Monthly Archives: October 2008

Writer’s note: The following was written in 2007 and refers to a 2006 award. I recently concluded my 33rd year of race announcing.

Last September, I received a hospitality award from the Quad-Cities Convention and Visitors Bureau (QCCVB) in honor of my more than three decades of weekly stock car race announcing in the area.

This season marks my 32nd year of announcing races. My thanks to Joe Taylor and the rest of the QCCVB folks.

I have handed out a lot of awards to others over my years as a racing official but, not surprisingly, have not won very many myself. One big exception, of course, was the Quad-Cities Racing Connection’s Oscar, which I received in 2001 for my “outstanding support and contribution to auto racing.” There is no finer honor than being recognized by your peers.

The QCCVB award was special, too. They handed out a lot of awards that September night, so there was no time for acceptance speeches. Had I been able to give one, though, I would have told everyone that I was sharing the award with my wife Sherry, who, until they were grown, stayed home raising our four children while I was gone 40 hours a week at mu full-time job and two and sometimes three nights a week announcing races.

She also took racing results phone calls from area tracks from 1973 to 1990 for my “Around the Track” radio show. Remember, there was no e-mailing or faxing results back then. And the mail wasn’t fast enough.

Had I had the chance, I also would have told the QCCVB audience that I have been a stock car racing fan since I was a child growing up near the Mississippi Valley Fairgrounds. You can’t be a youngster living near a race track, hearing the roar of those racing engines, without being attracted to them.

Most of my young buddies back in the 1960s wanted to drive a stock car someday. But what I wanted most was to be a track announcer like my idol, the late Paul Liebbe. Some of those “kids” I hung around with — Gary Webb is one example — got their wish and became race drivers. And I got mine as well.

Over my 31 racing seasons as an announcer I think I’ve seen it all. The thrill of victory. The agony of defeat. And so much in between. And I’ve had the pleasure of telling all of those stories to racing fans in the Quad-Cities and elsewhere at a number of tracks.

But the best part by far has been working with and getting to know many ofracing’s weekend warriors — the drivers, crews and their families. In most cases, they are some of the finest people you’d ever hope to meet.

Friends often ask me when I’ll quit announcing, and I really don’t have an answer. I discovered a long time ago that the real joy in life comes from being on the trip, not in arriving at the destination. And I’m still enjoying the trip! So let’s go racing!

Copyright March 26, 2007. This is an excerpt from an “On Track” column that appeared in Quad-Cities Racing Connection, Iowa.

Stranded!

My wife, Sherry, and I were among those motorists who were stranded in northern Iowa by a winter storm that resulted in treacherous roads on President’s Day, Monday, Feb. 18.

But luckily we didn’t end up in the median or in a ditch like lots of drivers we encountered.

It started out as a weekend visit with our son, Dane, and his wife, Casey, at their Minneapolis home. (Another son, Clint, and his fiance, Lisa, also live in Minneapolis. But they were in northern Minnesota at her parents’ cabin the weekend of our visit.)

We hit the road about 6:30 Saturday morning, taking the Avenue of the Saints, which is without doubt the best route between here and there.

We knew a winter storm was expected to hit Iowa Saturday night and Sunday morning, but we’d be in the Twin Cities before then. And we hoped conditions would improve in time for our drive back home Monday afternoon.

Besides, I thought to myself. Weather forecasts are often wrong—maybe we’ll luck out and the storm will fizzle out.

Our weekend visit with Dane and Casey was enjoyable. One of the highlights was a Sunday trip to nearby Stillwater, Minn. It’s a quaint hillside town with a riverside business district packed with antique stores and other shops in beautiful old brick buildings.

We left Dane and Casey’s house about 9:30 Monday morning for a stroll through the Mall of America before heading home.

Blending in with the morning mall walkers, we had already walked by a number of the varied stores in the four-story shopping complex by the time they opened their doors at 10.

By about 1:30 we’d pretty much toured the entire mall, and we’d had all the walking, gazing and shopping we could handle. We had lunch at the mall and were on I-35 by about 2:30 that Monday afternoon, headed home. We had no idea what an adventure awaited us.

Sherry and I have traveled a lot in our nearly 39 years of marriage. We’ve been lost in every mjor American city. We’ve had breakdowns, flat tires and overheated engines, and we’ve and floated along after accidently driving onto a flooded street. We’ve outraced tornadoes and have been caught in blizzards once or twice and in freezing rain and on icy roads many times.

But that Monday afternoon experience on the Avenue of the Saints won the award for the longest distance we’ve traveled in deplorable conditions.

We were driving our large conversion van because we’d happily moved some of Dane’s childhood possessions from our attic to his.

The Twin Cities were frigid while we were there, but they received only a dusting of snow despite the wintry mix Iowa got late Saturday and into Sunday.

But skies turned cloudy and there was a stiff west wind when we headed toward home, and it never let up. Our first sign of problems ahead was a flashing sign on a two-wheel Minnesota DOT trailer on the I-35 shoulder just south of Albert Lea, Minn., warning of icy roads ahead.

Wherever there were no hills, trees or buildings adjacent to the roadway to block the strong wind, it blew snow across all four lanes, causing whiteout conditions and long patches of ice.

That meant we’d have clear, dry pavement for a while. Then, without warning, we’d encounter many feet where all the traffic lanes were, basically, skating rinks. At those places, there were often up to a dozen vehicles—cars and jack-knifed semis—scattered in ditches or the median, some upside down. Most had been there for a while because they had been tagged by police and had snow drifting around them. But some were newcomers.

A rear-wheel drive van buffeted by the wind is not the most stable vehicle to be in during times like that, so we drove down the clear stretches of interstate at a reduced speed so we’d have no trouble slowing down even more in time for the icy spots.

Some drivers, though, were much more daring. While we and most other drivers drove at a cautious 50 mph on the clear stretches of highway, some cars and semis zipped around us in the passing lane going much faster.

Many continued to zoom by us when we slowed to as little as 15 mph on the stretches of glare ice.

I remember one shiny, black late-model pickup truck in particular. It was towing an empty flatbed trailer and going way too fast for conditions in my opinion when it passed us on a good stretch of road after we’d crossed the border into Iowa.

Several miles ahead, at an icy spot, some people were milling about on the sides of the interstate. It was obvious that some of them had just slid off into ditches, and other motorists had stopped to assist them.

That flatbed trailer that had been attached to the black pickup caught my eye. Separated from the truck, it was on the outside shoulder, facing the wrong way. Then I saw the truck that had been pulling it. It was upside down in the right ditch about 50 feet away. That must have been some ride!

We forged ahead, slowly and cautiously, hoping for improved conditions. We also hoped those passing us wouldn’t crash while doing so, taking us with them. For a while we followed Iowa DOT trucks that were plowing and spreading salt. But they were not very effective—it was too cold for the salt to work. Besides, more blowing snow covered it as soon as it left the spreader.

By the time we reached Charles City, Iowa, on this tense, white-knuckle, journey in slow motion, we were worn out. The wind was still whistling from the west, the roads were still bad and it was getting dark. The van needed fuel, and we were still 173 miles from home. That’s three hours under normal conditions but perhaps five hours that day.

In our younger years, we might have forged ahead. But on that nasty Monday, we decided to stay in Charles City and finish our trip home on Tuesday.

Not far from Highway 218, we stumbled upon a clean and inexpensive little motel, the Hometown Inn, owned by Don and Shirley Holm. It’s my kind of place — $51 a night including tax and you park right outside the door to your room.

On Tuesday, we were up early but decided to delay our trip until 10 a.m. to give crews more time to deal with the icy roads. The wind had died down and it was sunny but still dangerously cold.

After enjoying the motel’s complimentary breakfast and chatting with Don and Shirley (she’s a teacher whose classes had been cancelled that day because of the weather), it was time to leave.

But when I turned the ignition key on the van, the starter merely clicked. It wouldn’t turn the engine over.

The battery is fairly new, and I didn’t think that was the problem. But Don graciously brought out his jumper cables and insisted we try to jumpstart the van with his pickup truck. But all I got was a click—the engine still wouldn’t turn over.

“Maybe the starter motor is frozen,” Don said. “Sometimes they get moisture in them, and they freeze. I’ll put on an old coat, slide under the van and tap the starter with a hammer.”

I protested, saying we had Triple A road service and would call them. But he insisted. Moments later Don was underneath the van on his back. After a few well-placed taps from his hammer, I turned the key and the van started right up.

After offering our profound thanks and saying our goodbyes to Don and Shirley Holm, we were once again headed for home.

The roads were still bad in many places but slightly better than they had been the day before.

“Maybe we should make our future visits to Minneapolis in the summer months,” I suggested to my wife.

“Yes, maybe we should,” she said.

Copyright Feb. 25, 2008. This “Everyday People” column appeared in The North Scott Press, Eldridge, Iowa.

For us, another spring break trip is history.

Sherry teaches, so she has the week before or after Easter off each year. They used to call it Easter vacation. But now, in this politically correct keep-religion-out-of-school-so-you-don’t-make-atheists-angry age, they call it spring break.

I take five vacation days at the same time and, for the last half-dozen years or so, we’ve chosen a different city or region to visit during each spring break.

In the past we’ve toured places like New Orleans, the Great Northwest, San Antonio, San Diego, Chattanooga and the Colonial Williamsburg area. This year we traveled to the New England states of Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine.

Though Sherry and I always look forward to arriving home after a week on the road, unpacking is never quite as much fun as preparing for a trip and actually taking it.

When you arrive home, there are suitcases to unpack — we always seem to take more clothes than we need — and dirty clothes to launder. Packing is fun. Unpacking is work.

There are AAA Tour Guides, state road maps and travel brochures to deal with. We have a digital camera full of photos to print.

There is a week’s worth of mail to go through. The junk mail will quickly go into the trash, the credit card offers will get shredded and the bills will go into a stack for eventual payment.

There is a week’s worth of newspapers to read, too. Sure, they’re full of old news now, but we’re curious people; we want to know what we missed.

There’s garbage to put out at the curb. And a refrigerator to restock. And it will take time getting used to the quiet.

We used to have dogs and cats waiting to greet us when we arrived home. But they’re all gone now. Our remaining pets are a rabbit and some goldfish. They’re taken care of by a housesitter in our absence, so they don’t much care when we leave or when we get home.

And, of course, there are jobs to return to on Monday. We’re happy to be employed, but returning to work after a week of vacation is a shock to the system that one doesn’t look forward to.

I find preparing for our annual spring trip, on the other hand, lots of fun.

We could have a travel agent plan our trip, but I do all of that because I get a thrill out of it. First we choose a place to visit. Then in my spare time for weeks in advance of our trip, I use travel books, maps and the Internet to study the destination, sites of interest, lodging possibilities, the highways, the airports, the airline prices and the rental car prices.

Then I carefully develop a daily travel plan, buy the plane tickets and book a rental car to use while there. I’m no Peter Greenberg, but by talking to people smarter than me, doing lots of research and sure, making some mistakes over the years, I’ve learned a lot about travel planning.

To maintain some flexibility in the number of miles we’ll need to travel each day, I book advance lodging only for every other night or so.

The remaining lodging sites are booked via our laptop computer during the trip when I have a better idea where we’ll be on a given night.

This year we stayed in some motels, an 1800s inn and two bed-and-breakfasts.

All of the lodging sites I choose offer a complimentary breakfast. We generally skip lunch, then eat a full dinner at a place of our choice. That saves money and time. It also helps us return home weighing no more than when we left.

But now it’s all over. It’s back at home and back to work. My travel planning skills are on hold until next spring. All we have now are memories, photographs and, of course, the bills to pay.

Copyright March 30, 2008. This “Everyday People” columned appeared in The North Scott Press, Eldridge, Iowa.

“It’s a mean ol’ world. We’ve all got to live our lives. There’s one thing certain: Ain’t none of us gonna get away from here alive,” sang rock and roll legend Chuck Berry on Feb. 13. “While I’m here, I’m goin’ to keep pickin’ my tunes. Because I love what I’m doin’, and I hope it don’t end too soon.”

An appreciative audience, made up of men and women of all ages, cheered.

Berry, 81, was performing — as he does regularly — to a couple hundred people crammed into the Duck Room in the basement at Blueberry Hill (blueberryhill.com), a St. Louis restaurant and bar.

I was there at the invitation of my son Brendan, who lives in nearby St. Charles. He wanted me to see a live performance of this rock icon, a 1986 inductee into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame, before it’s too late.

No one person is credited as the inventor of rock and roll music, but Berry (chuckberry.com) is referred to by many as the “Father of Rock and Roll.”

The Hall of Fame says “Berry laid the groundwork for not only a rock and roll sound but a rock and roll stance.”

Charles Edward Berry was born Oct. 18, 1926, to a middle class family in St. Louis.

A beautician by day in the early ’50s, Berry, whose idol was Nat King Cole, led a popular blues trio at night. He befriended Muddy Waters, who sent him to meet the head of Chicago-based Chess Records.

Berry’s first single, “Maybellene,” was released Aug. 20, 1955. It sailed to number 5 on the Billboard chart.

He later wrote and performed “Johnny B. Goode,” “Sweet Little Sixteen,” “Rock and Roll Music,” “Roll Over Beethoven” and scores of other hit songs.

Oddly enough, though, the only Berry tune to ever hit number 1 was his novelty song, “My Ding-a-Ling,” in 1972. It knocked Michael Jackson’s “Ben” out of the top spot.

Accompanied by his small band, Berry, who in 1985 was given a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Grammy Awards as “one of the most influential and creative innovators in the history of American popular music,” sang many of his hits at Blueberry Hill.

Dressed in a red sequin shirt that sparkled in the spotlights, dark dress slacks, a bolo tie and a mariner’s cap covering white hair, Berry entertained for about an hour. He even did his trademark duck walk at one point for old times’ sake. Those of us who stood just 10 or 15 feet away from him knew we were in the presence of a legend.

During the instrumental portion of many of those tunes, Berry would chat with the audience.

“Where’s my lawyer?” he asked during one tune. Then he pointed to a man up front and introduced him as his attorney.

“Give him a big round,” said Berry, who’s had some well-documented legal problems over the years, including a five-month sentence for income tax evasion just a month after entertaining President Jimmy Carter on June 1, 1979, at the White House.

“If you ever get in trouble, he’ll put you right where I am,” said Berry of his smiling barrister.

Then, having forgotten which of his many songs he’d been singing at the time, Berry asked of his audience, “Why don’t you all tell me what I was singin’?”

Folks shouted out the answer and he was back in action, never missing a lick on his guitar.

Berry took requests and sang one hit after another that cold February night, sometimes making small talk between the songs: “Are we going to be able to put our Rams in the Super Bowl?” and “Isn’t the boy doin’ good? The young boy. I’m talking about Barack Obama.”

Despite being an octogenarian, Berry performs monthly at Blueberry Hill. Why?

“When I play here, I feel like I’m home,” he said at one point. The crowd roared in approval.

“We love you!” someone shouted.

Will Chuck Berry be slowing down anytime soon? I don’t think so. According to his Website, he should have just concluded a multi-city European tour.

Copyright March 31,2008. This “Everyday People” columned appeared in The North Scott Press, Eldridge, Iowa.

I know. You’ve had it by now with Iowa caucus stories, but please tolerate just one more because it has a strange twist. It comes to me from Ed Fallon, a former Iowa state representative who ran for governor in 2006 and is now running for the U.S. House District 3 seat.

“In my caucus, a handful of Kucinich supporters were not viable,” says Ed, a Democrat. “I laid out my case why John Edwards should be their second choice. A young gal explained her rationale for Obama. After 20 minutes of haggling, a flustered Kucinichite threw up her hands and said their group would caucus for whichever candidate’s representative won a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors.

“So, like two gladiators, Obama’s champion and I strode forward to battle, best out of three. I’d done a lot to prepare for this year’s caucus but never imagined I’d have to hone my Rock, Paper, Scissors skills.”

Ed says youth prevailed. “I lost, but our Edwards group remained viable, and the delegates were split evenly among Clinton, Obama and Edwards.”

He adds: “Quirky stories like this are the fun stuff caucus folklore is made of.“

***

Breathtaking! That’s the best word I can think of to describe MacGillivray Freeman’s acclaimed film, “The Alps,” showing through May 15 on the six-story tall screen at the Putnam Museum’s IMAX Theatre (Putnam.org).

The film was screened to a select IMAX audience late last year as part of the “Everyone’s a Critic IMAX Film Series,” and I’m not surprised that it took top honors then as “QC’s Choice Film.”

“The Alps”(alpsfilm.com) tells the true story of mountaineer and journalist John Harlin III and his successful September 2005 attempt to scale the deadly North Face of the Eiger, a steep Alps peak that had taken the life of his father, mountain climbing legend John Harlin II, nearly 40 years earlier.

You’ll find yourself on the edge of your seat at this flick, often holding your breath, as Harlin III and two fellow climbers, a married couple, inch their way 6,000 feet — nearly straight up — the ice-incrusted black limestone of what may be Europe’s deadliest mountain.

You’ll witness some tense moments. One is when Harlin slips and becomes airborne for a moment before the climbers’ ropes save him from a fall to certain death.

The trio reach the top three days and two nights after starting their ascent.

The close-up shots on the big screen of this endeavor will make you feel like you’re one of the climbing team. Footage of the villages and scenery of Switzerland, where the climb takes place, sets the stage for the big adventure.

Seeing “The Alps” won’t likely make you want to take up mountain climbing as a hobby. But you’ll probably have a little more respect for those who have. And when this majestic 40-minute film is over, you might be inclined to track down a copy of Harlin’s memoir, “The Eiger Obsession: Facing the Mountain that Killed my Father,” published last spring by Simon and Schuster.

***

So what are you afraid of? According to the January issue of Popular Science magazine, a survey of American adults points out that:

·     50 percent have ophiophobia, a fear of snakes.

·     36 percent have achrophobia, a fear of heights.

·     27 percent have arachnophobia, a fear of spiders.

·     18 percent have aviophobia, a fear of flying.

***

This is the time of year most of us look ahead. Though I don’t make New Year’s resolutions, because I don’t keep them, I have decided to exercise more in 2008 than I did in 2007.

My wife claims the only exercise I get right now is jumping to conclusions and flying off the handle.

But I found some other exercises I may try this year:

·     Climbing the walls.

·     Dragging my heels.

·     Grasping at straws.

·     Tilting at windmills.

·     Spinning my wheels.

·     Jumping the gun.

·     Passing the buck.

·     Kicking myself.

·     Pushing my luck.

·     Stretching the truth.

·     Running amok.

Copyright Jan. 16, 2008. All rights reserved. This ” Everyday People” column appeared in The North Scott Press, Eldridge, Iowa.