I sat down with dear old Uncle Hal today.  Around ordering golf balls and showing the golf coach new playing attire options and fielding a request for Pro V-1 golf balls from one of the two young chaps there with their coach, Uncle Hal and I talked a little bit about life.

We talked about getting older, as this is the theme for these fifty days of writing here.  But, while talking about getting older, we also reflected on days of our youth as well.

I am the second from the left on the back row.  We won it all in 1979.  The same summer we moved to Harrison County.

Uncle Hal and I talked about going back for one day.  He talked of playing with friends, riding his bike, and getting a pizza made by a legendary pizza queen.

The first image that came to my mind was riding my old purple Sears bike up Bridge Street in Brownstown.  My baseball glove was hanging off the handle bars and I was riding to practice at the town park.  My childhood in Brownstown was filled with images out of Norman Rockwell’s Greatest Hits.  Whether is was arm-wrestling with  a pastor after church every Sunday, playing on the tank on the courthouse lawn, or hanging out with the town librarian.

Down the hill from the park on Bridge Street, I had a great-grandmother who looked the part.  In an old dress, swinging on the front porch waiting for me, Grandma was ready to hand me a glass of ice cold water, or lemonade, or on that rare occasion she asked me if I wanted a Coke.  I knew better than to ask myself.  They were in the back of the fridge and they were gold that didn’t come out often.

I had two parents working in a large garden full of Mississippi style produce.  We had purple hull peas and peanuts growing in that sandy Jackson County soil.  When I rolled in on my bike, they told me to grab a hoe and join in.  If I could turn around and ride away before I was spotted, I did that too.  Regardless, time to come home was not negotiable.  That usually got me to hoeing and weed pulling.

We lived in a house that didn’t have air-conditioning.  I have written here before about living in a house a cornfield away from the Jackson County Fairgrounds home of the Brownstown Speedway.  With windows raised, I was serenaded every Saturday night to cars running around the quarter mile dirt track.

My sister filled half of eastern Brownstown with The Sound of Music blaring out the window of the house.  That record has to be crumbling by now. Me, I was listening to the Bay City Rollers.

The son of a high school football coach, I lived that life as a youngster.  Locker rooms and dirty words flying around.  Music from a locker room that has lasted decades later.  Having the opportunity to grab a ball and throw it and kick it.  Grabbing a basketball during basketball practice warm-ups and shooting around with the high school guys.  I was there.  It was a great place to be.  It was what you would hoped it would be.  It was what you wish others could feel and understand.

I shared some of that last May before they tore down the old stadium.

Uncle Hal and I talked about getting older too.

Do I feel fifty?  I don’t know. I snap crackle and pop a bit when I stand up. Still,  I think I have been fortunate enough to hold on to some of these things I have mentioned.  I still love football.  I’d give anything to play a baseball game.  The music of my youth has stayed with me.  I saw my first Moody Blues concert when I was 18.  I saw my last one this past July at age 49.  There were 55 of them in between. Justin Hayward is 71 and can still sing wonderfully and can still flat tear up an electric guitar.  I hope another of his solo shows is in the future.  But…you never know.

We don’t know.

But what I do know is that I am glad I left that Brownstown life.  It wasn’t always easy…but it got me here…

and it got me here…

and it got me here…

with her…

So Happy Birthday to me!

That is…

Speaking the Rights.

Danny Johnson

There is not much I can add to this photo.  My dear wife, Carrie, and I were heading to school this morning.  As we rounded a couple of curves before we got to the Tunnel Hill Bridge, I told her to get the camera ready.  Carrie and I both got new phones this weekend.  Unlike her, I have never had a phone that could take my temperature.  I finally fell of that metaphorical bridge.  The photo from this bridge is, well, spectacular.

I hope you enjoy it.

Oh, and a Happy Birthday shout out to Matt Kellems.  He is leading blocking my way to 50.  Matt is a good guy.  I am proud of his efforts in leading our school.  It is not an easy endeavor.

Speaking the rights…

Danny Johnson

Last night the North Harrison Cougar boys basketball team was bested by the Silver Creek Dragons in a Sectional Final that was played in Ramsey last night.

This photo was taken by my new phone.  The one that lets me ask where the nearest restroom is.

It was a tough battle for the Cougars last night.  I am proud of them.  The night before they beat Brownstown Central in overtime to make it to the final.  It was a tough road to the final and the first quarter of last night;s game looked great.  NH was leading 17 to 9.  In the end the Cougars were defeated 50-37.  It was hard to take.  But I was so proud of the team.  They played great all season and ended the year 17-9.  That is the best season North has had since 2004.  My hat is off to Coach Kevin Jones and his staff.

Sectional Final action.

My dear wife, Carrie, and I just watched a one hour program on television chronicling the life of the great Rev. Billy Graham.  I was fortunate enough to hear Billy Graham at the new Cardinal Stadium in 2001.  I was there with a group from our church.  Hearing the man preach was uplifting.  After seeing him and hearing him on television as kid, I knew I was in for something special.  Rev. Graham had one mission and that was to help people by leading them to light of Jesus.  He will be missed.  The rest of us have some work to do.  It won’t be easy.  Just look around.  We must keep the faith.  We must press onward.  No matter the obstacle or how faith gets twisted, we must spread the love to the down and out and those in need.

Speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson

I

I did it.  I got a new phone.  One of those you can ask questions and listen to stuff on and get directions if you need them.

I got one.  I took pictures with it tonight…but I still need to get up to date on how to move the photos and use them.  What can I say?  I am phone challenged.

Tonight the North Harrison Cougars were bested by the Silver Creek Dragons in the Sectional final.  I took some pictures with my new phone.  I hope tomorrow I can transfer them to here.

The Cougars came out like a house of fire, as they say.  17-9 the Cougars led after the first quarter.   They were behind at halftime 20-19.

The boys played hard.  I am proud of Coach Jones and the team for giving us a season to remember.

Maybe we will have a picture or two tomorrow @ speaktherights.com

That is speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson

Wow.  The brain is running faster than the fingers right now.  So much to process this great night.

Tonight our North Harrison Cougars defeated the Brownstown Central Braves 60-57 in overtime to advance to tomorrow night’s Sectional Championship game.  Our guys played the hearts out and the gym was a raucous environment much of the game.  It was a great place to be.  For Cougars fans it was a classic.  For Braves fans it was painful.  The drive up 135 was a long one tonight.  The Braves first lead of the game was 55-54 in overtime.  That is how crazy it was.

Before the game, earlier in the day, things were not crazy in the gym.  They were quiet.  The place looked like it was ready for the massive crowd that would make it tonight. It was peaceful with a tension to it.

The Cougar was ready.

Braves sideline.

These things saw plenty of action tonight.  In the first game Silver Creek defeated Scottsburg handily.  Tomorrow night it will be the Cougars playing the Dragons.

They gym filled up and thing got interesting.

Starting Lineups.

The opening tip and we had no idea how good it was going to be.

At this point, I was hanging on the rail with my dear friend, and Brownstown Central class of 1978 grad, Barry Hall.  When Barry met me early in the fourth quarter, North has a nice lead.  I was about to tell him to go back and sit down where ha came from.  I didn’t.  I kept the faith….though it was certainly tested. I could kick myself for not getting a picture of me and Barry together right here.

The final score in overtime.  How sweet it was.  Yes, in the sectional format, North Harrison was the visiting team on the scoreboard.

Looking forward to tomorrow night’s final.  I think the Cougars can do it.

After the game, I walked past a couple from Brownstown in the hallway.  I hear my name.  It was Greg Isaacs’ parents.  I had not seen them to talk to them in decades.  Remember, I am an old Brownstown boy from way back.  Greg was in my grade.  We played little league baseball together.  He was one of my cronies.  Many of these old friends, as fondly as I remember, have been lost in time.

They took me to Greg and I was so delighted to see him again.  We stood there and chatted for a while.  He asked me about the music I make and told me his Mom has one of my CDs.  I was dumbfounded.  You just never know.  I got Greg’s address and I am going to send him some more tunes.  He asked for them.  No way I am going to turn him down.  These 50 years being discussed in 50 days seemed a little not so long ago tonight.  I was brought face to face with a piece of the past I did not expect to find.  It was fun.  And it was a thing of youth.

Put that with the exhilaration of defeating Brownstown Central for a second time in the basketball season and you got a night you don’t want to end.

The Cougars have some unfinished business like beating Silver Creek tomorrow night.

Speaking the rights…

Danny Johnson

I have been asked if it has been difficult to keep this up.  I said I would put up a post for 50 days leading up to my 50th birthday.  Difficult?  No.  Demanding?  Yes.  An hours in the day kind of thing.  I wish we had 25.  I would write for the one extra.  Things don’t turn out like that though.  We press onward.  We try to make progress.

What do I like about being near 50?  I like that I know more than I did when I was 40.  Mind you I knew it all when I was 17.  I have been trying to get back to that level ever since.  I suppose that is why I think I can, most of the time, relate to kids I work with.  I don’t know why?  It is because I have held on to the music of my youth and that has crossed over to my understanding of young people?  Some probably think I am clueless.  You can’t please everyone.  I do know I am thankful that I have been able to help kids.  Kids these days face “stuff” I never dreamed I would see in my lifetime.  You can name a few of these circumstances I am sure.

This past Saturday I was in Jeff Carpenter’s Al Fresco’s Place recording studio.  I recorded two songs.  We were so proficient in laying down the tunes, they were done in 45 minutes or less.  My acoustic guitar playing was the best I ever did on a “demo like” recording.  I was pleased.  Jeff and I talked about making more music.

Making music has been a journey for me.  I picked up a guitar and found sounds after my dear friend, Todd Lincoln, passed.  He and I loved to listen to The Moody Blues together.  We saw four Moodies concerts together.

When he died in 1997 my dear wife, Carrie, cajoled me into playing the guitar.  It has worked out.

I look forward to making some more music.  I told Jeff I finally feel I belong in the studio.  For years I was like Minnie Pearl.  I was just happy to be there.  I finally found my way there.  I can hold up my part of the room.  That is a good feeling.  I am blessed.

Tomorrow night the North Harrison Cougars take on the Brownstown Central Braves in the Sectional Semi Final….GO COUGARS!!!!  Send the Braves on a long bus trip back to Jackson County.  I know the place well.

Speaking the rights…

Danny Johnson

The gym at North Harrison High School was a good place to be tonight.

North Harrison defeated Charlestown…always good…and Brownstown Central defeated Salem.  That means the Cougars will face the Braves Friday Night.  It should be a good one.  GO COUGARS!

Balls wait on some shooting.

Pre-game photo.  We have a nice looking gym.

Go Cougars…Beat the Braves!

Speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson

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

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

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