Monthly Archives: January 2020
Thanks For Your Kind Words . . .
First off, I want to thank everyone for their kind words about my uncle Tom. I’ve really enjoyed reading the many accolades in the local Alabama newspapers, and discovering a lot of family history that I hadn’t heard before.
In talking about the period while he was playing for the University of Alabama, I found this.
While playing at Alabama, he also developed a close relationship with Lenette Ellis, the captain of the cheerleaders for the Crimson Tide, whom he married in 1949.
Lenette was quite an athlete in her own right. She won the 1948 Southern Olympic Diving Championship and qualified for the Olympic trials.
And this –
In 1956, Calvin took the coaching job at Sylacauga for football. Calvin coached the Aggies for 21 seasons. In 1957, Calvin and the Aggies were named state champions by The Birmingham News. The 1960 and 1961 teams won back to back state titles. Sylacauga had 15 straight winning seasons including the 1969 state championship.
Calvin retired from coaching in 1988 boasting an overall record of 201-130-11. Calvin was a three time Coach of the Year and inducted into the Alabama High School Athletic Association Hall of Fame in 1991.
He and Lenette are the only husband and wife team in the hall of fame.
All the test drive prep work I had scheduled went completely unprepped, and I don’t really know why. I guess life intervened.
So I guess it’s going to all get put off until Saturday.
About 2pm Jan and I headed up to Webster to have lunch at our long-time favorite, Floyd’s Cajun Seafood. We’ve been eating here since the late 90’s when it first opened.
Originally it was called Thibodeaux’s when Floyd was a silent partner in the restaurant. The reason he was a silent partner was that Floyd is Floyd Landry, who along with his family, started Landry’s Seafood, first in Lafayette, LA.
He had to wait until his non-compete expired with Tilman Fertitta, who bought up the Landry’s chain, before he could open a restaurant in his name.
Like most restaurant’s we frequent, we both have our favorites, dishes that we keep going back to.
Jan got her Grilled Catfish Dinner with Gilled Veggies, and a Side Salad,
while I started off with a Dinner Salad, with their homemade Ranch Dressing,
and a Bowl of Shrimp Gumbo.
There were so many shrimp in here that there was one in every spoonful.
After that we made an office stop for some Amazon stuff that came in, and HEB stop on the way home.
A nice day.
Thought For The Day:
TOMORROW:
(noun) a mystical land where 99% of all human productivity, motivation and achievement is stored.
fgdfg
Some Sad News . . .
I spent most of the evening trying to set things up so I can reluctantly upgrade my desktop computer from rock-stable Win7 to Win10.
I’m doing a complete system image (iso) of the hard drive first before I install Win10 on top of it. I would actually prefer to do a clean install but I’ve got a couple of older programs that I use regularly and can’t find the CD’s for.
But with the ISO file I can just reinstall the image and I’m back where I started. In the meantime I’ll keep looking for the missing CD’s.
Although it rained pretty much all day today, tomorrow’s supposed to be a little nicer. So I’m going to do some prep work for our upcoming oil leak test drive this coming Sunday.
Some Sad News.
I got a text message from one of cousins this evening saying that my uncle Tom Calvin had died this morning.
He was 93, and he and my Aunt Lenette had been married for 70 years. He’s the last of my mother’s brothers, and the last of my direct relatives on my mother’s or my father’s side.
But Tom’s real claim to fame is in the football world, both as one of the oldest living NFL players, and his coaching abilities in the state of Alabama, where he is known as the Winningest Coach in Alabama History.
After playing for the University of Alabama where he led the Crimson Tide in rushing and played in the 1948 Sugar Bowl, he played 4 years for the Pittsburgh Steelers from 1952 to 1955. He was actually drafted for the 1951 season, but turned it down because he didn’t think the money was enough, so he took a job as a high school coach. But the next year, Art Rooney, the team owner, personally wooed him back to the Steelers with a bigger contract.
Tom even had his own Wikipedia page.
Not to be outdone, my Aunt Lenette was a Olympic level gymnastics coach and worked with Bela Karolyi and other well-known coaches at several Olympics, including Japan in 1998 and others.
I had hoped to see him when we’re up in Alabama next month. He will be missed.
Thought For The Day:
You’d think by now that Wile E. Coyote would have figured out that Acme Products Corp. is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Roadrunner Inc.
(BTW the ‘E.’ stands for Ethelbert
hdgh
