I Matriculated to USMA

Had a fine time today with my buddies.The matriculation of the golf ball was spotty at best,but the fun lasted 18 holes.I hope every dad has a happy Fathers Day.Iknow the people of central Indiana will overcome the recent weather problems.

silerCityDude: you must be a fellow alum from the Fightin' Engineers of Dear Old Rose (the sweetest flower that grows!). Class of '74. Then back to Rose from '82-'85 to teach U. S. Military History. Hopefully you are putting your degree to better use than I did.

Matriculate surely comes from the same root word as matrix (plural: matrices), a good, solid mathematical term that my 8th grade Algebra students would recognize (well, at least some of them).

sCD: I still swap Xmas cards with Steve Gibson (he runs a JROTC program in Shreveport, LA) and just recently had lunch with Jim Hocker, who came to Rose the same time as me.

My father-in-law and brother-in-law are both farmers in Boone County, IN, a tough and honorable vocation.

Hank had some wonderful football teams, and they played against Lamonica and Stabler's Raiders. Len Dawson wasn't mentioned here, but he was a General, and I think he was Purdue. I never really watched football after high school.

I lost my Dad 11 days after the attack to a heart attack. I didn't pick the phone up, but when you can hear the yelling from across the kitchen you know the score. He'd been out cutting firewood with best friends and a Grandson who was a fireman, and the kid missed the signs, which were sublte but signifigant. So he made it home, and was playing with the dog when he died. I'm pretty sure that's exactly what he wanted. It was one of my sisters rescues, and that dog loved him.

The only conversation I had with him after the attack was about 4 days prior, because I was basically gone for the week prior. He was a mechanical engineer and he was trying to explain to me how the towers were built and what made them so easy to drop once it got hot. He was sitting in that lazyboy recliner, and he didn't look good. I wrote it off because he was talking about something akin to Pearl Harbor, so I missed it coming too. There was nothing I ever saw that he could not do mechanically, but that wasn't the big thing. The big thing was that he left 4 children that were assets. So happy Fathers Day, Dad.

No flooding here; he found this house for us so there's never been a problem. The wife matriculated over to Volkswagen the other day so now I'm broke, but hey, you can shift it from the steering wheel like an F-1 car.

Very nicely put hopeanddust.......Your dad is very lucky to have you as a son.....

I could never repay all the things my dad did for me. And I use to tell him that all the time. He always told me "just do the same for your kids and thats payment enough"

I Lost dad one week after fathers day in 1985

Thanks Sweet*Sassy & B ball fan, those were very kind words to give.

I wish both of you and yours the very best.

Funny how this forum can connect people..

This is way off subject/thread (not that I know what the subject/thread is?), but for some reason, maybe the weather?, your mention of Bob Dylan put the song "Lenny Bruce" in my head. Which by the way, is in the top five of my favorite Dylan songs. Not sure why I am even mentioning this? Nope. I don't really know. Maybe it's that connection thing?

On second thought, maybe it's that time warp thing? That long minute in the Yellow Submarine...you remember how Bob rode with Lenny in a Taxi once? He said it was just for a mile and a half, but it felt like a couple of months? Yes, that's it.

I was sitting out in front of the Grill about a week ago with Nancy...enjoying another beautiful evening in the sleepy little town of Bloomfield. Nancy and I looked at the clock on the patio and it was 15 minutes to 9:00. I commented to Nancy how nice the evening was...then one of the girls came out to turn off the open sign. I asked "What are you doing?" "We have another 15 minutes before we close." The girl looked at me like I was crazy and said" What are you talking about?-it's 9:00!" Nancy and I looked at the clock-and it was 9:00! We then looked at each other in disbelief...

It was some kind of time warp that we both shared.

Hope that's what happens to us...to those who have lost a father or loved one, suddenly one moment we will look up and there they will be, and the months and years that have passed will seem like only a moment.

Oh well. Happy Father's Day to everyone!

Ever read the book Cold Mountain? In it Inman, a civil war soldier on his long,perilous trek home from the fighting, encounters the "Goatwoman", an old lady who lived by herself in the mountains with a herd of goats. She offers him refuge for a few weeks due to a previous misfortune that left him injured. During that stay the Goatwoman says to Inman at one point after be begins to open up to her a bit: "We don't hold onto the particulars of pain the way we do bliss. It's the way God made us, a sign of His care for us."

I'm thinking now that that maybe is another example of the time warp thing...I don't know. Maybe not.

I think that I've been in a time warp all of my life. I must have been when it came to my Dad's train collection. county gal you may have to refresh my memory on that one. He worked on the RR for 44 years, but I don't ever remember a collection that he had. You can reach me at mr.sims at comcast dot net.

Steven Wright once said that he had the world's largest collection of sea shells and he kept them on the beaches of the world. I once tried to collect worms of varying lengths, but they all would wither away and keep shriveling up on me. I could never keep accurate measurements.

Here's to hoping it doesn't rain again today. I've started noticing some webs growing between my toes lately and I'm concerned now that I have dishpan scalp.

Just got back from a week in Colorado on vacation. Beautiful country.

Dad had a train collection?

"Don't seem to get many comments anymore on these articles. After studying this for a bit last night, I've decided that I need to write some more controversial pieces about guns, animals, religion, politics and school boards."

Simmons, I checked all the other bloggers-you win the comment count.

Proof again there is no support like family support.

Simmons is truly a very rich man.

Never can tell, just read my next post. We might be related.