Comments:
Seems like I previously wrote a bunch about my life, but the text is gone so I'll try to fill in some of the pieces. All through high school I was in sports, especially track, and when I went to Univ. TX I was on the track team, mostly throwing javelin. It was during that time that the coaches went up against the UT establishment and decided that Blacks were not only people but great athletes, and I had the opportunity to meet and participate with and especially learn from lots of great people. One time when I was a Freshman we had a long-jump guy invited to one of the meets, and after talking with him extensively and studying how he jumped, I was able to jump 4' further than I ever did the year before in high school. Also in high school (or before) I began studying and doing archeology, and that became my life, big time. By the time I was a Freshman at UT I was training graduate students and finding it increasingly difficult to find time for classes. We would take off for the weekend to excavate around the state, which meant we would leave on Friday and return on Monday, which in turn meant that since we would be gone on Friday we would just leave Thursday night and return Tuesday. Then on Wed study and prepare for next weekend. Professors generally didn't like my schedule, so the semesters alternated between being on the President's top academic scholar list and being on Academic Probation. The day I graduated with a B.A., I received four letters -- congratulations on your degree, your Academic Probation has been denied and you flunked out, congratulations on your superior academic achievement, and you have been admitted to Graduate School. I picked the latter and went on for my M.A. After that my life pretty much went to hell for a while, and I floundered around with marriage and kids (which ended poorly), worked on ranches, taught jr high and high school (including Lamar, in Austin), delivered Cokes and made furniture, spent a year in Mexico doing cave exploration (and archeology), spent a couple of years in Germany and Spain working, going to school, and doing archeology (including running excavations with German crews), and lots more. Finally end up at the Univ of Missouri in the Ph.D. program, excavated across the U.S., around Mexico, Guatemala, Peru, and elsewhere, and then went off to Wyoming to do contract archeology work (surveys, excavations, etc.) for several years. Mavis and I married during this time and had one son, Brian (now a computer programmer/tester with AMD out of Austin but lives on his farm near Lexington VA -- I still don't understand that!), and we built up our business to unmanageable size then cut back. Then we both went back to the U of MO and got our Ph.D.'s and returned to Wyoming to continue the business (when convenient) and run around the world working, traveling, meeting people, telling stories, giving papers, writing books, etc. We spent a year doing Mavis' dissertation research in central Montana (rock art) and about the same amount of time (actually mine was more extended) doing mine in archeology and ethnography in southern Venezuela (again rock art and related things). Now we have three grand kids whom we visit as much as possible (with all the necessary Disney cruises, visits to Disney World, and trips everywhere) as well as our research preferences which presently take us all over the western US.
Thanks to professor Barr I am able to keep up with the dwindling high school scene and all the unforgettable memories and feelings associated with times gone by and the people who still mean so much to me and are still hanging in there with new stories.
