About Me

Since genealogy and tracing my family heritage is my primary avocation, and it is serious stuff, I have bigusmith.com as my genealogy website.

(Ain't none o' that Genealogy razz-ma-tazz on here!)

I do have some other hobbies - they may be cussed and discussed on here:

• Collector of fountain pens, the sort that you had to fill with ink or insert ink cartridges, which were the writing instruments commonly used before the invention of ball point pens.

• Collector of classic and luxury wrist watches.  They can be expensive in good working order, but for us po' folk, the idea is to buy them cheap in nice looking but non-operating  condition.  There are watch repair shops which can fix them very reasonably.

• Stamp collector.  I had been completely out of stamp collecting since  the traumatic loss of my collection in 1962, and just couldn't bring myself to do anything with stamps for years.  Then in 2019 a counselor gave (ordered!) me two months to get off of my pity-pot and bring in an album with some stamps in it to show him that I was able to get over my deep seated aversion to stamp collecting...have been at it ever since!

• Geocaching - sort of like a treasure hunt with no treasure...just a piece of paper where you sign your handle to show you found it.

• Avid Amateur Radio Operator.   My Call Sign is KA5NLY (or KA5 Not Loud Yet because I operate with extremely low transmitter power)   Low power operation is known as QRP operating (the lunatic fringe of Ham Radio)...anything over 5 watts is total waste of time and effort. 

Other stuff:

1963 graduate of Clinton, AR High School

1972 Accounting graduate, State College of Arkansas

1982 University of Arkansas Law School, Little Rock, AR

1966-1995 Retired Lieutenant Colonel, US Army, active duty and National Guard (Two tours in Viet Nam)

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