Greetings from the Quileute Reservation, La Push, WA.
Doesn’t seem like (50) years since graduation. Anyway, after SAHS, I went to the senior, senior high, Santa Ana College, though I spent more time surfing and motorcycling than in class.
Uncle Sam took notice of my adventuresome spirit and offered me an all expense paid vacation to that garden spot, Vietnam. So, while you stateside college students were dodging bullets on campuses like Kent State, I was sipping Mai Ti’s in that tropical paradise, Cambodia.
When Uncle Sam tired of financing my play, he sent me back to school on the GI Bill. (4) years later, 1975, I graduated from Cal State Fullerton with a degree in engineering. Armed with my degree, I became “Oilfield Trash” and spent the next (39) years chasing “Black Gold.”
If you’re “Oilfield Trash,” sooner or later you end up in Houston, which I did in 1979, and met my beautiful “Aggie” wife of (31) years, Suzanne Coody (I’m pretty sure she married me so she could change her last name. Her friends still call her “Cooty Bug,” remember the game?)
We raised (3) Texans in various Texas towns, (2) sons, Sean and Scott, and our “surprise” beautiful daughter, Stephanie. Sean, like mom, is an “Aggie.” A sound engineer, he’s traveled with several
groups like Randy Rogers Band, Flyleaf, and Eli Young Band. Scott graduated from Sam Houston State and is an Orchestra Director in a Texas school district. Stephanie is our Razorback, graduating from University of Arkansas, having spent a semester studying in Japan.
Suz and I have our separate hobbies, she’s a Physical Anthropologist and still loves to dig in the dirt. We just spent (2) months in Silver City NM, where she helped curate the Indian artifacts she helped excavate (30) years ago.
I like to punch holes in paper at (200) yards with high powered rifles. I made my goal last year of competing in the (4) CMP National Events, Oklahoma City, Butner NC, Camp Perry OH, and Phoenix AZ. Wish I could say I’d won something.
Suz and I enjoy one activity together, Ballroom Dancing, watch out Dancing with the Stars, haha.
(3) years ago we started planning for retirement and bought our Retirement Castle in the Ozark Mountains, south of Branson, MO. Then, March 2014, we pulled the plug. I retired from Schlumberger and Suz retired as Adjunct Professor of Anthropology (a fancy title meaning low pay, no benefits) from Lone Star College. We bought a small travel trailer and hit the road. Been traveling for (15) months. After Washington, our next stop is Alaska.
We’ll make it back in time for the reunion.
Hope to see y’all then, if not, hope to meet you on the road sometime in the next (50) years!
Chuck Patrick