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. 

Although politics and religion are not completely off-limits, classmates are asked to be positive in their posts and not to be too repetitive or allow a dialog to degenerate into an argument. 

Forums work when people participate - so don't be bashful! Click the "Post Response" button to add your entry to the forum.

Wayne Gary

David,

I have been thinking about the Assult Rifle laws.  The people writing the laws just do not want any guns.

I can relate it to you buying a VW Bug and getting as Farrari fiberglass kit and putting it on.  Just because it looks like a Ferrari does not make it drive and perform like a Ferrari.

The gun banners reminds me of the Oboma Fast & Furrious program.  Many dealers were not wanting to sell guns and reporting the people wanting to illeagly buy AR type rifles and the ATF told the dealers to sell the guns so ATF could follow the trail and make arrests of the big boys.  When the federal agent was killed, Obama wanted to punish the dealers and make it harder for law abiding citizens to buy this type of gun.

Kurt Fischer

Speaking of brewing beer....

When my wife and I visited our son at his house while he was working on his engineering degree at A&M, we were suprised at the contents of the house.  As an aside, he was living with three other engineering majors.

When you walked in the door to the living room, the first thing you noticed was the three tier elevated couches aiming at the gigantic TV and twin huge Bose speakers.  Not the kind of decorating my daughters did when they shared an apartment at A&M, but okay...

When you looked to the right, you noticed a wooden contraption with some form of hardware tool looking device on it.  On second thought, it was an ammunition loading center.  Obviously what every student needs.

Looking further to the right, there were a number (let's say six) beer kegs, each with lines running from them to a chest freezer with a six pull tap sticking out to the top. In addition, there were kegs in the freezer.  The young lads had wired the freezer's thermostat to keep the beer at the right temperature and had also implemented a recycling glycol mixture to keep the tap itself nice and cold. Cursed engineers...

Walking on the floor was difficult due to all of the power tools and regular tools everywhere and, on the shelves where you would normally find kitchen utensils stored, there were bunches more of tools and parts.

In the backyard there must have been 4 different grills and all sorts of sports eqiupment.

Finally, their method of rodent control was to load up the shotgun with rock salt, go up to the attic and wait.  Then they would shoot the rats.  Some collateral damage, but you have to break a few eggs...

Lest my main point be lost, they spent quite a bit of time brewing large quatities of beer of different natures and seemed to enjoy most of them.  Engineering must build a powerful thirst.

Wayne Gary

Kurt,

It seems 2 of  your kids decided to go to a good school.  Did Stephen get his degree in ET in 08? Sara in History in 99?

Janalu Jeanes (Parchman)

Kurt,

Next time you visit your son's house, I hope you will snap a few photos to share.

The unique abode sounds like a deluxe mancave, of sorts, and possibly a creative style that a guy magazine might write 'a piece' about, or even advertise as a model home for others who might be interested.

Were the sofas arranged in a theatre or stadium-seating type of concoction?

I don't suppose there was any particular color coordinated scheme worried about...... or throw pillows or fern greenery......

Keeping the beer at a perfect temperature was/is genius!  My husband would love to stop by and check out that idea, I'm sure.

College days memories, huh?

I remember my brother telling me about how he and his roommate would each have a large can of Raid, and at night they would have roach killing competitions in the kitchen of their old, rented house.  They would measure the distances of the fastest roaches, recording how far the speed demons would flee in their mad dashes, before going belly up.

Wayne Gary

I saw where Freshman Rep Matt Gaetz (R-FL) proposed the Judicary comm meetings start with the Pledge of Alegiance. The Dems voted against.  One Dem said they say the Pledge in the morning at the start of the House meeting and once a day is enough. Rep Cory Bush (D) said she will  not say the pledge because it is a symbol of White Superiorty. It seems the Dem ridicule the Pledge.

Also, the House Dem Prosicutors do not believe in the 5th amendment. In their request for Former Pres Trump to testify under oath in the trial they said if he does not testify it should be considered an admission of guilt. I know when in a criminal trial if the defendant does not testify the Judge instructs the jury they can not make any inferance as to guild or innocence.  This is in accordance with the 5th amendment.

Spelling corrected 2/9

Kurt Fischer

Wayne:

Sarah graduated from A&M in History in 1999 or 2000, not sure which.  She managed to accrue around 190 hours, but graduate summa cum laude in the Honors college.  One of 18 at A&M at the time of her graduation.  She teaches in Plano at Plano East, both in the International Baccalaureate program and the AP US History course.

Katherine (Katie) graduated A&M in Animal Science around 2002.  She went on to earn a Masters degree in Animal Science from U of Missouri, specializing in Swine reproduction and worked for five years managing a boar stud facility and AI lab in a small town in Kansas.  She moved back to Plano, got married and lives near us.

Stephen graduated A&M in 2005 from the Engineering college with a degree in Manufacturing and Mechanical Engineering Technology.  To me the degree looks like a Manufacturing Engineering degree, but had a much greater emphasis on combining both processes and materials.  He and his wife now live in New Orleans.

So, there you go.  Three A&M graduates.  I managed to drive each of them to Texas Tech for a college visit and each indicated they wanted to go to an academically better university.  Oh bother.

Kurt Fischer

Janalu:

Alas, Stephen's time in College Station and Bryan is in the past.  He and his wife now live a block from Magazine Street in the Irish Channel in New Orleans in a home I could never justify buying from an affordability perspective.  They are both A&M graduates and Engineering majors and make more money they is justified by 30 year old kids.  Life is very good for them.

Wayne Gary

Kurt,

Stephen is the only one of your kids that lists both of their siblings on the A&M Former Students profile.

Must be proud of having 3 Texas Aggie graduates.

Janalu Jeanes (Parchman)

Kurt,

Sounds wonderful for those two exceptional Aggies!

New Orleans is so much fun!

Steve Keene

Kurt,

 It does sound like you have some very successful kids, congrats.

Lowell,

It is probably not possible to mistake you for Lawrence Taylor.

David Cordell

A few of our classmates had fathers (maybe mothers?) who worked for Sun Oil Company. My father was a geologist for Sun for 25 years, but I didn't see a Sunoco gas station until 1992 when I moved to Philadelphia where Sunoco stations are common.

I always knew that Sun created the highest octane gasoline, and that the Sunoco Special race car was very successful, driven by Mark Donahue.

What I didn't know about Sun was its critical role in the air in World War II, particularly relating to the British Spitfire in the Battle of Britain.

This article details a bit of the story.

https://legionmagazine.com/en/2020/07/gassed-up-the-juice-that-fuelled-victory-in-the-battle-of-britain/

Kurt Fischer

Steve:

Looking back, I always find it fascinating how little insight I had into what my kids would like to do with their lives and how to prepare them.  I pushed my eldest daughter to major in Accounting.  Well, by her junior year she decided Accounting was definitely not the way to go and it took an extra year for her to earn her degree in History/Teaching.  While an honorable profession, I had my sights set on something with greater compensation for her.  I didn't get in the way of my middle daughter and allowed her to make a choice.  Swine genetics?  And working on a boar stud farm?  Making $35,000 a year?  Living in a mobile home which had been built in the early 1960's?  And on the weekends going to the one place in town to have fun - the VFW?  Not the path I would have guessed.  At least my son was destined to become an engineer from an early age.  That's one I could have guessed based on the stuff he used to build while in grade school.  On the other hand, he could have taken a scholarship from Texas Tech and been a bigger fish in a smaller pond, but insisted on A&M where his placement of being 10% in his high school class ended up putting him at the bottom of the A&M engineering class.

But it is a mystery why we as parents can't better fathom what our kids would be fulfilled doing and then helping them get there.  We all try and only occasionally seem to get it right.

Steve Keene

Kurt,

My daughter that became a nurse had to suffer with me encouraging her to become a doctor.  She did not want to work that hard and enjoyed the sorority life and social scene.  My other daughter did just what I expected and excelled beyond my dreams at the Law School.  I have a great respect for the engineering school at Texas A&M.  When I went to school at Tech the petrolem engineering school did not possess an advanced degree program.  Even so, they rotated with the other schools in the Southwest Conference grading graduate papers to award the best paper that would be published in Petroleum Engineering.  I was one of two engineers that was asked back by the faculty after graduation to judge the graduate papers.  The other engineer was an oil company President from Midland who was a contemporary and friend of my father.  The two of us judged the two papers submitted by A&M graduates the best papers and I think a U.T. paper was third.  I have a feeling that I might have been chosen, for the fact that I had started my own oil company with about 20 employees and I had given a scholarship to Texas Tech to support an incoming freshman student.  It was not for my grade point average or scientific knowledge.

David Cordell

Classmate and some-time poster Don Chester is scheduled for some serious back surgery. It is so extensive  that it is divided into two segments to be performed on two different days -- tomorrow and Wednesday. I'm sure he and wife Diane would appreciate our thoughts and prayers.

Lowell Tuttle

Good luck, Don Chester.

What a drag for a golfer to go thru back surgery.   I know Tiger woods has had what, six operations?

I have sufferred frcom 3rd 4th and 5th vertabrae arthritis, bone spurs, disc bulging, and stenosis in the past 18 months to the point that my legs hurt at the end of any walking exenstive activity.   (I can ride a bike 20 miles, but not walk 500 yards without sitting down for 10-15 minutes after.)

I can still golf.   But, my once prodigeous (lol?) length has gone away, and, my short game suffers due to lack of strength and thus, co ordination. 

But, my wife says, well, you can still get out there so quit complaining.  She's right, she's always right.

The surgeon said they would be able to put a rod in my back, but even after that there was no guarantee, so I am just doing back excercises and going forward.

I know you hope to get back to playing again.  

I wish you the best.

Bob Davidson

Good luck, Don.  Even though I haven't seen any posts from you lately, I always enjoyed seeing what you had to say. 

Kurt Fischer

I too wish Don well.  My relationship with Don may be unique on the Forum.  He delivered my son in 1988. 

I know he's delivered hundreds of babies and there is a strong likelihood he's delivered other RHS 1969 graduate babies, but it was surprise to me when I learned he would be our baby doctor.

David Cordell

Kurt, you reminded me of another story.

Many years ago our late classmate Mike Nahkunst's wife had a premature birth, and it was really touch-and-go. Mike told me what an extraordinary relief it was to him to learn that the neonatologist caring for the baby was our classmate Eileen Sullivan Milvenan, who assured him that everything would be fine.

Russ Stovall

Don 

You are in our prayers..  May the good Lord guide the hands of the doctors  for a successful procedure and a speedy recovery.

Janalu Jeanes (Parchman)

Don,

 Praying you are on your way to a speedy recovery!

Janalu Jeanes (Parchman)

I've noticed that there are some posters who like to say that they are neutral in politics, or that they claim to be Independents.  Okay, that's fair.

However if you are noticed to vote in lock-step or make statements in agreement with friends that we KNOW to vote as Democratic or as Republican, then your cover is blown, at least for the time period of the just past presidential election.

If you then want to say afterwards that you want to return to being an Independent, you can certainly do that, but to erase the memory that we have of your choosing to side in one particular way in the 'just past' voting era, is asking us to NOT NOTICE what you have demonstrated by your actions.  And then to accuse us of making judgements about your political leanings, is senseless, in that you are judged by the company you keep, whether you like to be "judged" or not.  It is human nature to make judgements.  All of us as adults HAVE to make judgements all the time, since we have to choose which road to go down, at the fork in the roads of life.

Independents can SAY they are fence sitters, unwilling to commit one way or the other, but as soon as they vote, then they have declared that they have chosen a side, at least for this voting season, so, the way I see it, they can't NOW say, "But I am an Independent," and I don't want any sort of label to be attached to me.

Your actions define you, even if you are wishy-washy about telling others of how you are thinking at any given moment in time.

Now you may choose to "lean" toward a different party in the next election season, but until that time that you may choose differently, you are still "judged" as we have noticed you to be, in THIS current season, and we'll be noticing you as you go down life's forked roads of the future, if we are so inclined, since we see that you are afraid to let others know your true feelings, if you are asked, at any given moment.  Or maybe your mind is just perpetually enveloped in a whirlwind of indecision, which must cause many headaches to endure.

Sad.

Additionally, by the way, fierce battles have been going on between Republicans and Democrats for ages, and were NOT just recently initiated by Trump's personality and Trump's way of governing.  Review the 20th century's presidential battles to find plenty of heated battles to peruse.  Such an argument is a red herring!
 

David Cordell

Diane Chester passed along the word that the surgeon said that Don's surgery went very well today and that the surgery on Wednesday should be less complicated and less lengthy. 

Janalu Jeanes (Parchman)

Very good news, David.  I suspect the angels et al were with Don and his able surgeons, as we would all wish to have as well, in our time of need.  

Randy Rushing

Wayne Gary

The battle with the Dems against anything Republican started when  Pres George W Bushwas in office and the Republicans were in control there was a conference of Dems where Nancy Pelosi said the best way for the Dems to regain control was to be opposed to all ideas of Republicans. A very good example was When Sen Clinton and others were pushing for US military overseas to be re-aligned.  Two weeks later President Bush said a Pentigon committee sugested certaing movement of forces. Hillary and others screamed there should not be any movement of forces.

The summer before the Affordable Care Act was enactaded there was a bi-partisan bill written.  The house went on summer break and when they returned Nancy Pelosi threw out the bill and at 4:00AM released her and Obama's 2000 page bill to be voted pn at 9:00am that day.  There was not enough time to to print the bill as required by House Rules. She told  here followers to approve the bill then they could find out what was in the bill which is what they did.  The Senate then followed suit in not having any amendments to the bill.  After the bill was passed a lot of Democrats reliazed ther were changes needed but could not get passed.

With the Covid bill The President and Dems do not want to make any changes suggested by Republicans.