UND"s 8th National Championship

After watching UND win their 8th NCAA National Championship last night in Tampa, I thought about another UND National Championship.

On March 29th, 1980 I drove from Boston to Providence, Rhode Island to see a hockey game, an NCAA National Championship game between the UND Fighting Sioux and the Northern Michigan University Wildcats. 

Without a Boston school in the tournament interest in the final four, (they didn't call it the Frozen Four in those days) was low. The Boston teams, BU, BC, Harvard, Northeastern were eliminated in the earlier rounds. Dan Davis, our sports director at WHDH, gave me his press credentials, and off I went to Providence. I was pumped to see the game!

When I was a kid in Grand Forks, UND won the national championship twice, in 1959 and in 1963. In the game in Providence against Northern Michigan, they would be going for their third title, their first in 17 years.

I grew up with UND hockey, skated, and played in the 'Old Barn" on the campus from the time I was a little kid through club hockey at UND.

Gary Como and I were members of Al Purpur's ice crew at the Old Barn, we shoveled the ice before Al pulled his pre-Zamboni contraption around the rink to resurface the ice. For our efforts, we got game tickets and could stand at rinkside during the games. We saw some great WCHA battles at the barn. We saw the incredible World Champion Russian Red Army team play on their first tour of the US. We saw Harvard and the Cleary brothers play UND during Harvard's first-ever western trip. We even saw NHL legend Gump Worsley play in goal for the Winnipeg Maroons during one of his punishment tours in the minor leagues.

After leaving home to make my way in broadcasting I hadn't seen the Sioux play for many years. Living in Boston I was a Bruins fan, I went to Harvard and BU games a few times a year, I never missed a Bean Pot tournament, this night was different because the Sioux were such a big part of my life.

I parked across the street from the Providence Civic center in the press parking section, I went to the press entrance and got my passes updated.

A guy poked me in the back and said, "What the hell are you doing here?" It was Bob Bustin from KNOX radio in Grand Forks. I worked at KNOX for a short period of time and knew the staff. Bob took me up to the broadcast booth to say hello to Doug Teigmeyer. I knew better than to hang around when Doug was getting ready for a game. So I was in and out of the booth and left Doug and Bob to prepare for the pre-game reports and the play by play. Because of my press pass, I had all arena access. I made my way down to the lower section and found a seat about 8 rows up and to the left of the goal. Perfect site lines for watching a hockey game. Here's what I saw from my seat.

The Sioux won by a score of 5-1

The 16-year drought without an NCAA Championship ended in 1980. 

In 1980 head coach Gino Gasparini led the Sioux to the 1st of three championships they would win under his leadership.

North Dakota had lost twice earlier in the season to Northern Michigan.

Mark Taylor and Howard Walker were named 1st team All-Americans.

Captain Mark Taylor, who led the Sioux with 92 points would only play part of the 1st period of the championship game before breaking his collarbone and forced to leave the game.

Doug Smail was named the NCAA Tournament's Most Outstanding Player.

Smail, Marc Chorney, and Phil Sykes were named to the NCAA All-Tournament Team.

Smail was the first UND player to score four goals in an NCAA Championship game.

UND first-year goaltender Darren Jensen made 20 saves in the win, ending his season with a 13-0-1 record.

UND had only won one (Dec. 28, 1977, 8-4) of the four games in UND history against the Wildcats prior to playing for the 1980 Championship.

There was a large group of UND fans at the game, they were noisy and the pep band was there.

I found out later the "real" UND pep band wasn't at the game at all because the school wouldn't foot their travel bill. The UND pep band director knew one of the band directors at Brown University and sent the UND music and a box of jerseys east, so kids from Brown could impersonate kids from UND.

After the game, I went across the street to the Marriott Hotel with Bob and Doug to the UND victory party. I got to see people from my home town, people I went to school with and one or two I played hockey with and against. It was a great night for a Grand Forks kid in Providence. It was a great night for Bob and Doug too, because I took them to Camille's Roman Gardens on Federal Hill for late-night Italian food and several bottles of wine.

This is the Old Barn where UND hockey was played when I was a kid.

This is the arena where UND plays now...

Interesting anecdote, Ralph Englestad taught me how to swim.

  

Harley Thoughts on a rainy Saturday Morning in SoCal

When I went through my mid-life "biker" stage, I met some interesting people and had some crazy experiences.

I met a knocked out, gorgeous woman with two tattoos. On her left shoulder was a large, perfectly drawn rose, the stem wound down around her arm, leaves, thorns and buds. The root ended in the palm of her hand. On her back was a huge Harley Davidson Eagle, once again, perfect. I asked her about her tats. The answer, "My second husband was a tattoo artist." I told her he was a pretty good one. "Yes, he was" she said. "But that was all he was good at, the son of a bitch."

Speaking of tattoos, I almost got one. Why? I was at a Biker Rally, it was almost 4 in the morning, I was drunk. It's a good thing there was a long wait or I'd have barbed wire around my bicep.

There is a jeweler in Boston, he's a top flight craftsman, he wears bow ties, starched pinstriped shirts and steel framed glasses. He has a small pony tail tied with a grosgrain ribbon.. I ran into him at a biker event, he has full body Japanese Irezumi tattoos. He had them done while he was stationed at Yokosuka. After he got out of the Navy he went back to Japan to study jewelry making and to finish up his tats.

At the same rally, it cooled off around midnight and I went to get my jacket off my bike. I was walking along the long rows of parked Harleys and I came across a woman handcuffed to a Knucklehead. I asked if she was okay? She told me to "go fck myself."

After I had my scoot for two months, I looked at my bank statements and credit card bills and realized I'd spent over $1,500 on accessories.

I was invited to a party one night by a biker named "Jabba the Wrench". The party house was decorated with Nazi flags, Jabba was an ex-con and a short order cook. He would drink until he threw up, then start drinking again. The only other guy I've ever known who did that was my college roommate.

I know a guy in Boston, he's a haircutter. He's about the size of Prince and at work he dresses like he's on stage. He had a mechanic in Somerville do some engine work on his chopper. The mechanic was a huge biker type, long flowing beard, tats, etc. The mechanic delivered the bike to my friend's shop on Newbury Street. The cutter gave the mechanic a ride back to his shop. On the way they stopped at a light in Cambridge. Two biker guys in a pickup pulled up next to him. One of them rolled down the window and said, "Nice scoot man, but you've got the ugliest old lady I've ever seen."

Springsteen Cancels North Carolina Gig Over 'Backwards' Anti-LGBT Law

A letter to Springsteen fans in North Carolina...


"As you, my fans, know I’m scheduled to play in Greensboro, North Carolina this Sunday. As we also know, North Carolina has just passed HB2, which the media are referring to as the “bathroom” law. HB2 — known officially as the Public Facilities Privacy and Security Act — dictates which bathrooms transgender people are permitted to use. Just as important, the law also attacks the rights of LGBT citizens to sue when their human rights are violated in the workplace. No other group of North Carolinians faces such a burden. To my mind, it’s an attempt by people who cannot stand the progress our country has made in recognizing the human rights of all of our citizens to overturn that progress. Right now, there are many groups, businesses, and individuals in North Carolina working to oppose and overcome these negative developments. Taking all of this into account, I feel that this is a time for me and the band to show solidarity for those freedom fighters. As a result, and with deepest apologies to our dedicated fans in Greensboro, we have canceled our show scheduled for Sunday, April 10th. Some things are more important than a rock show and this fight against prejudice and bigotry — which is happening as I write — is one of them. It is the strongest means I have for raising my voice in opposition to those who continue to push us backwards instead of forwards."

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band’s Sunday April 10th show is canceled. Tickets will be refunded at point of purchase.

Good for you Bruce and the E Street Band.

In addition to Bruce's objections, a major expansion by a national company has been cancelled. The NBA is probably going to cancel the All Star game in Charlotte and more to come. 

The Highpoint Furniture Show (the biggest in the world) has had dozens of exhibitors pull out.

The crap has to stop.

The First Time I heard Merle

I remember driving late one night across the North Dakota Prairie, my left hand on the wheel of my Chevy, my right on the radio dial. My home state, at night was a big electronic vacuum cleaner, sucking up radio signals from all over the country. I'd been driving for hours and was looking for something different to listen to. I hated country music with very few exceptions.

As I turned the dial, I came across WBAP from Fort Worth and as a Nashville "countrypolitan" song faded I heard finger picking, then the nasty Fender Stratocaster sound of "Mama Tried". It was the first time I ever heard Merle Haggard. I liked it.

What I liked most was the pared down, clean sound. A small tight band, one back up singer. Merle Haggard and the Strangers did the songs and the made the sound Nashville was trying to get rid of.

Like Buck Owens, his sound was tight, fresh and clean. I learned later they were from the same town, Bakersfield, California.

Bakersfield is a hot, dusty, dirty town in the Central Valley. Bakersfield grows food and pumps oil. The people who do the work are underpaid and overworked.

In the dust bowl days, thousands and thousands of people (like Haggard's parents) from Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas and other states moved to the Bakersfield area, they brought their music with them. Hillbilly music, folk music, honky tonk, western swing and blues. The "Bakersfield Sound" was made up of all those traditions with a sprinkling of Mexican Rancheros sounds thrown in for flavor.

Most country music is written through observation by the writer. Merle Haggard lived the songs he wrote, he lost his father at 9, he was a teenage delinquent, served time in juvenile facilities, a drop out, constantly in trouble. He and a friend rode the rails to Texas when they were 15, when he was 18 he was in prison for robbery, he escaped and was sent to San Quentin. Haggard wrote about what he knew, what he'd lived. His "Workingman's Blues" was about his work as a truck driver, short order cook and field hand.

His song "Sing me Back Home" was written about a prison buddy, who after a daring escape killed a man, was captured, tried and sentenced to death. His song "Mama Tried" was autobiographical. written about his widowed mother's struggle with him during his teenage years.

Haggard was an alcoholic, when he wrote, "Tonight the Bottle Let me Down" he wrote what he knew, the same with his song "Swinging Doors". Haggard did a lot of cocaine as well, he was a life long expert in substance abuse. 

Merle knew about relationships, good and bad. He should have he was married 5 times, once again his songs reflect what he lived, "Today I Started Loving You Again.", 'If We Make it Through December", "If We're Not Back in Love by Monday" and many more. He wrote a song called "Irma Jackson" in the 60's it was about an inter-racial love affair. His record company wouldn't release it.

Later in life he commented about "Okie from Muskogee" and "The Fightin' Side of Me", he said, "When I wrote those I was dumber than a box of rocks."

Up until his death yesterday, Merle was still playing over a 100 dates a year.

I saw him live twice, I'm glad I did. Merle Haggard was an American Original.

Here is his discography...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merle_Haggard_discography

Bad Girls?

My Dad kept a diary during his service in WWII. I have it, I've read it.

My Mother kept every letter they exchanged as a young, married couple during the war. I've read the letters. They are newsy, funny, loving and lonely." They aren't particularly romantic. My Mom was a much better writer than my Dad, then again he was a much better pilot than my Mom.

In Dad's diary, he is more romantic than he is in his letters to Mom. I wonder why? He was better at expressing his longing for her to himself than he was to her. Later in life I asked Mom why? She didn't have an answer, although she was pleased to read his thoughts about her in his diary. 

Dad often wrote a line or two about his fellow pilots and their off duty adventures in London and Paris. His buddy Johnson getting drunk and crashing into the glass door of a bar in France. Getting thrown out of bed at a hotel in London during a German bombing raid when the bomb's concussion sucked the glass out of the hotel windows.

Several times in his diary Dad would write a line or two like this "C picked up a bad case of the clap" or "A is getting the last of his penicillin shots today"...

When I was 18, I ran into a 'bad girl" one night over Christmas vacation, when I got home at 4:30 in the morning Dad was standing in the kitchen in his underwear (he never wore pajamas, he said he got used to sleeping in his underwear during the war). The old man took a look at me as best he could in the dim light from the stove hood and said, "You smell like a French whorehouse." I was a rock solid smartass at that point in my life, I replied, "Of the two people in this room, only one of us would know what a French whorehouse smells like." Dad got pissed, on the other hand he didn't tell me I was wrong either. As I got older and closer to the old man, I often thought about asking him about it, but I never did.

I had a long time girlfriend at the time, both my parents really liked her and the "French whorehouse" incident was never connected to her. Then again she wasn't involved and she was a "nice" girl...little did they know. Maybe they just didn't want to think about it.

Years later, my daughter, she was about 20 at the time, asked my Mom whether or not girls "gave it up" for the boys during the war. My mother didn't respond right away, she got a small smile on her face and told my kid, "Well honey, they might not have come back."

Every generation seems to think they invented sex, mine, the 60's generation truly believed it and we have been blamed for a lot of societal changes...maybe that's true but we didn't invent sex...

I've downloaded this new book, haven't finished it yet but it sure as hell got me thinking about my parent's generation. Here's a quote from Amanda Littauer.

"Casual and diverse sexual practices on the home front stimulated a public recognition of the divergence between formal sexual standards and actual sexual behavior that outlasted the renewed conservatism of the long postwar decade and fostered the liberationist sexual ethics of the late 1960s and 1970s."

My mother and I had an informal, two person book club for years, I'd love to discuss this book with her.

Here's a link...

http://notchesblog.com/2016/04/05/sex-on-the-home-front

Driving Forces

I read a long article yesterday about self-driving cars. The Google test car in the picture has no steering wheel or pedals, the technology takes you for a ride. I don't think the goal is for you to have one of these in your garage. It would be more like a subscription service, need to take a trip to the store, call up the car service, the car shows up, takes you to the store, makes what ever other stops you need to make and brings you home and it disappears until you need it again.

There is sensational automation in new cars today, automatic braking, adaptive cruise control, warning signals in the rear view mirrors, lane centering and all kinds of warning systems. My Grand Cherokee Overland Summit has all of those with the exception of lane centering. The automatic braking has saved my ass at least once. The side mirror set up eliminates every blind spot. The adaptive cruise control is great on the Freeway and for long trips.

It's funny how quickly you get used to the electronic aids to driving, I don't think I could live without a back up camera anymore.

Lane centering devices allow you to drive hands free already...

Tesla has test driven a car from San Francisco to Seattle hands free on I-5.

My Corvette had "heads up" technology, I miss that-a lot. It had a wide range of selections for the windshield display.

Uber is involved in driverless technology, their reason? It will eliminate their one expense, human drivers. The trucking industry is also doing research on driverless systems for over the road trucks. Their reason? No drivers to pay.

There are some big issues with all this technology, if the no steering wheel, no pedal Google car gets in an accident, who's at fault? If there is a glitch in the electronics and you're at sleep behind the wheel and get stopped for speeding is it the car's fault or yours? The biggest question is, who owns the data from the car? You or the manufacturer? Insurance companies have already pulled data from automotive ECUs and used it to determine fault for accidents. The car convicted it's owner. What about hacking?

Think about this. I took my Mercedes AMG in for service, when I picked the car up. The service manager laughed and said, "I see you drove it 151 mph." I said, "How the hell do you know that?" he said "The car's computer told me."

My black C-6 Corvette's computer hides another secret of mine, 168mph. The C6, other than our Volt got the best gas mileage of any car I've owned. Example, 85mph, 1850 RPM in 6th gear, 33 mpg. At 70 it was just north of 35mpg. The new Vettes with 4-6-8 technology get close to 40 on the highway. If I kept my foot out of it in town, I was never less than 20mpg.

I love to drive, I don't like to commute and I don't like to drive for hours on long stretches of Interstate highways. Give me a piece of road like Highway One in Big Sur or the Million Dollar Highway in Colorado and I'm there, alert and behind the wheel. The rest of the time, I'll take all the automation I can get.

Don't Get Fooled Again.

The other night when Chris Matthews pushed Trump on Choice, The Donald got lost. The other two Republicans waffled, Ted Cruz said of course a woman wouldn't be punished, so did John Kasich. Never the less they both want to ban abortion, using the word "ban" is a softer way of saying illegal.

If abortion is illegal, there would have to be a law against it. How would you write a law that has no penalties? None of the Republican candidates have an answer for that question, because the issue, until the other night, hasn't come up. The Pro-Life people have been used as a useful voting bloc. Republicans get them all riled up with promises about getting rid of Roe v Wade and the Pro Life people vote for them. Useful tools.

If abortion is against the law, every pregnancy would have to be monitored from conception to birth. Who would do the monitoring of every pregnant woman in America? The cops? Would there be a Federal department created to do the monitoring or would it be left to the states?

In 2015 there were 3,999,386 children born in the US. Think about that number because it's obvious the Republican Presidential candidates haven't.

All three talk about education, of the three only Kasich, as the governor of Ohio,  has had to deal with education directly. When Kasich took office Ohio had the 5th best schools in America, He initiated his "reforms" and now Ohio schools are ranked 23rd. Good job. Kasich wants to get rid of the US Department of Education, probably to duck the monitoring and ranking of student success. Trump and Cruz agree, the Department of Education has to go along with those nasty, unhappy, overpaid teachers..

Ted Cruz wants to abolish the IRS, make the tax codes simpler and easy to use, of course he also wants to lower rates on the highest incomes. Somebody needs to ask the "Tailgunner Ted" who is going to collect the new, lower, simpler and easier taxes if we have no IRS. Is he going to create a new department? From scratch?

The pundits all say Trump is a "New Kind" of candidate, he is not. All three are peddling the same old Republican orthodoxy the party has been selling since Reagan.

If you want to know what the US would look like and be like with Republicans controlling all three branches of government take a peek at Kansas and Louisiana... .

http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2016/02/kansas_state_budget_situation.html

Those two states aren't alone.

These fcking people drive me crazy!