Who Remembers John McKay?

In 1948 Oregon football coach, Jim Aiken, had put together a juggernaut team composed of many WW II vets from all across the country. If Aiken challenged you to a duel you could be certain one of his handlers had loaded your weapon with blanks.  Jim liked to shave the odds but that '48 team with Norm Van Brocklin went to the 1949 Cotten Bowl after getting shut out of the Rose Bowl when a tie with Cal was decided by the University of Washington voting for the Golden Bears.  That decision by the Dawgs still resonates with Duck fans.

John McKay was a star running back on that Cotton Bowl team.  After Aiken was asked to leave Oregon, new Athletic Director Leo Harris hired Len Casanova to replace him.  Casanova brought McKay onto his staff in 1950 and after nine years, his talent as the offense coordinator was recognized by other programs including USC. which hired him as an assistant in 1959. They appointed him head coach the next year, after which he would go on to win four national titles.  McKay considered Casanova his mentor and his affection for Cas lasted throughout both their lives.

When you are the head football coach at USC, it's like being King with a really good army.  After Cas retired as Oregon's Athletic Director in 1969, I went with him to LA where Oregon would play the Trojans in the Coliseum.  Friday before the game, McKay invited Cas to have lunch with him and I tagged along. We went to a restaurant-bar across the street from the USC campus and it was apparent this was a royal gathering place. McKay had a round table on a raised landing in the back of the room and it was obvious only John and his guests ever dined there.  After lunch we went back to McKay's office (no tab for the lunch ever came to our table).

Did I say office?  Let's define it as a large,  impressive reception chamber. One side of the room was dominated by a window overlooking the practice football field two stories below. On the wall behind McKay's massive desk at one end of the room was a huge oil painting of O. J. Simpson. A number of comfortable chairs surrounded a low table in the center of the room where we sat and I remember John telling Cas, "If you can't win at USC you should find another line of work."

John's son, JK, came into the room and after introductions said to his dad, "I need new tires for my car so is it OK to charge them to you." "How about using your Rose Bowl ticket money for your tires?"  Rose Bowl ticket money?  You mean wealthy USC alums might pay generous money to players for their Rose Bowl tickets?  Shocking!

John McKay would move on to coach the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and USC  replaced him with another Oregon coach, John Robinson. We know about O..J. but what happened to that oil painting of him? The frame looked expensive.

Let's Hear It For Bill Gates

 I watched that Sunday CNN guy whose name I can't spell interview Bill Gates today.  Bill Gates.  What an exceptionally fine man he is. Look at his face (you can't hide what's on your face). High intelligence. Friendly. He is obviously comfortable being Bill Gates.  Watch him respond to questions and he might reach up and readjust his glasses. Also,  he has a habit while talking of reaching over with his right hand and twisting his wedding ring.  Is that a way of touching bases with Melinda?

If I could get every living American to line up according to the contributions he/she has made to their fellow humans on the planet Earth, brother Gates would be very close to the front of the line.  The remarkable accomplishment of his entrepreneurial creation of Microsoft has been topped by the amazing impact his philamprothy to international causes has had.  

Gates has also used the excellence of his mind to consider problems in our national life and offer intelligent opinions that could solve them.  Of course, this gift from Gates can only be valuable if there is someone smart enough to recognize its worth.  He recognized the coronavirus threat years before it happened but his warnings went unheeded.  The brilliance of Bill Gates's mind has not been a secret for many years and why political leaders would not seek his counsel is hard to understand. Maybe some important clout-meister will come along in the next few months and see the light.

Order In The Court

I must admit that I have never made a plea before the Supreme Court of the United States of America, but I do have a close friend who has done that. His name is Lawrence Alden Aschenbrenner and his issue before the court concerned the native tribes of Alaska whom he represented.  In his career, Larry stood before the Supremes three times. 

That lofty bar of justice is not like the court where you are defending some poor miscreant for driving while seriously drunk.  No, no. To work in that historic room you must have been sworn in as a credible practitioner of the mystic codes of jurisprudence. In 1966 Larry was sworn in by Chief Justice Earl Warren after being sponsored by Oregon U.S. Senator Robert Packwood in a class of five other attorneys that included then Attorney General of the United States, Bobby Kennedy.  Packwood introduced Aschenbrenner to Kennedy which allowed Larry to check off one more box in his bucket list: Have a chat with President John F. Kennedy's brother.

So my lifelong friendship with Larry Aschenbrenner has given me two separations of personal contact with a President of the United States, John F. Kennedy.

The Wayward Bus

In my senior year of high school I turned 18 on February 4, 1948.  This made me eligible to get a chauffeur's license which I did because the principal of the high school, Frank Thomas got me a job driving a school bus. The principal liked me because I played football, was his student body president and was not a trouble-maker. My route to pick up and deliver young scholars to the schoolhouse conveniently followed the roads leading to my home seven miles west on the Redwood Highway.  After my last student was safely delivered to his/her home I would park the bus in a field across from where I lived and then retrace the route the next morning.  With a $50.00 payday that was one sweet deal.

My young bus riders were enthusiastic fans of the driver (me) because every after-school day was race day between our bus and a bus driven by another Frank Thomas favorite student that went south and east of town.  Grants Pass at that time had 6th street with four traffic lanes going through the center of town; two going north,  two going south and both of us had to go south through town where two lanes became one to cross the Caveman Bridge. The race was on to challenge that bottleneck.

Another factor affecting the race was all the citizen drivers who were desperate to not get stuck behind a school bus that stops at every mailbox to let some kid off.  They, too, joined the race to the single lane bottleneck at the Caveman bridge.

Those busses were real rattlers, big yellow hulks that let you know they were coming.  As the two drivers jockeyed for lanes to arrive first at the bridge, the occupants of both busses were wildly into the action with stomping feet and pounding on the metal side panels under the windows.  Not to mention  screaming at the driver by both boys and girls to go faster.  Rolling pandemonium. YeeHaww!!!  Some days we won.  Other days we lost (some citizen stopping in my lane to park). Those appointed rounds were never dull.  Hell riders to the bridge.

The House Buys A Round

Recalling my brilliance in winning the gown order at Glide High School triggered another memory of the Glide High School Principal, Norm Bergstrom. Years after the gown incident, Norm retired and bought a small motel south of Roseburg, Oregon.  One day Georgann and I got a late start from Portland on a trip to visit relatives in Grants Pass and south of Portland I realized we couldn't make it to southern Oregon before late night, I suggested it might be fun to stop for overnight at Norm's motel.  I hadn't seen him in years. 

Norm was working the reception desk when we checked in and he was delighted to see me.  He invited us to come back for cocktails after we got settled in and we found his living quarters behind the office to be large and nicely furnished. Norm introduced us to his wife and took drink orders.  Georgann would have preferred wine but none was offered so we both chose mixed drinks.

We talked about old times in the school house and I asked Norm how he was enjoying retirement in the motel business. "Bill," he said, "Life is good for Alice and me because we can handle everything needed in the small number of units we have.  I'll tell you one good side benefit; we never have to buy liquor because people are always leaving partially filled bottles in their room.

Arrgghh!!!

Timing Is Everything

I worked for years as a salesman for Jostens of Minnesota calling on high schools to sell graduation gowns, announcements, diplomas and school rings.  It was a competitive business with other companies offering the same products and Jostens paid me no salary,  just straight commission on what I sold.  My assigned territory was southern Oregon and one week I was working all the schools north of my home in Grants Pass.

I had a 9:00 A.M. appointment with a Principal at a school in Sutherlin and on my arrival I was told my man was ill and would not be in his office that day.  My next appointment was two hours later in Roseburg and when you work on commission time is money so you don't waste it.  I would use the time to make a courtesy call on another school in the area. Entering the administration office the Principal's  secretary announced me and when he came out of his office he had a strange look on his face. He said to me, "How do you people do that?  I had no idea what he was talking about but I made some innocuous comment and he continued, "The Herff Jones salesman was supposed to take our senior gown orders two hours ago and he apparently forgot the appointment so I'm giving you the gown business.  Meet me in the gym and I'll get the seniors down there."  The seniors arrived with their Herff Jones order forms filled out which I gathered up to transfer to our forms.  Then I thanked the Principal for his business and headed down the road to my next appointment without a clue as to what just happened.

I found out later that an hour before I arrived in his office he had called my boss in Portland and told him he was giving the gown business to us and to have me make an appointment to take the orders.  Then I walk in his door.

You don't have to be a great salesman if your timing is excellent.

Max

Max Coley, whose mother was a full-blooded Cherokee, was a better than average running back in college.  He would not have looked out of place bare chested astride a galloping horse.  Max coached running backs and quarterbacks for Len Casanova at the University of Oregon where he and I became friends.  We investigated after hour establishments from time to time and I grew to appreciate his deep knowledge of the game of football.  One Saturday morning I called Max to suggest we go to a track meet that afternoon and he said no, he didn't think so because he didn't really enjoy sports where people didn't hit each other.

At a scrimmage in 1969 Max was putting in plays for the next game.  Jim Fegoni was the center who would form the huddle and Max would lean in over Fegoni's back and call the plays he wanted run.  Sometimes when Fegoni left the huddle he would take a chop step back and plant his cleated foot right on top of Max's foot.  Ouch.  After the play Max would collar Fegoni and tell him, "DO NOT CHOP STEP OUT OF THE HUDDLE".  Fegoni would do fine and then he would forget and drill Coley again.  The third time it happened Coley limped up and confronted Fegoni. He placed his hands on the kid's shoulders and looked him in the eye saying, "Jim, I think I now know why the Italians lost the war".  Fegoni,  not blinking,  replied,  "How'd the Indians do, Coach?"

Max went on to a long,  successful professional career in the NFL and was Terry Bradshaw's coach at Pittsburg in those great Steeler years.