Rotary to meet at Phillips Farms

Bob Bader

I have good news and even better news. The good news is the fact we are meeting out at the beautiful Phillips Farms. The better news is the fact we won’t have a program or a speaker.

I have never seen a study on the subject, but my feeling is the average Rotarian goes to Rotary meetings because he loves being in the company of Rotarians. The meeting Thursday evening will include wives, husbands, sweetie-pies of both sexes and lone rangers. We have gone too long between meetings in which significant others have been included and it is one of the reasons we have seen our numbers decimate in the past few years. The average Rotarian is a gregarious animal and needs occasional forays into the realm of charming and enlightening human discourse and the more the better. Having social events takes the strain out of being a strictly money grubbing service club, so come out and have fun telling lies and listening to some from others.

Phillips Farms, thanks largely to Jeanne Phillips, has become a beautiful little Garden of Eden in which small acreages of beautiful flowers, delicious fruits and vegetables, verdant lawns, a major winery and fauna of most every domesticated kind can be found on the southern periphery of the farm, all brought there for the enjoyment and edification of the visitors, some of whom have come many thousands of miles to see and touch gentle creatures, furry and feathered. It is thought that the wildest creature of them all is the genial proprietor of the menagerie, big Don Phillips, his own self.

Don is an institution in an institution because of his venerable presence. He is the dean of the fruit and vegetable world and has a reputation far and wide.

This evening is the beginning of a series of meetings designed to get the members and significant others together for fun and food. The ones to follow will sort of harken us back to the days when we had a lot of people in the club and the gemutlichkeit was so thick you could spread it with a butter knife. One of the joys of membership in a service club is the participation in the administration of the service.

You have read a million times it is better to give than to receive. That was written by someone who actually saw the good as it was received. It doesn’t matter if the gift is tangible or not, going about doing good will enhance your soul. We could start by taking up a big collection for the Bader Foundation, a charity designed to allow the founder to continue his research into the kinds of cars that make the most hardened speed demons weep. I will report back on my findings.

Just as a point of interest, I got a ride in a new GT-R Nissan, a car that will actually go from zero to 60 in a shade over three seconds. If I get another chance to snag a ride in that car, I will bring my own barf bag. Heavy “G” forces exerted on a person of my age can be a true test of the integrity of the upper sphincter of the stomach. I didn’t actually lose a lunch, but I was not up for an immediate encore featuring a demonstration of the car’s ability to negotiate high speed “Ess” curves, especially not in the hospital parking lot. I didn’t allow myself so much as a discreet burp for the next three days.

Next week: Frank Koukis, facilities manager for Armor Struxx. Their website says ArmorStruxx possesses the largest and widest ranging capabilities in the composites material industry worldwide and provides composite materials that meet a variety of cost, performance and weight specifications.

What that means is they manufacture stuff that will make vehicles used by our troops more impervious to enemy roadside bombs and other munitions, and furthermore they build a vehicle that is state of the art protection for our people.