UpperWestside

I never spent any time in Highland Park, but my friend can recall that night like it was yesterday. People can sometimes show you the worst of themselves in moments of great disappointment like the time after that game in 1999. My friend is a guy that gets along with pretty much everyone (He’s a SOC grad), but man you mention Highland Park and he still wants nothing to do with them 24 years later because of that night.

This seems as good a place as any to post this. I saw that Mississippi State fired their head coach this morning. The offensive coordinator was Kevin Barbay. Pretty distinctive name if you know anything about smaller schools in Texas. Sure enough Kevin is the nephew of legendary Newton head coach Curtis Barbay. Not real sure why he abandoned the Air Raid in favor of an offense that scored 33 points in the final four games before he was sent packing, but he’ll have some free time on his hands to sort that out.

Aww man you’re gonna enjoy it. My copy is sitting about 10 feet away underneath the TV. Very meticulously researched, but written in a way where it feels like you are there.

Maxey put up 50 tonight and Embiid had 37 in their 137-126 win against the Pacers. Maxey got whatever he wanted tonight. The Pacers really need someone that can protect the rim. Heckuva performance from him. I will be shocked if he isn’t a 2nd team All-NBA this year at the least, barring injury of course. He just needed Harden gone to really kick it up several notches. I thought he could’ve done this last year had he had the freedom he now enjoys with Nick Nurse coaching him.

20-28 between Philly’s duo for 51 points. Embiid had a block on Turner near the half that was completely on Turner. Not real sure why he would attempt such a low release on a guy with the wingspan that Embiid has.

Embiid and Maxey 35- Pacers 35 right now.

The back and forth he had with the politically-minded code breakers in Washington who he argued with almost non-stop over his code-breaking ability, as well as that of the rest of the staff out in Hawaii, is good reading. I will have to add this book to the list as Rochefort was one of the most interesting characters of the entire war and definitely one of the most intelligent people as well.

That sounds like the route my friend is going to have to go. He just wants a stronger connection to his past as he gets older now and has grandkids. He loves history so knowing what his grandfather did during the war is important to him.

I need to do one of these 23andMe type searches to do a deep dive. My mother does not want to, but I do because her dad played the field A LOT when she was young. Her mom had two other daughters that their dad took from her and left town with. She was young and uneducated and had no real way to stop that from happening. Her dad drove trucks and he had a REAL GOOD TIME doing that. My mom jokes that she has no idea how many actual brothers and sisters she probably has out there. The only folks I know for sure that are on my mom’s family tree are a guy most of you would n ow in John Wesley Hardin. It’s documented from the people who kept diaries during that time and were intact for a relative who researched the family in the 1970’s. The better one to me is another part of my grannie’s family. They came from Scotland in 1640 and worked their way down the eastern seaboard. Eventually they stopped in Texas. Along the way five brothers fought in the Revolutionary War. A few decades after that some of the family congregated in Spartanburg, SC. When one of them died around 1850 he left I believe 100k to start a Presbyterian Liberal Arts college. That school is Wofford College. I remember a couple of years before my granny died I told her to turn on her TV. She had a real thick accent and I tell her to turn it to CBS and see the names of the teams playing. She says “I see Michigan and Wofford.” I said “Grannie one of your ancestors started that school.” She gets quiet and says for a few seconds and says “Well J (nickname for being a junior) I gotta get going now. Love you!” She could not have cared any dang less…😂 I told that story when I gave her eulogy a couple of years later and it helped give everyone a pretty good laugh.

That just sucks because that is just history that is gone. Thank God so many historians have written as much about the war as they have and continue to do, but those individual records help tell someone’s life story.

A fire happens I can understand. Seems insane, but fires happen. I cannot understand how the United States did not have any back-up archive of these records. I get this was before the computer age, but man that comes across as odd to me.

Sorry to hear about the records being lost like that. Being at Iwo Jima probably left him with some pretty incredible emotional scars. I have a friend who is trying to find his grandfather’s service record and he would have to go through the archives to get it. He was an African American soldier so this could also make it more difficult to find out exactly what he did. He knows he was stationed in New Guinea and The Philippines and wants to plan a trip with his wife to retrace where his grandfather was at. I am trying to help him as best I can with that once he hopefully gets a few bits and pieces of the puzzle.

What stories did your father tell you about his experiences in the Pacific? I would love to hear them if you are willing to share them on here. I am sure others would enjoy that as well.

Thank you for sharing that story. That’s honestly really awesome to get hear about the experience of the regular soldier who fought in those places.

Just talked with one of my friends that coaches at Carter and he is looking forward to the challenge of playing Stephenville this week. He stepped away from coaching football for 23 years I believe (He’s a basketball guy first and foremost), but the last time he was coaching football he was part of one of the biggest upsets in Texas HS football history. He was a young coach on the staff at WW Samuell when they shocked top ranked Highland Park in the first round (Before getting bounced by Ennis the next week). He still to this day has never willingly scheduled Highland Park because of the racist things that were said by their fans after the game in the parking lot to their players and coaches. He’s still salty anytime that school is brought up.

I wanted to share this because perhaps some of this video can help or relate to some of us. Buss is pretty private about her life outside the Lakers, but her and her now husband Jay Mohr talk about addiction and the intervention she got for him. I have admired Buss for her business acumen as well as just being a good person so seeing her and Jay open up really cool.

I read a book called A World Undone over the summer and oh man does that take you on a wild ride through The Great War and the many insane decisions made by those who were leading it. It’s by GJ Meyer and it’s well worth the time spent reading it.

You kind of spelled out my thoughts with this. The cloak room is okay. I can tolerate and be fine with reading someone’s differing opinion there. We all look at the world differently. I am sure people think it’s a liberal echo chamber, but that’s more on having so few posters willing to engage on topics in good faith because of who they voted for in 2016 and 2020. Chrispy gets shown the door in there repeatedly and GRHorn does on the rare occasions he comes in under a new name. Outside of that there’s not much out of the norm going on.

It’s college athletics. That’s it. Nothing more and nothing less. Yes I find it odd behavior how angry people get over athletes 18-22 or so years old. It’s entertainment and nothing more. Of all the things in life to spend time being angry about being upset about college sports, or really sports in general, are something that I cannot understand anymore as I get older. For me it took a couple of moments in life to reach this point because I was guilty of the same misplaced anger about sports. You get one shot at life and wasting years of your life being pissed over something that should be a nice diversion from real life is sad to me.

And I hope the prior message was not taken personally because there is no offense meant. It is observations on my part, nothing more. I have read you plenty in other spaces on this board and I enjoy your contributions, especially when you helped guide me through taking care of my first tattoo when it hurt like all get out to walk.

I find people like this man to be really cool in how they can channel all of their passion into so much positive energy. He seems like a really kind soul. More of us, myself included, can stand to learn something from an example like this.

I don’t much care if you’re left or right of center or way out in left field. How middle age people and beyond behave about a college sporting event is odd, at best. The vitriol and negativity in general on the football board has no equal on this site.

I don’t watch much college football, but seeing people who are legitimately upset with how Texas looks despite being 9-1 now is incredible. It’s a game. If you start to take it too seriously back away from it and reevaluate where you are in life. I can understand the 20 something fan having an attachment to the team, but not older folks getting angry over this stuff. The football board is the most toxic forum on this site.

I looked at SJSU’s schedule and they are more like a seven win team. They lost early to USC, Oregon State and a now 9-1 Toledo Rockets. If they had played a couple or three more cupcakes they’d be 7-2 right now.

UCLA is the Iowa of the west now.