St. John's (totem: "The Flyers") was run by priests and young
men midway through their arduous 12 year priest-preparation time. The priests we called"Father." The future priests we called "Mister." The Jesuits termed the latter  "Scholastics." Typically, the scholastics had spent two years as novices in Grand Coteau, Louisiana, deep in the bayous of Acadia. They had then studied Greek, Latin, Math and literature for two years before moving on to Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama where they spent three years studying science and philosophy. 

After those first seven years they were given Minor Orders of the Roman Catholic Church, which made them clerics and from which they might later, if they changed their minds before prietly ordination, easily be dispensed. At the conclusion of their novitiate they had, however, vowed perpetual poverty, chastity and obedience in the Society of Jesus. From these vows, too, procedures to be released existed and were not superhumanly difficult to work through if, at a later date, individual  men chose to return to lay life. Then years eight through ten were given over to teaching in Jesuit high schools in Houston, Shreveport, New Orleans and elsewhere. After this came three years of theology, priestly ordination, a fourth year of theology, a final year of "second noviatiate" and then the world was their battlefield: as astronomers,  poets, Sinologists, missionaries, writers and even once a U.S. Congressman, Robert Drinan, S.J. of Boston.

For my part: I was sixteen, going on 17 when I was graduated second in my
high school class in 1952. I had dreamt a lot and dissipated my mental energies
chasing many a snipe until about half way through the tenth grade. Then,
for some reason, I said: "I can do better than this." From that point on I
achieved the best grades among my companions and classmates, though not good enough quite to overcome the lead lanky Howell Payne had achieved in grades nine and ten. Simply put, those Jesuit priests and scholastics pushed me to thirst for what my father had been instilling in me my whole young life up until then: the life of the mind.

For reasons not too clear to me then or now, the good Fathers of St. John's
decided at the end of my 7th grade that I should "skip" the eighth. They
must have seen more in the dreamer than the dreamer did. In any event, for
a mere $15/month tuition, I learned things the Jesuit way and still regard
my five years at St. John's as the most exciting, most radical, most novel
time in my intellectual formation.

I had always preferred the company of adults to that of children. Until I
was at least 30 years old and in Foreign Service of the United States, that
remained my mind-set. I liked older, experienced people whether Sandy, the
courtly colored gardener/chauffeur of the wealthy Mrs. Brewster our next-door neighbor, or whether Mrs. Brewster herself ("Mom B" to her children and grandchildren and even to me and my sister). I had the free run of Mrs. Brewster's enormous home and recall struggling through MOBY DICK at age nine over a period of weeks on her upstairs study floor. Admittedly, I preferred to pull down the stairs and go one storey higher to play pool in her attic. But that's the way it was.

It was, therefore, natural that I expected to learn more from the Jesuit
priests and scholastics and the handful of lay teachers than I did from my
classmates, a few known since my primary school days at St. Vincent's. But
some of those boys  also  became my teachers.

There was Louis Hennick. His mother, for the second time a widow, was Mrs.
Thigpen. She and Louis ("Looie") lived alone with a servant or two on the
exquisite Fairfield Avenue in a large white house set behind iron picket
fences amid manicured lawns.  Looie was a railroad buff. He never missed an opportunity to persuade some railroad company (probably he would first
induce his mom to buy stock in the firm) to let him ride 100 miles somewhere, anywhere -- in caboose or preferably cab. I too love railroads and am glad that a dozen or so pass 1/3 of a mile to my south here "somewheres east of Asheville" every day carrying coal from the fields of West Virginia. Ten miles east of downtown Asheville, I dwell and I love to hear trains' self-important wails as they warn people to look sharp at grade crossings.

More importantly, Looie had a great collection of 78 and 33 rpm records. In particular he made he induced me to appreciate opera and more particularly Mousorgsky's BORIS GODUNOV,with the unforgettable bass, Boris Chaliapin in the lead role. Looie might have had the makings of a future eccentric. Once he somehow acquired a medium-sized black hawk whom he promptly named Hatrel, after one of the Jesuits who taught us. I recall at least one ride in the front seat of Louis's personal luxury Packard (all I had was a bicycle) accompanied by Hatrel the Hawk confined in the back seat, defecating freely and whitely over the expensive upholstery.  [NOTE: let future historians note that Mr Hennick disputes that he ever did any such thing with a hawk.  TPK 06/30/2001].Looie was one of the non-Catholic boys who made up 1/3 of our class of about 50, divided into three groups by ability and/or academic interests. Louis and I are discussing by post cards and letters whether to attend in 2002 the 50th anniversary reunion of the St John's graduating class of 1952. [NOTE: Looie made our 55th in 2007; I did not, being busy teaching an adult ed course on Sir Walter Scott. 12/10/2007]

I must not reminisce further without a word or two about Robert Upton, Jr.
Bob was a baker's son. So I always looked forward to visiting Bob and his family on  the "wrong side" of the Red River in wild, sinful Bossier City. Bob's
dad had taught him the baker's trade. Bob's mom always saw to it that Bob's
brown bag lunch included exquisite baked goods. He drove ten miles to
school every day in his very own Model-A ford. Bob was a cartoonist. He was
forever sketching. He caught and exaggerated people's weaknesses, for instance, the
large, prominent teeth of one young teacher. Bob also gave him a
nickname, "Cheese Teeth," to express some of the unprettier ways those
dentals sometimes shone upon Bob. Bob Upton was one of only two among my  my closer friends even to try out for varsity sports. Football was it. He was a valid contender but too slow, I guess, to make the cut, or perhaps he did make the cut.

My closest chum was a year behind me, Peter McRoberts. Our dads had known each other since their college days at Houston's Rice Institute [now Rice University]. Don MacRoberts was Research Director for United Gas Pipeline Company at the Shreveport headquarters. Upton fastened the name "Yo Yo Ears" (just "Ears," when the speaker was in a hurry) on Pete. 

MacRoberts (our teachers called us all by our family names) grumbled but deep down seemed to like the attention he got from Bob Upton via the Yo Yo Ears monicker. But he pretended to be angry and christened Bob in revenge "Four Eyes, The Fish-Faced Aborigine." This didn't make much sense except for the fact that Bob wore glasses. The rest, I guess, was pure euphony. In any event, Bob's nickname usually proved too long for every day usage even for its author. So Pete regularly did his Cheshire cat grin and hissed "Four Eyes Skrijanee" (as heard) in contraction. 

Pete introduced me to the words and music of Gilbert and Sullivan. Pete's family lived in Broadmoor, across the river from Barksdale field--there was no direct bridge in those days as there now is. Mom B's granddaughter whom my family liked to visit also lived there. Babe had had polio when very young, was about ten years older than I, was recently married, and at times flashed forth a fiery temperament. The MacRoberts, pere et mere, were not Catholics but always attended St. John's Parish Church 200 yards from our school. They said that they did so because of the intellectual quality of the Jesuit sermons.

Regarding sermons: I will admit that after graduation in 1952 I never heard more intellectual sermons until my Fulbright year (1959-60) in Vienna. One Jesuit priest at the Universitaetskirche in Vienna excelled in relating writers like Rilke to contemporary Christianity. But even greater than the sermons in Vienna were the full orchestral Latin Masses in Austria, with music provided by Mozart, Beethoven, Bruckner, Haydn and others. I have never doubted since Vienna in 1960 that God is as much beauty as anything else. (O, those radiant ceilings in Baroque churches!) Our Shreveport Jesuits' sermons, too,  could also be pretty meaty. I remember a series on communism, to packed congregations. Father Harold Gaudin, the pastor, was of a strongly mystical bent, so we also learned of St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Avila and others as well. All part of the Jesuit Catholic cultural scene in northwestern Louisiana as the 40s turned into the 50s.

Pete McRoberts was my favorite chess partner, though I enjoyed playing with Howell Payne, my friend and great rival for grades, as well. Pete and I also played chess by telephone. Howell played trombone in our school's marching band and later married Anne Mathieu, the belle of my first grade class at St Vincent's Academy. Howell, an only child, also lived in Broadmoor where his dad owned a propsperous, well located filling station. I believe that Payne, Sr later took a senior position with the city government of Shreveport.

At times I would play chess over the telephone with Pete or others. 

(In those pre-Clinton, pre-Monica days, none of us at our wildest ever dreamt that a phone could be used to phone females for sexual titillation.)

My father eventually pulled the plug on chess by phone. "Pat, a telephone is an instrument of business. If you want to play chess, let X come here or you go there, " said Doug Killough.

My response was to found at school a chess club, with a little, barely bigger-than-a-broom-closet room of our own. Oh, by the by, my dad had given me a chess set and lessons for my eighth birthday and for the next eight years, chess was a big part of my life. I wasn't very good, not much above average, if truth were to be told. But I joined the Shreveport Chess Club and played Friday evenings at the Shreveport YMCA, while my classmates were pursuing their lady loves. I even managed to come in next to last in the State tournament in the early 50s. 

Another of my chums was the ultra-thin, ethereal Steve Scalco. Steve used
to tell anyone who would listen that he was a member of the princely house
of Simitch (I can't remember from what Balkan country). The best Bob Upton
could do with that status was to dub Steve Scalco "Simitch" or halfheartedly
"Prince Simitch."  Steve and I decided to make a crusade together to get
other lads on campus to stop bare-knuckling each other and to cease or at
least cut back on  their cussing. In the process we founded a mock humorous organization called the NELLIES. Our goals were to give stray dogs more appreciation and recognition than they usually got, as well as to persuade our schoolmates to cut back on their cussing and slugging. Our secret recognition sign was "Mon, Nelly,  Mon!" I don't recall anyone else's ever joining us. But Bob Upton loved to put the NELLIES into his cartoons as we wandered across the playing fields doing our peacemaker thing. Oddly, our blue stocking approach induced the otherwise affable Father "Hootie" McCown, S.J. to tell us that there were worse things our teenage confreres might do that "rip out an occasional oath." Now why does that stick in my memory?

Edward Paul Buvens did not come to St. John's until the tenth grade. Like
Louis Hennick, Paul and his parents lived on the elegant Fairfield Avenue, an easy bike ride from where I lived. Ed became the starting quarterback of the perennially unsuccessful St. John's Flyers varsity football team. He is the first person I remember who used contact lenses. I think they were probably more trouble than they were worth. In any case, those were the cavemen years of contact lenses. Ball point pins weren't much older as inventions. What a scramble when the quarterback's contacts fell out! 

Ed had earlier done time at the mega public school 15 blocks away on Line Avenue: Byrd High (all white, was St John's). Rumor had it that drugs were available and used at Byrd, along with nymphomaniacal girls, brutal Neanderthal boys and assorted forms of temptation and trouble. Somehow Ed had survived Byrd. Like me, he was also a debater, and wily and cunning he was, too.Fearless, as eager to defend the negative as he was just as courageous arguing the affirmative. Ed's mother was Canadian and proud of it. This gave Ed a certain air of aloof mystery among the largely Sicilian Catholics who made up the core of our student body in hugely non-Catholic Northern Louisiana.

And now? Where are those boys now? They were my informal teachers, "of the things that are, that they are, and of the things that are not, that they are not."

Those youngsters had their impact on me and it was measurable. I do not
think that any of it was bad. At best we sipped together some minor poisons which helped inoculate us all (not as much as we could use) from incessant carping, fault-finding and personal cruelties to others because of the way they looked or talked.

I have had almost no contact with those lads in the intervening 46 years [NOTE: written in 1998]. I have, however, kept up most with Ed Buvens. Ed went on to a five-year engineering degree at Rice Institute (now University). He then joined the Jesuits and stuck it out through ordination to the priesthood and a variety of useful and holy apostolates since.

Ed tried to get me to a class reunion in October 1998. I said that I would go if Louis Hennick would also go. Ed gave me Looie's address and we corresponded. Looie does not live for crowds or big events. So we have not been to that or any other reunion. After that reunion Rev. Fr. Edward Paul Buvens, S.J., however, reported by email on many classmates whose names--but not their faces or some of their deeds -- had long since slipped away from me.

Ed did mention one lad who had been baptized by Bob Upton as "Snake"
Colby. [Ralph Leroy Colby died after a long illness in 2000. We shared some reminiscences toward the end. He had been preceded in death by my old colleague since first grade, Father Charles Bartles, S.J. 06/30/2001 TPK.] Steve Scalco had been sighted at an earlier reunion but not at this latest  one, Ed said. I gather that Father Buvens had not seen Bob Upton for years. Ed added that Bob has a PhD, looks fit and does a financial planning newsletter. Howell Payne remains married to his high school sweetheart, Anne Mathieu--whom I recall as stunningly beautiful as long ago as the 1941-42 first grade class at St. Vincent's Academy.

Those boys were there when I needed them. I took up a lot of their time and learned much from them.

From the Jesuits I learned far, far more. I wish that I could find still in the land of the living people like Father William Coyle, S.J. who, inter alia, tutored  me through two semesters of extra credit Spanish. Mainly he taught English. He taught it well. I have not knowingly dangled a particle since ninth grade. [NOTE: just before commencing a five night elderhostel in Lafayette, LA, my wife Mary and I visited the Jesuit graveyard at Grand Coteau, LA. Quite a few old teachers lie there, including Father William Coyle and his younger brother Father Auguste Coyle, S.J.]

Oh, to have a chance once more to speak with Father Harold Gaudin,S.J., the uncharacteristically mystic Jesuit.

Father Vincent Micelli, so happy he was in those days, giving my head more than one exuberant "Dutch Rub,"  as I wandered the campus  fields preaching peace on behalf of the Nellies. Later, alas, Micelli was more or less expelled from the Jesuits, ostensibly for being too rigidly conservative. He died a few years ago, a saint to a million or so American lay Catholics who preferred the way things were in America before the Second Vatican Council.

There was also Father Auguste Coyle, William's brother. A powerful orator he. In one retreat he made it clear that we boys were to store up and save our sexual energy for later expression in marriage, did we wish to stay north of hell. 

"Touch a girl anywhere from here to here," he thundered, slicing his hand first across his shoulder and then across his knees "and it's mortal sin!" 

There was the only occasionally seen over the years (but a great pal of my dad), Father Mike Kammer.  He had made his reputation giving weekend retreats to groups of pious Catholic soccer moms and grandmoms in New
Orleans. He would kick off his opening sessions: 
 

"Ladies, it is my firm belief that not one woman in this chapel has ever committed a mortal sin. It's just too darn hard.Very few of us have the guts to be really evil."

Ed Buvens!  Ed showed and shows far better than I a personal interest in each and every one of our cohort. He keeps up with as many as want to be kept up with. Maybe that's why he became quarterback of the Flyers. Leader of our pack. Our Alpha Male. [He is tempting me to the 2002 class reunion by asking me to write a class history. This finger exercise is about as far as I plan to go in that direction! 07/03/2001 TPK]

Almost none of those personalities at St. John's 1947-1952 directly affected me thereafter. Some are dead, even one I knew in first grade, Father Charles Bartles, S.J. I went my way. They went theirs. It was as if I, Cyclops, grew particularly lonely one day in 1947 and joined Odysseus and his crew for an extended picnic. That picnic was long ago and far away in a Red River kingdom of memory.

-000-
 

11-10-98; revisited 12/10/2007 (Lafayette, LA)

Final examination paper for novelist Yvonne Lehman's Creative Writing [Right-Brain] Course MCCALL, Montreat College, Montreat, NC.

http://www.patrickkillough.com/books/mycohort.html