Boogie Woogie

I've watched this several times and get tired doing so, but enjoy it all the same.  Perhaps sometime in your life you've had dance lessons and at one point you were able to perform like this.  If so, you have remained trim, for sure.

If you're getting this post emailed to you it probably won't show up in the email, so go online to the blog to view it.

The dance was popular in the 30's and 40's, thus the Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy performed by the Andrews Sisters, and was not more than an image I kind of knew about during our decade.  Wikipedia has an interesting article on it, wherein it describes the "twelve-bar" blues format.

To watch the above, you really need to click the full-screen icon, play it on a 23-inch monitor, and use good speakers.  It's just fun.  I swear the dancers never break a sweat.

J Edgar Hoover and the Public Enemy

Perhaps you're looking forward to the movie coming out next month starring Leonardo di Caprio as the Man himself.  Back in 5th grade Andrena Hanson Opheim was a big fan of J Edgar, the guy who reined in all the bad guys and made America safe, or at least in her worldview.

Had she known of some of the rumors regarding his kinky sexuality, she may not have been a fan.  In fairness, Wikipedia reports it may have been rumor only, though the rumors indeed circulated widely.  Regardless of those sins, if any, Hoover was not above wiretaps and the elimination of habeas corpus if it were to his convenience.  Just to keep us all safe.  Few have been so polarizing as he.

Though it's not related to Hoover, it was also when we were in fifth grade that congress changed the Pledge of Allegiance by inserting the phrase "under God" and to this day I still don't know if you need to pause before, after, or both.  Seems like the norm is to set it apart with both.  Either way, I remain a patriot.

Old News at the Anchor

This just in from the Anchor, October 26, 1961:

The N-K Vikings hung on for an 18-12 victory over the Garner Cardinals Friday night and go into the last home game against Belmond with two wins, one tie and two losses and in fourth place in the North Iowa Conference.  Coach Clarence Mounts switched Doug Fallgatter from guard to fullback, Jim Nelson from fullback to quarterback and the regular backfield men Mike Lien and Leallyn Turvold moved the ball for the Vikings a total of 164 yards rushing and 20 passing.

The report makes it sound like Doug and Jim were in the new positions for the first time but since this game was 2 weeks after Homecoming where we lost Phil Johnson and Gary Hengesteg for the year, I am pretty sure it was their second time to line up as they did.

The offensive production, especially on the passing side, doesn't sound like much, and I'd be willing to bet all 20 receiving yards went to Larry Holstad since he was our primary receiving threat.  But even more surprising to me was that the yardage was even reported, because I don't ever recall any emphasis placed on statistics like you read about today.

The two wins in the story above were conference wins, and this was the third and final victory of the season because we next lost 19-9 to Belmond, and tied Lake Mills in the final game 6-6.  No surprise - we missed three extra points in the Garner game, the plague of the season.  We obviously didn't do it very well, but kept repeating the same strategy for some reason.  Mike Lien was responsible for kicking the extra points, and was probably as puzzled as the rest of us as to those misses.

Lien vs Britt

In the game against Britt the previous week he was appointed co-captain and that may have given him a little more commitment than normal.  We had scored a touchdown, then let Britt score to get right back into the game that they finally won.  Mike had suffered a short term injury on their touchdown drive and was clearly upset that they had been allowed to score, so when he came back onto the field for their kick-off, I saw a fire in his eyes that was above and beyond what I normally saw.  I was hoping he would receive the kick-off, which he did, and though he didn't score on the return, he did run it back 35 or 40 yards and looked like he wasn't going to go down.

If nothing else, our team produced a couple of good coaches.  Phil Johnson was the basketball guy who took LaPorte City to the state tournament in the early 70's, and Larry Holstad did very well over a long period of time at Ventura and Forest City, today still holding down the Athletic Director position at Winona State.  If we just had a chance to re-play that 1961 season with either of those guys as coach, my guess is we'd be undefeated.  I can dream, can't I?

Vikings go to Eight-Man Football

It should be no big surprise that the Northwood Anchor reports the enrollment of N-K is in a stage of decline, and the recent recommendation of the coach and AD to go to an 8-man program in 2012 reflects the problem.

Fifty years ago the graduating class was somewhere between 60 and 70 students annually, and today the entire high school will be housing 100-120 students for the foreseeable future.  If you're responsible for programs, as the board and administration are, you're looking at a significant issue.

How can you provide competitive services and curriculum at those levels?  Your high school staff has to be reduced at least 40% from the days of yore, and curriculum is probably provided through a sharing arrangement with other school districts, and that is not easily done for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that a top-notch math teacher can select whatever job he or she wants.  And traveling from Northwood to Manly or Lake Mills for half your assignment, on a daily basis, leaves little to be desired.

The N-K school district appears to have gotten boxed in or left behind for whatever reason, as other area districts did their merging.  So you're at the mercy of what's available, and in the case of the local gridiron heroes that means the JV will need to travel longer distance, possibly play both 8- and 11-man football, or even 9-man football against Minnesota schools just to have the program.

As freshmen, we had 13 players on our frosh-soph team.  That meant two available subs standing on the sideline and a coach, Jon Swenson, holding his breath and hoping nobody on the field got hurt.  Fortunately our team size grew as the Kensett guys came on board in the future, and the reflection here is to consider that at least for that year we faced what they face today - scarcity.

The Sound of Change

Looking at Richard's jukebox brought back memories of the change change in sound over the years from what we first thought was pretty hot stuff, High Fidelity, to the modern Dolby Digital and surround sound.  THX is the quality assurance program that brought us this fabulous sound:

Rule of thumb with that playback is that it's not at the proper volume if something doesn't fall off a shelf.

Consider THX "progress".  I wound up with an old Edison phonograph that had been in my family, with the quarter-inch thick wax records that were the precursor to the LP.  My recollection is that the monaural quality went to High Fidelity, then stereo, and ultimately the surround sound that I love today, even though my hearing is impaired.  And that may be part of the reason my hearing is impaired but it is always great to "feel" the sound, isn't it?  Watching "Saving Private Ryan" and the D-Day invasion makes one uncomfortably involved in the movie when the fragments are whizzing over your head, "plinking" into imaginary metal barricades behind you.

Somewhere about our junior high years KGLO brought stereo to our home when they did a simulcast on radio and television.  One channel of this separated sound was on the radio, the other on the TV, and my Dad was pretty excited about setting it up to listen to it though at the time I couldn't really figure out what the big deal was.  Today, of course, you've already read above my total commitment to amplified sound.

God bless Surround Sound!

What Did You Expect?

This weekend I had the chance to visit with my grandson on his first trip home from college.  He is excited about all that is happening, and far more engaged than I was in the four years leading to a degree.  Seems he knew what to expect once he got there, much unlike my own experience, or perhaps yours.

For many of us there may not have been a pattern laid out, for a career or school of choice, and like Merrilee many may have chosen a job immediately after graduating, even if she didn't get her preferred CIA position.  Especially the girls.  What did our parents want them to become?

As a little birdie told me, for most girls the career choices were nurse, secretary, or elementary teacher.  Going to college may or may not have been expected of them, and if a girl did go it was to get some type of training that could be the "insurance policy" in case the man of their dreams, i.e., the husband they would marry, should happen to come to misfortune - or disappear.  Another reason for a girl to go to college was to get the MRS degree, and indeed I ran into some of those, although as an insensitive, non-intuitive, typical male, didn't realize it until some years later.

Brutalizing Wordsworth, the child is the son of the father, so the doctor's son becomes a doctor, the lawyer's son a lawyer, the farmer's son a farmer, the banker's son a banker.  And the daughter?  Well, her mother was a housewife in our world, so what would you expect to happen?  As time has gone by we've certainly and appropriately seen occupational changes for the fairer sex where female doctors, lawyers, and bankers are becoming more prevalent although the latter occupation remains quite paternalistic.  I earned the right to make that judgment after spending about 20 years calling on bankers - and seeing the glass ceiling that exists in that industry.

A Guidance Counselor's Dream!

Not many of the girls in our class had the expectations like the four pictured here - a photo included in an email making the rounds, apparently four young women in military training.  Awesome...  Unless it's a staged photo.


Lacking expectations myself, I should have undertaken the mission of preparing my own offspring, right?  Indeed - and I was all too reluctant to do so.  For reasons that I don't understand but regret today, I was kind of assuming that they would figure it out, didn't want to be dictatorial, and though they didn't have a straightline approach to a career, we did eventually have real discussions about results and happiness.

Now that the grandson is beginning his adulthood I will quietly encourage and watch with pleasure as he succeeds.  At long last I expect it - with little or no causation on my part.

The Return - and Near Death - of Blade and Seed

OK, the preamble:

I always thought and still do that Arlyn Morse was the most intelligent person in our class.  It still amazes me that, although he was salutatorian, he never got a scholarship.   It always bothered me more than him.  We all strived to succeed and I think I only made the top half of our class, but that was significant since a very high percentage of us continued to excel in educational endeavors.  Anyway, Blade and Seed did make use of some of the education we received, however it was amplified by research, mostly from Arlyn's extensive reading.  HS was a phase of life that needed to be amplified.  The adventurous and entrepreneurial aspects were enticing and started for us during this time. 

Blade and Seed Sagas:

I would like to think that we coined the phrase "Road Trip".  It started in HS and continues to this day.  Through the years, I have visited every state, except ND, and a lot of that was accomplished by road trips with Arlyn (Seed).  Initially, we used the "dangerous"  Corvair.  The only problem we had with the car was the spark plug wires kept falling off, so we had to stop every now and then to reattach them.  We graduated to Sebring convertibles and MGB's.  As I recall, we made 2 road trips from CA to IA for NKHS class reunions.  At the outset, we could encamp and decamp in 20 minutes with tents and cots.  This flexiblity  led to the ability to come and go quickly.  Now, we have more money and can be more comfortable.  Also, the next road trip may need to include the better halfs, so who knows whether or not the tradition will continue?

#1 - The Bootleggers convention.

Probably during prohibition, but certainly before my time, Kensett hosted an event called the bootleggers convention.  According to legend, there was a bootlegger on every downtown corner during the festivities.  In an effort to carry on the tradition, we (Seed & Blade) decided to create our own white lightning enterprise.  Knowledge was gained from books and chemistry class.  Equipment was procured and a still was set up in Grandma Arendts's old garage.  The garage was used as storage and was located next to the infamous cottonwood tree described in the out house story.  It was secure and out of the way, so discovery was unlikely.  At the time, my grandmother was elderly and seldom ventured out side her house.

The liqueur of choice was corn whiskey.  The effort took a few weeks due to the fermenting process.  Fuel was charcoal, since portable butane was not available at the time.  In retrospect, the operation was quite impressive and involved a lot of engineering.  When the still was activated, we took turns tending, paying particular attention to pressures.  The watches were relatively boring, so we studied or read girlie mags.  As time went on, it became apparent that our design was not working.  Seed came to relieve me from one of my watches and found me passed out on the floor.  He managed to revive me.  We speculate that the carbon monoxide build up in the garage had almost done me in.  I was sick for a few days, but we never told a soul about our experiment.  There was no 911 in those days.  Moonshining was illegal.  No harm no foul.  If we would have had access to the internet, I feel it would have succeeded.   Seed, I owe you one!!  Such is life.

SCA