Yahn Smith: Razor Shards of Rat Puke ... Ho, Ho, Ho ....

Yahn Smith, Bossier High School 1964

As I read through the blog, I am constantly struck by the depth of friendship all of you share. As a "City Boy" I really liked the fact that my father moved around the country with the Civil Service. I was born in 1946 in Greenville, Texas but we moved every few years to another assignment. In 1951, when I was five, we moved to Galveston, where I went to elementary and junior high school. I grew up there on the beach. That was cool. The two friends that I was closest to in Galveston are now both dead.

We moved in 1960 to Bossier City, Louisiana when my father was attached to Barksdale Air Force Base. Bossier High School was primarily an Air Force school. We were not only segregated by race then, but by our father's rank as well. My father's civil service rank consigned me to the group of officers' kids, and officers' kids just didn't run around with NCO or enlisted men's kids. Families were transferring in and out all the time. I had a group that I hung out with in our subdivision, and I often crossed the "invisible line" and had friends in both groups. These kids were a pretty worldly bunch of teenagers, used to being uprooted with little notice and sent off to Japan or Germany or any other base where their father's services were needed. I think to some degree we all knew that it wasn't a real good idea to get too close to each other. None of us were ever as close as I think you guys were and are.

When I read about you guys knowing each other from pre-school and earlier, it's a bond that goes beyond simple friendship. You were part of a community, your parents knew each other, you all had certain shared experiences, and now even those of you who did not know each other very well way back then have a common bond. I cannot help but be a little envious.

In 1974, Jennifer and I were living in Dallas and we drove over to Bossier City to attend my ten year high school reunion. Even though Jennifer and I are the same age, I didn't get to skip grades as Jennifer did. I graduated in 1964. It was interesting to see some of the people. Mostly I went to see if any of the bad things I had wished on some of the "A Group" had come true. High school had not been one of the better experiences in my life, and many of my wishes actually had come true. The star football player, BMOC, was already a fat, balding used car salesman. The snobby cheerleader/homecoming queen had married badly, seemed to drink quite a lot, and was aging rapidly. Almost none of the people I had run around with were there. I've never tried to get in contact with any of them since. I guess I was sort of a loner and I knew that all any of us really had in common was a short lived physical proximity to each other.

That I was an artist (see above picture) also seemed to set me apart from a lot of people. I was unhappy and, within certain limits, rebellious in high school, so I was never going to be voted "Most Popular" or "Best Team Spirit". If you've ever seen the Kathleen Turner movie Peggy Sue Got Married, I was the teenage biker poet writing truly awful poetry: "Razor shards of rat puke raining down ...", etc. By 16, I thought that I was a "serious" beatnik. I went to Fellini films and stage productions of Shakespeare and Shaw over at Centenary College. Some of my friends and I staged spontaneous "Happenings" that maybe ten people would show up for. I ached to dress all in black (black turtleneck and black jeans, like "real" beatniks on TV and in the movies ... see picture below ... with goatee ... under "Season's Greetings from Glitter City") ... except my parents would never have permitted me to dress like that. Imagine a time when teenagers actually answered to their parents' wishes!

Oh, but I so wanted to be "cool". If we'd only had a coffee house in Bossier City for bad poetry readings and bongo rhythms. Not that I was "affected" or anything like that. I remember that I tore a picture of Lawrence Olivier as Hamlet out of TV Guide and took it to my barber. I wanted my hair cut just like his. I was already blond ... just short, little bangs, nothing over the ears or collar or, you know "weird" like that. I was 16 or 17 and he told me I would need a written note from my parents before he would cut anything as extreme as that. Remember, this was still pre-Beatles.

Your group's recollections seem so "American Graffiti" to me. Even though I was "the bad boy" that nice girls were forbidden to invite to their parties (they had to sneak me in the back door or hide me in a closet), we probably didn't get into any worse trouble than you guys did. A little beer, a little kissy-face, cruising around the Kokomo Drive-In (read your Dairy Mart) and up and down the Bossier City Strip which was lined with a pretty mean group of neon-covered nightclubs for the servicemen from Barksdale. We listened to KOMA out of OK City just like you guys, but somehow the atmosphere was very different. There was a security to Childress that was absent in my world. Jennifer had some less than wonderful memories of Childress ... I guess everyone had a lot to deal with growing up ... but she has come to appreciate growing up where she did. The Good,The Bad, and The Ugly ( I think there is a movie in there somewhere) ... it is still one of the things all of you should probably be grateful for, even if it wasn't always sunshine and roses.

Happy Holidays (again) to all ....