[August 5, 2024] There it was again, my yellow-stained 6th-grade Report Card with my end-of-year marks. I didn’t want to even look at it. Okay, I had at least one “B,” and I think that was in “recess.” And to make it worse for me, one of my parents had to sign off acknowledging my performance. “You can do better.” Like so many boys my age, I was admonished for not “living up to my potential,” whatever that meant. I was just not good at readin’ writin’ and ‘rithmetic.’ Mom would be the one signing the report card, not Dad. Oh no, not Dad.
In rural Louisiana, there was an expectation to finish at least junior high, get a “real” job (not some gov’ment job), marry your sweetheart, have a house full of kids, attend church services, join the volunteer fire department, not become a murderer or join the crazies in the KKK, and so on, and so on. I was to follow a time-honored Christian path to be a contributing member of my community. However, I was unserious and restless and easily distracted, so I ignored the hard path, and chose the easy way. I’d rather be fishing. So, I went fishing.
One afternoon, after fishing for catfish in the local bayou, several of us sat around a cozy campfire to eat our day’s catch, whittle on sticks, laugh at ourselves, and talk about our fishing and hunting skills and what we might do after grade school. It had been a long school year in 1964 for us, the academically challenged sort. Ambition? Studying? What’s that? We were sitting back, taking it easy. Now, that’s the “Life of Riley.”
Talking topics around the fire ranged from girls, of course, to guns to the fastest dirt bike Jesse owned, to the best PBR beer – so we could sound macho – and to the times we’d witnessed stray dogs having sex in our neighborhood. We knew so much more than our parents – what kid doesn’t – that we were planning how to make a gazillion bucks by selling duck calls made from wood and then retire to New Orleans, along the intercoastal areas for better fishing and a Cajun lifestyle. We’d get all this accomplished by the time we were 15, just in time to buy a Jon Boat for better fishing on tributaries of the Mississippi River.
Grade school had finally ended, and we were going to junior high where the girls were curvier, the teachers stricter, the courses harder, and us finally getting our chance to drive tractors on farmland and motorbikes into the hills south of town. I didn’t know it then but my life was about to change when my Dad took a promotion on the railroad. Shortly, we would move to another town. That move wasn’t really what threw me for a loop, but in the upcoming three years where I attended junior high in four different cities, in three states, and more than 500 hundred miles from my hometown.
Before that happened, we had some good times and taking-it-easy times. Except for one boy who was 14, the rest of us had just turned 12. If anyone had looked at our campfire group, they might have laughed, a ragtag bunch of fake macho, 90-pound weaklings and wannabe manly men. Jesse had a can of beer and drank it so fast that foam came out of his nose. He jumped around like somebody had lit him up with a cattle prod. His nasal passages and his belly surely felt like fire. We all laughed when he threw up on himself. Now, that was funny.
None of us were good at book learnin’. It wasn’t that we didn’t like school, exactly, but being inside on all those beautiful days that would have been just perfect with a fishing rod or shotgun in our hands. Better perhaps to say the school didn’t like us.
Principal Mr. Montgomery was a tough man and demanded perfect discipline during lunch – our only real break: no talking in the lunch line, eat and get out, don’t waste food, drink your milk, separate paper and food at the open trash cans when done, and then line up outside before being told to return to class. Outside, we secretly and quietly told jokes so he couldn’t hear us. “Why did the chicken cross the road? Because chickens are really, really dumb.”
Jesse, already in junior high as you might have gathered, was a kind of child Beatnik or Hippie; peace, love, music, drugs, sex (nope) and “personal freedom from Da Man.” That’s what he said, anyway. The best part was no more school. No wonder he always wore a dirty, smelly, tie-dyed t-shirt. Perfect. We started talking about being counterculture pioneers and traveling in one of those VW microbuses with peace symbols and other bright colors painted on the outside. Plus, there were lots and lots of college women who would date us if we were “cool.”
All our plans were dashed when my family packed up and moved out of town. It would be in Texas that I would also attend high school and be a jock. Not a good jock, but a jock athlete nonetheless. Now was payback time for never studying or reading or learning how to do math. I had a lot of catching up to do, and it was frustrating and embarrassing. Yes! Not readin’ writin’ rithmetic’ again! These Texan kids were smarter, faster, and better looking than me. They also talked with a cool accent and were great at football. I’d never played it, and after getting knocked unconscious once on the field during practice, I’d not play again until college.
My campfire group was about to dissolve permanently. My friends would go on living in Louisiana as I moved west to Bastrop, then to Little Rock, then Corpus Christi, and finally to Harlingen, four junior highs in three states. The experience was scary and hard. This was when I realized that I was totally unprepared for the transformation that was also happening while I began my transition into puberty. It meant pimples, sleepless nights, excessive sweating (I could smell myself), and a range of body changes that created all sorts of confusion and new levels of embarrassment. With new neighbors every few months, a different school, and hormonal changes set the stage for some challenges that I would fail.
I was about to move away from the easy, relaxing, fishing-hunting, rural life in small-town Louisiana to the big cities in other states where life was faster, brighter, with less privacy and a much greater emphasis on formal learning in school. We were also expected to figure out what we wanted to do after graduation and begin a program that focused ourselves in that direction. I couldn’t figure it out.
I was about to be crushed socially and academically. At the same time, my eyes would be opened to the possibility of a better future. “Hey kid, what do you want to be when you grow up?” asked a 7th-grade school counselor. “A comedian,” I told him and got my first laugh. That began my newest adventure.
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NOTE: See all my letters here: https://www.theleadermaker.com/granddaughter-letters/
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Sir, it is hard to write something nice that others have not written but I will only encourage you to continue this series and to please keep us informed about your granddaughter as well. These letters are, in a way, an encouragement to stay in touch with all my relatives and to share family history too. Regardless how good or bad our upbringing may be, we must remember it in order to make ourselves better men and women. Thanks.
Well said, Lou. And you can support Gen. Satterfield better also by getting his books and learning more about how these ‘experiences’ as a boy changed him into a good man.
Thank you for sharing your inner thoughts, Gen. Satterfield. 👏👏👏👏👏👏👏
Sir, well done. These letters are a big part of what attracts me to your site, and was the original reason when one of my friends called me at home to tell me that I should read your blog. I’ve never looked back since. This letter is a change in direction as we are witnessing the tipping point of boyhood to teenager. This is going to be a true adventure for you and I, for one, look forward to reading about it.
I think most of us by now that have read most, if not all these letters, have figured out that these letters are simply more than letters to Gen. Satterfield’s granddaughter or an inside look at the Gen. S. as a boy. These letters fall in on the pattern of life. And that is one reason they are so popular with us and why so many of can relate to them. Gen. Satterfield gives us insight into the human soul and what motivates us, what we love and hate, what we see and cannot see, and how we can learn from these events to make ourselves a better person. In this particular letter, he gives us a time, just before entering junior high school, that he was entering a time of what he called a “transition.” He was entering puberty – a difficult time – plus his family started to move around due to promotions that his father got (more money and movement from lower to middle class America), and meeting new people with new ideas and a different culture. Traumatizing? Maybe. But a time of great learning, yep.
Army Captian, well said and I do think there is something to this. He has not written much about this time in his Junior High days and maybe for good reason.
BEAUTIFUL …. 💕💕💕💕💕💕💕💕💕💕
Who really could feel for the little boy Gen. Satterfield when he wrote this?
“I was about to move away from the easy, relaxing, fishing-hunting, rural life in small-town Louisiana to the big cities in other states where life was faster, brighter, with less privacy and a much greater emphasis on formal learning in school. We were also expected to figure out what we wanted to do after graduation and begin a program that focused ourselves in that direction. I couldn’t figure it out.”
❤ Another great love letter to Gen. Satterfield’s granddaughter. ❤ Sir, please continue to write these for us to enjoy. I also copy them and post them on my employee’s bulletin board at work for my coworkers to read. Many have asked where I get them and I do direct them to your website. But all I ever get is positive comments.
Interesting Stacey. I thought about doing the same.
I think that we should all be appreciative of these letters that Gen. Satterfield is sharing with us. Not only is he telling the story of his childhood for his grandchildren (and, yes, his granddaughter too) and for the future generations of the Satterfield family but he is telling the story that most young boys of the past have been part of. And those stories – based on very real experiences – are what helped make him who he was. What Gen. S. has also noted, but not fully flushed out in my thinking, is how his personality affected what he did. We get some hints of it when he said he was a ‘disagreeable’ kid. That is one of the big five psychological traits that others have written about so often. I hope he dives into that area too at some point.
Whenever I open my computer browser and go to https://www.theleadermaker.com, I always want to see one of Gen. Satterfield’s letters to his granddaughter because I know that I’m going to find out something important about his past that makes a difference in how he became a successful Army General. Rarely do we ever get to see the insides of the making of a General. Here we are. Read these letters for what they are, experiences that made a man out of a boy. Great things are happening in these letters and we don’t want to miss a single one of them.
Well said, Jerome. Thanks.
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Best of the best love letters to Gen. Satterfield’s granddaughter.
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♡ Another BEAUTIFUL Love Letter. Thank you, sir, for sharing it with us. Also, I do appreciate you sharing this difficult time you had. ♡
PAULETTE, and yes it is a beautiful letter and let us not forget why we humans do appreciate beauty.
“Love Your Enemies: What it Really Means”
https://www.theleadermaker.com/love-your-enemies-what-it-really-means/
This article tells us much about beauty and the real meaning of love even if that love is for your enemies.
Hi Kevin, I think his articles on beauty apply better. Read “Be Alert to the Beauty in Life” https://www.theleadermaker.com/be-alert-to-the-beauty-in-life/ where he says, ” Be alert! Be alert and focused on the unexpected beauty in life. If you want to overcome life’s murky and tragic nature, look into the darkness, especially when things are bad. You have to look and see where things are still beautiful and where there is something that’s sustaining.” and to this by Dante, “Beauty awakens the soul to act.” – Dante Alighieri
Yes, Paulette, a beautiful love letter for Gen. Satterfield’s granddaughter and for all his grandchildren and their children in the future. This is what it mean, IMHO, that we should not only be mindful for ourselves but mindful of our future selves and that means setting the conditions for our future to succeed. These letters are much more than just a “beautiful” letter of love but also a roadmap to the future success of those who read them. That is why they are so popular here at https://www.theleadermaker.com. And why they will always remain popular because they tell stories of all humans since the first walked the earth.
WOW WOW WOW …. Letter to My Granddaughter (Readin’ Writin’ Rithmetic’) #87. We are entering a new era in Gen. Satterfield’s life as a kid. Now things are going to get really interesting. Let’s all ask Gen. S. to not stop at letter #100. Thanks all.
Another great and loving letter to Gen. Satterfield’s granddaughter and a wonderful letter it is. ❤ But this letter is one of the firsts to begin the discovery of a little boy becoming a young man and the struggles that entails. I hope and recommend that he also write more about this transition time, and about what appears to be one of the biggest challenges of his young life up to that point. The more I learn about these days as Gen. S. as a kid, the more I am beginning to learn about him and his family. I know that Gen. S. values his family over everything, except God, but the more we know the better.
Exactly, Cow Blue, as I have also noted and why I also believe that God has helped Gen. Satterfield be who he became and he acknowledges it, maybe not always, but that acknowledgement is always there.
These letters sound a lot like J.D. Vance’s book “Hillbilly Elegy” but Gen. Satterfield’s letters have no mention of the term “hillbilly” but uses the term “southerner.” Both can and are used in a pejorative, insulting way. I think I’d rather be called a southerner. Oh well, at least Gen. S. was still from the Deep South.
Gen. Satterfield, you were a cool dude. You might have not realized it at the time, but you were really really cool for a kid from rural Louisiana.
This time was the real beginning of how Gen. Satterfield transitioned from being that little boy doing what he wanted to do, to the start of adulthood (with the onset of hormonal changes) and him being pushed into doing things he had no experience about. I can understand that he was confused, frustrated, unhappy, and not at peace. Imagine what his parents and siblings were also going through. Perhaps he could write about them too.
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Be sure to get a copy of his latest book “55 Rules for a Good Life” and enjoy learning about how to be a better person.
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/ づ♡ I love you
Hi Georgie B. nice graphic!!!!!!!
….. and yes I read his book several times. I too recommend “55 Rules for a Good Life” by Gen. Doug Satterfield. Get your copy today.
Yusaf, thank you again for hawking my book. You are one of my long-time fans and that is greatly appreciated.