Dynamite Ditch!

When we moved to Patterson in the summer of 1968, I was a little sad to be leaving Bayou Vista; so many of my friends and places I had had so much fun with and at for as long as I could remember were being left behind… but that was offset in large part due to moving somewhere that I had also spent a lot of time. And being in town meant that the friends I had in school were now local, and a whole new universe of possibilities were now available to be explored!

Across the street was Billy Gober, who I had known since the First Grade; and 2 houses down was Mike Comeaux, who had been a classmate in the First Grade; and around the corner was Joey Smoorenburg, a friend since the Third Grade; and across the backyard was Glenn Jumonville, who I had played PeeWee football with for a couple of years… within a couple of blocks there were 15 or 20 guys I had known for most of my life at the time.

This story is about a one of the adventures I shared with Glenn Jumonville; we had many hours and days of fun times together, mostly due to the fact that he came from a large family with 5 boys and one girl; we were only about 6 months apart in age, so I stayed over at his house a few times, and was treated like one of the guys by his Mom and Dad; it was like a second home to me.

And it was a great place to be for a kid; the house was on a double-sized lot, with a large front and back yard; and his parents had no problem with boys being boys, and provided an environment where the kids could stay busy. There was a Pool table in what had probably been originally intended as the dining room, a Ping-Pong table in the enclosed Patio area, a Pole Vaulting pit in the backyard, a basketball goal on the driveway, and many football games were played in the front yard, when Go-Kart races weren’t occurring there! There was never a dull moment at the Jumonville house…

But one day, I think it was during the summer of 1968 not long after we had moved there, when I went over and everyone else was busy doing Family stuff; it must have been Sunday; it was just Glenn and I, and we wanted to do something different. Somehow during the course of our ruminating over what to do, the idea to go exploring on the other side (South) of the railroad tracks came up; we didn’t have much knowledge of that area, but knew it was swampy/marshy; so the idea of walking around in that wasn’t appealing. And we knew that there was a canal across from Red Cypress road that went south from there, to points unknown (to us, anyway)! So the decision was made to load the Pirogue into a wheelbarrow, and tote it down Highway 90 on the shoulder, and go see where it went!!! You can just about imagine the thoughts of people driving by us on the 4-lane, passing by these 2 young boys with a boat in a wheelbarrow…

The canal that we were headed for was known to us as Dynamite Ditch; the popular story among our age group was that it had been dug using dynamite; well, barring actual historical facts, it sounded reasonable to us, anyway. Upon arriving at what we thought was a good place to load out, we put the pirogue in the water, then stashed the wheelbarrow so no one could easily find it; we didn’t want to come back and find our means of transport gone, ya know? Then we got in and headed out on our Grand Adventure into the swamp! It was so exciting…

There was not much of a current in the canal, so we paddled for a while, and enjoyed the scenery as we moved slowly downstream; as we went it became more and more obvious that we were moving into an environment that was unknown to us, which merely heightened the excitement. And after a while, we came to an intersection with a larger watercourse that we found out later was Patterson Bayou; it was twice as wide as the canal, with a slightly stronger current… and after a few moments of “turn around, go upstream here, go downstream…”, we decided to keep going downstream, not really considering the effort that might be required to come back…

So we continue down the bayou for a while, enjoying the adventure; but at some point we realized we had been out there for some time, and we probably should head back… upon turning around, we were dismayed to find that the current was more than we thought; and it was going to require constant paddling to get back upstream… fortunately, being young and in pretty good shape, we could do it; but it was gonna take twice as long to get back! And it’s getting late in the day, so the urgency has come to the fore that we better get a move on.

Meanwhile, back at the Home Front, our absence has been noticed; inquiries have begun, and un-beknownst to us, panic has begun to set in amongst the grown-ups… the only thing that is known is that the last time we were seen was heading off with a pirogue in a wheelbarrow… the alarm has gone up, and an all-out search has begun focused on the river! The police have become involved, and half of Patterson is in an uproar, looking for me and Glenn! This is all happening while we’re paddling like mad to get back to our starting point on Dynamite Ditch…

So we finally get back, load up the pirogue, and haul it back toward home; only to be met by a Wasp nest of parents giving us a what-for for our callous dis-regard for their concern for our welfare; this is not to say that it was not earned… when you get older and have your own children, you totally understand the feelings that they went through. and there is some regret that they had to go through that. But I think that they and I as well, would rather have children that are un-afraid to face the unknown with an adventurous spirit… but at least give us a heads-up about your plans!!!

To be continued; same life, different story…

© Dewayne P. Blanco 2021

Tales from Red Cypress – Cane Trucks!

Ahh, the bicycle stories; but sometimes, we didn’t even need them to have an adventure… some of the things we did led up to them, however…

One of my campout cronies for a year or so was Jeff Dolci; at the time he lived only a few hundred yards from our Area of Operations on Red Cypress. At the intersection of Red Cypress and Highway 182, as a matter of fact… and we had some crazy fun camping out and chasing parkers! One day we spent several hours working on our bikes to make them as silent as possible; grease or oil on any part that might make a noise as we snuck up on our un-suspecting targets… we were so devious in our own innocent way… LOL!

Setting the scene for the rest of this story, the border of the property where Jeff lived, along Red Cypress, had several sections of bamboo; there were openings between these sections of several feet, which allowed a view onto Red Cypress, and allowed easy access back and forth.  It also allowed a place to hide from view of the vehicles on the road, which was a major factor in the flow of events forthcoming in this story…

During cane cutting season, there was a steady flow of cane trucks coming from across the river; for those who haven’t seen it, in South Louisiana in the fall they are everywhere. In the old days there were cane grinding mills on every plantation; the cut cane would be loaded into trailers, several hooked together in a train, then towed by a tractor to the local mill to be ground up and processed into molasses, which was loaded onto a barge on the adjacent bayou to be transported to a larger mill up or down the waterway to be processed into sugar, etc. Over time, with the advent of bigger trucks and better roads(!) it became more efficient to transport the cut cane from the fields to the larger refineries via tractor-trailers and large haulers containing several tons of cut cane.

So, they would come from across the river, then have to stop at Highway 182; then they would have to cross the highway, slowly accelerating their 20-40 ton loads back up to speed… needless to say, this took a while… so one day, while watching this process, one of us (who knows, eh?) came up with a crazy idea… Hey, by the time they get across the highway, they’re only going maybe 10 miles an hour; we can run out there, grab ahold of the bumper, and hang on while skidding on our shoes, until we feel we need to let go and run back off the road! WHAT? So we lay in wait one day; the anticipation was agonizing… would they see us? Would they stop? Would they call the police on us? Would someone else see us and call the police? I say agonizing, but if you knew us back then, there was barely a second thought that we had that overpowered the excitement of the adventure.

Here he comes; across the highway; grinding through the gears, slowly getting up to speed… as soon as the tractor is sufficiently past our location (we HOPE!), we sprint out to the rear of the trailer and find a hand-hold; squat down low enough to overcome the friction of our shoes, and hang on, sliding on the concrete, adjusting the angle of our legs so that we can continue sliding down the road as the truck accelerates! The next problem is immediately apparent; when to let go? It is a fine line that only YOU can decide; of course, the competition component comes into play; who lets go first!!! If you let go too soon, it is easy to run to a stop as the truck continues down the road. On the other hand, if you hang on too long, you cannot run fast enough to overcome the momentum, and risk doing a face-plant onto the concrete roadway! Decisions, decisions…

We got pretty good at this after a while; well, you either get good at it, or go to the emergency room, eh? So we up the ante; now we’re gonna try doing it on our bicycles, so we can get more of a speed rush out of the exercise… and one day, all the chickens came home to roost, so to say.

The truck comes by, and we ride out together, on one bicycle, who knows why!?! I’m in front, and grab hold of the bumper; off we go, accelerating down the road… finally, I feel that we are going (almost) too fast, maybe 45 miles an hour, I let go… and as the truck slowly begins to pull away, for some reason Jeff decided to put on the brakes… and coaster brakes on bicycles are not intended to be used at these speeds, eh? So the back tire locks up, and I’m thrown over the bars onto the road; then the bike, then Jeff, is thrown down onto me… and we come to a grinding, agonizing halt. OWWWW!

After un-tangling ourselves we made it back to Jeff’s; and upon inspection of my injuries, there was a hole ground into my back wherever a muscle crossed a rib… not pretty… but doctor Ricky Rochel showed up, and he had a cure! He had Jeff go into the house and find some Mercurochrome… and proceeded to throw it onto my back with enthusiasm… I remember sliding on my back along the ground like a dog with an itchy butt! After recovering from this procedure, I finally made my way home…

At that time, one of my parents (and mine) good friends, who had been a Para-pelagic from his High School days, Marion Roland, was sharing my room with me; he had gotten sick and was not able to be on his own at the time, so we had set up a hospital bed in my room until he recuperated. He was one of those good people that you meet in your life that teach you that you can overcome bad things that happen to you; I have fond memories of the time we spent together, as he taught me how to play dominoes, and he gave me one of those special dogs in my life, Felicia, that will always be in my memories…

When I get home, Mr. Marion can tell I am moving around in a un-characteristic way; and I begin to tell him about my day; and one of the first stories is the fact that I had earlier in the day unscrewed 13 coat hooks from the back of one of my classrooms; then, the story about the cataclysm on Red Cypress… after he recovered from the fit of choking laughter he had from the stories, he asked me: “Do you think that they might be related?”… and I thought awhile, and said: “You may have a point there…”

The next day I brought the coat hooks back…

To be continued; same life, different story…

© Dewayne P. Blanco 2021

Tales from Red Cypress; Guardian Angels!

Looking back on my life, it becomes obvious to me that I have had one (or more!) Guardian Angels; there have been many instances where I was in a situation that could have resulted in my death or permanent injury; some would call it luck, but if I had that, I would have won the lottery by now, right? But when you live to be my age (66 next month…), living your life the way I have, it feels like something more has been in play.

In 1968 we moved to Patterson; and my Mom gave me a longer leash… and one of the things I began doing that summer was going swimming in the river. We called it the Teche, but technically it was the Lower Atchafalaya… and we had some great fun! I had never had swimming lessons; I swam in the tub from a very young age, and the most important lesson I learned there was the ability to hold my breath for long periods of time, and deal with the panic you would feel as your oxygen level decreased. And I learned the importance of economy of motion in order to decrease the use of needed oxygen…

The most frequented swimming location that summer was the Versaggi docks across the road from First street; there was a small boat lift at one end with a second story picnic deck; and we would jump/dive off of that, and play tag amongst the pilings of the dock. One of the things we learned from this was how painful creosote burn could be; we figured out early on not to hug the pilings! And that mayonnaise was the preferred treatment…

One day, during a lull in the action, Teddy Paul convinced me we should swim across the river… I was skeptical at first, but he was a proficient swimmer with the credentials to back it up; I believe at the time he was already a lifeguard. He had already shown me how to swim on the surface, since I until then mostly swam underwater until air was required and only surfaced long enough to replenish air long enough to go back under and continue… so even though it was further than I had ever swam in my life, I finally agreed.

So off we go, headed across toward Ed Kyle’s camp on the other side; it seemed like forever before we were even half-way there… the river there is probably over a quarter mile, maybe more; but I had more confidence than sense back then! Probably 100 yards or so from the other side, I began to cramp up; I would get a good load of air, then relax as much as I could underwater and massage the cramping location. After a couple of minutes I would come up for air, then repeat the process… eventually, I recovered enough to make it to the shore. It took a while to build up the energy/confidence to go back, but we made it…

So I’m sitting out here in my garage with the propane burner providing heat, and the garage door closed; But I have a CO detector sitting next to me; another occurrence from the Red Cypress campouts gave me a heads-up on that…

One weekend there was a pretty large group of us wanting to camp out; and we decided to pitch a tent at a different location from our base, since someone had a tent, Coleman stove, etc; Jack Smith, Joe Stewart, Steve May, Earl Harrington, Keith Gary, Jeff Dolci are the names I remember; it was a small four man tent, but we could fit, eh? At the end of an exciting evening, we retired to the tent. It was a cold night, probably in the 30’s; we had some sleeping bags, some blankets; but we decided that we would light the Coleman stove to augment the heat we had available… then we all went to sleep, unaware of the potential consequences…

Sometime later, I awoke with a splitting headache; the stove was spitting and hissing and barely lit; I crawled over to the tent door and unzipped it and opened it. Then I began shaking everyone awake to make sure everyone else was OK… everyone finally got up and began moving around… It was only then that we realized the major mistake we had made.  Had that tent been a bit better sealed, we would probably been another statistic for Carbon Monoxide poisoning!

That experience is the reason that, to this day, I implore everyone I know to get a Carbon Monoxide detector, and use it anywhere you are using anything that burns; fireplace, gas stove, generator, etc. They cost about the same as a smoke detector, are battery powered, and will possibly save your life!

Give your Guardian Angel a break, OK?

To be continued; same life, different story…

© Dewayne P. Blanco 2020