BillT
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09/17/13 23:24:14 |
My first memories of life were odd when compared with my friends.
I remember sitting in the front seat of the car as a kid around 5, as we arrived at the front of a bar in south Tulsa. The bar had just had it's front entry way and front door blown off with dynamite. We had arrived sometime after the event but, I think we were there to render assistance. The only other memories are of my time with my dad when we would spend the weekend with gangsters. Even the children of these folks are now mostly dead from a violent end. My dad was renowned among some outlaws in town and was respected by many I met. Even after he had retired over 20 years before, the children of them would
say; "Oh, you are Tommy Tucker's son, you should come and see dad" ///
As a young man seeing a lot of outlaws at work, i decided not to be an outlaw. Oh, the flashy cars, big houses and gold cufflink lifestyle looked fun. But, lots of these folks would end up killing each other.
My dad's brother Bill Tucker was just the opposite.
Pretty straight laced. He taught me many things. He was some sort of smart.
I learned a lot from him over the years ;.
The next memories are of mom being single. She dated some for a while, then mom married Jess Scarborough and we moved to Mexico, ...
Jess was a war hero. Korea. Was military everywhere you looked. He was a wild drinker, jetsetter with tons of money. He taught me military style rifle range for a few years. Jess could take a few halfdollars, put the 22 rifle butt on his hip, toss a halfdollar in the air and never missed. four or five in a row, he would toss one up and he would hit it. I would run and get each one. I lost them many years ago now. He never missed. I was pretty good myself.
When we moved to Mexico i ended up missing a year of school. I was enrolled in a school down there for rich folks. Those kids spoke several languages and i was just there a few days of our adventure. We returned to the states and mom got a job working at the Camelot Red Lions Club., It was brand new and just opening, she got her picture in the Tulsa paper. I went to a couple of weeks of tutoring in the summer and I started school just like i had not missed a year. We moved several times in the next year or 2 and, that made school a real challenge for me. It was the 7th grade when i found out i was good at math. Thank God for Algebra.
Lee had started me in Karate school after one more fight that left me with a black eye. Taekwondo ... saved my life. At this point in time, they owned several bars in Tulsa. They had Jean's Club, The El Toro, The Kan Kan Klub and Jose's Hideaway, and the Quadrangle Club, one in West Tulsa that I can not remember the name. Then, we moved to Bernice. A wornout old building with holes in the roof that were put their by the previous owner with his gun shooting squirrels ... It was worse than green acres, they even had their own http://www.grandlakelinks.com/cgi-bin/Search.pl?green%20acre
We had great outdoor adventures. We hunted a lot.,
We shot everything that moved, if it did not have a brand,
a collar, or could have been someone's pet.
So When I returned to the area some decades later they
had to put screens around the tops of power polls to
keep the woodpeckers that we no doubt shot on site
when I was a kid, from pecking the poll tops right off. lol ...
The US Navy. Sent me to college. College was hard without a proper foundation. Going to school in Afton was a mess. I was kicked out of Drivers Ed first day and then the guy who kicked me out of Drivers Ed was the coach. Then he had the ass to tell me i was going to go out for football. I was cursed with the Newton thing, equal and opposite reaction. so no 6th hour or ag, i was not going to learn to handle cattle or hay. So i was taking 3 math classes, the long hair and attitude made me real hard to deal with.
John Ivey, my buddy, smoke cigars, drink a few beers, had just returned from serving in the Navy and said that if i signed up they would guarantee me a college education. Vietnam was still going and soon i would be receiving my draft card. So i went to take the test. What could it hurt. I was going no where. I was only learning to work construction. Shovel, Hammer , tree trimmer , dish washer. The recruiter said i was qualified to go to Nuclear and Electronics or what ever i wanted to do. I was really good with electronics. I had been exposed to it with my cousin at a very young age and it stuck. He was a nerd and could have been a rocket scientist. Lee had promoted electronics with a couple of killer electronic experimenters kits when i was 10 and 11, .. I had little hope of going to college as i had such a pitiful education to that point. So, Electronics it was , US Navy, 3 med cruises, southamerican cruise, shellback and a few other things.
On Flightdeck of USS America, I was working below a hovering helicopter, I secured a akt22 donkey dick antenna that was stuck down, so a SH3H could land. Since they had only ever talked about it actually
happening, I am sure there is plat film of the event showing
just exactly how not to do it. The bolts had been coated with
that brown stuff to protect the b-nuts and bolts from the salt water.
I got the 1/4 in bolt out, but the 1/2 would not budge.
To hold it up I first called for duct tape, too much hydraulic fluid
on the air frame for tape to stick.
All the while the Air Boss is yelling, "Get those #$@#$ ROTORHEADS off the flight deck, we have to recover real aircraft.
I called for a broom, held the antenna up with the handle
until it had landed.
Fought a major fire on the flight deck one morning. The smoke was thick dark and black. Out of the smoke you would see kids appear and no one died that morning. The Port Side Outboard Waist Cat had just had a full bag of jet fuel dumped in it, when a A7's fuel flapper valve stuck. There was a senior chief and i putting a rubber stopper in the track trying to keep the fuel from all spilling in the track and keeping oxygen out. Jumping up and down on the long piece of rubber. whew, the crash and salvage guys went over the side down to fight the fire from the outside of the ship. The captain, the airboss were all talking on the 5mc at once. No one called the fire away. for minutes no one below knew we had a fire. The light water hoses did not work as the only time the system was manned was only during General Quarters or Flight Ops or some reason. It is a wonder no one died or we turned into the second Forrestal.
Saw an F14 crash on the flight deck. That was scary,
the F14 hit the round down, the nose slammed the nose
gear through the flight deck, the plane slid up the deck to
the angle deck and slid into the water.
My squadron had the pilots out of the water and back on
the deck in minutes.
we took liberty in several wonderful places, RIO, and Dubrovnic when Tito was still alive,.
I wrote up accident report about a Lt Cmd, for his piloting as pilot error, that did not work out too well, he had a kid pick a fight with me and then the kid screamed racial discrimination. I learned a lot about the politics of reality. I was always so gullible, learned everything the hard way.
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So I went to college ...
The most fun was not going to school.
I took me years to learn how to study as I had
never done home work or studied before.
The most fun was Teaching College ...
I was good at it, they loved me, I would run
out of gas on my way to work I was so poor.
Great Fun!!!
Spartan College of Aeronautics ... I had the most fun. They were on their last 2 semesters when I got them. We put it all together, built things. With Transistors, Resistors, Capacitors and ICs,. I was just a kid, loved it. We literally built computers before apple. Shot lasers up and down the halls. I helped write the first digital course at Spartan. god it was fun.
Thank God for ALGEBRA!!!!
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So I am playing pool at Magicians Theater,. This beautiful babe is staring at me from the other end of the pool table. She is wearing black boots that go right up to her hips. I was hers instantly, … as if I no longer had a will of my own. Her name is Christine, in those days I called her Chris … She worked at Mini Computers Inc. At that time I worked at Gordon Holmes Systems. We shared a hot romance for a short time before I went to the Caribbean,. After I arrived in Anguilla, I sent a postcard offering to fly her down for a vacation …
Unfortunately, I did not hear from her for 30 years.
She signed up here at GLL as a 13 year old and when she contacted me I said I might know her mother. lol ...
[img]http://www.grandlakelinks.com/attachments/Bill142.jpg[/img]
Sometime later,,, So we are standing in this barn. When they opened the doors the smell of pot was,,, overwhelming. The barn was filled with 55lb Sacks of Purina Cattle Chow bags from Columbia, Clearly it was not cattle chow. We explained politely that we really were engineers and kindly accepted a half a sack as a sample. Not in Middle Earth or Farm World, but Anguilla., almost Christmas 1981. A year or so later when I returned to the states, I contemplated the bag logo as a souvenir, but thought customs might dog smell it and create
some trouble.
When I lived in Anguilla, local folks, after seeing me in the same places for more than a long vacation, people would ask what my special crime was that I did not live and work in the states. It was wall to wall outlaws. I heard stories from X-Patriots, that you have heard as folklore ...
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A Year in my life
http://www.grandlakelinks.com/grandlakevideo.shtml
Some Horse Videos
http://www.grandlakelinks.com/TheCongress.shtml
The">http://www.grandlakelinks.com/cgi-bin/pic/pics.pl?banner=monstermash;time=1379475754;member=grandlakelinks;zone=GLL]The Monster Mash :)
The Halloween Video is killer, watch for the surprised kids...
The Congress videos, i made back in 2000 when i spent 30 days at the All American Quarter Horse Congress. Made for Dial-Up so they are small and cool. We had a video, that i can't find a copy of, that we played on Stallion Ave, on the bigscreen. It was a show stopper! In the congress videos you can see the pictures of the people watching it.
The lake video is with a wmv file, this format however useful and people use it a lot, is not directly available to everyone. It has to be installed in addition to the normal video tools in browsers.
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I have a millions adventures, a lot of them are not good.
There are quite a few that really suck.
Tap, Tap, Tap ... Is this thing on?
Bill //////// :)
- ![Here I am ...]()
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