• Although my professional truck-driving career was brief, I did learn enough to do a nearly perfect double-clutch with a non-synchromesh transmission, while driving up a hill on a forest track, carrying a bunch of kids in the back of a dumptruck--the tippable, flat-bed kind, not one designed to squash garbage.

  This talent (and general cautiousness) seemed sufficient to garner a nominal association with the Swift Transportation company as safety director.

• Perhaps this position was gained by being a big-rig transporter driver of NASCAR autos to and from races for the Roush Racing/Valvoline team.
• I parlayed a stint on the High School AV squad into a side career as recording engineer for rising C&W singers in Nashville, for example Jill Anne Curington.
• Similar C&W engineering and artistic talent was expressed in Brazil as well: I wish you could still see www.par-ou-impar.com.br/dennis.htm, which captured a career as "Diretor/produtor e engenheiro musical, além de cantor, arranjador, músico, pintor, cozinheiro, motorista, mágico, humorista.... Trabalha com os mais importantes artístas da música POP e Country, seu talento sem dávida trouxe a este projeto a mais alta qualidade." All too brief a career, I'm afraid, since the link is now dead.
• Although my connection with local politics, particularly those of Republicans in Carlstadt, NJ, has traditionally been tenuous, and I'm afraid that my own attendance at town council meetings is worse than desultory, nevertheless there was a successful reelection in 1999. I can assure you that Dennis Ritchie in the role of Recreation Director remains utterly free of any taint of nepotism in connection with Paul Ritchie's appointment as Recycling Director.
• I lost an election a while ago in a Kentucky Equine Law group, but seem to maintain some agricultural roots as Poultry Division chairman of the Arkansas Farm Bureau
• On the other hand, I, Kernighan, and Prentice-Hall Inc. disclaim any and all connection with the oeuvre of any music group that dares to call itself Stale Urine.

Established 1 Apr, 1999