NEW YEAR GREETINGS! 
                                          .... from your classmate, Janice, guest editor for this issue.

In August we made the big jump and moved out of the DFW metroplex to Huntsville near our daughter and her family.  It is the grandparents who help with the grandchildren, and the daughters who look after the elderly parents (eventually), I think.  Anyway, that is the plan.  This is the same young family that could have been wiped out in the March car wreck that I wrote about earlier.  Best laid plans, etc.  By the way, the early pregnancy that survived that accident produced a pretty baby boy that was nearly 10 lbs.  On Nov. 2. He is almost 13 lbs. now and becoming a butterball.

After 21 years in one place that move took over 1 ½ years to accomplish as 9/11 occurred in the early stages of trying to sell our house.  Thankfully the interest rates stayed down until someone was enticed as the market on resale houses was really down in that area.  Unfortunately, it was up in Huntsville after the Houston floods.  Home choices were limited because of it.

I have begun to reconnoiter the area as a resident rather than a visitor.  To me as an outdoors person, it was always a great place to visit.  We are located close-in to the central area, but we have an unusually large corner lot, almost a half acre with trees, but the neighbors still have old pines that have about 2 ft. diameter trunks.  They are really something to see.  I have a spot in the living area by a window where I can watch the birdfeeder and look up the slight hill which rises up the street behind.  Our lot angles over so the street veers into a turn away from our property, otherwise you would drive straight into our backyard and garage on that end of the house.

Several years ago I went on the Texas Great Birding Classic trail into the valley and saw the Sabal Palm preserve.  I really liked them and they seem to be pretty hardy so I bought a small one at a nursery there and hauled it back on top of my van!  I didn't want to leave it when we moved, so I had it extracted and wrapped for the trip and brought it to Huntsville.  We must have been an interesting sight.  We got caught in a traffic delay on I-45 and dark overtook us in Corsicana. There we discovered that the trailer had shorted out my interior lights and we had to find a motel at a late hour and hope that our loaded vehicles would not be tampered with during the night.  Things went well.

Palms really like water so the Sabal had not grown much until the last year in Grand Prairie when a neighbor uphill from me put in a sprinkler system.  The water was coming under my drive and keeping my yard looking great and the palm loved it and it thrived.  I always said we lived on a limestone rock there.  It takes palms about two years to settle in and we planted it behind the house here.  The newest frond had come out before we moved, but not opened and it still hasn't three months later, but overall it is getting larger.  When all the deluge of rains hit, my rain gage said we got twenty inches and I think the palm felt right at home standing in water!  They say Sabals once covered the entire Texas valley.

I actually had a complete and edible Thanksgiving meal for eleven including my son-in-law's parents after finally getting the carpenter out of my kitchen on the day my sons were arriving in town before Thanksgiving.  There was a lot to remember about this year for thanks giving.

The next couple of years will be occupied with painting and arranging things (there may be a big garage sale) and compiling two family genealogies that I have gathered materials for in recent years.

I hope I haven't bored you, but I am hoping this will get the paper rolling again and we are looking for others of you to volunteer for the next issue and others.  Let John know if you are willing as he seems to be ready to do his part.  This should be a one time project for me for a year or two.  There are a lot of capable folks out of SPHS 1954 who can contribute.

If you want to see a bigger website, talk to John about donations that might do it for a new year.
He is limited to be able to add pictures and other items.

Best to all of you and looking forward to your input in 2003.

First, let me say, I must apologize to everyone for not getting the “Greenie Gusher Online” out sooner.  Hey, Janice's new grandbaby gained 3 pounds before I got this together.  By now most of you have probably heard that Don Marshall has decided he no longer has the time to serve as a co-editor and has asked that we try to go on without him.  As I’ve stated several times I’m not the person to write monthly articles, but would occasionally try to fill in when needed.  Thanks Don for your contributions to the Gusher.

As always we need to keep informed about our classmates.  Last word on Robert and Shirley Green is that they are both doing well, and Mickey Sellers is still recovering from treatments for his condition,  Skeeter Woods and his wife are both having health problems and Stein Cloy just completed Proton Treatments at Loma Linda University Medical Center in California, these are the same treatments I took in December 2000/January2001. I talked with Stein last week and he was doing just fine.  Annie Ruth Bobino Finley lost her husband in December, and we also need to remember the family of Jerry Bell whom we lost in October.

Don't forget to visit Gwen Garig Watkins' web site,  "Angel Food Blessings" http://www.geocities.com/angelfoodblessings

James Robbins, a talented artist, and our classmate, has spent over a year painting a mural  for his church in Lumberton.  The mural is now finished and has been delivered to the church.  In the next few weeks we'll be adding photographs of this beautiful artwork to this web site.   In case you missed the Beaumont Enterprise newspaper article about James you can still read it in the June issue of the Greenie Gusher Online. 

Many of you have written and expressed appreciation for the online Gusher. One person suggested that we have rotating writers to contribute articles.  That sounded good to me so I volunteered her to be the first.  Janice Zahn Adams graciously sent me her “Gusher” in November.  We usually leave out of here in October for our annual trip to Albuquerque and wherever else that takes us and I was in Albuquerque when Janice sent her material.  I decided to wait until we got home in December feeling we had plenty time to get it published before Christmas. When we got home we had so much catching up to do and it didn’t help that the company I retired from decided to drop all retiree benefits.  We got home on December 10^th and received a letter dated 12-07-02 telling us our health/drug benefits and life insurance would cease on 12-11-02 .  We’re still in the process of finding insurance for Mil and a drug plan for me, I’m on Medicare with a supplement but she has two more years before she’ll be on Medicare.    

Hopefully, all of you will understand about the delays and someone will step up and take over the Gusher. With our 50th reunion coming up, the GUSHER can really be helpful in keeping everyone informed and updated on what the planning committee is working on.  I will still format the Gusher for the web site, so all that is needed is for someone to write the articles.  As for the “web site” I’m working on some changes that I feel everyone will really like.  I’m going to register the URL (web address) SPHS54.com; this is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time.  Also, I’m working on a new Guest Book that won’t cut short everyone’s comments.  The web site will be taken off of Yahoo and put on a private server, so we won’t have to look at those annoying pop-ups any longer.  Another thing I’m working on is putting all of the photographs in an album format on the new server so that they can be accessed faster.  So, as SlimbO says, I have a platter full at this time and hopefully someone out there will step up and take on the job of Editor for the “Greenie Gusher Online”.   Any ideas or suggestions are always welcome.  Thanks Janice and Wanda for writing for this one.  
Until next time Greenies…."Keep Looking Up"....John Watson jlwmil@aol.com