Bossier City, Louisiana

When we moved to La, I was in the 6th grade. I loved that age - having girl friends, wearing pretty dresses to school, singing in music class (when the music teacher came into the classroom). I even remember some of the songs I learned there. It was in 6th grade that band started. They sent us all to the gym where they asked who might be interested in playing an instrument. I thought I would like to play the clarinet, but I wasn't sure of the name, so when they asked about the flute, I raised my hand. I was not too happy to see I had chosen the wrong one, but was too embarrassed to tell them, so I've played the flute ever since.

In Jr High school, my band director was Mr. Winderweedle. He looked like his name sounds. And my biggest competitor in band was Sam Boggs. He and I always vied for 1st chair.

We lived in a trailer until Mom and Dad bought a house. I think the 3 of us girls slept on the sofa bed that was in the awning-extension room attached to the trailer. Every night we would get the blankets and sheets out of the bottom of the sofa and fold down our bed, and in the morning we would fold up all the blankets and sheets together and put them back and "create" the sofa again.

Dad tried to have a garden wherever we lived, but I think Bossier City, while we were in the trailer was the most challenging. The winds were so strong that the corn stalks grew almost horizontally. His attempts at potatoes weren't much more successful. His favorite saying was that some of them were the size of peas and some were little bitty things.

Once we got into a home, we felt very settled. I remember "helping" Lynn work on his car, and I remember one time he was brought home by the police for something he and his friends were doing that was dangerous (but not serious or illegal). I loved helping Lynn with anything. He was (is) my hero. It was sad when he joined the Navy, but I was still impressed at how grown up and BIG he was. It was like, "Wow. Lynn (my handsome brother) is going in the Navy."

Band consumed me in La. It was my main focus all through jr high school and in high school, it was the only thing that was important to me. I loved marching, and we we so into it that we actually used to go down to the high school at night and turn on the lights on the football field and march around. (Like 5 of us.) Everything we did in the south was barefoot, and it was great to march around on the grass barefoot - except when we stepped on frogs and felt them squish between the toes. Ewwww. But that didn't stop us. I could march forever. Our band took 1st place in every competition statewide, in both concert and marching seasons, and we also took 1st place in the International Marching Parade in Atlantic City, N.J. There was nothing bigger or more fun for me than band. At that time Dad made records for people as a side job, I guess, and he made a record of our band.

I remember one morning we were waiting for the school bus to pick us up, and we had set our books and stuff on the corner while we waited. When the bus came, it took the corner a little wide (there was no curb, just the dirt to the side of the road) and he ran over our books and MY FLUTE! I was so scared they would make me pay for it. I had my stomach in my throat for about a month waiting for someone to tell me what a horrible person I was and how much I was at fault and that I would have to pay for it or quit band or both. I didn't dare say anything to anyone, but eventually, I figured enough time had passed and they weren't coming after me.

We lived in the south before integration. There was a lot of talk about it though, and I couldn't understand the opinions people had there. I remember that the blacks had a brand new high school with a swimming pool and we had an OLD high school with no pool. I thought, why would they want to come to our high school?, and in truth, they didn't. And the members weren't any more tolerant of blacks than the non-members, which surprised me. Once I said, "well I thought that since you are Mormons, you wouldn't be prejudiced against blacks", and my friend said, "Its because we are Mormons we are prejudiced. We know there is a curse on them and we shouldn't have anything to do with them." (we didn't call them blacks back then, we called them Negros or Niggers.)

I also remember that there was one black man who had joined the Church but he wasn't allowed to come to our Church. So he would wait for Stake Conference when we held it in a huge conference hall, and he would sit way up in the balcony where he hoped no one noticed or called the police. It all puzzled me, but I could see that the blacks felt the same way, and wanted to stay separate from the whites.

I remember that our cars didn't have air conditioning, but in spite of the heat, we (meaning the 3 of us girls) would roll up our windows to pretend we were rich and had A.C., and act like we were freezing, when in fact we had sweat rolling down our faces.

Our house was the center of activity for us and our friends. Even though it wasn't the cleanest or nicest, it was the place everyone wanted to congregate. We couldn't have a Sunday evening without a fireside or something. We loved having the missionaries come over, and we loved playing SEEK or anything that would count as a fireside, and had to have get-togethers every weekend (or so we thought).

We had to go to Shreveport for Church. It was about 1/2 hour away, I think. For that reason, we couldn't do Seminary. It was just too far and there weren't enough of us to convince the adults it was worth it. Also, when I got to high school, Anne and I were the only Mormons in the whole school.

All our growing up years Dad was a civilian working for the Air Force and we lived right next to, but not on Air Force Bases. He told us that the bases we lived by were SAC (Strategic Air Commands), which meant that if the US was bombed (the 50s were all about bomb shelters and being prepared for "the big one"), the base we lived on would be one of the 1st targets. That was pretty scary for a kid. In La, every Saturday at noon they did the air-raid siren test. Airplanes always flew low overhead, and occasionally there would be a huge boom when one broke the sound barrier. I was always just a little scared. No matter how hot it was, I couldn't sleep without at least a sheet on me, like it could protect me in some way.

We lived in Bossier City 5 years - longer than we had ever lived anywhere. We loved certain parts of living in the south. I loved the southern accent and can revert back to it any time. We loved the southern hospitality and most of the food. But I hated the heat mixed with the humidity. It was killer.

Another interesting thing is that Dad used to drive all the way to Texas to buy gas, cause they had a place there where he could get gas for only 18 cents a gallon, instead of paying nearly 25 cents a gallon where we lived!