Well every once in a while I just look for different forums that might be something fun or new, finding a good forum is much harder now days. There are several forums I post on now for over 8 years but a few have lost there once large population. I super mod and co administer one but then others are just sites near my home town and of course my old army units all have personal association's or websites. I live west of Baton Rouge, where the water does get deep sometimes and the next four days it appears it will be one of those times. I hope the power stays on, every time it rains the power usually goes out, the infrastructure here sucks. Last week we had an electrical storm come through very fast and vicious , it was like that cloud in the Movie close encounters, for two hours you could see the lightening strikes heading west after it hit us. My transformer outside took a direct hit but luckily it damaged nothing inside, I had already turned off the computer knowing it was going to be an ugly one, but I did have the TV own when it hit and no damage done. The neighbors dog next door is still walking with his legs crossed after that strike, he must have felt a little tingle being on the wet ground so near.
No, just because I live here don't make me like them, I still like the Texas teams, A&M,SMU,Rice,Texas, Baylor and a few others. Even if it were an Eastern opponent I would be routing for the east when it comes to LSU. Right now we're getting hammered with some pretty good wind from the storm, I let a neighbor use a nice dog house I don't need for his mutt living outside in a pen, the stupid bastard is sitting there on the top of the house with his back to the wind and rain. Hardcore!
Here are two photos, one is current and the other was 1970 the same year I got out of the Army, and the Houston I knew. The current photo is showing the same area but with more down angle and without skyline, but nevertheless it shows how radical things can get in 40 years. One day you will see the same happen in your home town, I feel like an outsider when I'm there and completely out of place. One of the most striking changes made while I was away for 25 years was the total screw up of Main Street! In 1970 you could drive down Main Street at night and catch all the red lights just right and only stop once or twice, there were no cops patrolling as they now do so you could drive like a bat out of hell. Anyway, they put a damned Train going down Main Street and therefore completely shutting down a larger part of it in Downtown proper. Now of all the things I really find disgusting was this change, I shouldn't be too concerned because in Houston's early days Street Cars and Trains were everywhere, but it just took away something special about driving downtown and following Main street all the way south past Rice University, the Astro Dome and many more great Historical places. This current photo shows the property that the Houston Aquarium now occupies, that 1970 photo shows the Houston coliseum with a bridge coming across the bayou for foot traffic to the coliseum, as long as I can remember that is where they held the Live Stock and Rodeo and Circus, the Ice Escapades and just about everything you could imagine. Now a fine arts Museum is sitting on that property and you can see the enclosed overhead so the rich won't get wet when they pull up to the curb. I came down this route many times four years ago when my friend was dying from a broken hip that never healed, eventually it killed her. So the entire Downtown has so many varied memories for me there are just too many to list, one thing the old photo shows is the old Bank of the Southwest, my wife worked there and I worked just three blocks further back into town behind the Bank. I hated driving around the block waiting for her to come down traffic in 1970 was bad because all the streets were two way then and it just took longer to get anywhere. I'm sure you heard of Schlumberger , it was a Oil and Gas exploration magnate involved with any and everything in the Petrol Industry. My wife handled their accounts there at Bank of the Southwest. Well it's a long read but the photos would be meaningless without an explanation. 1970 Current
Here is a very nice video made by a good friend who was a gunner in the Navy's HA(L)3 squadron . My first and second companies were two of the original training entities when the Navy first deployed this one and only squadron in the Delta. The pilots flew with Army Gunships to give them a leg up on tactics and other important things. Soon transfer of Army Helicopters were made to the Navy ( we didn't give them the best stuff), and they started flying their own area of responsibility which at the time was to protect the River Force and also to insert and pickup Navy SEAL teams. The tactics they used were much different than the Army's, they flew much higher and were armed with indoor mini guns which most Army gunships did not use, we did use them on our firefly ships but that was the only use of a door mounted mini . We always flew about 40 feet from the ground because it was much harder for the enemy to shoot you when moving low and fast, in this video you can see their tactics of flying much higher over the battlefield. My friend once told me they thought of us as the Calvary because we were always no less than two ships and a lot of the time 4 ships. So here is the movie it gives a very good insight to what they were doing as late as 70 and 71, I was home and a civilian already at that time.
There are no fans like LSU fans. People don't know what has hit them when LSU fans travel to an away game. All the coonasses come crawling up from out of the swamp to attend and nobody parties like they do.
I hope they do better than they do on COPs during Mardi Gras , you know like pissing on the sidewalks and screwing in the alleys
I have two more sections to place photos, one will be photos from my second company I flew with for two years, in a few days I'll post them. This first photo is from that company the 121st Also I have photos of my pre Vietnam service when I was a missile crewman at a Nike Hercules Missile Base , I was stationed in Alvarado Texas in the Dallas Fort Worth Air Defense The base closed within 4 months after I was sent to Vietnam. I actually had orders to go to Bonn Germany as a Hawk Missile Crewman but somehow I found myself in Vietnam, they screwed up and faulted my re enlistment contract, I could have asked they send me back to the states or Germany, I am not a worrier so I stayed and they had to ask me what I wanted to do. Before the Nike Missile assignment I was an airborne infantryman with the 101st, so I don't care much for walking and asked they send me to an aviation unit. Best decision I ever made, those guys that I was with at Fort Campbell were the company that was on Hamburger Hill two years after I left. I was in Vietnam but a lot of those people I knew were still in the 101st up North, I did run into one guy I knew well and he was on his third tour, I don't know if he made it out or not. I haven't seen his name on any of the association rosters for the 101st. It was ironic but the company I was finally assigned to "336th" was originally an aviation unit of the 101st, they moved the 101st personnel up north and assigned my company to the Delta Battalion or the 13th Combat Aviation Battalion, and it stayed there at Soc Trang until it was de activated and the airfield was turned over to the south Vietnamese. I think people will enjoy the Nike Photos, I recently was in touch with a person that went to the old site and was allowed to take pictures of the actual Pit I was in , we had more nuclear power in that one pit I worked in than the two Nukes dropped on Japan. The place is still intact for the most part, the launch area where I worked is still standing and rotting down but still there. A real estate person from the east purchased the upper area and has a house there. I visited the site in 77 with my wife at the time and all the buildings at the upper radar and quarters area had been torn down with nothing but the slabs visible, someone went back in and built new buildings on the old slabs using the same floor plans, but I know for sure the buildings were not standing in 77, that's something you don't forget. Looking at the new buildings they are not the same as the original ones, one has a sloped roof and another has windows, which the one building I slept in had no windows. The Mess Hall I'm unsure of and it was the last building on the company street, I am almost sure it was not standing or I would have remembered it, but now there is a building on that same spot that looks like the mess hall with the exception of extra windows and breezeways at all three entrances, there were none of those in 1967. There is a lot of interesting facts to tell about this base but I'll wait til I post those pictures. Not a survivable hit, this was the result of a mortar attack on the airfield, after midnight the bad guys always came out, so did we! Rocket Attack on the air field, we always gave them a warm reception Ron Swanson's ship, ran out of fuel and had a hard landing in charlie country
