I took this from turn 3 at Newkirk Track around Cook Field at Paoli High School yesterday. The place is a lovely sight to behold. The fact that I can look at it on more days than not now is a sincere reason for thanks.
We are all at the starting line of the most unusual and scary new school year any one of us can ever remember. In earnest, I hope we all make it. There are arguments from both sides and a few other corners, I suppose, about how things need to be. My hat is off to those charged with more leadership than I. The circumstances of 2020 were never in a syllabus or class outline in programs that dealt with school administration. This is as close to walking on the moon as we will ever know. The world is a different place.
Thanks to my colleagues at Paoli for helping me along in the early going of this place in time. I do appreciate you a great deal.
My memory has few rivals. I am speaking of my ability to recall and recollect with a great deal of accuracy. Though I love to put words and sentences together, numbers stick in my head. Ball game scores and dates hang with me for some reason.
Though I admit I am not as talented as I once was, there was a time whilst enrolling a student, that I could often look at their birth date and tell them what day they were born on. I had reference points in my head. Be a concert or a ball game, those were the two biggies.
I was asked what I miss the most about being “kept in” during this national and world tragedy that we are all living through. I miss the honest and calm interaction with people that we once had. Be it the virus that is hurting us or the political climate that wants to tear us apart, I miss folks just sitting in a room chewing the fat and just “being”.
In quiet times in my mind when I look around any room that I knew during better days, that is what I yearn for. I am prepared to deal with that reality, a longing for a more peaceful day that was not too long ago, at least as prepared as I think I can be. Somehow there seems to be a new level of lack of thought or threat from some direction that can still raise my brow and turn my head sideways like a beagle hound trying to figure out what in the world is going on here.
Young folks are dealing with more than I ever had to deal with. I feel guilty about that.
I wish I could take them through a time portal and land in a hay field and we are all pitching hay and chewing Levi Garrett as we try to hold a conversation over the hum of the tractor that is pulling the wagon we keep time with like a symphony. It is a beautiful movement. I raise my forearms from the keyboard I am typing on right now and wonder how they ever recovered. I was one of those stubborn so and so’s who did not want to wear a long sleeve shirt while pitching hay or straw or sticking tobacco. My forearms got ate up. I enjoyed every bit of it. Mind you I did wear long britches in the field. I did not compromise that. Lord it was hot on some of those days. And the best thing was we did not care. Back then 4 bucks an hour could buy a great deal of Levi Garrett I can tell you. And we were not without a cassette or two of Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” floating around. Those semoleons could also get us to a cool movie house for the 9:30 show if we hustled. We usually did.
In my office at school and in our home, there are photos of places my dear wife, Carrie, and I have been. In many of these photos we are in the shot. I did not expect to travel to as many places as we have over the years. It just turned out that way. One thing I have learned is that if you stop and over-analyze things too much, you may never get anywhere. I have trusted my gut instinct. I have listened intently for guidance. I have prayed a great deal. And more often than not, I have heard the words “go”. Or in the vernacular of Pastor Duke Lackey’s sermon titled “Do This”.
Some of those dates still stick in my memory year after year. I see the date on the morning paper and say to myself “In (inset the year) this (insert the occasion) happened”.
The last travel of any great significance Carrie and I engaged in was in December after Christmas. By this time in recent calendar years we have seen the North Carolina shore a couple of times and spent a couple weeks in New England taking in the cooler air that is kinder to my bothersome pipes. I see pictures of some of this travel and it looks a dream.
Dates stick out in my head. That is for sure. I was asked to share some of these. I told them if I did, there would be more here than we have time for. Do it anyway, we’ll get to it in more than one sitting if we have to. I will keep the culprit anonymous so you don’t have anyone to blame but me.
I wish I had kept all my ticket stubs. I got on a mean streak one day many years ago and tossed a bunch of stuff I probably thought I would never want to see again. That is all I think. But I am very glad I have held on to memories that I have talked about with friends and family lately. Good times. Good times.
I’ll tell you about a few of them in no particular order.
Carrie said she wanted to see Brett. I told her about Fall Break plans I made. She said let’s go see Brett Farve play. One of my friends said, “You’re a lucky man, Cheeze.” He’s right! Vikes won 33-31. Hauschka missed a field goal on the last play of the game.
The Moodies at The Gardens in 1988 for $15.50.
I took a hiatus from listening to others while I was finding my own sound from 1999 to 2002. By 2003 I was ready for another Moodies concert. They debuted songs from their new December holiday album which was their last original recordings.
Russell Harrell and I drove over to Champaign to see IU lose this one. Saw Anthony Thompson score his last touchdown. Jeff George lit the Hoosiers up 41-28.
In what lives as a special tradition to this day, my Aunt Barbara and I talking football, this is the ticket stub of the first game we went to in Jackson in 1989. Uncle Durwood passed away in 1988 to a brain tumor. Aunt Barbara and I have been pals ever since. I spoke with her Friday about the prospects of the new season and how Mississippi will have fun one day with Mike Leach at State and Lane Kiffin now at Ole Miss.
Eli Manning’s senior year. Cody and I went to Nashville. It was 96 degrees for the Jefferson-Pilot kickoff. 24-21 Rebs win on a LONG field goal. A good kicker can save some bacon for sure.
The last Ole Miss game Aunt Barbara and I attended. Eli threw for the most yards he ever had in a Rebel victory. 43-40 was the final. Had they played fifths instead of quarters, might not have worked out so well. The Rebs squandered a large lead.
I have said it before.Giving my Dad a chance to walk into the Rose Bowl and Notre Dame Stadium are highlights for me. I think he enjoyed it too.
Another story to relive. As we were listening to Paul sing “Hey Jude” I thought if only we could get all the folks throwing rocks at each other together to sing along with this, they’d stop throwing rocks. The next morning as we were leaving our hotel I got a call from Jarrett. Turns out while we were sing Hey Jude, he was in a Chinook over Iraq that crash landed with a little help. It was a long drive back home from Nashville.
The last Moody Blues concert we attended. I was 18 when I saw the first. 49 when I saw the last.
A stop over in Greensboro to see The Key. Alicia Keys. One of the best shows I have ever seen.
Me and my dear friend, Corner King Lincoln. This was our last cruise. The Moody Blues in Ft. Wayne. On August 26 that year, he left us.
The most significant game ever played in Bloomington with national implications. It was Penn State’s first visit to Indiana and it cost them the national championship. Chris Dittoe came in as the back-up quarterback, as I remember, and his mop up duty turned a 35-13 game into a 35-29 game. The Hoosiers scored on a fluke of a pass on the last play of the game and went for two and made it. This result was an eye test that cost a 12-0 Nittany Lions team a National Championship.
An awkward flyover by a military cargo plane changed me. I came to see a Bengals loss at the hands of Eli Manning.
This funky sideways flyover DID ME IN.
What I would give for a phone like we have now on this day. I married into a family of Dolphin Fans. Carrie’s Dad, her brother, and Jarrett and I went to see the Fins play the Colts. Had a great time.
Heard Brian Wilson sing a song I had never heard before at the Tanglewood Shed. Have not been so moved by a song since.
Talk about good times. Thank you, Bob Biddle. Ticket was given to me. 
I don’t know if I have ever seen such a mass of humanity.
I shocked Carrie with these as we were in Willamsburg, VA. She was working on school certifications and studying her butt off. I told her we were going to see Train. I knew she would like it. Well, I was blown away. We have seen them six times since, including two time in Saratoga Springs, New York.
Finally got my sister to see The Moody Blues!
This was the first time Carrie and I saw Justin Hayward play a solo show. It was on the way back from Fall Break.
I will never forget the night Pat Conroy grabbed my shoulder when I told him I had been an English teacher for a long long time and said, “I wanted to be you.” I told him he never stopped teaching.
A proud moment. The concert was at Kings Island. While trying to impress the young lady I with at the time, I took her over close to the Twin Racer roller coasters were and asked her which stuffed animal she wanted. She pointed to one. It was the football throw. Throw that football through a hoop that it can barely make its way through. I took the ball and did a perfect impression of a Ken Anderson five step drop. I threw it and it hit nothing but the back of tent behind that little circle. The old boy told me he would give me everything on display if her could. Then I carried a huge stuff bear to the car so we could continue our day. The Moodies were great, of course.
Good times. Good friends. Hotter than…fill in the blank! Was so delighted Brother Tim got us to T-Town for this weekend. I am so grateful.
A while after this game my brother, Darrell, was about to embark on a mission trip living in a homeless shelter for a year’s time. I am thankful we got to see his beloved Twins and watching batting practice around the cage before the game. Good times.
Y’all know what is going on here, don’t you?
I am reliving good times during so much uncertainty and I could go on. I just hope we are one day set free from this bad cloud.
We got a football season to look forward to!
Speaking the rights…
Danny Johnson
