We Don't Get Overs

 When you're running life's marathon and you still can't see the finish line, you try to take your mind off how tired you are by thinking of other things.  Such as what you would have done differently at particular times in your life.  Some anthropologists believe your earliest behavioral patterns chart the course you will follow for the rest of your life.  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Would you name your kid "Wolfgang"?) was reportedly playing Turkey In The Straw on his little violin when he was just 3 years old.  And he did OK in music for the rest of his life.

In the exciting hours of another fun-filled day in this Russellville commune, I think back to an event that took place in Cove, Oregon on my Aunt Helen's ranch when I was probably 4 or 5 years old. I had wandered down to where pigs were kept in an enclosed area and I remember thinking it might be fun to ride a pig.  Picking out one big porker as a prospective mount I eased up beside him and jumped on his back and grabbed for his ears to hold on.  The pig took off as if shot from a cannon and I went flying.

Instead of figuring out a better way to ride a pig, I wrote it off as not worth doing.  And I think of other times in the years that went by when I gave up a failed mission when I should have kept riding the pig. I'll try to remember that in another lifetime. 

Mamas and Monarchs

 My friend Lou Barrett's long career as a police officer ended when his heart sent him a message that it was time for him to retire.  He survived the malfunction of his principal organ but took its advice and turned in his badge.  We often meet for breakfast and Lou's experiences as a law officer always have relevance to the current events of the day.

Such as domestic violence.  Lou contributes time now supporting a shelter for women and children who are victims of domestic abuse and his interest in that issue evolved from his years of dealing with it on his job. 

Early in his career in California perpetrators of domestic abuse could not be prosecuted without the cooperation of the spousal victim and in a large percentage of the cases, he says, the victim would not agree to testify, either from fear of future abuse or from a belief that the abuser was remorseful and would change.

Lou said it was not unusual for an officer to get hit on the head with a frying pan when trying to arrest an abusive spouse. Many women, he says, are convinced they can change the behavior of a violent spouse.

Yeah, right.

German anthropologist Hinrich von Stuben  in 1903 reported in a leading scientific journal in Berlin,  the results of his 12-year study of butterflies and their relation to human female behavior.  His study found that in a flight of 10,000 Monarchs, 7,468 of them will flit around and land on beautiful flowers while 2,532 of them will flit around the beautiful flowers and then land on a cow pie.

The Morning Show

 If you lived in Eugene, Oregon in the late '60s and early '70s, there is one daily ritual you shared with 90% of the other residents of Lane County: you listened to the Morning Show on KUGN radio with its crew of announcers that included Wendy Ray, Russ Doran, Dale (Uncle Fuzzy) Reed, Fred Webb, and Dick Cross. All five of those personalities had a humor persona that was off the charts and the material they did from 6:00 AM until 9:00 AM each weekday morning with weather, traffic reports and general commentary on local and national news dominated the airwaves of their big power broadcasting licence.

Off the air that crew was a congenial clique of friends that would get together from time to time and the interaction of those talents made for a rolling tsunami of laughter.  My friendship with Wendy Ray who was the radio voice of the Oregon Ducks for football, basketball and track, got me a seat in the room with the KUGN bunch and those were the funniest and most entertaining events of my life.

Once we were at a new barbecue restaurant that a couple of African-American guys opened near the University of Oregon campus.  Their grand opening had filled the dining room with mostly friends and family of the owners and we had comp invitations from the management in trade for extra radio advertising on KUGN.  After an opening round of salads the server cleared the plates and said to us, "Keep your knives."  Fred Webb looked around the room and said to the server in a frightened voice, "We're expecting trouble?"  

So many of the times it was, "You had to be there."  The re-telling loses the spontaneous spark of the moment with its interaction of the comments from the various individuals.  Some wives were along at a seafood restaurant one time when Joyce Ray asked the lady server if her snapper was fresh. Joyce never got an answer to her question because the table was completely breaking up.

Roll the credits...

Queen of Eugene

Last Sunday's Oregonian carried the obituary for Shirley Nyman Pape'.  Shirley's life of 99 years was well lived with a Mills College and Stanford education as well as a graduate degree from the University of Oregon. Shirley truly was, during the '50, '60s , and '70s, the Queen of Eugene, Oregon with her production of children's television shows as TV came to America.  When TV's second station, ABC affiliate KEZI, arrived, Shirley became Women's Editor and interviewed local and national celebrities.  She was married to Dean Pape', who owned a large dealership for heavy construction and logging equipment.  Shirley sat on a number of boards connected to charitable activities and was involved in Eugene's social life.

When the University of Oregon was awarded the 1972 Olympic Trials in Track and Field, I had a role with the board of directors who would produce the event.  This was a big national deal involving the United States Olympic Committee, America's top track and field coaches and athletes and all the administrators connected to those entities.  Shirley Pape' contacted our board and offered to host a reception one evening of the ten-day event for the meet organizers and VIP visitors to Eugene. It would be held in her home in the east hills of the city.

"Home" does not adequately describe the Pape' mansion.  The large house with spacious grounds high above the city and the University of Oregon campus was known locally as "Shirley's Temple." For the cocktail  reception, which was held on the tennis court, she brought in two long rows of troughs running the length of the court that were filled with charcoal briquettes. When fired up they would warm the evening chill.  To enhance the appearance of the troughs, Tiki torches on long metal rods were attached and the effect was quite breathtaking.

Perhaps a half hour into the cocktails as the guests mingled on the tennis court watching the beautiful sunset over the Oregon campus, an event occurred that none of those in attendance would ever forget.  Those troughs of smoldering briquettes created such intense heat that they started melting the metal rods supporting the tiki torches which caused them to bend over, striking the guests like flaming spears.  Panic.  Men and women screaming as the torches came down one by one.

No one was seriously injured and the party moved inside for dinner.  The night of flaming torches was not mentioned in Shirley's obit. 

Uncivil War

 In 1894 Oregon Agriculture College (OAC) played the University of Oregon (UO) in the new game of football.  With little in the way of protective gear it was no activity for sissies and on that November day the farm boys took their cross-state cousins to the woodshed, 16-0.  That meeting (in Corvallis in even number years and Eugene in the odd numbered) became one of the nation's most celebrated football rivalries.  With the loss in Corvallis in 2020, the Ducks lead with 66 wins to OSU's 48.  There have been 10 ties, including the infamous 0 to 0 "Toilet Bowl" in 1983.  An NCAA rule change later that year put an end to most ties. 

For players, coaches, and fans, losing at home is a double twisting of the knife in the wound.  And to lose when your team plays badly is one more twist.  As in 1961 at old Hayward field where the Beavers won with a total of 6 points while the Ducks had a pathetic 2.  The Len Casanova staff had a tradition of meeting, win or lose, at one of the coaches' homes after the games.  Adult beverages were served and wives were part of the celebrating/healing process.  When the gathering broke up that night Max Coley pulled me aside and said a couple of the guys were going downtown for a nightcap and that he would drop me at my home afterwards.  

Late that night we were leaving the bar and as we passed a booth of four guys one of them called out a taunting slur about the game.  We had passed the booth but Max stopped and turned back, the fire-water surging up in that Cherokee Indian warrior as he grabbed the first guy he came to and with one blow released all the frustration of an awful day. We quickly hustled Coley out the door in a tactical retreat.  Later, in the car on the way to my place,  Max said, "I probably shouldn't have done that."  I said, "Probably not."

In Tuesday's mail Max received a letter from a Eugene law firm.  The man who sent the letter was the one Max struck and he informed Max that he had hit the only Duck at the table as well as the only lawyer. He apologised for the inappropriate remark of his Beaver friend and he wished Max and the rest of the staff good fortune in the coming months of recruiting.

Whew! Thank God Max didn't punch the Beaver.

Yikes

 Do you like books that scare the living you-know-what out of you?  Don't reach for Stephen King's latest yarn, grab Bill Bryson's new volume titled The Body.  It's 383 pages devoted to the individual cells and juices and bones and muscles and endless other fibers that are wrapped up in the skin we love to touch. The research Bryson has done finding out what makes all these parts tick and the  million-plus horrendous things that can go wrong with our creator's masterpiece will keep you flipping the pages and screaming, "No, no, no."

Take the human heart, the super-star performer in this human comedy.  It is not shaped like a valentine or hung over there where you put your hand when the flag goes by.  It's four muscle-wrapped pouches that weigh about a pound and attach in the middle of your chest. Two of them power blood out through the tube network designed to bring oxygen to individual parts and two of which receive the used blood for reconditioning for the next  round.

Here is how I envision the birthing room in LaGrande, Oregon, occupied by Eunice Landers on the 4th day of February, 1930.  EL to her doctor: "I want to make certain Billy has your premium quality heart because it will have to beat about every second, 24 hours a day without missing a beat for probably 3.5 billion times during his life and you'll agree that is a lot of freaking beating."

What is more interesting than reading about our favorite subject; ourselves?  I won't spoil the ending of the book for you but I will tell you this: if you sense your number of heart beats is anywhere close to 3.4999999 billion, go ahead and pig out on the bacon and cheese omelette topped off by a gallon of ice cream. And cancel your newspaper.

Do You Believe In Miracles?

 Tom Blanchard played 11 years in the NFL as a punter and backup quarterback (if all other QBs were out of commission). Tom could really hammer his punts. His last three years were with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the current NFL champions.  Tom retired to Grants Pass, Oregon (my home town) and my sister who still lives there sent me a clip the local newspaper ran about him.

Tom was injured when his shoe cleat caught on the worn field cover of Portland's Multnomah Stadium in 1970, causing his knee to painfully twist and buckle.  His replacement was a young quarterback from San Francisco named Dan Fouts who took the next snap from center and launched a sixty-yard bomb that brought the stadium fans to their feet. Fouts went on to win the game against Cal (31-24), the first Oregon victory over a California conference team in 10 years. From that dramatic start,  Fouts would lead the Ducks for every game in his remaining three years.  But for one magnificent night later that year, in the Los Angeles Coliseum against the Bruins of UCLA,  Tom Blanchard wore Superman's cape.

UCLA showed the Ducks no mercy.  At one point they hit Fouts and knocked him out cold.  Now,  that would be a concussion-ending night for the Oregon star but then it only brought Tom Blanchard into the action.  It was not a promising situation.  Going into the fourth quarter the Ducks were trailing by the score of 40-21 and UCLA had called off their rottweilers and were clearing their bench.  With just under four minutes remaining Blanchard hit Bobby Moore (who would evolve to Ahmad Rashad) with a pass which Bobby took to the endzone.  On UCLA's first snap after Oregon's kickoff, their second string QB fumbled the ball and  Oregon recovered.  A couple of plays later Blanchard connected with Moore again and with just minutes left in the game the score was UCLA 40 - Oregon 35. 

Many fans had left the game early in the fourth quarter.  Now UCLA was in full panic mode as they lined up for what they knew would be an Oregon onside kick.  That desperate attempt to keep possession of the ball rarely works but on this magical night in the City of Angels the ball went the necessary 10 yards, bounced around in a frantic scrum that left Oregon in possession.  Now, in the dwindling minutes, it was UCLA defending the Zone of Doom at their backs.

On Oregon's first touchdown of the fourth quarter Blanchard had taken a hard hit on his right shoulder just as he delivered the pass to Moore.  But with Dan Fouts still hearing canaries,  Blanchard returned to the game and got the critical next score. Now, with the game on the line, Tom didn't think he could handle the ball with his injured arm so Fouts had to answer the call.  Which he did.  Dan drilled Greg Specht in the endzone for the Oregon win.   The Ducks went for a two-point conversion but didn't make it so they took their 41-40 miracle and put it in the records book with golden ink.

Ask me about the post-game Oregon locker room. My, oh, my. Bring more towels.