Phil Johnson, We're Calling for You!

Show a little respect for your elders, y'all.  After spending four hours in makeup, 2012 NBA Rookie of the Year Kyrie Irving heads to the courts of New Jersey to devour some young bloods in a pick-up game.  And gives us old folks a lift.

Another 50-Year Milepost

Wow.  Class of '62.  Target. Wal-Mart.  The Beatles.  You're in good company.

They were yet to hit the Sullivan Show but 1962 was the year the band was formed, changed drummers (to Ringo), and made their first recording at Abby Road.  The story was reported this morning via USA Today, the most widely distributed US Newspaper, and for the full account you can click here.

Ironically, of the talking heads on the set of today's Morning Joe (MSNBC) only one of them had seen the boys on Sullivan.  That youthful crowd missed out on all the good stuff, only to take advantage of the road we paved for them.  Or something like that.  If there is an iconic band, this has to be it.

Here's a one paragraph report from USA Today:  On June 4, (1962), they signed a contract with Parlophone, a subsidiary of EMI. And on June 6, they entered Abbey Road Studios with producer George Martin for the first time, recording demos of cover tune Besame Mucho and Lennon-McCartney compositions Love Me Do,P.S. I Love You and Ask Me Why. Martin, mildly impressed, lectured the band about its lousy equipment, then asked whether they had any complaints.

Harrison quipped, "I don't like your tie."


I discovered who the mopheads were in another Vic's Pizza moment in the fall of '63.  Like everyone else, I found their music was catchy, but didn't realize all those songs that I heard and liked were coming from the same group, and didn't know who they were until I heard one of their songs being played on the jukebox at Vic's.  That particular jukebox showed the album cover of the song being played - and that's when I discovered these fellows needing haircuts were the ones making that music.

By the next spring I was working Sunday afternoons at Kropman's neighborhood grocery store on East 9th Street in Mason City, and the owner's 12-year-old daughter and her friends were all agog over who was the cutest, Paul or John.  I thought they were nuts.  Well, they were 12, so what should I expect.

How about you?  When did you first "connect" with the Beatles?

Another Retirement

I happened to get notice of the report about Larry Holstad's retirement and found it online.  Congratulations to Larry for his success at WSU.  It was a huge leap from principal at Forest City High School back to his alma mater and he made a difference.

Read the full story at the Winona Daily News by clicking here . . .  If you'd like to contact Larry email nkhs62@gmail.com and we will forward the request to him.

If you have news of other classmates making the big leap into retirement, let me know and we'll post it here.  Personally, mine was not announced in the paper, but if yours was, I'd like to hear about it.

1962 Band Festival

The thought was to put together a slideshow of all our locals who were there that day in June for the Music Man Band Festival, commemorating that event.  George Von Wald assembling his band, for example.  Then the slideshow/story would be posted exactly 50 years to the date of the parade, historically and accurately marking the most significant Band Festival ever. But the only relevant photos to be found were celebratory, of actors like Robert Preston, Shirley Jones (she was nothing but beautiful), Ron Howard, or Buddy Hackett.  Nothing from the Class of '62.

Without all those local photos, the slideshow idea went away, and knowing the exact date for purposes of historical commemoration became a non-factor.

The NKHS queen candidate is also unknown but perhaps you can email or add a comment so as to amend that loss, because this writer obviously doesn't know.  Outside of how gorgeous Shirley Jones was, the basic personal band festival memory became that of wearing a pair of white Bermudas that day.  Whatever it takes.

If you dig around the internet long enough you will find much has been written and many photos posted, but little will satisfy the original goal for this post, all those "hometown" photos apparently being buried in treasure chests belonging to members of the Class of '62.  One article found online comprehensively reports, with photos, the transition from stage to film, Meredith Willson's hometown connections, all those actors, and other not-so-well-known facts like the $100,000 Warner Brothers gave to the city to offset some of their costs associated with the event.  Read that article here . . .

Outside of "76 Trombones" a popular song was "Ya Got Trouble" and this YouTube footage from the movie will hereby take the place of the slideshow that was a good idea without enough photos behind it to make it work.  Still it's all a good memory.

Gettin' Ready to Get Ready!

We're less than a month away from the 50th reunion.  That includes a reunion of the four queens in our class.  You'll be seeing them soon.

She's the 10-year-old who "became a woman" in the most recent episode.  Kiernan Shipka plays Sally Draper, the daughter of Betty and Don Draper in Madmen, Season 5.  Episode 512 had a lot of plot twists including Sally's maturation.  Here's part of the Q & A on AMCTV online:

Q: Do you think kids are growing up faster today?

A: Well it's different today just because of electronics and Skyping and texting. I think that's put a big influence on everything. It's definitely changed.

Q: Does the Mad Men set look like it's from ancient times to you?

A: It's funny because you walk in and it's a huge sound stage, and within the sound stage, you walk into a little house and that's the Draper house. And then you walk back out of it and you're in modern times.

Q: How was it saying goodbye to the Draper house set?

A: It was really strange. That was kind of the set that I worked on the most. It was weird seeing it go.

Q: Sally has a really rebellious streak. Do you have one as well?

A: I'm definitely not super similar to Sally just because of the way she's parented and the time she grew up in... But sometimes I think of Sally as not really rebelling, but more so just coping. She's in an incredibly tough situation, and I can only imagine how I would react.

Q: But it must be fun to play a character with a dark side...

A: It's definitely been fun to portray Sally... All the characters on the show, really they act like human beings. They're written real; they're written flawed. They're just doing what a normal person would do.

If you don't follow the series, the Draper house was pretty '60s, and it was abandoned after Don and Betty divorced.  Poor kid lacks access to Skype and texting in this TV show, just like you did.

The Norwegian Lutheran Iowa Farm Boy

Technically, that could be me in the title, but for the purpose of this post, it's not.  It's a take-off on Snapshots of an Iowa Farm Boy, or Growing up Norwegian Lutheran in the Heartland, by Daniel E Sorenson.

Sorenson grew up in Lyon County in Northwest Iowa, graduated Luther College 1958, spent 30 years as a counselor in the St Paul, MN, school system, then retired to a log cabin in Edgewater, WI, home to the Edgewater Store (beer, groceries, bait, coffee with table, the Pioneer Press, and 2 gas pumps), a resort, campground, a few houses, and the ChitChat Bar 'n Grill.  (What's a small Wisconsin town without a tavern?  A travesty, that's what!)

Edgewater is located on the north end of Big Chetac Lake,  a panfish paradise.  Edgewater is also about 1.5 miles from my daughter's cabin, so we've had occasion to visit this metropolis from time to time, though never at the home of Mr. Sorenson.

Marni bought the book for her personal reading, then husband Brad noticed the puppy dog look on my face so he picked one up for my personal library.  Nice move,  young man.

The title of the first chapter is "Well, For Crying in the Beer!"  I remembered hearing that, a memory that came from years ago, with my mother's laughter attached to it.  Understanding the connection was beyond me then and remains there today.  It's like his reference to "Judas Priest" that my mother would NEVER have said since that presumably mild epithet is beyond the pale for her even if Sorenson cited it as the pet phrase of his father.

It was his Uncle Herb who would bellow about the beer.  "On those occasions when we just didn't make any progress repairing a machine, he would stop as if challenging the gods in the sky and bellow the phrase we loved to hear.  Coming from him you could almost know he was thinking the worst swear word back in his brain, just like we were doing."

OK, so my mother would not have been thinking swear words; for her it was more the "can you believe that?" phraseology with a twist of sin added to it.  Remember, swearing was taboo.  And when Sorenson wrote of a neighbor's pet phrase, I was a bit dumb-founded because I know it's one I've heard, haven't heard in years, was always tied to a laughter of frustration, and normally came from my mother: "I get so mad I could cry!"  Or perhaps she said, "I get so mad I could just spit!"

Whatever.  Must be pure Norwegian Lutheran: don't swear, just say something with an absurd juxtaposition of human emotions, and you will pass any call to censorship.  We knew how to set that bar, eh?

To learn more about Sorenson, keep reading this blog because we all have much in common, Sorenson and I that is, or go to the New Century Press website, where I'm sure you can get a book, or write to Sorenson himself:

D. E. Sorenson
3015 N County Rd F
Birchwood, WI  54817

The book is $13 with shipping.  Next time I go to Birchwood I plan to stop to visit.  He has far greater recall of things we all thought unimportant at the time than you and I will ever have.