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David Mitchell

Mike,

After having just re-read my comment on your peice I am struck by yet a third item - just how bad my spelling is.

David Mitchell

As we enter the new year, and decade, we have much to look forward to

- (stolen from a classmate on Facebook - but can't remember who?) 

Michael McLeod

Don't feel bad about the screw-ups, Dave. You can go back and fix your posts. Just bring it back up and there is an edit option on the top right hand corner. I screw up constantly - little things, and more and more these days, sad to say. 

Plus most of our classmates are worn out from the holidays and doubling up on their naps so it doesn't much matter.

David Mitchell

Thanks Mike,

I knew that.

I was just using it as an excuse to abuse the Forum - even more than usual. 

Mary Margaret Clark (Schultheis)

Happy 72nd Birthday to Crick!!

https://diaryofanut.com/2020/01/06/happy-72nd-birthday-crick/

Michael McLeod

I'm not sure where and when I heard this, MM.

But it helped me when I did:

Grief is just another side of love.

Joseph D. McCarthy

Dave, Once again I think you temporarily broke the forum.   You had to let out the secret that you have been purrposely "Mis-typing" in an attempt to have the few of us who can't spell add to the forum.  And, Mike, you have contributed to the problem by telling the secret (Dave actually uses the EDIT button to purposely mis-spell.  Cut it out for the sake of the Forum.

Joe

David Mitchell

Oops, Busted! 

Michael Boulware

I just returned from a funeral in Owensboro, Kentucky. When Don Holland and I went to UK, we had no idea that we were a part of history and those years would be forever engraved in our hearts. One of our teammates died of a heart attack. He was a trail blazer, one of the first African Americans to carry a ball in the Southeastern Conference, possibly the first. He was taunted, threatened, and a hated man just because he was not white. He never complained. He was always a gentleman. He left a positive mark on the world. He was a gracious man and left a gracious, polite family.

It was difficult to see a former hulking figure in an old and lifeless body and a huge lump developed in my throat. His name was Huston Hogg. When I first heard his name I chuckled because I pictured a pig. After knowing Huston and what he did for others: I don't chuckle anymore.

Mark Schweickart

Mike B. -- wow, a very poignant memory recalled, and beautifully articulated. I think you just put a lump in all of our throats, and we didn't even know the guy. 

Michael McLeod

Thanks for that, Mike. And thanks for such men of strength and peace.

James Hamilton, M. D.

Beautiful eulogy, Mike B., and a reminder of the turbulent '60's on college campuses. 

Jim 

Fred Clem

Houston Hogg

Sculpture in front of Kroger Field, in Lexington, honoring the four African American UK football players that broke the SEC color barrier.  Mike Boulware and Don Holland were also members of that team.

David Mitchell

Mike B,

Great tribute. Thanks for sharing a touching slice of history. 

p.s. Very cool Fred!

John Maxwell

Thomas McKeon

Beautiful post Bull

Michael Boulware

Tim, Jim, Mark, Goose, Mike,Fred, Dave, and Jocko. Thanks for your affirmation; I really did not excpect anything like that. It had been raining like crazy during the entire trip I picked up a teammate in Ft. Wright, Ky. on the way to Owensboro, Ky.. It was a 5 1/2 hour trip one way, so I drove 11 hours in a driving rain storm. My poor windshield wipers were full go all the way. When I returned home, I was still pumped from the concentration it took to drive in the dark with headlights reflecting off of the road right in my face. I could not sleep, so I wrote about Huston's funeral. It was nice to be acknowledged. I even got a phone call from Bobby Curtin. Hell, it doesn't get much better than that

James Hamilton, M. D.

Bull, to change the topic a bit, you mentioned your harrowing drive to and from Kentucky. Joe McCarthy had described his fun drive across country a few months ago here on the Forum. In Post #6582 I had mentioned that my wife and I were leaving to drive down to Albuquerque onThanksgiving Day and hoped to do so between snow storms. It turned out that after we got about 60 miles south of Colorado Springs we were caught in 300 miles of snow, ice, "wintery mix", fog, slush and frequently being surrounded by 18 wheelers trying to stay on schedule. We encountered multiple vehicles on their sides in ditches, a 25 foot RV flipped over on its roof and several ambulances heading towards various accidents. Raton Pass at the Colorado-New Mexico border was down to two tire tracks (surprisingly still open). We used 4WD essentially the whole trip.

Are we just getting older and these conditions bother us more or when we were young did we just not think of the dangers as much? Not only were my knuckles white it took the rest of the day for them to straighten out! Fortunately, my nephew, who with his wife hosted the family dinner, makes excellent martinis.

Jim 

Timothy Lavelle

I talked to Oprah.

If the Seahawks win today

You get a beer

And you get a beer

If they beat SF next week

You get a car

And you......

David Mitchell

Wow! That may be only th esecond or third post by the artist otherwise known as  "Goose" since this Forum began. He must be feeling his oats because he is older today. 

Happy Birthday Tom

David Mitchell

Oh, and Happy Birthday to one of our other essayists, the noteworthy Mark of L.A. , screenwriter extaordinaire. 

Have we lost you somewhere along the way? Or simply bored you to tears? 

Michael McLeod

Doctor J:

You bring up an interesting and troubling subject.

I remember when people would say "Let's go for a drive." 

This was at a long-ago time when it didn't take guts to say that.

I don't think you have to be our age to be scared shitless on a regular basis the way things are on the highways these days.

Here in Florida I don't have blizzards to contend with. I must face something worse. Tourists.

But it's bad all over the country. 

Glad you made it through ok.

James Hamilton, M. D.

Mike McL,

Yes, made it through O.K.

I used to enjoy that drive but the last few years it seems more tiring and stressful, but this one was just plain frightening. Like you, Colorado Springs has it's share of tourists but mostly in the summer. Winter is for those skiers crowding I-70 west of Denver. Anymore I prefer mountain dirt roads - even with their occasional "drop-offs" -  to freeways and Interstates, and I feel safer on them.

Memories of drives "in the country" in our family 1949 Mercury are in the recesses of my mind. Dad would load us up and drive north along the Olentangy river for miles and miles or along Route 33 by the rolling hills southeast of Columbus. Then stop at Mr. Murray's Pure Oil gas station on High Street at Torrence and have the attendant "fill-er-up" with regular (19.9 cents a gallon), add water to the radiator and ask to "check that oil, sir?".

Those relaxing days of motoring are long gone.

Jim

David Mitchell

Jim, Mike M., and Mike B. 

You are all bringing back memories of the many trips I made driving from my home in Denver to the various ski slopes, both before and after kids, and before and after the completion of the "Eisenhower Tunnel" (underneath the wicked Loveland Pass - Americas highest continuously open roadway).

We made a couple trips from Ohio before the tunnel, before I-70, and before such places as, Copper Mountian, and Keystone existed. Once (1963?) we travelled with a group of friends from Chicago by train and then drove from Union Station in downtown Denver in a caravan of three rental station wagons into an absolute mess of a snow storm west on old Route 6 (before I-70 was built). We were headed for Vail but the highway patrol had closed Loveland Pass - but only at the top - and had not yet passed the word down below, so that each car had to crawl in slow bumper to bumper traffic all the way to the top, only to be turned around once you reached the summit. It was nail biting! (even as a passenger)

(If you have not experienced Loveland Pass, you've missed a real treat - switchbacks climbing thousands of feet, up to about 14,000, with very few guard rails and no room to pass.) 

We finally made it back down to Georgetown (where we had stopped hours before for lunch at the historic "Silver Qqueen" bar. But so many drivers had gotten back to that point before us, there wer no rooms left in town. So we proceeded all the way back to Idaho Springs for rooms in a cheap motel. I think we had driven something like 4 or 5 hours (including lunch), only to get 45 minutes out of Denver. The pass was re-opened the next day.

I had many other doozies including a trip alone one time where I got stopped behind a large truck that had lost his traction, and was forcing me to stop and lose mine as well. I was gradually sliding backwards and towards the edge of a thousand foot drop off with no guard rails. I eventually I backed up onto some rough gravel on the shoulder, regained my traction, and made a risky pass around the stalled truck. Nerve racking!

My kids were with me on many more crazy driving days, headed for the slopes, but by then we had the "tunnel" and avoided the nasty climb over that pass. Or we were headed to Winter Park or Steamboat, and that meant another difficult drive over another wicked  pass - Berthoud Pass - in some ways worse than Loveland Pass. But those are all fond memories. 

And then there were some wild 4-wheel drives (summer only) up over the back side of Telluride over "Black Bear Pass" into Ouray. Talk about "off-road" driving!

That is Telluride at center right in the distance a few thousand feet below (note the jeep - right center). My other best friend Tom (Smith, not Litzinger) and I drove these trails a few times in the summer of '72 where Mary and I and Tom) lived for one sumer.  Tom stayed and is thee big wheel in the Real Estate brokers crowd dealing with the likes of Oprah, Susan St. Anton, the late Dave Brubeck, Ralph Lauren, an Austrian prince, and the list goes on. Telluride is the location of the first "bank withdrawal" that one Robert Leroy Parker made in 1889, before visiting many other banks in many of other towns. Parker's other name was Butch Cassidy.

I believe the operative word here is STEEEEEP!

Michael McLeod

We have a Winter Park down here, in a pretty community dotted by lakes, so many beautiful lakes, just north of Orlando. There's a fabulous museum in the middle of town devoted to the mansion and the stained glass windows of Louis Comfort Tiffany, just down the main drag from the pretty little liberal arts college where I still teach.

In Columbus in the olden days the first childhood car I remember was a Packard. Dark blue, I think. Built like a tank. Then a green Crysler, just as solid. (Remember the thunk of a door being slammed back when cars were built that way?) Then a series of white Chevies in ascending order of fanciness: Biscayne, Bel Air, Imperial.

I had three sisters. We were told to lock the car doors once inside and backing out of the driveway. You'll remember the inside lock on each door was a skinny button mounted on the frame at the bottom of the window. We'd say "ping the pingers" - sounds weird now but that was the command to push down the buttons on either side. With mom and dad in front, all four of us could sit comfortably in the back seat on our way to... was it Knight's Ice Cream, I believe it was, on Indianola, near Morse Road? Turning right on East North Broadway, past Hawley's bar and grocery story and Brody Drugs and the Sinclair station where Mr. Cotter, who fixed the cars, had a face that was always darkened by engine oil, and then past Dinova's little market and Olympic with its fence and turnstiles and the scent of chlorine slipping briefly in the windows and past the pingers as we headed north on Indianola towards a summer treat.