Autobiography - The Galindo Group

Ram Galindo THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN Page 96
disturbing later-life event is that Juan, who was from a well-to-do family of Mexico City
and uncannily smart, went back home and became hypnotized by Cuba’s Castro
oratory and became an avid Marxist. That is the last time I heard from him. I never
understood what value he was creating by joining the extreme left.
Following my graduation with a bachelor of civil engineering from Texas A&M in May
1960, I accepted a job with the Texas Highway Department as an urban bridge design
engineer in Houston, Texas. This was my first exposure to organized production work
and team effort at solving technical problems. I learned how to be microscopically
correct about my work. The experience reinforced my belief, bred by my father, that my
education would not be complete until I received at least a master’s degree.
Consequently, after a year in the work force, I applied and was accepted at Texas A&M
as a graduate engineering student. My two brothers and many friends were still
attending TAMC, so it was like coming back home. I received a lab assistantship, which
added to my savings and other part time jobs I had on an ongoing basis, allowed me to
cover all my expenses and even save a bit. A review of my bookkeeping ledgers from
my college days proves that frugality was a virtue my parents had taught me well.
In the late 1950s, during my undergraduate years, Texas A&M was essentially a military
college of approximately 9,000 cadets and less than 1,000 civilian students. The
campus was literally in the middle of nowhere. The only residents of the town of College
Station were the college’s teachers and other employees. The college itself provided all
the necessities of life, such as utilities, dorms, meals, post office, and exchange store.
The only walking-distance commercial establishments were a few bars and bookstores
in the “North Gate.”
The college would cease operations for many days at a time in between fall and spring
semesters (at least a month), spring break, before each summer session, before the fall
semester and during Thanksgiving week. During these periods the dorms and the mess
hall closed, the power plant would go on idle and many of the “North Gate”
establishments would close also. The foreign students and others who didn’t have a
place to go to would be allowed to move into rooms in one floor of a dorm that remained
open. These periods also provided opportunities to do part time work substituting for
students on home leave. Places such as the animal farms the college kept needed
continued manpower to maintain the facilities. The livestock had to be cared for even
during Christmas. This is how I got my first exposure to farm work - driving tractors,
moving hay, shoveling manure and cleaning barns.
In one of those holidays, spring break of 1958, an invitation from the Houston Former
Students Club came for any stranded Aggie, as students from Texas A&M are known,
to spend the week with a host family. I eagerly volunteered and was warmly received by
W. Scott Potter and his family. It was the beginning of a friendship that would last a
lifetime and would have a very marked impact in my future. The Potters lived in one of
Houston’s exclusive subdivisions on Memorial Drive, and I met and became lifetime
Autobiography.doc 96 of 239