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Follow The Sun Novel Now Reinstalled...Volume 1 follow-the-sun-by-e-v-pete-hester This novel, click on the title and when reading, it moves right to left by using your little wheel on top of your mouse. A little different but you soon get used to...

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A Repost On The Abortion Debate Doesn't Belong On Billboards Kathleen Parker wrote: Abortion Debate Doesn’t Belong on Billboards Posted by Pete | Posted in News | Posted on 24-05-2019 2 Pete Hester wrote Kathleen the following e-mail today: I...

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Coalfire Stories....from an earlier posting There is no Wikipedia information on Coalfire, Pickens County,  Alabama….It is not included…So, you are gonna have to just trust me or the twenty-five or thirty or fifty other people who can talk...

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St. Jude Children Research Hospital. Please Give. ... Luke 18 verses 15 - 17...."Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belong to such as these"....I try to give something every month to St Jude. What an institution...

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Vallecito Reservoir, Colo….Fishing and Visiting…

Posted by Pete | Posted in News | Posted on 10-06-2019

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With 12 to 18 feet of snow remaining in the mountains around Vallecito reservoir, snowmelt is coming in very fast bringing in all kind of food for the fishes…..Very few were going after our baits. Very disappointing….However,  our food was great, that did not change and we all enjoyed that. Our younger fishermen were also hoping to do a little four wheeling but with all the snow up on the mountains all the trails were closed. Another disappointment, but  a great time was had by all.  Our stay again was at Croll’s Cabins.

 

Comments (3)

This comment is about the luckiest former Alabamian that I know. His name is Pete Hester, the friendly Webmaster of this site. His life makes me turn green with envy every time I think about it. He is retired, not only in central New Mexico, but in Albuquerque, which I always considered the peak of God’s country after a four-year forced stay there while in the AF at Kirtland. I did not feel this way from the beginning of that stay. That first nine months was difficult during which I even wondered whether or not there was a God who would make such a different and difficult place for life to exist; but as the days and months passed, it dawned on me that things were not always as they appear and the benefits of the place began to evolve into something very different and unique, which all of a sudden became New Mexico, a state which became, in my mind, a completely new and different state to the fifty that I had learned about and to spell, along with their capitols in Mrs. Taylor’s English class back at PCHS. As all good things must do eventually, It had to come to an end forever. The AF got tired of me and said that it was time to go on with my life. The country was going forward with different things. One can’t irradiate sheep forever, or even do chemistry in a desert hell hole like the “Goat Farm” and stay sufficiently sane to stay refreshed for each new day’s task ahead. Pete, on the other hand, managed successfully to keep it all together, to stay to the end and to achieve a great retirement in God’s beautiful place and even vacationing in Colorado, God’s next most beautiful place. I envy you, Cousin. You have done great.

You mentioned Vallecito Reservoir and you mentioned Croll’s Cabins, but you never mentioned that beautiful drive across northern New Mexico to get to southern Colorado and especially the beautiful drive back after vacationing in God’s country yet again. That’s one of the things that makes it God’s Country: the uniqueness and the beauty of the drive back after the vacation is over.

Thanks, Errol, I have to agree….I love it here. and I love Colorado, to visit. It’s a little to cold and a little to much snow up there. but summers are nice. It is hard to beat New Mexico for living. Dry, windy and a little cold at times, but all in all it is a great place to live Thank you for your comments…

You are a lucky dog, Pete. It is not mine to give; but, if I could, I would give you the entire state of Arkansas just for a place to live and make a living in New Mexico and especially in the area around Albuquerque without the benefit of a government salary. All in all, it was a great place to serve out my military obligation which my teachers and government recruiters at PCHS always said I had to my chagrin. I found it so difficult to understand why I had a military obligation to serve, and all of these silly girls around me did not. Anyway, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I suppose New Mexico, Albuquerque, Kirtland AFB, and the primacy of research in its mission made the difference. Even more, I guess the University of Alabama and the initiative of getting a degree first provided the key that opened the door, for me, to God’s country. It didn’t do me much good career wise, but just the feeling of walking in the same steps where the developers of the atomic bomb had tread and operating the same whole body counter, at least assisting in the operation where the original Seven astronauts were counted before they were chosen made me feel very good. I never met John Glenn, Gus Grissom, Scott Carpenter, and the other four astronauts; but I felt there spirit as I watched the controls of the whole Body counter, although there were only sheep being counted inside. I had to physically move them into the counter and to move them out in cages (This wasn’t the case with the seven astronauts, as they were willing patients.); but it seemed to me like the same thing. I appreciate Sergeant Mason for asking my help instead of one of the other screwball recruits. It was experiences like this one that made my military experience worth while after all, experiences like also my many trips to Las Alomos and the Nevada Test site where atomic testing was winding dow at the time, but it was still going on underground. So the Goat Farm, officially called the Radiobiology Laboratory, wasn’t such a bad place after all. Just seeing the monkey who had received more “lethal” radiation than that would kill most men and to see him so alive and healthy made me realize that this radiation thing was really so dangerous if only because people and animals had such variance in tolerance for it. I wonder if that monkey is still alive. If so, he should be given a medal. Just seeing our pet black sheep taken from their dead mothers’ womb after they had died of radiation poisoning at the Farm and raising them on a bottle to adulthood showed me that there was hope in controlling and overcoming the radiation menace. The last being that I talked to and had empathy with before I left the Goat Farm were two of these sheep. They were beautiful animals.

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