No SWAT necessary
A swat team on Boeuf Trace? That once was as likely as Mr. Trump playing pickleball.
The street in Penny Acres was off limits to any kind of untoward activity, including hijinks of youths such as I and my co-conspirators in mischief.
Reason was simple enough – the then-new Trace was the domain of the late Jack Carter Sr., legendary Louisiana State Trooper, who took the saying “quiet neighborhood” literally.
Carter was a one-man neighborhood watch committee.
You did not want to run afoul of him whether as a teenage boy or a misdirected adult.
As a result, boys and girls living on the street did not suffer some of the pranks of the era. Papered lawns, burning bags, cherry bombs in cans and such were an invitation to hard times.
An aggravating circumstance in my instance was Carter knowing me and where I lived.
His wife, nee Maxine Goodman, later Maxine Chandler, (who taught music for years in Rapides schools, private piano lessons in their home and played the organ at a number of area churches over decades) had lived with her parents across the street from the Butlers at one point and we had all come to know the trooper during the courtship.
So the high school years passed with detente in place.
Well into my college career the trooper and I renewed acquaintance.
My date and I exited Tiger Stadium one Saturday night for legal non-football activity. A trooper assigned to the stadium environs security detail noticed.
“Jimmy,” he said, “y’all best get back to the game.”
As noted earlier, Jack Carter’s neighborhood was off limits.