Monthly Archives: February 2018

50 years in 50 days Day 32… Hoosiers

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While I have not gotten into the gym as often I wish I had, the North Harrison High School Cougars basketball team plays tomorrow in a sectional game that we are hosting and I just know good things are to come.  I feel good about the Cougars’ chances.  I think they can do it.  In the games that I have seen them play, they have been an impressive bunch.

Indiana high school basketball.  There is still nothing like it.  I believe that.  I was not a proponent of class basketball.  If you are, good for you.  I have seen both sides of it.  I worked at class A school, Medora, the smallest of the small save Cannelton, and I know hearts were broken when it meant the end of the Seymour Sectional for Jackson County schools Seymour, Brownstown, Crothersville, and Medora.  That was the place to be.  I covered all that in earlier posts when the Lady Cats went calling twice to Seymour in the regular season and then in the Sectional.  Don’t get me started.

“Welcome to Indiana basketball.”

That is my favorite line in the movie Hoosiers.  Coach Norman Dale says that to himself as he is about to enter the gym for his first game with the fictional Hickory Huskers.  What a team.

You can only understand this team picture in its fullness if you live in the state of Indiana.     I believe that.  This football guy has that picture in a frame!

Indiana High School Basketball.  I have had a few good memories with it.

When I was seven I was there when Jim Brown hit the “shot heard round the county”.  Jim played for Brownstown Central and the Braves were playing against county rival Seymour Owls in December 1975.  Jim put one up from the baseline as time was drawing to a close.  Braves 61 Owls 60.  I’m still glad I was there.  I saw Jim last week.  He is a dear friend.

When I was a kid at North Harrison we played in the Floyd Central Sectional and that was always dominated by the home team…Floyd.  In 1976 the North Harrison Cougars won the Floyd Central Sectional.  That was a great feat.

In the mid-1980s North Harrison moved sectional locations.  They went west to Crawford County and found much success. Starting in 1985, my junior year, NHHS won 6 consecutive sectional titles.  They won another in 1996.  That was the last one.  My old friend Ken Oppel was the coach of that team.  Ken was one of the good guys.

So class basketball came.  I equated it to bye bye Hoosier Hysteria Pie.  That is a guy about to turn fifty talking.  The kids today, you know, the ones actually playing the game, don’t know any better.  That is the way it should be.  They just play the next game.  You and I would too.

Memories…

This is true.  I know some of you won’t believe it…but it is true.  I owe it to my friend the late Jim Stewart to tell you about it.

Jim Stewart was a coaching/educating legend.  He is no longer with us.  He hired me at Medora in 1998 and we quickly became friends with an unbelievable understanding.  He was in charge.  I was not.  I gave him everything I had.  He deserved it.

Jim Stewart worked at thirteen different schools.  Corydon Central was one of them.  He was the head basketball coach and teacher there in the early 1970s.  He worked all over the state of Indiana.  He coached in more gyms than any other coach in the history of the game, I have no doubt.  Why did he work for 13 schools?  He was a stand-up guy.  He had conviction.  He would not compromise his beliefs.  Jim stood about five feet six inches tall.  There was no one bigger in the room, I assure you.

When Jim was coaching his first game at Medora, in a scene cut from the movie Hoosiers, some fans and parents were concerned about how things were going.  They were huddled up near the top of the bleachers and they delegated one of their membership to go talk to the coach about how things were going and that the team needed a different defensive scheme.

This happened on the sideline as the teams were warming up before the second half:

Delegate:  Coach, we think your defense isn’t working.

Coach Stewart:  Well, we are not the coach.  I am.  And who is we, anyway?

Delegate:  Me and my bunch up there.

He pointed to a group of parents and fans looking down on the scene with their arm crossed and waiting for an answer to their request of a defensive change.

Coach Stewart:  I have an answer for them.  Here’s what you need to do.  You need to go back up there and tell them all to kiss my ass.  I am the coach.  They’re not.  So watch the game.

It was the best thing he could have said.  They got it.  He was in.

Jim Stewart worked at Medora Schools as the high school principal and head basketball coach for 12 years.  It was his longest tenure at any school he worked and he told me on more than one occasion that it was his best stop along the way.  I learned so much from him.  He was the best.  I miss him so much.

One more Medora story.  I was teaching English in 1999 at Medora.  One of the basketball players was in my class.  He was a junior.  That Friday night we were playing Dugger.  Dugger had a player that to this day is the best high school basketball player I have ever seen on a court. His name is Brody Boyd.  He played for the Iowa Hawkeyes when he left the gyms like Medora’s.  Anyway, this kid in my class was charged with guarding Boyd.  He told me he was going to shut him down.  In the third quarter, as I was doing the public address announcing at the game, my student was checking back into the game and here is what he said as he looked at me:

“He’s really lighting us up tonight.  I think he’s got 38 so far…”

I laughed into the mic.

NH Cougars Basketball…this is your time.  Go get it!

Speaking the rights…

Danny Johnson

 

 

 

 

 

 

50 years in 50 days Day 31 in Chicago

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It took us a long time but my dear wife, Carrie, and I finally made it to Chicago in 2007.  Of course there was a Moody Blues concert involved.  It nearly shames me to say that we went to Wrigley Field to see the Cubs play the Giants in the day and that night we saw The Moody Blues at The Chicago Theater.

I still remember getting off the bus at Clark and Addison, taking three steps and seeing Wrigley Field in front of me.  I was struck.  Then to walk in the place.  I wish I could locate the photos we took there.  I know they are out there somewhere.  It shames me even more that the Moodies show was almost anti-climactic after being in Wrigley Field for the first time.  I played a great deal of baseball when I was a kid.

Carrie and I took Chicago off this year.  The previous three of the last four years we went there to celebrate our anniversary.  The museums are great.  The food is great.  Frank Lloyd Wright is in Oak Park…or some of his stuff is.  Can’t go wrong there.  Last year it was warm.  The other years it was cold.

On The Navy Pier.

This was the same year we went to a Frank Lloyd Wright house not far from the field museum.  It was COLD.

It was the same day we went to look at the police station that was the made-up Hill Street Station on Hill Street Blues.  Hill Street Blues is still my all time favorite television show.  Again, I was “anxious” as we walked over to see the structure.  I know Carrie must have thought “it’s only a building”.  For me and my Dad it was common ground on Thursday nights when I was making my own way and our ground wasn’t always so common.

Walking up to see Captain Furrillo.  “Let’s be careful out there” was Sgt. Esterhaus’ line.

I think I was speechless.

One cool thing I can share, though I have not traveled it, is showing you where Route 66 starts and ends.  I have taken those photos.

Chicago not far from the Cloud Gate “Bean” along Michigan Avenue.

Santa Monica Pier.  I think I like this Pier better.

That is speaking the rights…

Danny Johnson

 

 

 

 

 

50 years in 50 days Day 30 Time Flies

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I can’t believe I am 30 days in to this endeavor of writing a post for 50 consecutive days leading up to my 50th birthday.

My mind is moving in 40 directions tonight.  North Harrison is on a 2 hour delay tomorrow and that is mind-boggling.  We were to start our ISTEP testing tomorrow.  The schedule is tight enough and now this.  It is what it is.

My dear wife, Carrie, and I saw a bald eagle not far off the road as we were travelling north on Corydon-Ramsey Road after church this morning.   I saw it in the field in the distance and thought…you gotta be kidding me.  That could only be a…  I didn’t say a word to Carrie until I was quite sure it was and it was.  The baldy was inspecting a dead deer int he field.

The Winter Olympics has wrapped up.   Hard to believe.  It goes too fast.  Kind of like writing 50 posts in 50 days.  I still have some recorded events to look back on that we could not stay up late enough for.

Speaking of not staying up late enough for.  Today marked the 7th day I have gone without a cup of coffee.  I usually drink that and plenty  more through the day.  The thing is last Monday I woke up with stomach troubles and I did not want anything…including coffee.  For whatever reason, I have not had a cup since.  I hope it works out.  I doubt it.

Right now, I just want to retire for the evening and that is what I shall do.

Speaking the rights on day 30…

Danny Johnson

50 years in 50 days Day 29… Luther

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As I type, Carrie and I have a visitor in the house.  His name is Hot Rod.  He belongs to our son Jarrett.  Hot comes over for a visit now and again.

I went to the studio today to record a new song and it went quite well.  Jeff Carpenter and his family have a new dog I was introduced to today for the first time.  I had heard about this new addition.  They lost Harley the puggle some time ago and got a new dog.  He is a husky-shepherd mix.  He has beautiful blues eyes.  Loki is a friendly dog.  He and Hot Rod would probably hit it off.

All this dog talk makes me want to relive a column I wrote around 2006 for the now defunct Capitol News.  I was fortunate enough to write a column for that paper and I truly enjoyed it.  One a week is a piece of cake compared to 50 in 50 days for sure.  Still this has been fun.

Last weekend Carrie and I drove through Bedford, Indiana and I thought of the late Norm Taylor.  He was a counselor at the North Lawrence Career Center at BNL High School.  We sent students from Medora there for classes.  Norm loved the piece I wrote about Luther.  He’d ask, “How’s old Luther?”  He was always in earnest.

Norm died suddenly in late November 2012.  Luther left us Labor Day Sunday 2010.

This photo was taken not long before Luther was gone.  He looks tired.

So here is that column from 2006.   I still like it.

Luther

 

Don’t be so morbid, my wife, Carrie, will tell me.  I’ll tell her I just can’t help it.  Do the math, honey, I’ll impart.

When the math is complete, the number is 70.  Pro-rated over the course of the year, it’s more like 76.  Translation: my dog is getting old.

His name is Luther.  He was adopted from the Floyd County Animal Shelter in March of 1996.  He was about eight weeks old when we invited him into our home.  The very adoptive act was a minor miracle to me.

I wasn’t too hot on procuring an animal that I would take home and share my environs with.  Animals make particular smells, especially during the housebreaking stage.  I wasn’t thrilled at the prospects of smelling these odors.  In fact, the day Carrie, and our boys Jarrett and Cody, and I went to the animal shelter, I’m not so sure I wasn’t just going through the motions to shut them up without the intentions of really following through with taking a stinky dog home.

Carrie had grown up with a dog around the house.  I had two dogs growing up.  One was a beagle puppy named Rebel.  I loved that dog.  I also remember the disappointment I felt the day my Dad told me Mom ran over Rebel as she was backing out of our garage on her way to work. I was five years old at the time.  Dad went on to tell me Rebel was given a proper burial in the garden.

I still have a picture of Rebel and me.  I cherish it.

Daisy was my other dog.  Another Beagle.  She survived getting hit by a car and wound up on three legs.  She did not, however, survive being hit by the train.  Daisy was a good dog.  I don’t, however, believe intelligence was on her side.

My dog history mattered not when I laid eyes on Luther.  He was ten kinds of pitiful. But did he ever grab my heart when I first looked at him.

Luther is a mutt by some standards and a mixed breed by other standards.  I call him a corgi-retriever.  He has a sawed off body and the thick build of a corgi and he has a face of a golden lab retriever…or a reasonable facsimile thereof.  I have a picture of Luther laying on the floor of a hallway in our house pinned to my bulletin board at work.  “Man, he’s a big one, isn’t he…” is a comment I got one day.  I went on to explain that Luther is a short dog in a short hallway.  Pictures can be quite deceiving.

In the ten years we have had Luther he has become a celebrity.  Gus Stephenson and I lived in the Briarwood subdivision North of New Salisbury at one time.  To this day Gus asks about Luther often.  Gus, an avid runner I am prone to calling Forrest Gus, was the only one who ever made Luther bark incessantly.  If Gus showed up at the house, Luther would bark.  If Luther saw Gus running down the road, he would bark.  And I’m telling you he would really turn loose.  How anything that small can be that loud I’ll never know.  It got to the point that Gus would call me and let me know when he was going running so I could close the blinds of the bay window.

When I talk to Mick Rutherford on the phone, he lives in Sellersburg and we see each other much less than we ever planned, he will ask how Luther is.  So will so many of my other friends and family, even Aunt Barbara in Jackson, Mississippi.

This year has been a tough one for Luther.  He’s had allergy problems and it really brought him down for a while.  He’s had to take medication and he falls asleep watching the Food Network and he always liked watching that channel.  But, like all of us, he presses onward.

Carrie insists that we will get another dog when Luther is gone.  And I mean the word “insist” in the calmest of connotations.  But, man, I just don’t know.  I don’t want to think about life without Luther.  Mealtimes would be lonely without him hovering below the table working each of us over until he gets a scrap.  And I don’t think I’m quite prepared to not have to watch my step in the yard.

Carrie also nixed my idea of having Luther stuffed when he gives out.  She didn’t think that was very reasonable.  In the meantime, I’ll just watch my step in the yard and love every minute of it.

 

Speaking the rights…

Danny Johnson

50 years in 50 days Day 28 Practice

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I have been giving these guys a bit of a workout this evening.

Tomorrow I will go to Jefferson Carpenter’s Alfresco Place Recording studio in Louisville and put them to good use.  I am practicing two new songs that I am laying down solo tomorrow.

The worst report I can give is that of a guitar player who has not been playing the guitar enough.  I don’t have the sturdy calluses on the ends of my fingers that I once head.  A player who plays everyday can’t feel the ends of his fingers.  Ironically, that is a very good feeling if you love to play.

I have enjoyed the strap being over the neck and am having fun with it.  What finds its way out never ceases to amaze me.  In thirty minutes time I can go from having nothing to suddenly having something I can carry with me the rest of my life and enjoy.  That is special and don’t think I don’t know it.  But I am like anyone else who does this in earnest, I am looking for the next sound and the next line and the next song.  I know it’s out there somewhere.

Speaking the music rights.

Danny Johnson

50 years in 50 days Day 27 New York, New York

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I didn’t hear Bill Joel singing “New York State of Mind” today on the radio.  For what reason, I don’t know, I thought today about two trips my dear wife, Carrie, and I made into New York City in consecutive summers….2014 and 2015.

Both times we were staying in western Mass. a place they call The Berkshires.  It is a peaceful, historical, and relaxing place.  Full of nice folks, we still go back.  In 2014 we decided to head to The Big Apple.  We had tickets to see David Letterman and that was a thrill.  Being in The Ed Sullivan Theatre where The Beatles started the British Invasion was pretty cool.  The show was good too.  The place is very small.  No cameras allowed.

To get to NYC we had to drive to Poughkeepsie, New York some 70 mile to the Southwest.  We got on the train and it took us to Union Station an hour and a half later.

It was great.

In 2014 we walked until our feet bled.  I was in a pair of boat shoes with no socks.  Dumbest thing I ever did since I exploded one of those old red paper caps ( the ones we we put in cap guns as children) with my class ring on my desk in Mrs. Englehardt’s senior English class.  Yes, I was a senior in high school.  Mrs. E and I were pals.  She looked at me like I had lost my mind.  For a moment or two, maybe I did.

Anyway, Carrie and I must have walked 30 miles that day.  We saw all sorts of sights and places and we were in awe, we really were.  We spent time in Times Square and that was a blast.

We spent some time in Central Park and it was an amazing place.  John Stossel, the news man, was playing volleyball with some of his cronies and the ball got away from the game and landed at my feet.  I threw the ball back to Stossel and he said “Thank you.”

Carrie and me on a bridge in Central Park.

Yes in 2014 and 2015 I wore the same shirt to NYC and I still have that shirt and I will wear it again if we ever go back.  When I was a junior in high school I wore the same shirt every Monday the entire school year.  It was The Monday Shirt.

In 2015 we got to Union Station via Poughkeepsie and found our way to a tour bus we had scheduled.  We didn’t walk 30 miles.  And we got to see more stuff.  We went up the Empire State Building.  We went to the Statue of Liberty where I took what I still think is a cool picture.

She is an amazing sight.

We saw the Reflecting Pools at Ground Zero where the World Trade Centers stood before…well..you know. Names of victims are on the ledges.  Unreal.

I’d like to think we will make it back to The Big Apple one day.

Speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson

 

 

 

 

50 years in 50 days Day 26 Do You Believe in Miracles? YES!

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Few things are worth a triple dip.  This one is.  From the speaktherights archives from two years ago by way of a piece that ran ran in The Corydon Democrat fourteen years ago.

I never get tired of this story.  A team picture of this bunch is a fixture in my office.

MIRACLE and how fortunate I am to know it

While I was exercising today I watched a movie.  MIRACLE is the story of the 1980 USA Olympic Hockey Team and how they beat the Soviet Union team during those Olympic Games.  February 22, 1980 was the date.  An old friend of mine said, the last time I saw him, he was at may parents’ house delivering wood for our fireplace with another gent we knew.

We huddled around a TV screen that was reliant upon “rabbit ears” to provide the signal of we would be watching.  I can attest the screen was far from the pristine visions we see running across TVs in 2016.  Still, it was better than anything I have seen on television in a long time.

There was a great deal of snow on the ground today.  When it was time to go down to exercise, I looked for this movie.  It felt like the right thing to do.

It makes my head spin to think this movie was released 12 years ago come February 6th.  I can tell you I never tire of watching it.

I was fascinated by this game.  I was eleven years old when this game was played.  Having lived under the same roof with a high school football coach my entire young life at the time, I understood a few things about competition.  I knew a thing or two about underdogs and what they were up against.  As much as I remember the victorious celebration of the USA team, the impression that made the most impact on me was that of the disbelief on the faces and in the posture of the Russians.  They stood there leaning on their hockey sticks not understanding what was in front of them.  They were not programmed to realize they could lose.  They just stood there.

I look forward to watching this movie again.

I shared a piece of prose I wrote with the local paper that 2004 winter.  They were kind enough to print it.  It is still on their archives and about twice a year I look it up.  I read it and I am glad it saw the light of day.

In the column I make an inference to my speaking with Herb Brooks, the coach of the 1980 Olympic team.  I really did do just that.  I was writing a paper for a Sports history class. My subject was the 1980 USA Olympic Hockey Team. Coach Brooks was coaching the Utica Devils of the AHL at the time.  I can tell you I don’t know if I was ever more nervous on the telephone.

From 2004…

This actually ran in the paper on January 24, 2004, before the MIRACLE movie came out.

Tears for a ‘Miraculous’ time
I invested in a pair of sunglasses yesterday. I never wear the things no matter how sunny the hottest day in July may be, or how I may need them as I squint along the cut of the hill on Interstate 64 east after the sun has smiled on us all for a few minutes on a clear day. I don’t like to wear sunglasses. These days I just find myself putting on a pair trying to hide in case I am in public and a television is within eyeshot. There’s a television commercial for the new movie about the 1980 United States Olympic Hockey team called “Miracle,” and it is getting to me. The Miracle on ice. If you’re over 30, you remember it. If you’re over 35, you remember it well.My dear wife, lovely Carrie, will tell you that I am a sensitive man. I cry at weddings. I cry at funerals. I cry at movies. I shed quite a few tears when Brett Favre of the Packers threw his last interception in the playoffs against the Eagles.

My dilemma these days is that I find myself welling up with tears each and every time I see the commercial about this upcoming “Miracle” movie, which hits theatres on Feb. 6. The very idea makes me cry. I am one giant goose bump each time I see a replay of the last few seconds of that game played against the Soviet Union on Feb. 22, 1980. “Do you believe in miracles? YES!” was the exclamation from Al Michaels of ABC Sports. As God is my witness, the goose bumps are on me now as I type those words for the first time in my life. It all resonates. You just heard it, too.

That moment in time was the greatest American sports has ever known. Nothing compares to it. Oddly enough, as much as I love sports, I don’t like hockey. Icing is something that belongs on a cake. That’s what makes this so special in the minds of so many. We caught a glimpse of a game we didn’t understand and celebrated it for one major unifying reason we did understand. We beat the Russians. The Rooskies. The Reds. The Communists. USA. USA. USA…

The coach of that USA team was Herb Brooks. Herb died in a car accident this past year. A private man, Brooks was approached by a college student in the winter of 1992. The student was in a sports history class, and when term paper assignments were handed out, he got the 1980 Olympics. The student spent most of his energy and focus on the hockey team. At the time, Herb Brooks was coaching the Utica Devils, a minor league hockey team. He told the student he could read it all for himself. That it had all been said and done before. He suggested contacting the players because they played the game. The student went away from the conversation refreshed that Brooks came off the way he did. It seemed as if he thought his part in the play did not deserve the attention. That’s what I’ll always remember about Herb Brooks. And as the tears are flowing as I watch the “Miracle” on the big screen, I’ll stop and say thanks, Coach Brooks, I got an A on my paper.

In addition to my being very sensitive, my dear Carrie would also tell you I spend too much time looking back. I love the past. Not that it does much good. I just yearn for a simpler time. I see a simpler time when I look back at 1980. 1 see phones with cords on them. I see Mike Douglas and John Davidson and Gary Collins on talk show TV. I don’t see Maury or Sally Jessy or Jerry Springer. I see concert tickets that cost 10 bucks. I don”t see the Internet. I see album cover art. I see Bear Bryant. I see US vs. THEM, and I really get wistful.

On that rare occasion when my old cronies and I get together, we often talk about things we miss. Sports. Old girlfriends. Teachers. Cars. I usually bring up the Cold War. Face it. Things were much easier when it was US against THEM. US against the USSR. Two super powers. All these pipsqueaks running around creating havoc around the globe now never had a chance during the cold war. There just wasn’t room.

When Super Bowl XV was played on Jan. 25, 1981, we were five days removed from having our hostages set free from the American embassy in Tehran. The hostages were held there more than 400 days. The Louisiana Superdome, where the Super Bowl was played that year, was adorned with a yellow ribbon that was 80 feet long and 30 feet wide. Those yellow ribbons were everywhere. This year’s NCAA BCS Championship football game between LSU and Oklahoma was played in the same Superdome.

In this era of terror, the Superdome was accessible to fans only after they passed through a chain-link fence 40 yards from the stadium door. The four large parking garages around the dome were closed off. Concrete barriers were lined around the dome. Hundreds of police officers, federal agents and National Guard troops were on site and armed with assault rifles. There was no yellow ribbon for the American troops fighting and dying today.

That hockey game of 24 years ago was so important to us. It was US against THEM. We won a game that was a microcosm of the big picture. A cold war battle appropriately fought on ice. That hockey miracle is coming to the silver screen. Pass the crying towel, please. Or maybe I’ll just wait until it comes out on video. That way I won’t disturb anyone in the theater with my sobbing.

….I was indeed speaking the rights in January 2004.
Danny Johnson

50 years in 50 days Day 25 Sneaking one step up and two steps back

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I suppose we were still being fascinated by the possibilities of what computers would do some day back in 1992.

It hasn’t worked out too well, I can tell you.  My first impulse is to point out kids in school during down time in the building staring at their phones instead of having a good old fashioned conversation with their friends.  Oh, sure, there is still plenty of that too.  I suppose I am guilty here of what I heard a guy talking about social media wise.  He said folks are quick to complain and slow to compliment on social media.  I get that.

I just wish folks wouldn’t look at their phones while they are driving and I sometimes wish a kid three feet from another kid would stick their phone in their pocket and talk to their classmate.

I digress…back to 1992.

One thing about not feeling so well is I have a chance to sit on the couch to recuperate and mash through the TV channels.  I had an uncle in Shreveport who called the TV remote a “masher” as in mash the button to the next channel.  My uncle was confined to a wheelchair most of the time.  He needed a masher.

So I sit here and mash a bit.  I find ten minutes of this interesting and four seconds of that interesting and I keep mashing.  I came across a movie by Robert Redford called “Sneakers”.  We don’t have enough time to discuss all the intricacies of the plot here.  Bottom line is Redford and his merry men and one lady were trying to artfully acquire some computer info from the bad guy Ben Kingsley played.  Redford’s character and Kingsley’s character had been college pals who got into some trouble earlier in life.

Of course Redford gets the “black box” of info, just like he always gets the girl.

But what struck me was the final verbal back and forth between these two characters as Redford was trying to get away and Kingsley was trying to stop him.  This movie was made in 1992 and these folks were 26 years ahead of their time.  The exchange went like this as they were going back and forth over the device with Kingsley thinking he still possessed it :

Kingsley: “There’s a war out there old friend, a world war. And it’s not about whose got the most bullets.It’s about who controls the information. What we see.  What we hear.  How we work.  How we think.  It’s all about the information.” 

Redford: “If I were you I’d destroy that thing.”

I always liked Robert Redford.  He played a great Bob Woodward.  He played a Great Gatsby.

It was entertainment in 1992.  Well, we’re here now.

President Twitter.

CNN looking for every chance to pounce.

FOX NEWS sounding like the empowered “Pravda” of the United States for their President pal.

Russian meddling via the internet bots…whatever those things are.

The result is the finger pointing capitol of the world, wonder when all that started?

Press onward, I say.  And do it without so much tweeting.  We need to be better than that.

Speaking the rights…

Danny Johnson

 

50 years in 50 days Day 23… If the Shoe Fits

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I am embarrassed to say that when I got off the elliptical after 32 minutes and then hopped on the stationary bike for a mile, my feet felt great.  It has not worked out like that since last November 19th.  That is when I bought a new pair of athletic shoes that I wear both casually and to exercise in.  I have a few pairs of them I can put to use.  Or, should I say, I had.  I am going to have to start collecting again.

The old foot has gotten wider.  Is that what happens when you turn 50?  I felt like a fool while I did my exercising pain free in the foot today.  I am stubborn I suppose.  But, most of us are.

I went to my trusty Brooks dealer, Joe Kellum.  He sent my shoes back and I ordered another pair.  They are in.  They will be picked up and the difference will be paid for, as I ordered a “step up”, and then I will hand them off to my son Jarrett and tell him to run like wind in comfort.  They will fit him.

I had my foot measured on Friday.  I have gone from a standard D with to a EE.  Why can’t they just say E?  It is different and doesn’t make my foot sound so wide.  Oh well.  I don’t care.

In the photo above you will see my new Brooks shoe and an old one.  It is an old kicking shoe that I have held on to.  It is a Spot-bilt football kicking shoe.  This shoe kicked a football farther than any other shoe I have.  One day in Shreveport LA, I admit there was a slight breeze behind me, I was kicking at Captain Shreve Stadium, a large high school stadium…well I just looked it up.  It seats 12,000.  It is now called Lee Hedges Stadium.  Coach Hedges is a Shreveport Football Coaching Icon.  He was Terry Bradshaw’s high school coach at Woodlawn High School.  Coach Hedges coached at Captain Shreve for 18 years before he retired.  Well, he kind of retired.  In 1986 when I was regularly swinging my legs toward the uprights that summer, I ran into Coach Hedges.  He was coaching 9th graders.  I asked for some time with him.  He took me into the coach’s office and there we just talked football.  I told him I had a cousin that had played on a State Championship team at Woodlawn.  He was familiar with the name.  He was gracious, he was blunt and honest.  He was great.  His 217 victories in the Shreveport area are still tops in the region.  It is a place where you win or you pack.  I digress.

So on that Lee Hedges Stadium field in 1986 I kicked a football through the uprights farther than I ever had before.  I put the ball on the near forty yard line and took two steps.  I approached the ball and I gave it my all.  I am a straight-on kicker.  We are dinosaurs now.  On this day in August of 1986, I kicked a football over the goal post in two steps from 70 yards away.  I still remember what it felt like…and I still wish someone would have been out there with me to witness it.  Dewayne Clayton and Jimmy Martin were guys I kicked with now and again.  They were good guys.  They were not there this day, however.

I still look at that old Spot-bilt shoe and smile.

A shoe similar to it was used to kick a field goal against Clarksville in 1985 when I played for North Harrison that is still the longest one made in school history…all of 38 yards.  I will be 50 years old this football season and that record still stands.  I live for the night I see a North Harrison Cougar kick one 39, 40, or more.  It is time.  Mick Rutherford snapped that kick.  Kelly Samons held that kick.  We all hope it is bested.  It is time.

But on that night in Clarksville in 1985 and that afternoon at Lee Hedges Stadium in 1986 and this afternoon in 2018 as I made it flawlessly and painlessly through my cardio workout, well…the shoe fit.  I am so glad it did.

Speaking the rights…

Danny Johnson