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Great questions, Randy! And there's no way I can reply to all of them in one sitting, but I'll get started...

1. I'd like to see the show pushed forward 20 years. I have a few scenarios for 1967. Who would be running Sloan Industries in 1967? Would it be Charley Haley?...we all know he married Gina, and in 1967 Emma would not be old/mature enough to handle the position, but she would be the rightful heir to the Sloan buisness enterprises. Would the male children of for example, Charley and Gina, Jeff and Ginger, Ann & Al Kahn's son Mike be involved in the Viet Nam War?

The Summer of Love... 1967! If Mike Sloan was 50 in 1947, then he'd be 70 be 1967. I guess I'd like to see Ruth Sloan as a widow, who still owns Sloan Industries and keeps just enough of a hand in to ensure that her granddaughter, Emma, will receive an inheritance. Emma, now 21 years old, has dropped out of private college (funded by her grandmother) and has just taken off with Michael Kahn (age 20) in a Volkswagen Bus. Destination: San Francisco! Michael returned to River Run with his parents in 1960, and he and Emma are fast friends. Al Kahn (now in his sixties) lost Anne a few years ago from polio complications and has become romantically involved with Ruth Sloan, who's doing a bit of "rebelling" just like her granddaughter by seeing somebody considered unsuitable by her women's club friends.

Charlie Hailey - now about 47 years old - is now a foreman at Sloan Enterprises and is active in the River Run VFW in addition to being the longtime president of Local 411. He and Gina (also in her forties) had three children together, so he didn't quite fulfill his postwar wish for "six children, maybe eight." In fact, he and Gina have even begun talking about making a trip to Italy, so Charlie will probably end up crossing county lines as well! The Hailey kids are teenagers - ranging in age from 14 to 18 - and the two eldest are girls, but Charlie watches the evening news with fear that his youngest may see a battlefield.

Michael Kahn is of prime age for the draft, should it be reinstated. The draft is still two years away - though he and his father couldn't have known that. While Al is planning a way to ferret his son out of the country should he be called, Michael is quite calm about the prospect of a draft. Though he's accompanying Emma Sloan to San Francisco for an anti-war protest, he's only doing so out of curiosity. He's actually struggling with a decision he needs to fill his father in on --- he's enlisted!

Jeff, who works on the coaching staff for the Cleveland Indians, and Ginger, who retired from her career as a local television star to raise her family, live in a ranch home in a development just outside River Run, where they're raising two daughters, now in their late teens. The younger of the Metcalf girls is the spitting image of her mother and just as concerned with boys and make-up and dating. The older of the girls is determined to be a career woman just like her aunt, Linda Havel. In fact, she's interning this summer at the River Run Courier.

Aren't foremen in some industries eligible for union membership? I have no idea --- and it hadn't really occured to me when I made my post that Charlie might not be eligible to continue his membership in Local 411 if he accepted a promotion to foreman. They never really show us who were the foremen at Sloan Industries; Sam was a personnel manager, while foreman would still be kind of a blue-collar job. When I Googled the words "foreman" and "union," references to "foremen's unions" and "a union-member foreman" were among the links that came up, so I can't tell what the rule is, or if it's different depending upon the industry.

While this issue up in the air, I guess I'll have to write up an alternative storyline. Let's say instead that Charlie once accepted a position at Sloan as foreman and left the union, but soon realized that he'd made a mistake and returned "to the line." It took him some time to regain the trust of his fellow union members, but he was eventually re-elected president.

2. Would Jeff Metcalf be a Korean War Veteran?

Absolutely. As a teen - and then the only male "provider" left at home - Jeff didn't get a chance to serve his country during WWII. Remember when he told Sara he ought to run off and join the Air Corps? Well, I see him enlisting with the Air Force in, say, June 1950 --- when new recruits were sorely needed on the front in Korea. Determined not to leave Jeff to the wiles of another "Judy," Ginger would have picked up their daughter and followed him from base to base - returning to River Run only when he was sent overseas. Jeff's tour of duty would, unfortunately, have cut his baseball career short as he found himself "too old" for athletics after the war. His job on the coaching staff for the Cleveland Indians allows him to enjoy the game, and his skills as a bartender have made the Metcalf cocktail parties famous in their suburban development!

Well, obviously, there are conflicts of interest. There must be union foremen in a variety of industries, however, or I wouldn't see so many references in a simple Google search to "union foremen" and "non-union foremen."