These days I don’t watch too much network television.  It is not worth watching.  Too much violence.  Too much sexual innuendo.  Too much raunchiness.  Too many fools.

Talk shows these days.  Why is it people like to watch folks fighting and cussing at each other as they figure who was sleeping with whom and what the paternity test found out?  That is some sick stuff.

Why do people watch cop shows that show footage of people being exploited by television as they are being arrested?   I don’t think it is lowering the crime rate.  It is, however, raising the stupid viewer rate.

Do we really like to see folks that have it worse than we do to that degree?

I don’t get it.

A month or so ago I posted about television and how I miss and pine for days gone by.  I still do.

Thank the Good Lord football season is here.  I’d rather watch a pre-season football game between the Eagles and the Steelers (which I am watching now) than anything else on the 200 other sorry channels I have to choose from.

I miss Sanford and Son.

I miss Hill Street Blues.

I miss M*A*S*H.

I miss Monday Night Football, the way it was when I was a kid.

I miss Barnaby Jones.

I miss St. Elsewhere.

I miss Ed.

Ed was the last TV series I kept up with and the bowling alley lawyer called it quits in 2003.

I miss Chicago Hope.

I miss Mannix.

I miss the Midnight Special.

I even miss Fantasy Island.

What I really miss, especially this time of the year, are the great tones and wisdom of Keith Jackson.  Keith called college football on television for as long as I can remember up until 2006.

Keith was as down-home as they come.   He was the classic example of less is more.  Always succinct with his delivery, Keith was straight-forward and entertaining.

My favorite two Keith Jackson calls went something like this:

Calling an Ohio State-Michigan game in the 1970s, Keith was witness to an Ohio State offense that ran the ball and ran the ball and ran the ball some more.  They put a guy in motion to the left on some plays and to the right on others….and they never passed it to him.

Keith Jackson (late in the game):  Ohio State with the ball at the 48 of Michigan.  Schilchter under center as Williams goes in motion to the left…he’s run three miles today.

USC playing I do not remember…the team was punting to USC and Keith made a call that went something like….

Keith Jackson:  The punt is a high hanging effort…Smith is under it and calls fair catch…he’s got a crick in his neck from looking at it so long.

Wow.  That was Keith Jackson.  Man, I miss him.

I called high school football games on the radio for a number of years.  I could not tell you how many times I thought about Keith Jackson.  I borrowed his “Oh My Goodness“….  I unashamedly used his phrase when previewing a game…”It should be a good one.”

Ultimately my partner, Gus Stephenson, and I had a style of our own that was well-received.  I am thankful for that.  I miss calling games with him.

These days I still love to hear Mike Patrick call a game.  I hope he is still at it this year.

I also wish M*A*S*H was still on Sunday Nights in case the football game is a stinker and I could mash the remote….we call it a masher…to another station.

Just speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson

I was thinking about my Aunt Pupi on my drive home from work today.  I have a healthy commute to and from the school where I work.  108 miles round-trip to be exact.  I do have time to think.

Today I thought about Aunt Pupi and how I figured this would be a good thing to share.

Originally published in another publication in the fall of 2006, this is a tribute to my Aunt Pupi.  She lived in Alabama.

A Gift from Italy

Somewhere in a newly moved into nursing home room in Selma, Alabama, there is a gift from Italy waiting to die.  My aunt, Antonio Hines, age 91, has a swollen brain and is unresponsive to any earthly stimulus. She had a feeding tube removed.  No argument here.  Her lungs are still working.  Her heart is still beating.  And while I have heard over and over again that it could be “any time now”, if it’s up to her heart, who knows how long it will be before that gem gives out.  Well, God knows.

Aunt Pupi. Pupi is what she has always been called.  That’s pronounced pooh-pee.  It’s a strange name, but one you get over when you spend a great deal of time with her.  In the last twenty years the only times I have noticed her name as peculiar is when I have spoken of it to someone for the first time.  I’m usually asked for a replay when I mention Aunt Pupi.

In the northwest corner of a boot of a country called Italy, there is a city called Trieste.  That is where Aunt Pupi is originally from.  She had planned to visit her sister next year, the last living sibling she has.  When I was a child Aunt Pupi would tell me stories about Trieste.  From what I gather it must be one very windy place.  She told me there are ropes on the city streets that are there for folks to hold on to when the wind starts to blow exceedingly stiff.  I never imagined such a thing, but she told her stories with such authority behind that thick Italian accent it made me feel like I was there.

One of my mother’s seven brothers, Uncle Paul Hines, was in Italy during World War II.  Uncle Paul met Antonio and thus began one of the greatest love stories you never heard of.  I just say that because even at a young age I knew these two were madly in love with each other.  Uncle Paul died in 1989.  He had suffered from emphysema for a long time.  His lungs just gave out.  A couple years later Aunt Pupi and I were speaking of him and I got a little wistful I suppose.  She shook her head and said, “I miss him so much.”  There was a thickness about her accent again, it gave more credibility to what she said than anyone else in the room.  I can still hear her talk of how she missed him so much.

Now I’m missing her.  But, heck, I’m also thankful I just got to know her as well as I did.  Uncle Paul was about twenty years older than my mother.  That’s a whole other column in itself given that she had sixteen brothers and sisters.  To this day I don’t know why my mother and Uncle Paul turned out to be as close as they were.  In the 1970s and early 80s, Aunt Pupi and Uncle Paul, without fail, would drive from Selma, Alabama up to Indiana in October to visit for a week or two.  They loved the fall colors and Aunt Pupi always stocked up on apples from a place in Bedford.  Have mercy did she ever like to cook.  And was quite good at it, I might add.

The stories I get the most mileage out of include the one when she was eating olives…the green ones…out of the bottle.  We never had olives sitting around the house when I was a kid, but Aunt Pupi always brought some.  I was quizzing her one-day on what the olive tasted like.  She said, “You must try.”   I took one in my hand and smelled of it.  Then I placed it in my mouth.  Yuck.  I thought it was hideous.  Aunt Pupi looked at me and said, “You must think it is peach…” as she chomped away at yet another olive.

After Uncle Paul died, Aunt Pupi would come up to stay with Mom and Dad two or three times a year, sometimes for three weeks at a time.

I guess I’m at a place in my writing where I’m supposed to leave you with a memorable line or an attempt at something clever.  The truth is I don’t feel like I even got warmed up.  Aside from that, I ain’t quite ready to say goodbye yet.  I’ll just raise a glass to Italy.

“All Night Radio” is a song by our friend Tim Krekel.  He writes/sings about listening to the radio in his room late at night when he was a kid.

I heard this song on my ipod today and I got to thinking about how much I have enjoyed listening to the radio over the years.  I’ve enjoyed radio for many reasons.

My favorite AM radio station of all time was WLS 890 Chicago.  When I was teenager, I caught the last years of this station being known as “The Rock of Chicago”.  They played great rock and roll music and I heard some tunes on that station that I never heard on our local Louisville, Ky stations.  One song I so remember was a tune called “What About Me” by a group called Moving Pictures.  I never once heard that on Louisville radio.

Each night at 10 PM Eastern Time you could hear the Top Nine at Nine.

There were great personalities on WLS.  Les Grobstein did Sports.  DJs were Chuck Britton…I think he is the voice following the “WLS!” jingle on the clock radio you hear on Ferris Bueller’s  Day Off.

My favorites were Uncle Larry Lujack and Little Tommy Edwards in the mornings.  You got to remember this was, as Krekel’s song suggests, all night radio at its finest.  The sun had to be way down before you could think about picking  WLS up….then it would fade away about the time the sun would slice the Eastern horizon in the morning.  Lujack and Edwards did a funny segment every morning called “Animal Stories”.  Nothing was sacred as they would talk about animals of all kinds and in all circumstances.  I could not explain the “Animal Stories News-team Anchormen” to you in seven weeks.  You can “Youtube” it.  My dear wife, Carrie, will tell you it will make you laugh or it won’t.  She has yet to laugh about it.

One last WLS note.  I remember lying in my bed at night as a kid with a transistor radio with a raised antennae in one hand and a single white ear piece plugged into the radio as I was listening to Barry Manilow sing “I Write the Songs” which was, ironically, written by a guy named Bruce Johnston.

Other AM radio highlights:

Listening to WAKY 790 out of Louisville on the bus when I was a kid in elementary school.  I wrote on an earlier post that it was on that bus, listening to that radio station, when I heard a sound that would change my life.  It was the guitar riff in the song “I Can Help” by Billy Swann.  As I reported  earlier, over thirty years later I would find myself in a recording studio playing songs I had written with the same guy…Tim Krekel…that played guitar with Billy Swan.

WAKY had its share of great DJs.  Bill Bailey the Duke of Louisville.  Bob Moody.  Gary Burbank.  Lee Masters.  Johnny Randolph.  And Coyote Calhoun.

Great story:  I was doing an editorial piece for WHAS TV-11 in Louisville in 1989.  A polite young lady was giving me a tour of the facility, which also housed WHAS radio and WAMZ radio which was and I suppose still is big time Country Music radio station.  We met Coyote Calhoun, now the afternoon drive guy and program director of mega-Country station, in the hallway.  Coyote had his cowboy boots on and had just gotten back from a big Country Music Award Show where he had been honored for his work.

When the young lady introduced me to Coyote I said the first thing that came to mind: “Yeah, I know you.  I used to listen to you on WAKY when I was a kid.”

Coyote was a bit put off.  He kind of pursed his lips and turned his head.  The next thing you know I am being whisked away by my guide to another side of the building.

I don’t care that Coyote played country music.  Good for him.  Just don’t make me listen to his show.

Other radio highlights:

Rob Ray in Middle School bringing in a transistor and an ear-piece to listen to the Cincinnati Reds opening day on WLW.  Rob could get away with that.  I would have gotten caught.  At least he passed me a few notes updating me on the score and if someone hit one out.  Thank you, Marty.

WWL 870 out of New Orleans.  This was a truck driver’s paradise of a radio station in the 1970s.  “The Road Gang” is what they called the broadcast team.  We’d listen to it as we were traveling South to visit relatives.  They gave weather and interstate reports all over the country.  I remember they’d have comedy on there too.  There was one skit called “Dammit Ray and the Talking Outhouse”.  I hope one day I can find it again.

Today my favorite radio station is an FM station.  96.3 WJAA in Seymour is awesome.  Robert Becker owns and runs the place and he’s like Frank Sinatra doing it his way.  Plays what he wants…says what he wants.  Tom Petty couldn’t have said it better.  I know who he was singing about.

I will not leave out 650 WSM the Home of the Grand Ole Opry.

“This portion of the Grand Ole Opry sponsored by Cracker Barrel.”

Now that is speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson

Football Season is here.  The NCAA season will be in full swing the last weekend in August.  My dear wife, Carrie, and I will be covering the Marshall Thundering Herd  as they visit the Miami (OH) Redhawks in Oxford, Ohio on Saturday, August 30th.  Kickoff is 3:30 PM.

The Marshall Thundering Herd will do well this season.  I am calling for the Herd to go 12-0 in the regular season.  They will then host and win the Conference USA Championship game and proceed to be somewhat media darlings as they get to play in a New Years’s Eve or New Year’s Day Bowl…one of the BIGGIES.  The Peach Bowl?  Maybe.  The Orange Bowl?  I hope so.  The quarterback, Rakem Cato and his favorite receiver, Tommy Shuler, are both from Miami.  So to start the season in the smaller Miami and end the season in the big Miami would be apropos.

This will be good and bad for the Herd faithful.

West Virginia is going to continue to stumble in the Big 12.  I believe they will fire their coach, Dana Holgersen, at the end of the season and offer that job to current Marshall coach, and WVU alum, Doc Holliday.    I have no doubt Chuck Landon, the Huntington Sports Columnist, is prepared to barb away at Doc on this matter.

Go Herd or Go Home!

Lets look at three conference races that will appeal to many of us…but not all of us.

The Atlantic Coast Conference.

The ACC is made up of two divisions.  There are seven teams in the Atlantic Division and there are six teams in the Coastal Division.  I think they should have named these sub-groups the Ocean Division and the Beach Division.  Marketing would enjoy this much more.

Note:  I am not writing about the ACC because the University of Louisville joined said conference this year.  I liked it better before Louisville got there.  I pull for the North Carolina schools.

Here are my predictions as to how these teams will finish in their prospective division:

Atlantic Division                                                     

1.  Florida State-    Injury and themselves are worst threats.

2.  Clemson-  Howard’s Rock will be rockin’ this season.

3.  Louisville-  The welcome mat is out for Petrino until he burns it.

4.  NC State-  Things have to get better in  Raliegh.  A kind schedule could mean 8 Ws.

5.  Boston College-  Coach Addazio has his work cut out for him…he can shell the corn.

6.  Syracuse-  If they’d move out of that dome they’d win against warm weather schools.

7.  Wake Forest-  Left BB&T Field off my list of football venues.  I was wrong.  Team is bad.

Coastal Division

1.  Virginia Tech-  Beamer -ball is back in a big way.

2.  Duke-  The heart wants to put’em #1.  Coach Cut has worked miracles.

3.  Georgia Tech-  Their option “O” can  still give  teams fits finding the ball.

4.  Miami (Fla)-  There is always trouble.  Canes of old didn’t have social media woes.

5.  Pittsburgh-  Give them credit…they have same Head Coach for 3 years now.

6.  Virginia-  The Cavaliers have a tough road.  Schedule is brutal.

Over the years I have seen nine of these teams play in person.  The four I have missed are Pitt, Syracuse, Clemson, and Georgia Tech.  I weep not for any of them.

North Carolina is our adopted second home.  Carrie and I visit there as often as we can.  What is so special about it?  Well…the first time I crossed the Virginia state line into North Carolina, Carrie was sitting beside me looking out the window.  This was the first destination we ever found together,  having neither of us been there before.

I enjoy keeping up with the happenings of the ACC during football season.  I know it is a historically strong basketball league; I won’t hold that against them.  Yes… I do watch basketball when it matters:  March…and only March.

I also pull hard for Duke because they were stinkers for years and former Ole Miss Coach David Cutcliffe has brought them out of the doldrums and onto the high seas.  They won ten games last year.  It used to take’m six years to win ten games.

Wake Forest

Ole Miss @ Wake Forest 2008

THE BIG TEN

Like the ACC, the Big Ten is also made up of two divisions.  One division is called the EAST DIVISION and the other is called…imagine…the WEST DIVISION.  Believe it or not the names of these divisons are an improvement.  They used to be called the Leaders and Legends…talk about nose out of joint attitude.  But, that is what you get from the Big Ten…they tend to be a little class conscious.  Reference Indiana University Football ticket prices.  I guess they don’t think they will fill the place if they charge  5 or 500 dollars. Their tickets are too too high. The rain’s gotta start and stop somewhere.  This where the adage “you get what you pay for” lost its credibility.

I know my barbecuing of IU may come as a surprise to some that have read about my affinity for Memorial Stadium where the Hoosiers play.  Where they play and how they do business are two totally unrelated variables.  I still love the place.  I wish I loved what was in it.

Indiana’s Memorial Stadium…The Safest Place in America on Saturday.

Enough of the social commentary already.  Let’s talk football.

BIG TEN predictions…yes… I know they have 14 teams.  Makes a great deal of sense.

BIG TEN EAST

1.  Michigan State-  Sparty is ready.  Lost one game by 4 points last year.  Look out.

2.  Ohio State-  If they stay healthy, they could make a great deal of noise.

3.  Michigan-  The Big House will recover.  Struggled last year.  Still is 3rd not enough.

4.  Penn State-  Could be 2,3, or 4.  Coach Franklin is that good.  See Vandy work.

5.  Indiana-   Hoosiers need to justify doubling the new coach’s salary over the last one.

6.  Maryland-  New kids on the block.  First season in Big Ten.  Odd appendage.

7. Rutgers-  New like Maryland.  Bring with them the TV Cow of the NYC market to milk.

 Iowa will shell the corn.

BIG TEN WEST

1.  Iowa-  They are singing “This is Gonna Be My Year” in Iowa City.  Ball bounces their way.

2.  Wisconsin-  Swissconsin and the fans of Bucky are happy again.  And cold.

3.  Northwestern-  Feels odd picking NU over Nebraska.  Think it’ll happen.

4.  Nebraska-  The Cornfield of the West belongs in the Big 8…but it doesn’t exist anymore.

5.  Minnesota- Coach Kill will be sharing time with the Vikings at TCF Bank Stadium.

6.  Illinois-  The Illini will wish they had Red Grange in their huddle.  Great place to visit.

7.  Purdue-  They just plain eat it.

With the addition of Maryland and Rutgers, I now have two teams in the Big Ten that I have never seen play…those two.  This past summer I drove on the New Jersey Turnpike and went past the exit to go to Rutgers.  It looked like Big Ten country about as much as Gene Simmons looks like he belongs in The Moody Blues.  Oh what Big Ten purist have to put up with in the wake of cash-driven college sports looking for the next big city market to get a piece of.  Next year the Big Ten will probably branch out with the addition of the University of Edmonton or London State.

Drum roll please…

The League that matters.  The League that if they didn’t beat on each other every week for eight weeks no one else in the country would have a chance.  The other schools in so-called power conferences look not at the scores of SEC games….they want to see who got hurt?   Ohio State fans are pinning their hopes of getting to the national championship based on whether or not a hoss of linebacker from Ole Miss put the hurt on Alabama’s best back and knocked him out of commission.  The whole country knows it.  Most of them resent it.  It is just a matter of priority.  Football rules in The Southeastern Conference.

THE SEC

I love the intensity of SEC football.  They get it started in a hurry.  During the first week of the season, South Carolina is taking on Texas A&M in a HUGE conference game.  That kind of intensity and sense of urgency is on fire from week one in this conference until they settle on a Champion the first weekend in December.

An Ole Miss fan as far as the SEC goes, I have seen every team in the conference play over the years with the exception of Florida and Mississippi State.

This year’s SEC predictions from speaktherights.com:

The SEC is, like most conferences these days, split into two divisions…primarily so the winner of each division can play for the championship at the end in front of a huge crowd while…the legend continues (my apology to Keith Jackson).

SEC EAST

1.  South Carolina-  The old ball coach is finally going to sling it again and throw his visor.

2.  Georgia-  Coach Richt is a survivor. There is a TV  show by the same name.  He’s it.

3.  Missouri-  Belong in the SEC East like Rutgers belongs in the Big Ten.

4.  Florida-  Happy days are not here again for the Gators.  Injuries and trouble abound.

5.  Tennessee-  Butch Jones will have them moving on up…but another year of growing pains.

6.  Vanderbilt-  Derek Mason has a tough job following James Franklin.

7.  Kentucky-  Need to change name from Wildcats to Mildcats.

SEC WEST

The greatest division of football on the planet.

1.  Alabama-  Hate it. Wish it was the Rebels.  I’ll be like an Ohio State fan looking for injuries.

2.  Ole Miss- Coach Freeze is a winner.  Hope Ole Miss has sense enough to hang on to him.

3.  Auburn-  So many starters returning, you’d think I was a Homer.

4.  LSU-  It is time for LSU to stub their toe….or Mike to get a thorn in his paw.

5.  Mississippi State-  Their Hail State campaign was a meteorologist’s nightmare.

6.  Texas A&M- Johnny football gone.  The whole dynamic and culture needs rebuilt.

7.  Arkansas-  Pig Sooooie?  All I can say…Razorback fans be prepared to hold your nose.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t put a pic of Dad and me at Notre Dame last year.  I haven’t been that cold since.

CHAMPIONSHIP MATCH-UPS

ACC CHAMPIONSHIP GAME:   Florida State v. Virginia Tech

Winner: Florida State by virtue of their team speed.

BIG TEN CHAMPIONSHIP GAME:  Iowa v. Michigan State

Winner:  Iowa… though I am the only one believing.

SEC CHAMPIONSHIP GAME:  South Carolina v. Alabama

Winner: South Carolina…the head ball coach retires as king.  The Gamecocks will win it all this year.

Enjoy the 2014 Football Season.  I know I will.  In fact no one has it better than I do each and every college football season.  I can look at Carrie and say we are going to Nashville to see Ole Miss play and she will have one question… “What time is kickoff?”   I am a blessed man.

As the season goes on I’m sure I’ll find time to speak the rights about it.

Danny Johnson

I root for the New York Giants.  They are my favorite National Football League team.  I suppose they will continue to be my favorite team as long as Eli Manning is playing quarterback for them.

When it comes to my interest in pro football, I have maintained the same philosophy for over forty years.  The player comes first and the team comes second.

When I was a kid growing up I was a fan of the Cincinnati Bengals.  Ken Anderson was their quarterback and he played with the team for sixteen years.  I was a Ken Anderson fan therefore I was a fan of the Bengals.  When Anderson retired, I retired.  In fact, my NFL allegiance was in nowheresville until 1998 when the Indianapolis Colts drafted Peyton Manning.  I liked Peyton.  That made me a Colts fan.

I still watch the Colts and I hope they win…most of the time.  Just depends on who they are playing.  If Peyton Manning, now a Denver Bronco, was playing against Indy…GO BRONCOS.

I hung with Peyton and the Colts as my favorites until 2004 came along.  That is when the New York Giants got Eli Manning in a draft day trade with the San Diego Chargers.    Eli played at Ole Miss.  Both of my parents were born in Mississippi.  I have relatives that “finished” at Ole Miss.  “Finished” is Southernese for graduated.  I like that term…finished.

Thanks in large part to the great relationship I have with my Aunt Barbara, I am an Ole Miss college football fan.  While I know I declared my fandom of the Marshall Thundering Herd in another post, Ole Miss is mighty close behind them.

During football season, Aunt Barbara and I are on the phone.  She lives outside Jackson, Mississippi and we love to talk football.  Over the years I have made a few trips with her to Oxford to watch the Rebels in person and she has made it up here a couple of times to take in Indiana games at Bloomington.  We also watched a couple games together in Jackson when the Rebs were playing a game or two in the big city in off-campus home games.

With college football, it is all about the team.  The players come and go very quickly in the college game.  You can’t have a favorite player too long.  By the time you like him and think it’s going to work out, he is off campus.  His four years are up.

Once upon a time I was enamored with the team in Bloomington.  I so enjoyed watching the Indiana Hoosiers when Bill Mallory was their head coach.  He was fired on Halloween day in 1996 after 13 years as coach.  IU Football has been haunted by this move ever since.  Though I have been back to watch several games, it has not been the same.  They can lose a game and all I will do is shrug my shoulders.  I didn’t do so well when Anthony Thompson got caught from behind on a kick off return as time was winding down against Purdue in 1989.  The poor IU kicker had a chance to win it for the Hoosiers.  He missed a 26 yard field goal wide to the left as time was about to expire.  He was a freshman.  Purdue 15  IU 13.  That was a tough loss.

Right now my Giants are losing a pre-season game by a 20-0 score.  It is the pre-season.  Who cares.

My ten all-time favorite Pro Football Players:

Ken Anderson-Bengals

Eli Manning-Giants

Peyton Manning-Colts and Broncos

Isaac Curtis- Bengals

Brett Favre- Packers and Vikings (the Jet year doesn’t count)

Walter Payton-Bears

Fran Tarkenton- Vikings (Giant years I don’t remember)

Jack Lambert- Steelers

Dan Ross- Bengals

Mark Moseley- Redskins

Football season…a good time to speak the rights.

Danny Johnson

Malcolm Lincoln and I were watching the Marshall Herd play at Louisville in 2011.

My Dad coached football for a long long time.

Dear Lord, thank you for allowing me to be a son that enjoyed what his Dad did for a living and did not try to rebel against the game.

I love football.  Yes…I know that does not make sense to many people who know me professionally and don’t have a clue as to how much I enjoy the game of football.

Many folks know I love music.  I so enjoy writing my own songs and making them work and even recording some of my songs.

Many folks know I enjoy writing.  I don’t shy away from it in any way, shape, or form.  I truly am enamored with the idea of finding out how the English language can work for me.  That is what I teach my students.

I tell my students…and they are not going to find this in any T-square driven textbook…that language is situation specific.  If we learn how to use the English language to our best ability in the moment we are in…we are winners.

I gave this example today to a student that I needed to correct because said student had said some things said student should not have said.

I told said student:  Look… when my I get together with my buddies to play cards, I am probably not going to talk like I would talk at a job interview.  I am going to be relaxed.  I am going to joke.  I know the difference.  You (said student) need to learn the difference.  You can’t say the words you said today in front of Mrs. So-and-so.

Like The Byrds sang in reference to Ecclesiastes: There is a time for every season under heaven.

Language is situation specific.  THAT IS WHAT KIDS NEED TO HEAR!  They can figure it out, if we just explain that to them.

I digress.

Getting back to football.

As I said, most of my colleagues over the years don’t know of my love affair with the game of football.  The most important reason why is the school I work at and put my heart into does not have a football team.  I mentioned this in an earlier post.   We are a small school.  We couldn’t field a football team if we wanted to.  I accept this and really don’t care.  These are the students I want to work with.  I work in the town I want to work for.  End of story.

Do I miss football?  Yes.  I last coached the game twenty years ago this fall and I still remember it so very fondly.

But since then I have done SO many other wonderful things.

As I said, I recorded music…lyrics and music that I made up myself.  I got to record with masterful musicians I felt I had no business being in the same studio with.

I wrote a human interest column for a fledgling and now defunct weekly newspaper in the county I live in.  This was 7…8 years ago.

I wrote a novel I am proud of.  It is 74,000 words long. One day I hope it is published.

I was fortunate enough to broadcast high school football games on the radio with my friend Gus Stephenson for a number of years.  That in itself is another great post on speaktherights.com that will come soon.

At the risk of sounding ostentatious as I use the pronoun “I” much more than I…ouch…feel comfortable with, there is a moral to this story.

Oh yeah, before I forget…I sang the National Anthem in the arena where the Indiana Pacers play.  It was in the summer before a high school basketball game.  I can tell folks I have heard two people sing in Conseco…now Banker’s Life Field-house in Indianapolis…me and Paul McCartney.

I, in part, give credit for all my diverse shenanigans into life’s world of opportunity to a chance meeting and a brief exchange I had with one of the world’s all time greatest characters.

Maude McMahan was the librarian of the Brownstown Public Library when I was a kid growing up in Brownstown, Indiana.  Maude was also my next-door neighbor.  She was a wonderful and informative influence.  I so wish my dear wife, Carrie, could have met Maude.  They would have hit it off grandly.

Miss Maude gave me free reign of the public library.  I had a card, of course.  I also had an insatiable appetite for reading books about football.  One of the books I found and read and grew to love at the ripe old age of 10…was “Paper Lion” by George Plimpton.

George Plimpton is larger than this column I write today.  Look him up!

Plimpton was a journalist and an editor by trade.  He was a participatory  journalist.

He played with The Boston Pops.  He skated with The Boston Bruins. He tried to play on the PGA tour.  He did so so many things out of the norm and wrote about his exploits of each adventure.  One of those included playing and training with the Detroit Lions in the 1963 pre-season.  He was also a classmate at Havard and close friend of Bobby Kennedy.

In 1966, Plimpton published “Paper Lion” about his time playing football with the Lions.

I read it around 1978.  Alan Alda starred in a movie by the same name in 1968.

As embarrassed as I am to say I do not remember the year, given I remember most things, George Plimpton came to the campus of Indiana University Southeast in the early 1990s to give a speech.  I was a student there at the time. Plimpton came at the behest of one of the faculty members who was an old friend of his.

I too had a friend on the faculty, Dr. Millard Dunn.  He was my teacher, mentor, and friend.  I still consider him all three.

Anyway, after George Plimpton gave his speech I suddenly found my self in a group of four making chit-chat as the evening was winding down.  The four of us were myself, Dr. Dunn, the colleague of Dr. Dunn whom had invited George Plimpton, and George Plimpton himself.  The four of us just chatted politely.

At the exact same moment, Dr. Dunn and his English teaching colleague were motioned away by different corners of the room.  That left George Plimpton looking at me and me being dumbfounded that I was standing alone next to the guy that wrote “Paper Lion” that I had read when I was ten years old.

I will give you our account in a similar way that I told about my exchange with Carrie’s grandpa in my my CARS entry.

Plimpton to me ( as we where both pulling up the ground):  Well, I think the evening went quite well.

Me to George Plimpton:  Yes it did.  We really appreciate you coming and sharing with us tonight.

Plimpton: You have a nice, cozy little campus here.

Me:  Mr. Plimpton…all the things you have done…it is just amazing.  What inspired you?

Plimpton:  My dear boy…you can think about it all day long.  You can be inspired.  You can have the greatest of intentions.  But until you do something about it….what have you done?

Me:  You do indeed have a point.  Thank you so much for sharing.

About this time Plimpton’s buddy showed back up. Before he was whisked away, George Plimpton looked at me and dropped his head and raised it back up without taking his eyes off me.

As I look back the message was straight-forward:  GO DO IT!

That is what I have tried to do.  That is why I am here pecking away at a keyboard.

When I have been inspired, I have acted.  The adventure is endless.

Thank you, George Plimpton.  You helped.

So here I am…speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson

P.S. George Plimpton died in September of 2003. He was 76.  He is still important to me.

Good friends are no guarantee.  You are either going to make them or you are not.

I can look back on friends I had thirty years ago that I have lost touch with…totally.  Not by choice.  It just happens that way.  I am a little saddened by it when I stop and be still and think about them.  But that really doesn’t last all that long.  If it did, I would make a mission out of it.  I don’t do that.  Life just treats us this way.

I have kept up with friends that I have known much longer than thirty years…it is almost comical to think in those terms.  When we get together it is as if time has stood still…unless we are talking about our kids.  Our children are proof that time has not stood still.  Time has flown.

Jerry Brown was in my wedding.  I was in his wedding.  His wedding was in 1992.  My wedding was in 1996.  The last day we spent together in school was in May of 1979.  I moved that summer.  He did not.  Like I said, we have indeed kept up with each other.  To this day when we get together we just take up wherever we left off.  John Lodge of The Moody Blues refers to that relationship as not friendship…but as being “mates”.  I like that.  I also like John’s songs “I’m Just a Singer (in a Rock and Roll Band), It May be a Fire, and Love is on the Run”…among others.  I think I just took some liberty with some quotation marks.

When I knew I would no longer be hanging out with Jerry Brown in the 6th grade…given that I had moved…I was very apprehensive the first day at my new school.  Firstly, I was in a building that was, to me, antiquated.  I had never seen a structure quite like it.  It had no air conditioning.  My old school did.  It had funny windows and long blinds the teachers would occasionally pull down.  To quote Dorthy, “I was not in Kansas anymore”.  The more I looked around and the more I perspired…the more I wished I was at my old school.  And that was just in the first 15 minutes of the first day before the rest of the students I did not know showed up.

I think it was Susan Christie that told Mick Rutherford and Kelly Samons that a new guy was sitting in Mrs. Lambert’s 6th grade classroom by himself as others that had filtered in had gravitated toward their friends and left the new kid hanging in the wind.

Mick and Kelly came and sat down next to me.  They peppered me with questions.  I answered them.  In an amount of twenty minutes, I stopped thinking about what my friend Jerry was doing at my old school.  I moved on…quickly.

I’m so glad Mick and Kelly and I caught the last of 1970s together in a 6th grade classroom that quickly became home to me.

The three of us, Mick, Kelly, and myself have stayed dear friends all of these years.  You can tell how miserable we are around each other in the following picture taken at Kelly’s daughter’s wedding this past early June.

Mick, Kelly, and me.  Or as Mrs. Walton named us in the 6th grade: Huey, Dewey, and Louie.

Louie was fortunate Huey and Dewey came over to speak with him that first day of 6th grade.

He hasn’t forgotten it.

Nor will he forget to…speak the rights.

Danny Johnson

I don’t know much about cars.

I put gas in one.  I put oil in the same one.  I make sure the tires are properly inflated.  You’d think the guy who drives 108 miles a day round trip to work and back would know something about cars.  I wish I were him.

I drive a 1999 Dodge Stratus.  The thing is in great condition, considering it has nearly 225,000 miles upon it.

This car is special to me and I do not want to give it up.

In 1999 on a Wednesday afternoon in mid-October, I was checking in on my dear wife Carrie’s grandparents.  It just so happened that on that day her grandfather, Rubert, had purchased a new 1999 Dodge Stratus and he drove it home that day and it was sitting in the driveway with all of 34 miles on the odometer.

As I walked in the back door that led the kitchen of the house of  Rubert and his wife, Mildred, I met Rubert and he gave me a pleasant greeting as he always did.  It went something like this:  ” How’s it going, Old Buddy?”  “Glad you came by…preshadit.”

I sat at the kitchen table and Rubert asked me if I wanted a cup of coffee.  Mildred asked me if I wanted a sandwich…this was the common drill.

I settled on a glass of tea.

Rubert then asked me if I was still planning to take our oldest son, Jarrett, with me down to visit Aunt Barbara near Jackson, Mississippi.  The three of us, Aunt Barbara, Jarrett, and myself were to be heading from her house on Saturday up to Oxford to watch the Ole Miss Rebels take on the Georgia Bulldogs at Vaught-Hemmingway Stadium on the campus of Ole Miss.  It was a great game, by the way. The only problem was that Georgia won by a score of 20-17.  Quincy Carter was playing quarterback for Georgia.  Also, I remember watching Ole Miss running back Joe Gunn run 85 yards for a touchdown.  It was a very exciting game.

Anyway, Rubert told me to take his new Dodge Stratus to Mississippi that weekend.  The car had only 34 miles on it!

I told him no.  I was not going to take his new car.

He told me otherwise.  I think our exchange went something like this:

Me:  Rubert, I am not going to take your new car.

Rubert;  Yeah you are.

Me: No…I am not.

Rubert: Why not?

Me: Cos the car is brand new…I don’t want to hurt it.

Rubert: You’re not going to hurt it.  Just take it and test it out.

Me: Rubert, I am not going to take it and test it out.  It is your car, you need to test it out.

Rubert ( getting a little testy):  You take the damn thing…blow it out…tell me how she runs!

I had no choice.

Me:  Okay…I will drive it down there.

And so I did.  And I am still driving that car all these years on.

By the way…I enjoyed driving that car too much that trip to Mississippi.  I got a speeding ticket just inside the Illinois line and I will swear in court I was doing 69 and not the 71 the officer told me I was doing.  I played nice.  I was in another state.

In truth…as I mentioned on another post…Rubert had to be put in a nursing home in early 2007.  I started driving that car when he was no longer able to.  He died in April 2007.

I still think of him often as I drive to and fro to work every day.  I hope the car holds out for a good while.  I have been taking good care of it.

Just yesterday I was outside of the school I work at and I was walking with a 7th grade student as I was heading to my car.  When I told the student I was going to my car he quizzed me on which car was mine.  He guessed it was a nice new modern SUV.  I told him mine was the puny Dodge Stratus.  He told me I can do better than that.

I thought of Rubert Hawkins…and I thought…no, I don’t think I can.

That is just plain flat outright….speaking the rights.

Danny Johnson

” I’m looking forward to your next post,” a friend said recently.  Then they asked me why I missed a day once or twice.

Good question.  Answer:  There are only twenty-four hours in the day and I think we should both be glad that I was blessed with the ability to sit here and hammer away at this keyboard and spout off and carry on like I think I know something…or a reasonable facsimile thereof.

Another good question:  “How can you think of something to write about all the time?”

Answer:  It goes back to time.  If we had forty-eight hours in the day, I would be delighted to drone on even more than I do!  I tell kids at school that only boring people get bored.  My wheels are turning in constant motion until I decide it is time to retire for the evening.  I am thankful for this.

Why?  Good question.  Answer:  I love to sit here and share my thoughts, ideas, and the occasional opinion.  I just speak the rights.  I try to steer clear of any in-your-face agenda…you  can find that anywhere else if you stay still long enough.  Sooner or later you will find something objectionable…that is if you object to anything.

I saw a picture on an internet post that my dear wife, Carrie, likes to look at for entertainment purposes.  It is named after a food condiment or something…The Dill or whatever it is?

What I found funny was a message that had been spray painted on something and it said, “Spread Anarchy!”  Then someone came along behind them and wrote underneath it: “Don’t tell me what to do!”  I thought that was funny.  There can be humor in nearly every form of stupidity as long as it finds its place.

My place for a few moments every night during the work week and usually in the mornings on weekends is right here.  This is where you will find me, sitting on my screened-in back porch speaking the rights.  Of an evening, I am usually sipping on diet ginger ale as I type away.  On Saturday mornings I will be out here vowing to write four entries as I drink too much coffee and hope it doesn’t get so hot out here that I have to move indoors.  And no….I have not  written four of these at one sitting, though I have no doubt that I could.

I was amazed this past weekend at the PGA Championship at Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville.  Huge crowds…or should I say galleries.  They call crowds at PGA events “galleries”.  How can you call a crowd like that a gallery?  Guys were swilling beer at this thing, not drinking tea with their pinkies hiked in the air!  Gallery  indeed.

Louisville is fairly close to my home.  We live in Southern Indiana about forty minutes from Louisville if you really get on it in a car and don’t get pulled over for speeding.  Carrie and I both earned graduate degrees from the University of Louisville.  When we graduated no one asked me if I would have any family to be part of the “gallery” that was to watch us graduate.  There was no need for that, regardless of what they called the crowd.  Neither of us made the trip over there for commencement.

Speaking of golf.  I have a golf tournament of my own to play in this fall.  I will meet up with three of my best cronies as we gather together to make a foursome for The Corner King Classic.  This will be the fifteenth year we have played together in the Corner King Classic and I promise I will give you both the history of the tournament and the results that follow.  Do wish us the best of luck.

So there.  I did it.  A friend of mine told me he did not believe I could write a post that mentioned sports without going on about football.

Don’t worry.  There will be plenty of time for that later.  I assure you.  This weekend is “PIGSKIN PREDICTION WEEKEND” on speaktherights.com…be sure to tune in.

I will leave you with a couple scenes from the official speaktherights.com screened-in back porch.

This is what I look like as I am trying to speak the rights.

Success.

Danny Johnson

I wish I had a picture here to show you.  Perhaps I will get the few…or maybe just two that I can think of that may actually still exist and find a way to digitize them for sharing.  They are pictures of my bicycle.  I’m on said bike in one of those photos.  I know that photo survived.

When I was a kid, I had a purple bicycle.  My parents bought me this bike.  They bought it at an old Sears catalog store in a town close by to the one we lived in.

From birth up until I was eleven years and a few months old, I lived in a town called Brownstown, Indiana.  The place is nothing special which is good.  Had it found a way to be some kind of special tourist trap, I probably would not have been allowed to ride my bike all over town.  But ride I did…every chance I got.

We lived on the far east end of town on a street called Jackson Street.  It was just a few blocks down the hill from the courthouse, as Brownstown is the county seat of Jackson County.  When I was riding my bike,  the town had all of one stoplight in it.  Nowadays it has two.

Even after I moved to some out-post called Ramsey in Harrison County, now and again I was startled by what I thought was the sound of the bell atop the courthouse clock bonging to indicate the hour of the night it was on.  I suppose I was dreaming.  Last Sunday I was at a picnic just barely down the street from my old homestead and indeed the clock bell’s sound was pleasant and welcome.  That sound has not changed in over forty years.

The courthouse lawn has a tank on it from the Korean War.  My buddies and I played on it. Oh the things such a stout piece of metal can do for one’s imagination is astounding.

As I said, I rode my bike and I rode it everywhere in town.

My bike started with a banana seat.  I think I was 6 when I got it.  I rode it until I was 11.  One day…years after I put what we called a “ten speed style seat” on it…I was peddling away and the handle bars just up and cracked and broke off.  I was heartbroken.  I suppose it was good timing.  We moved a couple months later and I did not have take it with me.  I started riding my Dad’s old bike.  It was a blue 5-speed.

I rode my old bike to the  Brownstown pool.  We had a pool in town.  It too is still there.  It is situated on Bridge Street about a mile from our old house.    Also on Bridge Street is the park.  I played little league baseball there.  I rode my bike to baseball practice.  It was a great feeling to slide one’s baseball glove over a handle bar until it hits bottom and just kind of dangles there as you peddle your heart out heading to a diamond.  In 1979 I was on an unbeaten team…The Royals.  It was back when we still played ball in blue jeans and t-shirts and the only players that got trophies were the members of the teams that won the season’s championship.  There were no handing out of trophies just because someone was afraid a kid might get his precious feelings hurt.

That last sentence is why soccer in the United States will never be a major professional sport.  I cherish my 1979 trophy.  I earned it.  Our boys, Jarrett and Cody,  played soccer and were patted on the head at the end of the season and handed a trophy annually and neither one of these boys could tell you where a one of those trophies are.  They didn’t earn them and they both understand the value of hard work….thankfully.

I digress.  But I did speak the rights while doing it.

Just down Bridge Street…another block downhill from the park…lived my great-grandmother, Ivy Nowling.  I rode my bike to her house.  I was ten and she was seventy-six and every day at 1 PM during the summer I knew I could count on watching “Days of Our Lives” with her.  She enjoyed it and kept me updated if I missed out on a day or two or three in succession.  She had a habit of pronouncing the names of the characters her own little way.  The bad guy was named “Stefano”.  Grandma called him “Stefana”.

I have strong memories and I have strong legs.  Thanks in great part to a purple bicycle I miss right now…as I speak the rights.

I’ll find a picture.

Danny Johnson