On a portable speaker close to where I type these words, The Cars are singing the song “Drive”.  Never a great Cars fan, I enjoy listening to Benjamin Orr handling lead vocals much more that anything Ric Ocasek put forth.  Drive is far and away my favorite Cars song.  The Cars were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame the same night The Moody Blues were.  I wish Benjamin Orr had lived long enough to see it.

I was reminded today that I have not written a post in a while.  Nice to know someone cares.

Where do we start?  Let’s get the bad stuff out of the way.

Indiana is a great place.  It really is, in spite of ourselves.  My dear wife, Carrie, and I were about to cross the street in Wilmington, North Carolina, when a guy spoke up when he saw Carrie’s sweatshirt that was advertising Indiana University.  Turned out the guy, a half a generation older than us, was an IU grad.  He told us he believed the nicest people he had come across in his travels were from Indiana and North Carolina.  Maybe.

Having travelled many Interstates, highways, and backroads in the Tar Heel State, I have yet to find a road that resembles a public landfill like that of my walking trail on St. Louis Road NW of the house.  It is unreal.  You would think there was sign along this road that says “DUMP YOUR TRASH HERE!”

I know every zip code has its share of hilljacks and idiots.  I just wish the ones in my zip code were not so close.

Case in point…I am convinced that Hansel and Bubba were on my walking trail recently and Hansel was not throwing popcorn out for Bubba to follow the trail.  Hansel was throwing Busch Light beer bottles.

Here’s one.

Here’s two.

There’s three.

And just in case Bubba needed an extra clue, Hansel threw out the six pack holder as well so Bubba was not to be confused again.

This was not an isolated incident.  Business is going well for Jimmy John’s Subs, McDonald’s, Burger King, Taco Bell, Lite Beer from Miller, and Subway.  At the very least, I encountered trash from these establishments on my semi-serene .85 mile walking trail.

Indiana.  We’re soooooooo proud of you!

I apologize.  I should throw the book at Harrison County, Indiana.  If you go to Dubois County, Indiana (not far from here) there is a whole different level of pride along the roadside.  God Bless them!

Let’s get the bad stuff out of the way.  I was taken aback when I saw this infomercial on TV when I obviously hit a button and found a Twilight Zone selling channel.  Make your  hair great again?  Dear Lord help us.  What is this?  Trump Hair Loss?  Is this the Trump Defense Fund at work?  How embarrassing.   This is just affirmation on why I sadly gave up on the Republican Party.  Lord how I hope liberals look like the foolish ones again some day.  We need you now, John Kasich.

On a GREAT note, I saw two Bald Eagles on Rothrock Mill Road a few days ago.  They were in a tree right along the road.  I thought I was going to faint.  You go half a century hoping to see Bald Eagles in your environ and now I can tell you I have seen more than I can sit and name for you.  It is a wonderful thing to behold.

Looking at my photo catalog, I found this picture we made light of at the time.

Me handing off a roll of toilet paper to my Mother last March.  Little did we know what was ahead and what it all meant.  How could we?  We still don’t know.  But I am a little more optimistic than I was six months ago.  I have received my compliment of Moderna vaccines.  We shall see, won’t we?

This old Outfield promo flat finally found its way to a wall in my home office.  My sister game me the frame.  It looks great.  If there are two songs that remind me of my senior year in high school it is The Outfield’s smash Your Love and The Moody Blues’ last Top Ten hit Your Wildest Dreams.  Yes, I know.  It was 35 years ago.  The Moodies have been on the wall for years.

I tip my cap to Brenda Eubank.  This is in the library at Paoli High School.  I have to think Brenda had a hand in putting it there.  I think it is awesome.  Thanks to Brenda and e.e. cummings.

The field behind the house.  I like the camera on my new phone.  I just wish it was not subject to trash on the side of my waking trail.

Speaking the rights.  And, know I pick Alabama to win the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship.

Danny Johnson

I did not expect this post to be as difficult to write as I intended.

This afternoon I spoke to my Aunt Barbara Hines.  Lord, I cherish that woman!

She is my Ole Miss football watching buddy.  Aunt Barbara and I have seen the Ole Miss Rebels play, in person,  Arkansas in 1989, Arkansas in 1991, LSU in 1996, Georgia in 1999, Kentucky in 2001, and South Carolina in 2003.  The Arkansas games were in Jackson.  The Kentucky game was in Lexington.  The other three were glorious days in Oxford.  She has returned the favor with visits to Indiana to watch the Hoosiers play Minnesota in 1994 and Penn State in 1996.  Good times, I tell you.

March 4th, 1988.  Oh to be 19 again!  Two weeks before my 20th birthday, I worked a 3:30 to 9 shift at the now defunct Sears department store in Clarksville.  After my Sears gig that night I drove to my parents’ home where, bags packed, I threw them in my parents’ mini van and drove all night to Shreveport, Louisiana.

My great-grandmother, Ila Ashley, had taken a turn for the worse in Shreveport.  Grandma Ila was always a tough customer.  All four foot nine inches of her.  That she was ailing was something I could not process.

While in Shreveport, early in that week, we got word from Jackson, Mississippi, that my Uncle Durwood Hines was in peril also.  There was only one thing to do.  Point that minivan East on I-20 and get to Jackson.  We did just that.

My Uncle Durwood was one of the kindest, well-mannered, Southern Gentleman you would ever meet.  Always wanting to make sure all in the room were taken care of, he made a great impression on me.  He loved country music.  He enjoyed telling a joke and laughed as hard as the rest of us at the punch line, and on more than one occasion, I asked Uncle Durwood a question to find him asleep in his chair…sitting straight as an arrow.  How I miss those days.

In the 1970s we annually had a family reunion in Forest, Mississippi at Uncle Bob and Aunt Nell’s house on Thanksgiving day.  What a celebration.

Okay.  To put some needed perspective on this, my mom had nine older sisters and seven brothers.  W.E. and Levi Jane Hines had 17 youngun’s.  We had a LARGE family reunion.

On the Friday after the family reunion, my parents and my sister and I would visit a wide array of folk in Jackson, Mississippi.  There was Mr. Anderson, a great man my Mom befriended while she was in Nursing School in Jackson.  There was Mrs. Prewitt, a neighbor to my Great-Great Grandparents.  She complained a great deal, though she made a great raisin pie. There was Edna Bell, the house keeper for my Great-Great Grandparents. She was a precious lady there is not room for here today. Miss Doby was a step-grandparent to my Dad.  Stricken by a stroke that left her speech quite limited to a few phrases…I will never forget the look on her face the day we introduced her to my little brother, Darrell, on what may have been the last time we saw her.  Struggling to get the words out, she said, “I know.”  She meant she knew what she was trying to say.

I’m dancing here.  I need to get to the heart of the matter.

When my Mom and I got to Jackson to check on Uncle Durwood he was about to have a biopsy on his brain.  He had a brain tumor.

My memory is better than most, I can tell you.  I am thankful for that.

But I am still shaking writing about the last time I saw my Uncle Durwood.  He said something I will never forget.

At his bedside after his biopsy, Uncle Durwood’s head was completely bandaged up.  I looked at him and said, “Look at you.  You look like you have a football helmet on and you’re first string.”  He looked at me and smiled the best he could, “I think I’ll have to be the water boy” he faintly said.  I had his hand in mine as he spoke those words.  After this moment, my memory gets as cloudy as my eyes are right now.   It was the sweetest good-bye I have ever been a part of.

Uncle Durwood died on April 18, 1988.  I was on the phone in the Sears paint stockroom when my Mom told me over the phone.  Choking up, I walked out to the loading dock, sat on some steps, and sat there for a long time.

I don’t have many regrets.  I don’t.  That I did not make it to Uncle Durwood’s funeral is one of them.  But, I know there were plenty of folk there for Aunt Barbara.  I just wish I had been one of them.

March Forth!

Speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson

This post written while listening to Justin Hayward’s 1985 solo album Moving Mountains.

The song Lost and Found is on here.  It is the song my dear wife, Carrie, and I danced to at our wedding reception.  As usual, I picked out the tune.  Carrie expects this, of course.  Rediscovering vinyl has been fun for me.  I first acquired Moving Mountains on cassette.  Then I ordered it from Camelot Music at the Jefferson Mall in 1990 or so on CD.  Oh my. Music was such a treasure then.  I miss that.  I miss that for me.  But even more, I miss it for the kids today.

For the Glory that is hard to come by is my thought about Indiana University men’s basketball.  Coach Teri Moran, from Seymour, has the women’s program sailing along.

Archie Miller and the men’s program don’t have that going on right now.  It’s tough to look at it.  When a football guy is feeling bad for you at Indiana, something is bad wrong.

I know plenty about my love/hate affair with Indiana.  When they fired Bill Mallory on Halloween of 1996 I was done with them.  It took a great deal to get me back.  Ironically enough, I had a candid conversation with Coach Mal’s replacement, Cam Cameron on a hot summer day during football camp.

I told Coach Cam I was mad when they fired Coach Mallory.  I also told him it was not his fault.  But it all still stung.  He asked me to hang in there.  Cam had a step-dad who was fired as a high school coach.  I told him about my Dad’s similar treatment at Brownstown many years ago and we found some common ground there that not many folks can share. Cam was let go and the Indiana athletic department in their rumbling fumbling bumbling stumbling way that is their way fumbled another hire in Gerry Dinardo.  Then came Coach Terry Hoeppner.  Had he lived to tell the story, I think it would have been a good one for Indiana.  God rest his soul.

Bill Lynch was next.  He didn’t have the support he needed.  It was just a matter of time.

More rumbling fumbling bumbling and stumbling when Indiana named Kevin Wilson to be head football coach.  Who gets a team not used to getting to a bowl game to be played in Yankee Stadium tell all within earshot in a press conference that he is not much of a baseball fan?  I rooted for David Cutcliffe and the Duke Blue Devils in that game.  I did.  I got to watch a closed scrimmage in March of 2003 when Coach Cut was at Ole Miss and Eli Manning was the QB.  Wide receiver Bill Flowers was rehabbing that day running steps in the stadium that still had a grass field before turf was there for the regular season.

When Indiana had the good sense to hire Tom Allen as the new head football coach I was elated.  Sometimes you just know.  There is a perpetual chip on Tom Allen’s shoulder that goes back to folks wondering if he was up to being an assistant at Ole Miss on Hugh Freeze’s staff.  Coaching football at Indiana has plenty of chips to go around.  I just knew he was the one Indiana finally hit a home run with.

I will not purport to know a great deal about basketball.  Have seen a great deal of high school basketball and a few basketball coaches I count among the best friends I have ever had.

I have never attended a college basketball game in person.  College football is a different story.  I have seen more than 70 of the current FBS teams play in person.

When I look at Indiana University and the treatment of the basketball program since the demise of Bobby Knight, I see the same rumbling fumbling bumbling stumbling that the football program has been subject to half of forever.  Bad hires.

Replacing a legend is never easy.

Indiana University is a good place.  I believe that.  Academically, it holds up.  Athletically it has been suspect for some time when it comes to the biggest money making sports on campus.

Archie Miller, I don’t wish an ounce of bad will on him at all.  I also believe he may privately hope that someone out there will pony up on that buyout his owed if IU terminates him without cause.  I’d say he has earned a great deal of it.  And he can probably go elsewhere and find a place where the old specters are not the most important aspects of a basketball floor like they are at Assembly Hall.

What coaches are paid in college athletics, it is not a good look.  But, that is where we are when deep pocketed donors rule the landscape and pave the roads along with fat TV contracts by the networks.  I don’t blame the coaches.

Look, I too look back to my favorite Indiana Basketball eras.  Playing in the basement with a friend and he was Scott May and I was Kent Benson.  Absolutely GLUED to the local broadcasts I miss so much with Chuck Marlowe and John Laskowski when Ted Kitchel was firing up long range shots from the corner.  Watching Steve Alford and Keith Smart win it in New Orleans in 1987.  Waiting for Clarksville’s Chuck Franz to be put in the game.  Randy Wittman.  Ray Tolbert.  Don’t get me started.  We’d be here for hours!

Sure.  I love Indiana Football.  But I also know my little southern third of the Hoosier state  is a mighty cool place to be when Indiana Basketball is the one holding the handle of the mop when the cleaning of the floor is going on.  I miss that.

Speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson