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My gggrandfather was Elijah Fincher who fought in the Civil War. I know almost nothing about him. I wish he would have left some writings about his life for me to know him better. I write this brief note on my life for my future grandchildren and great-grandchildren. I may not know you, but I love you already and leave these notes for you.
We lived in a little trailer park. My earliest memory is being chased across a plowed field with my brother Mike by a bunch of boys, one of whom had a hatchet and were trying to kill us. Don't know what we did to deserve that.
We lived out in the desert while my Dad was stationed at George AFB outside of Victorsville CA. Our little cluster of 4 houses was miles from any other homes. We caught lots of lizards and once a tortoise wandered into our yard to eat the fresh grass. I remember going exploring with my brother out in the desert. I wanted to see how far the desert went. My mom gave us an old plastic bleach bottle filled with water and wished us well. I was 10 and Mike was 13. I don't think they send kids out in the desert by themselves anymore.
While in the desert, my dad bought a wonderful horse named "Schepps" whose owner was a young woman going to Hawaii. We rode Schepps all over the desert and eventually Dad got two ponies, Apache and Midnight for Mike and me. As we were moving away from CA, Schepp's original owner came to visit the horse. She rode the horse bareback and would steer the horse just by using her hands and did many other tricks with him. We had no idea he could do all those things. The horse probably thought we were the dumbest owners. ("They don't even know how to steer using only their hands.")
I remember putting a soft saddle on Schepps one time and hopped on his back and started riding. I didn't tighten it enough and as I rode the saddle slowly rotated down and I was looking up at the horse's belly. Fortunately Schepps just stopped. Good horse.
One night my dad opened up a .50 caliber shell and poured the powder out in a circle in our backyard and lit it on fire. It was very eerie experience with the darkness all around and the smell of gunpowder burning and lighting up the night. Weird the things you remember as a kid.
In California Mike and my education took a detour for the worst. Mike's math book for his next grade was the one he just completed at our last school. The schools were one year behind the Texas schools, so when we left CA and moved to Texas we were behind.
We went to church with Dale Evans and Roy Rogers. Actually I just remember seeing Dale a few times. Don't remember Roy being there.
Having a holiday meal at the ranch with cousins, aunts, and uncles. I was bored and went out to play by myself. I turned over a metal disk about a foot in diameter. Underneath were a bunch of interesting bugs. I thought about playing with them, but decided to move on. Later I learned they were scorpions.
My family was big into boating and skiing. It was a thing with the pilots in particular I think. Dad would take our ski boat, lash a tractor inner tube to the front open-hulled bow and go deep sea fishing at Port Aransas. We caught lots of king mackerel.
During the summers we would often go back to Albany Tx to be with family. My grandmother Dorothy and Herb owned the Hereford Motel. One time when I was about 10 years old everyone was gone and I was sitting in the front office. A man came in to get change for a 20 dollar bill. I handed him the change. Later Dot found that I had mishandle the change and given him a extra $5 bill instead of one of the ones, so he got too much change back. Same man came back later to ask me for change for another $20 bill.
I was helping putting away groceries once at the motel. Unlike our horizontal freezer Dot had a standup freezer. Thinking the vertical appliance was a refrigerator, I put the eggs and other groceries in the freezer. Eggs are not great after they have been frozen.
I was walking behind by grandmother Lurline at the ranch one day. She walked right over a baby rattlesnake without seeing it. I almost stepped directly on it. She just got a hoe and dispatched the little critter.
At the ranch one year, my cousins and I collected lightening bugs in mason jars. Very cool to have your own lantern. I learned then that a jar full of dead bugs doesn't smell to good a few days later. The cousins played croquet in the front yard.
We lived in base housing in Idaho and walked to school or rode our bikes. A trivial unexpected, yet long lasting incident took place in room 136 in Mr. Dennis Stevenson class (I remember almost no teachers from growing up, but I remember him). He gave a math test to the class. If you scored 90 or above you would be in the advanced math class which would sit on the left side of the room and get special instruction. I scored an 85. But wait, I discovered an error in grading and he corrected it to a 90 - I made it in! That started my love of math which would later become important in engineering.
My best friend was Steve. At recess the boys would play an unsupervised game which had two teams. You would try to throw all the members of the other team to the ground where they had to stay. The team with the last player standing won. We were very serious about this game. Unfortunately Steve was on the other team and we stopped being best friends. Sad.
One time while skiing in high school I got really, really thirsty. I thought to myself, "Why be thirsty when you are skiing on a lake?". So I scooped up some lake water and drank it. I was in the hospital for just a few days with intestinal issues. Drinking lake water is not recommended.
It was common knowledge that it was easier to get into Texas Tech than to Texas A&M. The saying was "You have to be breathing to get into A&M, but only warm to get into Tech."
I studied Civil Engineering at Tech, but in my Sophomore year I decided to switch to Mechanical Engineering, which shared the same building as CE. I had seen a counsellor and made the changes to my future classes. Most of my CE classes would transfer as electives into an ME degree. The semester before I was to switch majors I was in the downstairs study room for MEs and CEs when I got thirsty. I didn't have change for the coke machine so I was about to go to the CE office to get change for my dollar, when I had the bright idea of going to the ME office for change so I could get to know the ME staff.
I went to the office and asked a secretary for change. She dourly said, "We don't give change to students." I went to the CE office and asked for change and she said, "Sure Mitch, what do you need, quarters, dimes?". I thought to myself, "I can't leave these people." Two years later I graduated with a CE degree.
I joined Intervarsity Christian Fellowship (IVCF) my first year at Tech and was involved in their weekly meetings, small group Bible Studies, and prayer nights. I remember going to the dark, deserted basement of the Chemistry building to a small conference room for our weekly prayer meeting.
Our IVCF chapter was into swing dancing and country and western dancing. This changed my life. I got to be good at the Texas Two Step and was never in want of partners. This gave me more confidence with women although not enough.
I went to work for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers after graduation in Flood Plain Management. Our department delineated the 100, 500 year floods for insurance maps. All new engineers at the Corps did a year rotation spending a few weeks in each department.
A lot of new engineering graduates were coming into the Corps at the time. Many didn't know how to look for an apartment, easily afford a hotel room, or how to get to work. We started a group called the "Corps Intern Association" and we would try to help the recent hires get settled before showing up to work. We also had parties and get togethers to welcome the new people. I published a newsletter called "The Underground Intern" with tips about working there and issues the interns were having. One time an admin came to me saying they lost track of where an intern was, and asked for my help to find them.
Ronald Reagan became president and froze all new hires after a while so our little CIA group lost a main reason to exist. After our rotation most interns just settled into their jobs in various departments. It was handy to know those people later on when dealing with different departments. I learned later after hiring had resumed the interns heard about our old CIA group and founded the "Federal Bunch of Interns", the FBI.
After my rotation through the departments I went to my home group of Flood Plain Management. I did one flood study and thought it was OK. I did my second and thought this is just like the first one. I did my third and thought I would scream because it was just very repetitive work that 90% of the time a high school grad could do. Fortunately the Corps had purchased a new mini-computer, the Harris 500. I loved playing on it and doing work. I developed a streamlined version of our workflow and had a great time doing it. I transferred after a year into the Automated Data Processing (ADP) section and spent the next three years there.
I started automating the surveying department. Jobs that used to take a week could now be done in a day with the bespoke software I wrote. I loved writing the software in FORTRAN and helping the people with their job. I had found my perfect job.
After five years I thought about going back to school to get a degree in Computer Science. I wanted to be able to earn enough money that if I got married some day my wife could stay home with our kids if we wanted to do that. I was in a time crunch since my GRE scores I took my senior year at Tech expired after 5 years. I applied to UT, but got turned down. I applied to Texas A&M and they accepted me and offered a part time job teaching that paid well enough to live on.
I moved to College Station in 1986. I thought after I had been programming for 4 years and managing computer systems that I would blow away all these recent undergrads just starting the Masters Program and it would be easy. I could not have been more wrong.
I got to go to the Aquila Dam project outside of Hillsboro TX for two weeks. I was trying to learn guitar by myself from a book at this time in the hotels and was unsuccessful. It never sounded right. Only later did I learn you are not suppose to strum all the top strings of the chords.
While in Hillsboro I worked with a quality control technician who told me stories of all the corruption during the building of a nuclear power plant. The threats and bribery were too much for him and he quit there and did QC for the Corps.
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