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This is another one of my Army stories, so hold on tight! After completing my Initial Entry Training (AKA Boot Camp), Advanced Individual Training and Airborne School, I was assigned to C Battery, 2nd Battalion, 319th Airborne Field Artillery Regiment. This was at Fort Bragg, North Carolina deep in the heart of the 82nd Airborne Division.
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Sometime ago a Sandbar column ran about two Whiteside leagues of land granted in the southwest section of Grimes County in the names of James Whiteside and John J. Whiteside. The article stated that research indicated these two were not blood kin, but further research shows they were brothers.
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One of my Examiner contributions is the content for This Week in History. This assignment requires me to peruse the Examiner’s big blue books for headlines of Grimes County news events for the past four decades. Can you imagine my surprise a week after writing “Railroaded Again?” and ”The Crucifixion of Grimes County,” I turned to the Sept. 9, 1993, edition and saw this headline - “City in high-speed train corridor!”
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This interviewee started out a little different than the others. I planned on interviewing her husband, who happened to be in Australia for a few weeks, so I wasn’t able to meet with him quite yet. The more I thought about who I would replace him with - the more I saw his wife and realized SHE WAS THE PERFECT ONE! Her husband even told me, “She is significantly cooler than I am, with a way more powerful story to tell.”
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Dear readers, this story is a bit embarrassing, but I’m going to push through for you anyway. This took place when I was in high school on a campout with a friend of mine. Actually, “campout” might not be the right term. It was more like trespassing.
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A highlight of my recent trips to Rockport and Port Lavaca was seeing firsthand that agriculture is not only alive but thriving in South Texas! Well away from urban concrete and steel, I saw farm after farm with nothing but cotton, cotton, cotton! It was on the shrub on my Rockport visit but a few weeks later on the way to Port Lavaca, it lay gloriously bound in large round bales.
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This tale happened in March of 1987 when I was a newly minted soldier in the U.S. Army. After completing Basic Training and Advanced Individual Training I, and a few others, were sent to the Army Infantry School at Fort Benning Georgia to (hopefully) complete the Airborne Course. This was all planned out according to our enlistment contracts and we were fired up and ready to get going with this last segment of our training.
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The impending return to school brought to mind a comment from one of my grandchildren upon their pre-COVID graduation from college. It hurts my heart every time I think about it but I’m sharing to prepare families of incoming freshmen for the changeling who may sit down to Thanksgiving dinner.
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