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Welcome to the Richardson High School Message Forum.

The Message Forum is an ongoing dialogue among classmates. The goal is to encourage friendly interaction, including interaction among classmates who really didn't know each other. Experience on the site has revealed that certain topics tend to cause friction and hard feelings, especially politics and religion. 

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06/18/20 10:59 AM #18276    

 

Steve Keene

Janalu,

At your request!

Enjoying looking at Texas Longhorns under "Devil's Tower" in Wyoming.

The "Horns and Eyes of Texas" are up to their hocks in grass, all the live long day!

 

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE LONGHORN KIND


06/18/20 11:17 AM #18277    

 

Steve Keene

Janalu,

Here is a video of my friend having to shue the moutain goats out of the gap in the Needles Mountains, Custer State Park, South Dakota.

The goats like to lick the mineral and salt deposits exposed in the rock faces.



Mount Rushmore, South Dakota

Profile View

Needles Mountains

Tunnel in Custer State Park, SD

Backside of Tunnel


06/18/20 11:30 AM #18278    

 

Steve Keene

Janalu,

Here are the ones in Deadwood, SD.

Rough characters on street in Deadwood.  Kinda reminds me of Carl's Corner.

 

Cadillac Jack's Casino at the Double Tree.  They ride you out of town on a rail if you don't pay.

On the Black Hills Express riding the rails to Independence, SD.

 

 

 


06/18/20 11:58 AM #18279    

 

Steve Keene

Janalu

Last ones.

Most fun I have had in 10 years renting a Honda Talon 1000hp Sport Model R ATV that carries four passengers.  My friend Joseph and I had the time of our life.  He is 74 and I am 69 and we acted like we were 14.

Joseph and Me with our fishing equip and groceries.

On our first rough stretch I was yelling at Joseph.  He only has one eye and was going 40 mph on a rough trail with one hand on the steering wheel and running video with his other hand and kept hitting the fender on my side on the trees.  We later found out the ATV was practically indestructable.  Good thing, because I agreed to replace it if we damaged it including 350 per day downtime till they got a new machine which was back ordered for months.



Next video



The ATV is street legal in Wyoming and South Dakota since it has lights, mirrors and license plates.  It would run 40 mph on the trails and rock climbs and we got it to 72 mph on highway.

Trail under Highway.

 


06/18/20 12:02 PM #18280    

 

Janalu Jeanes (Parchman)

Steve,

All these photos are wonderful to see!

Thanks!  I've never been to those beautiful states.

I'm sure you had a blast!


06/18/20 01:44 PM #18281    

 

Bob Davidson

Janalu,

We moved to Dallas at the end of the eigth grade so I went to RHS ninth to graduation.  Dad worked in Dallas from January, the rest of us moved when we sold our house and they bought the new one in May.  I went to UT, worked for a time, then went to U of H Law School. I lived in Austin, suburban Chicago, Cuernavaca, Mexico and Denton before law school.  I fell in love with Houston -- it's full of interesting people, fun things to do, great food, and has been a wonderful place to practice law.  The class of 2018 Beto judges have made a huge negative difference in state law practice, but we are all hoping that they may figure out what they are doing after the coronavirus disaster lets up. 

Ridgewood was my favorite place to live, followed by New Orleans.  For my mom, Jackson was her favorite place.  Dad liked working in New Orleans and NYC; he made lifelong friends everywhere we lived.  My brother, who lives in Austin, still loathes Mississippi.  Dad didn't like the financial and professional mess his boss in Jackson got him into and how much it upset Mom; he said that colored his view of living there.  After 25 years in Northwood Hills, they lived in Vancouver, Canada, for a few years while Dad fixed a Canadian insurance company, then Corpus Christi until he died in 2015.  Mom moved to a senior living place in Austin a few years ago and still lives there.

One thing I didn't like about Jackson was that Mom was never home.  We spent too much time with babysitters.  Unlike every other place we lived, we kids had to stay in our part of the house when they had people over.  No one brought their kids -- like they did everywhere else, because they all had easy access to babysitters.

For a boy my age, Jackson had a horrible culture of bullying.  There were older kids a grade or two ahead of us who tormented me and my classmates, guys who were the biggest guys in their grade, big and strong and total assholes -- I still vividly remember Elby Johnson, Buddy Mims, Bobby Cope, Preston York, and Earl Bell and get angry.  I was a little guy in 7th and the start of 8th grade (I grew eight inches in the six months before I turned 14) so there wasn't a whole lot I could do physically about hulking 6 footers who outweighed me by 60 or 80 pounds.  Unfortunately for them, I had an imaginative mouth -- I made up nicknames that caught on -- Elby became "Elby Jay" -- Vice President-President Johnson was not a popular figure among the redneck population -- and "Bobby Cope what a dope" "Ding Dong Bell" and "York, York, York" (said like Curly from the Three Stooges) were some of the catch phrases I came up with for the 7th grade after they started terrorizing us  After a time, they pretty much stayed away from me and my friends, at least when we weren't alone.  I don't think they knew who made up the nicknames since they didn't go after me more than the others.

My brother says he remembers me coming home from school bloody regularly -- I remember our maid Mary wrapping ice in paper towels and cleaning me up a few times and agreeing not to tell Mom, but not as much as he thinks.  I remember him fighting much more than I did -- he grew up to be 6'5" but was short and stocky as a kid -- Grandpa called him Mr. 4 x 4 because he was four feet tall and four feet wide. 

In retrospect it was probably a class thing -- those guys were dumb and didn't like the smart ass kids in the advanced class in particular or much of anyone else, for that matter.  I never experienced bullying to any degree at RHS or saw it anywhere else like in Jackson.

I never much liked RHS.  I did like a lot of the people -- there were some really awesome kids there, but the old Richardson clique that ran everything seemed closed to new kids.  I didn't like school or the teachers.  They were by far the worst we had anywhere we lived, mostly dull and seeming to be bored with a few exceptions.  My Mom was unhappy and Dad gone most of the time.  I was pretty bitter with her for years over college: one of the colleges had a program where I could go there after junior year if I took extra classes as a junior and senior English in summer school and did okay on the SAT and achievement tests.  Dad offered to let me skip senior year and go to college so I took the tests and extra classes, sent in the application, asked for recommendations from teachers, and got conditionally accepted.  He'd never gone to high school:  he was expelled when he was 15, in 1944, lied about his age and joined the army so he could be in the War, took the GED, and came back after serving as a radioman in the Pacific and MP sergeant during the Occupation of Japan to go to college on the GI Bill with his old classmates. Mom vetoed my going -- she said my senior year would be the best year of my life (she was wrong) and besides she needed help with other kids.  I was furious about having to be in high school hell for yet another year and she and I barely spoke. Incidentally, when I went off to college, Dad got a job in town with Southland Life in downtown Dallas where he didn't travel that lasted unitl my brother left home.

 


06/18/20 02:13 PM #18282    

 

Lowell Tuttle

Am sort of interested in Insurance companies and their history.

Southland Life, bought out/taken over by Internationale Nederlande Group....merged into Georgia Life, taken over by Denver Insurance Group, a division of Voya, who was originally ING.

ING bugs me for business all the time.  They act sort of as a life carrier brokerage....

I think back of the Southland Life building downtown next to the Sheraton Hotel.

Knew better, but was curious if a relationiship with Southland Corporation...no.


06/18/20 03:53 PM #18283    

 

Bob Davidson

Lowell,

Southland Corporation was the 7-11 people.  Southland Life was founded and owned by the Carpenters, of Carpenter Freeway and Las Colinas fame.  I know of no connection.
 


06/18/20 04:58 PM #18284    

 

Janalu Jeanes (Parchman)

I just read what Justice Clarence Thomas said about what Chief Justice John Roberts did today with his 'swing' vote, and I couldn't agee more with Thomas' statement.

Barack Obama even admitted he didn't have the authority to do what he ended up doing when he issued his Executive Order about the DACA children of illegal aliens.  

Excellent conclusion Justice Thomas!

It appears to me that the liberal block of the Supreme Court continues to do what they desire, rather than uphold the Constitution.  Am I wrong about that?


06/18/20 08:13 PM #18285    

 

David Cordell

Steve, keep posting photos. Martha and I visited Mount Rushmore, Crazy Horse, Badlands National Park durin our 5200 mile car trip in 2018. Had a great time. I hadn't seen Mount Rushmore since I was a boy when my father took me on a business trip to Billings, Montana.

Bob, I enjoy reading your comments. I recall seeing you draw a Jaguar XKE in, I think, ninth grade in some class. You seemed introverted, very bright, with a sardonic wit. It saddens me that you hated high school so much.

It saddens me even further to learn that I would have been an average Mississippian!


06/19/20 07:05 AM #18286    

 

David Cordell

During the Giuliani administration in New York City, they adopted the "broken windows" theory, which essentially says, "visible signs of crime, anti-social behavior, and civil disorder create an urban environment that encourages further crime and disorder, including serious crimes." If a broken window in a building is not repaired immediately, more windows will be broken. Same idea for removing grafitti and dealing with so-called petty crimes. New York's crime rate dropped precipitously during that era.

It appears to me that most cities now abide by the "breaking windows" theory, which seems to suggest that it is OK to allow mobs to riot, vandalize, steal, terrorize, injure, and set fires.

In Portland, statues of Jefferson and Washington have been toppled by mobs. The Washington statue was burned, along with an American flag. Interestingly, the mobs seem to be mostly young white people.





 

 

 


06/19/20 11:35 AM #18287    

 

Bob Davidson

David -- I didn't say you'd be an average student at my junior high:  I said you'd have been an average student in the advanced class.  Our school was near the University of Mississippi Medical School, Brookhaven College, and Millsaps College.  Ole Miss doctors were famous in Jackson after they did the first lung transplants: the daughter of the lead doctor was in all of my classes from fifth grade on and lived in our neighborhood.  I knew her and her three sisters well and liked her dad.  He drove us to the eighth grade dance and joked around the whole way -- I brought a corsage and was too embarrassed to pin it on so her dad did -- he thought that was hilarious.  Dr. Marston's son and Dr. Guyton's daughter were in our classes. In seventh grade I had a huge crush on Cathy Guyton -- she was beautiful, very witty, and still probably the smartest girl I've ever met -- a drop-dead gorgeous female with at least Jean Ward's intelligence -- she said she couldn't be my "girlfriend" (as things are in seventh grade) because I was too short and not Jewish, but we could still be friends. (My first excursion to the friendship zone.)  We both had polio survivors in our family (her dad and my mom) and the way she was so kind and understanding about her dad made me like her even more and understand my mom better. I thought I had a chance with her because the other boys in my class were intimidated by her.  Both Julia Hardy and Cathy Guyton went to Harvard, then medical school.  Steve, Cathy's big brother, always treated me extra nicely -- I think he knew I had a hopeless crush on his awesome sister and felt sorry for me.

During the Freedom Rider times the locals were pretty desperate to show that they weren't all ignorant rednecks and the Ole Miss docs were evidence they weren't.  So were Faulkner and Eudora Welty. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Hardy_(surgeon)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Guyton

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Q._Marston

My best friend's mom and dad were both Ole Miss medical school professors, but without international renown.  The other doctors on Dr. Hardy's team had kids in my grade. 

Ms Welty was a friend of our eighth grade English teacher and spoke to our class about observing humanity and writing about it.  She was a very formidable woman but really, really interesting. 

Years later, I found out that Cathy's grandfather was Faulkner's personal physician and Faulkner was a friend of her father. 

Those people often made me feel not too bright so I took on the role as class comedian. It worked, I think, because I was short, thin, unthreatening, told I was cute all the time, and was part of a group that stuck together against the local bullies.  Right before we moved to RHS, I grew eight inches in a few months so I was awkward, gawky, felt ugly, and didn't know anyone when I started there.  


06/19/20 01:17 PM #18288    

 

David Cordell

Bob,

Yes, college towns in the south are different from most of the south. The faculty members are bright with bright children, and they come from all over.

We lived in Baton Rouge for five years while I was on the faculty at LSU. The public school programs for "gifted and talented" were excellent, and there was a lot of financial effort on the other end of the spectrum also. If your children weren't in either of those groups, you enrolled them in private or parochial school.

After Baton Rouge, we lived in Clear Lake for about five years. Heavy NASA influence. Lots of smart kids. Same NASA influence in Huntsville, AL.

In Clear Lake we had about ten astronauts who were members of our small church. Two of them were Kathryn Thornton and Kathryn Sullivan. Kathy Thornton was a good friend. At one time, they were the only American women who had done an EVA - extravehicular activity-- in space. The joke was that for an American woman to do an EVA, she had to go to our church and be named Kathryn.

Sullivan went on to be head administrator of NOAA and Thornton is a professor at the University of Virginia, which will soon be burned to the ground because it was founded by a slave owner.


06/19/20 05:40 PM #18289    

 

David Cordell

Now there is a movement to force the Texas Rangers baseball team to change its name because the real Texas Rangers are deemed by some to be, or at least to have been, racist. 

Lowell, I think the Houston Astros team should be forced to change its name because everyone knows that the original seven astronauts were all white men, an obvious example of racism and misogyny. Besides, the Astros have a violent past, having originally been named the Colt .45s.


06/19/20 07:23 PM #18290    

 

Steve Keene

David and Bob,

I think we need to get down to the real root of the slave  problem.  Black tribal Chieftons on the West Coast of Africa took slaves of the other tribes after defeating their enemies.  They then sold these slaves to white trader middlemen who transported them to England and the Americas for wealthy farmers to purchase. When slavery was halted in England a triangle trade was established sending slaves to America, tobacco to England, and fabrics and trinkets to West Africa.  Indigenous peoples in the Americas also enslaved other tibe members and traded them for sex and labor to the French along with animal pelts.  In return they got weapons, copper arrowheads and axes and alcohol.  Therefore Indians and Blacks should quit blaming whites and blame their neighbors of color.  That is who needs to pay them reparations.


06/19/20 08:29 PM #18291    

 

Janalu Jeanes (Parchman)

In-depth analysis, Steve!  


06/19/20 11:18 PM #18292    

 

David Cordell

It just troubles me that this nation's history and the founders are being denigrated and monuments to them are being destroyed. Obviously, I understand why black people would object to the enslavement of their ancestors. But I object to the accomplishments of Washington and Jefferson being reduced to the fact that they were slave owners. Some of the destroyed statues of Washington and Jefferson will not be replaced. What will school books look like in the future? "George Washington was an evil slave owner, and also did some other stuff."

Do black people have legitimate complaints? Yes. But an irony is that current black people in the USA are beneficiaries of slavery. As a group, their freedom and economic opportunity is much greater in the USA than in the African nations of their ancestors. Compare that difference to the difference between my situation and my cousins in Sicily. I think I have some advantage over my cousins, but not that much.

I've had quite a few students from Africa, and they much prefer life in the USA. I think I have mentioned that my former TA from Gabon, who was exceptionally polite, respectful, and well-read, was unimpressed by the African-American culture. 


06/19/20 11:41 PM #18293    

 

Bob Davidson

David,

I'm familiar with the NASA world in the Bay Area.  My ex-wife is the daughter of the chief civil engineer at NASA and grew up in Nassau Bay and graduated from Clear Creek High -- their back neighbour was Buzz Aldrin.  In the 80s people referred to the houses as "Alan Shephard's house" or whatever, despite the new people living there.  I went to her Clear Creek 20th reunion.  It was like going to an event at Rice -- the biggest nerds were the coolest kids.

Jackson was probably somewhat like Baton Rouge with the universities and state capitol, except in a really poor state without any other cities and absolutely no national cachet.  We had about 145,000 people when I lived there and about half were black, and they had a separate social structure.  Bailey had less than 500 students in three grades, with most of the political and social elite from the state there.  The elected in 1963 segregationist governor's asshole son was in the class in front of me -- the teachers and principal were blatantly afraid to discipline him.

We were there for the Freedom Riders, the James Meredith riots, the civil rights murders in the Delta, the boycotts and the start of the integration of Jackson schools.  The whole everyone-knew-everyone-else was amazing to me: James Meredith was a cousin of our next-door neighbour's maid and we got to hear her opinion of him repeatedly -- both from her and from her employer.  [Incidentally, the neighbour was the runner up to Beth Myerson for Miss America in the 1940s.  She had a probably three times life-size portrait of her in her Miss Mississippi gown and sash on the wall behind the grand staircase coming into the house.  Unfortunately, her two daughters looked like their dad, who'd been a lineman at Mississippi State.]

I knew Julia's dad was a celebrity because everyone talked about him and his team -- with a sort of "see what they did -- we're not a bunch of dumb hicks, after all."  I had no idea Cathy's dad was a big deal aside from admiring him for being a doctor who'd survived polio.

 


06/20/20 12:00 AM #18294    

 

Bob Davidson

David -- it just occurred to me that you probably went to St. Thomas the Apostle in Nassau Bay.  I was married there in 1986.  Did you perchance know Glenn and Lunan Spencer?


06/20/20 06:42 AM #18295    

 

David Cordell

Bob, yes, St. Thomas was our church from 1985-92. I don't recall the Spencers, though. If I had known that you were getting married there, I would have sneaked in and heckled you!

Martha was a Sunday school teacher and coordinator of the Sunday school. I was on the vestry and was Senior Warden in 1991-2. Our youngest son was born in Nassau Bay..

Different issue: 

There is a statue of Lenin in Seattle. Do you suppose it will be vandalized and torn down?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statue_of_Lenin_(Seattle)


06/20/20 07:32 AM #18296    

 

Wayne Gary

David

Either Harlan Crow or Trammel Crow at their house on Preston Rd near Turtle Creek has row of statues of the fallen leaders of communist and socialist countries, Lennen, Stallen and the like as a reminder of their demise in th eface of good old capitalism.


06/20/20 08:02 AM #18297    

 

Sandra Spieker (Ringo)

David,

According to the Wikipedia article you referenced concerning the Lenin statue, it is on private property (as opposed to a public, taxpayer funded courthouse or park) and therefore has complicated removal.  It is also vandalized from time to time.  Confederate statues, like the one in Weatherford are located on public property, in Weatherford's case, the town square on the courthouse lawn.  It is therefore implied that the Texas government condones, and sanctions these representations of the Confederacy and all that it stood for, plus if these statues are vandalized the taxpayers pay to have them cleaned and restored.  By the way, on Monday, June 22, the commissioners in Parker County will meet to decide the fate of the confederate monument on the square.  The Daughters of The Confederacy, who paid for the statue, claim they still own it (after 100 years) and want it back so they can place it in or on a safer location.  I celebrate that and hope they do.


06/20/20 12:59 PM #18298    

 

Hollis Carolyn Heyn

Poor little Dixie the cat. So sorry for Christopher.

06/20/20 02:54 PM #18299    

 

Janalu Jeanes (Parchman)

Lance,

So sorry to hear about darling Dixie!  Your sweet son must be heartbroken.  

Did you tell him that he could go to the animal shelter to pick out another one soon?  There are SO many who would love to play with Christopher and give him hours of laughter and kitty kisses!  I hope it is a sincere possiblity for the two of you, since you already have the climbing tower cats love to tackle!

Little Dixie would want you to do that in her memory, I'm sure. 

Does he still have the little, white Westie too?

Boys need their buddies!  Bless his heart!  Tell him I'm pulling for him to twist your arm and give in!   He'll forever remember his time playing and cuddling with his critters, I can guarantee you.  I still remember fondly all of the fur-babies my siblings and I had.  Kids learn a lot from caring for them and loving them.


06/20/20 06:06 PM #18300    

 

Hollis Carolyn Heyn

Lance: What about the dog's owner? He/she offer to pay the vet bill? Expressed remorse, grief?

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