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My Personal Info

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Greetings web-wanderer, and thanks for visiting my site.

     My name is John Degnan.  I am 37 years old, married, and have one child.  I was born in 1969, way down south in the fruit-cake capital of the world - Claxton, GA, and for most of my life I lived in a little town in Georgia called Meldrim, which is in Effingham County... about 25 miles due west of Savannah.

     My family and I are conservative, non-protestant, non-catholic, Independent, Bible Believing Baptists, and we acknowledging the Lord Jesus Christ as not only our savior, but the one and only God of creation.  I hope to someday serve the Lord in ministry if he should see fit to call me.

( Let it not be said that I have a one-track mind )

     I have a number of hobbies and interests... some of which are sketching and illustrations (art), residential home (floor plan) designing/drafting/drawing, computers, graphic design, playing guitar, and last but definitely not least, model railroading and other forms of small scale modeling.  Many moons ago I was heavily into collecting comic books and non-sports cards, but those two interests have taken a back seat over the last 15 years to my other hobbies.  I also used to ride and race 4-wheeler ATVs on a non-professional basis, but my interest in that died in 1993 when Suzuki stopped producing race-quads; my bike of choice back then was the Suzuki LT-250R Quadracer (though I wish I had gone for the LT-500R "Quadzilla" instead).  My interest in this racing quads, however, might be about to rear its head again since, as of March 2006, Suzuki has once again been producing quadracers... re-entering the market with their new, awesome, and nothing short of incredible LT-R450.

     In addition to the above mentioned interests, I am also a huge fan of classic television shows such as Baa Baa Black Sheep, (a.k.a. Black Sheep Squadron), Rat Patrol, Battlestar Galactica, Bonanza, The Waltons, Hogan's Heroes, Combat, Airwolf, All in the Family, CHiPs, Dr Who, The Dukes of Hazzard, Gilligan's Island, Happy Days, Hee Haw, The Incredible Hulk, M.A.S.H, The Muppet Show, The Outer Limits, The Six Million Dollar Man, Star Trek (both old and all new series), The Andy Griffith Show, The Three Stooges, Little House on the Prairie... and quite a few more... including one show called "The All Nightmare Movie" which was a local production in the area I grew up in.  The show was hosted by a resident of the Savannah, Ga area - Mr. Jack North.  Though I never met Jack, and was just a kid at the time, I clearly remember this show and the way that Jack handled the intros to the show... GREAT STUFF... and I will never forget!  <Sigh> Sadly... they just don't make TV shows like those anymore... shows with real class.

     One other hobby I have is writing... though I have never written anything that I deem worthy of publishing, and never really finished and/or refined any of the books I started.  I especially like to write about my discoveries and findings in the Bible.  I don't consider myself to be an eloquent writer or even a good writer, I just like to share the little morsels of knowledge and understandings that God gives me about Himself and His Word, and I do the best I can to impart it in my own style.  This of course leaves room for much editing and updating, so please bear with me.

     As fate would have it, I ended up being raised by my grandparents.  My grandfather (God rest his soul) was a "storehouse keeper" in the Seaboard Air Line Railroad's Savannah Yard.  Though he was never a model train enthusiast, I got my interest in trains (both real and models) from him, because as a kid, I remember that he would see to it that I got at least one, and occasionally two train-sets for Christmas... and usually another set three months later on my birthday.

     The house that we lived in back in Meldrim was built in 1909.  It (the Crawford House (Pic. 1, Pic. 2)) was (and still is) one of the largest houses in town, and is located about 150 feet from the site where the Meldrim Railroad Depot (Pic. 1) used to be.  It had four bedrooms in the upstairs that were about 15' X 15' in size, and two more bedrooms of the same size downstairs.  Unfortunately, the house is no longer owned by my family.  But I plan to build a scale model of the house (in its "as built", original form) someday in (1/64) S scale... and maybe 1/32 scale as well... just for nostalgic reasons.  I ain't braggin', folks... just stating a historical fact.  For the record... I happen to be quite fond of ALL of the old, large historic houses in Meldrim, and would love to model them all for use on my model railroad layout which will be built to represent some time between 1945 and 1950.

     I was an adventuresome sort as a kid, therefore I spent a lot of time playing in and exploring the surrounding woods every chance I had.  I also spent a lot of time swimming in the Ogeechee River between Effingham county and Bryan county near the railroad trestle.  I plan to build a full-scale-length model of this trestle someday in S scale.  This trestle is the one where a Seaboard Air Line Railroad train wrecked back in 1959.  I have placed quite a few photos of this trestle on this site on the Historic Railroad Events page in the Railroad section... have a look!  Oh yeah... photography is one of my interests as well, though it is only in its fledgling state.

     Other than that, there's not much to tell.  So have a look around my web pages and see if you can actually find something interesting.

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