Ponderings by Dan Ponder

I admit that college football is the sport that I most look forward to watching.  While Auburn is obviously my favorite team, as anyone who even remotely knows me is aware, I enjoy watching other schools from around the country. The anticipation is now fueled by endless hype, primarily sports talk radio programs, designed to…

This week’s column is being written from the Minneapolis – St. Paul, Minnesota airport as we return from a long overdue vacation to Alaska and Canada.   Last week I wrote about the stunning beauty of Alaska.  This week I will cover a few other things I learned over the past couple of weeks. You can…

Some say a picture is worth a thousand words.  What do you do when a picture won’t adequately capture the sheer beauty of a place?  Such may be the case as Mary Lou and I finish the first week of our trip to Alaska.   Today we have cruised in Glacier Bay.  The sun has…

“We need you”, the white haired man said as he sat across from my desk.  “It is your time for this job.  I promise I’ll help you every step of the way.”  These were the words of the very first person to contact me about running for Mayor.  His name was Charles Barineau, and if…

The name has changed several times over the past sixty years, but the dairy and milk processing plant as you near Dothan, Alabama from the east will forever be known to me by its original name, Sanitary Dairy.  It would not be such a catchy marketing name these days, but it really meant something when…

You could hear them coming before you saw them.   The first was a big Huey-1H helicopter.  The second was a sleek, black AH-1F Cobra attack helicopter.   Mary Lou and I, along with our grandson Henry, were about to take a ride that put the rollercoasters at Disney to shame. The Friends of Army Aviation-Ozark and…

I can close my eyes and identify all seven women just by their laughter.  They are seven friends who met while attending the same school, Randolph Macon Woman’s College, in Virginia.  All but one came from the south.  Ironically, the lone person from above the Mason-Dixon Line is named Georgia. Lucinda, Mig, Camille, Gretta, Kathryn,…

Babe Ruth arguably was the greatest baseball player of all time, certainly of his generation.  Many of his baseball records survived for decades and some remain even today. It was 100 years ago this year that Ruth began his baseball career.  In 1918 he signed with the Boston Red Sox for the princely sum of…

It started out just as any other July 4th holiday at Compass Lake.  My children and grandchildren, along with my mother, made it another four generation vacation at the lake, which is always special. Henry, now six years old, has made the transformation from a tentative swimmer wearing a life jacket in the deep water,…

I am finding out that my Grandfather was telling me the truth when he said that the older you get the faster the years fly by.  With that said, it is hard to believe that Independence Day is already here again. I am already within ten years of the age of the oldest signer of…