Ponderings by Dan Ponder

I headed to Athens as I have every other year since 1972 to watch my Auburn Tigers take on the Georgia Bulldogs.  I had two missions on this particular trip.  First, I wanted to support my team even though the Dawgs are riding high at the top of the college football mountain. Second, I wanted…

Auburn has had a challenging run in the first five games of this football season.  It is not only hard to play five straight games at home, it is equally hard to host five tailgates in a row, particularly in September.  It has been hot, cool, rained, hot again and then the delightful Saturday afternoon…

Wow.  Who knew I would live to be 70 years old?  Certainly not me.  For the first 18 years of my life, I was invincible.  I loved growing up in Cottonwood but enjoyed attending Girard Junior High and Dothan High.  I had friends in two towns and enjoyed the best of growing up in small-town…

This past Sunday, Mary Lou and I did something we had never done before.  We sat in the very back row of the church.  We planned to exit early for the Auburn volleyball game which started at 12 noon.  We did not want to distract anyone by exiting from our normal pew about seven rows…

Auburn’s first game of the season was last Saturday, the last day of August.  Coincidentally, it was during one of the hottest days of the year.  It was also one of the few times I have taken three showers in one day. Auburn was fortunate to have one of those “teaser” tastes of Fall the…

Mary Lou and I drove to Atlanta on Sunday to take my mother to her old church.  Roswell United Methodist Church became part of her new home when she moved to Atlanta some 14 years ago. She no longer attends RUMC every week since giving up driving, but she still finds a way to attend…

Only once before in the 14 years I have written a weekly newspaper column have I reposted a previous article. After watching this year’s Republican convention and watching the first night of this week’s Democratic convention, I kept recalling of my thoughts during the 2016 election. I was elected to Georgia General Assembly in a…

I randomly caught a segment on the nightly news this evening that caught my attention.   That is a pretty big achievement these days as I continue to tune out more and more political commentary.  Dating myself, I am a bit like Sgt. Joe Friday on “Dragnet” who famously said in every episode, “Just the…

The excitement continued until the very end.  Catherine’s family was flying home into the yet undetermined path of Hurricane Debby.  Thanks to an eastward turn of the path of the storm, they made it just fine. On the other hand, Elizabeth’s family, along with Mary Lou and myself had a 40-minute layover in Minneapolis before…

Several years ago, Mary Lou and I began a plan to travel with our children and grandchildren on a regular basis.  We planned to take all 10 of our children, grandchildren and sons-in-law on a trip together every other year.  In 2022, we all traveled to Boston for a wonderful visit full of history, adventure,…