Mark Kelley,
Thanks for all that! Sincerely, one of the best things about this group is
learning all the back stories about before TAMU, and how our lives became
interwoven. All this new information gives me much deeper appreciation for all
y’all. I especially enjoyed that part in your story about travel in the
Netherlands, where I used to work in 1989. That and the 'buxom lass in a tube
top'… great imagination trigger. I didn't know you were sans parents when we
first met you. Gee whiz, sorry about that. Like you, the Aggie Band experience
and y’all, made me. I would be an entirely different person if not for TAMU and
especially the Aggie Band. God, those were great years.
I once had a flight from Chicago to Paris, bumped off of American Airlines to
Air France due to a looming AA pilots’ strike. Air France bumped me up from
business class to first class. Air France actually sent a gofer to fetch me
from the departure lounge and escort me past all the lines. Nowadays they pick
you up at your hotel in a Lambourghini. The seats were so huge that I could not
reach the seat back in front of me, with my leg fully extended. Literally in
the nose of the 747, under the cockpit, the opposite row on the starboard side
was miles away. My seat mate was flying home to Spain, after working in
Chicago. A few hours into the flight after supper and too much wine, I was
ready to settle down and sleep. Seat mate, she says, I am warning you that I
snore. I replied, no problem, I also snore and I have ear plugs! Sara Ais, her
real name, says, "I guess you haven’t realized that we are sleeping together
tonight!” I laughed my ass off. Couldn’t wait to tell my wife I had slept with
a Spaniard on my last trip. A great line I have used many times hence on those
long haul flights. Alas, when we landed in Paris she went on to Barcelona and I
had to fly to Cameroun, Africa.
Many years later, I got stuck in Helsinki due to a Finnair strike. I thought
about booking on Iceland Air and connection in Reykjavik…but it would have cost
me a lot and I got lucky with Finnair via Frankfurt. They wouldn’t allow caviar
on the carry-ons! Maybe visit Iceland one day…after I take my kids to Easter
Island…that's next on our family vacation plans after this damn pandemic.
Thanks again Mark. I have also been a ditch digger, between jobs. Was working
demolition once just south of Carswell AFB in FW. While there all I could think
about was bother Wright flying overhead in those 8 engined, lumbering B-52s
older than us!
Edward Retta
On Mar 15, 2021, at 7:52 PM, Mark Kelley <markrkelley77@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Summer of ‘75 I was a reporter and photographer at the Temple Daily Telegram.
I was fill-in, but I wasn’t bored. I covered one plane crash, participated
in a hot air balloon race, covered the police beat, rode a Huey with the CO
around Fort Hood as the ACCB Blackhorse Cobras shot at old tank hulls, and
interviewed several pols and celebs such as Edgar Bergen, Candice’s dad. I
helped distribute screw worm flies from the back of a fast moving pickup in
middle-of-nowhere Milan County. 1975 had been a tough year for me. My
mother died in the spring of our sophomore year after a 2 year fight with
cancer. I wanted to go to A&M our freshman year, but I was my mother’s
caregiver that year. Near the end of the summer, after dumping a bunch of
Valium into the toilet to get off them, I drove to New York City and then
flew to Europe via Iceland to visit my sister in the Netherlands. My family
lost track of me until I showed up at the central train station in The Hague
about a week later. I had taken the train from Lux via Brussels to get
there. I had landed in Luxembourg City with no plan other than to take the
train to The Hague. Once I got there, I figured all I needed to do was make
a phone call and she would come pick up up. It was very late at night when I
got there. I visited with her and her family for a week (Amsterdam, Arnhem,
Waterloo, Bruges, etc), and then flew back to the US on Iceland Air. I then
drove back to central Texas and packed up for our junior year.
On the flight from NY to Lux, I sat next to an Italian woman who spoke
Italian, German, and Spanish. On the other side of her was a buxom lass in a
tube top from Lancaster, PA, who obviously spoke English and some Spanish.
My German wasn’t too bad then. We would have some interesting conversations.
There was a brief stop in Reykjavik where we all disembarked. When it came
time to board the plane, the Italian woman was missing. This gorgeous, tall,
Icelandic stewardess asks me where my mother was. I told her she wasn’t my
mother and that she was probably in duty free buying cigs. This stewardess
orders me to go find her. I end up running across the apron in a snow storm
looking for this lady. I find her, tell her in an excited voice that we had
to get on the Flugzueg (sp) Yetz! I grabbed her by the hand and hauled her
to the jet as she worked not to drop her Salems all over Iceland.
Dad had died several years earlier. At 19 I was in the Aggie Band, had a
fiancé, no parents, and I thought that I was about as adult as they came.
Ah, the ignorance of youth.
For better or worse, the Aggie Band was the biggest thing I ever did in my
life. I wish I had appreciated it more at the time. If Wilbert hadn’t
decided to take care of me and as a result getting me to graduate, I don’t
know what I would have amounted to. I am eternally grateful to God Almighty
for putting him in my life. I think of him quite often.
I’ve done some weird stuff in the years since 1977, too. Been a truck
driver, ditch digger, salesman, teacher, and packaging designer. I can’t
believe how quickly the past 50 years have gone by.
