Yesterday I was on a not so busy two-lane highway that I use to transport my personage to get my allergy shots.  Pesky things those allergy shots.  They take time.  They take money.  They hurt.  I tell myself they make me feel better.  My nose and sinuses tend to confirm that.

On the way home I saw a very precious and welcoming sight.  On the east side of a north-south highway I was travelling north on, I saw a young girl…4 or 5 years old…driving in one of those battery-powered four- wheelers that children have a tendency to enjoy tooling around yards and driveways in.

This 4-wheeler was pink and decorated quite nicely.  The child was at least seventeen yards away from the road; there was no threat of danger to either of us.

What struck me was the way the child was intently looking at the other driver…me… and how she had both hands firmly on the steering wheel similarly to what we (those of us that took driver education) were taught.

Good for you young lady, I thought to myself.  Keep it up.

More importantly, keep that firm grip on the steering wheel!  Do not let go of it one day just because your little cell phone goes off and you think it is humanly impossible not to respond immediately to something that is doubtfully a matter of life and death…or much of anything really significant.

Translation:  Do Not Text and Drive!!!!

I have an ulterior motive here…I am greedy.  I want to live!

I drive at least 108 miles or more about 250 days of the year.

I am sick and tired of seeing folks with their heads titled at a 45 degree angle;  they are not looking at their odometers.  They are looking at their darn phones.

Who cares what “twitter” has to say if your safety depends on how you navigate a motorized vehicle through ample amounts of traffic or a country road that insists that you stay on your side of it for the sake of the safety of you and those around you.

It is tough enough on some country roads where I live given the massive deer population…I have hit five of Bambi’s cousins myself.

What is worse is the fact that I am now dodging idiots looking down at their cell phones as they are finding me hurtling toward them at a normal rate of speed…or slower thanks to these morons…and they jerk their cars back into the space they were intended to drive in based on the rules of the road.

Okay.  I do talk on telephone as I travel.  Given I have a long commute, it is the best way to keep up with some folks and find out what I need to get at the Jay C Grocery Store in Salem on my way home.

I do not, however, try to read as I am going down the road.

I am faced with a dilemma here.

Each time I see someone looking at their precious phone as I am driving,  I want to honk my horn.  I abstain from such a reaction because I do not want to startle the poor fool and potentially cause them more pain than they already have in their lives.  But…it is tempting.

If you make a habit of texting and driving, go ahead and look around your closet and pick out something you can wear at your funeral…or something you can wear as you are visiting my funeral.  I have a distinct fear this is not going to work out very well for one of us!  I hope and pray I am mistaken.

Know that when I speak the rights on these pages, I am not at a stop sign or a stop light.

Danny Johnson

In Indiana, Madison, Indiana to be exact (you may recall a movie about a hydroplane racing boat by the same name), there is a sign I always chuckle at when I pass by.

The sign, as the picture indicates, informs interested motorists that these two towns are in the direction after the next right turn.

Kent Austin is the name of the Hamilton Tiger Cats’ head coach.  The TiCats, as they are often called,  play in the Canadian Football League.  I watched part of a game last night.  Calgary was playing British Columbia.  It was an entertaining game…but the 10 pm kickoff made it too late for me to hang in there.  Wish I could have seen it all.  No…I don’t have a device to tape whatever I want on TV.  BC won by one point.  Calgary lost its first game.  They are now 4 and 1.

Kent Austin played quarterback at Ole Miss when I was in high school in Indiana.  I rarely got to see him play.  Thirty years ago we did not get to choose to watch what teams we wanted to.  We watched the couple of games that showed up on the television and one of them was narrated by Keith Jackson.

Still…I did my best to keep up with how the Ole Miss Rebs were doing by reading the newspaper and getting out a pencil and paper and figuring up statistics like the maniac I was about those sorts of things.

I can to this day recite the NFL’s quarterback rating formula that I am not sure they even use anymore.  In 1981, Ken Anderson’s qb rating was 98.5.  He led the league and was 10 points ahead of the NFC’s leader that year.  That quarterback was named Joe Montana.  He was in his third year.

1981 was the NFL’s greatest season.  The Super Bowl was truly the Cinderella Bowl that January 24, 1982. The Cincinnati Bengals played the San Francisco 49ers in Detroit’s Pontiac Silverdome.

Both  Anderson’s Cincinnati Bengals and Montana’s San Francisco 49ers had records of 6 wins and 10 losses the season before in 1980.  In 1981,  the Bengals were 12 wins and 4 losses.  That same year, the 49ers were 13 wins and 3 losses.  The Bengals were Bungles in the first half of the Super Bowl.  Turnovers led to a 20-0 halftime deficit.  I was a Bengals fan.  I was very sad at the half.

The 49ers held on to win Super Bowl XVI by a score of 26-21.  It was the first time in Super Bowl history….and probably still holds…that the losing team, the Bengals, scored more touchdowns and had more offensive yards and still lost.

In fact the MVP, Joe Montana,  threw for 157 yards and Ken Anderson threw for 300 yards and broke the completion percentage record for the game after he completed 25 of the 34 throws he made.  A few years later Phil Simms would do better leading the Giants.  You can look it up.

So there…just to help you get warmed up for football season…you get a NFL history lesson even though all I sat down here to do was to share a picture of an Indiana highway sign I think to be amusing.

Just goes to show you.  Anything is possible…when you speak the rights.

Danny Johnson

Carrie and I put our son, Jarrett, on a plane this afternoon at Louisville, Kentucky’s Standiford Field.  As I type these words he is probably on a tarmac at Hartsfield International in Atlanta.  His Delta  Jet….”FLY DELTA JETS” is on a sign near a hangar you can see as you speed down runway at Hartsfield (I suppose it is still there)…is going to take off at 10:17 PM.  He is flying from Atlanta, Georgia to Dubai, United Arab Emirates.  He will from there find a mode of transportation…probably a crappy plane that needs its oil changed…to the US Military Airfield in Kandahar, Afghanistan.

Jarrett is no longer in the military.  He is working there as a civilian.

He did spend many years in the Army.  He finished as a Staff Sargent…I think.

Jarrett, I mentioned in another post, did one stint in Iraq and served two deployments in Afghanistan.  You want to talk about a couple proud parents.  You want to talk about a couple relieved parents.  Well, Carrie and I probably don’t want to talk about it.

The times Jarrett was in harm’s way to the extreme during his deployments were difficult on us.

I remember one time we were talking to him on the telephone and it was like listening to one of those hairy episodes of M*A*S*H….we heard a big old KAA-BOOOOM in the background.  That night was one of the rare times in my life that I ever lost sleep.

Those days are gone, Thank God.

Still…it was so so hard this afternoon to let him go.  To watch him go out of sight knowing he will be so far from any help we can offer him in the here and now.  Oh yes, we pray for him.  We pray for him fiercely.  I believe in my heart this is a great and wonderful thing; I still wish I was closer to him in case he needs me.

On the way to airport, our car was kinda heavy with the task at hand.  We had to say good-bye to him.  It is never easy.  I tried to cut through the thick mental fog we were all travelling through by asking Jarrett about the helicopters he helps to maintain in the civil job he now has.

We had good speaks.  I tried to impress him with some verbiage that was uncommonly spot-on.  I got lucky, I guess.  I don’t know anything about transmission housings or stress problems in casings…but I talked like I did and he never felt like he had to explain anything to me in great depth.  Heck, I actually felt pretty smart for a change.

I am evading why I sat down here to write this.

Between deployments and leave and back again and this new job and back again, I have lost count on how many times Jarrett has gotten on a plane to fly to the other side of this big blue marble while we are left to hear word that he is safe and sound and made it to his destination in one piece.

This does not get easier for his mother and me.  It is not routine.  We are still waiting for the phone call from Jarrett that lets us know he made it to his destination and he tell us it is 112 degrees there.  Only then will we breathe deep again and wait for the next phone call and count the days, weeks, and months until he is back with us here in the U.S. of A.

Jarrett has a job to do.  He is good at it.  If he wasn’t…he wouldn’t be there.

Do me a favor and keep him in your prayers.

In times like these, flying to Afghanistan is not routine travel.

Speak the rights.

Danny Johnson

Our sons, Cody and Jarrett, fishing on Blue River a couple weeks ago.

I have been asked if this is a picture (top of the page)  of a private farm lake where I used to go fishing.

It is not.  I have not been to that location in probably two decades…at least.  I miss that place.  It was peaceful, calm, and many friends (some of whom I miss because they are no longer around) and I shared treasured times there.

What this is a picture of is…Walden Pond.

My dear wife, Carrie, and I visited Walden Pond in October of 2011.  In fact, this picture was taken on a Friday.  I went to a University of New Hampshire football game on Saturday.   Then on Sunday morning next there were 18 inches of snow on the ground.  We were visiting dear friends.

I took this picture of Walden Pond with my antiquated cell phone.  The cell phone I still use, by the way.

Perhaps the chronology of that weekend in picture form would help.

Friday, October 28, 2011   Walden Pond, Mass

Saturday, October 29, 2011  Rhode Island @ UNH

Sunday, October 30, 2011 The Great Nor’easter that brought a half a yard of snow.

Amherst, NH

Speak the Rights.

Danny Johnson

What follows is a piece I wrote a few years ago.  I share it for the first time.   I was reminded of it and inspired by a question I was posed today:

“How’s your Dad?”

It matters not what season.  It matters not what town.  Sooner or later, if I am recognized, chances are better than not I will be asked…”How’s your Dad doing?”

That is the legacy that my father, Larry Johnson, has passed down.  I am his personal press secretary.

Here’s the deal.  My  Dad is a retired educator.  He taught a few years in Mississippi, twelve more in Brownstown, and put in twenty years as a teacher at North Harrison High School.  Through it all, as much as he had a tendency to complain  as the end drew near, I believe he had a good time of it and, believe me… he was a positive influence on scores of folks over the years.  Had he not been exactly that, I would not be peppered so often with the same question…”How’s your Dad?”

In addition to being a school teacher, he was also a football coach.  He spent nine years as the head coach at Brownstown, 1970-1978,  and seven years as the head coach at North Harrison, 1979-1985.  To date he is the only man to head up football squads for two different Mid-Southern Conference Schools. (Edit…Jason Hawkins just took over Silver Creek coming from Charlestown…he is the second one to coach two conference schools.)  It is mostly this genre of extra-curricular activity that brings the constant re-visitation about the whereabouts and condition of my father.  It comes in the form of…”How’s your Dad?”

This is a good thing.  I’ll tell you why.

The constant inquiry I receive from those asking about my Dad is tangible proof that he is appreciated, well-thought of, and I suppose most importantly…he is remembered.

After all, if the folks asking about him did not care about him, they’d never bring his existence up to me.  Truly, I never get tired of hearing that question.

Most of the inquiry I get comes from Jackson County.  I spend about two hundred days a year working in Jackson County.  My workplace is less than ten miles from the street I grew up on as a child.  I can’t spend fifteen minutes in Brownstown before someone is asking me how my Dad is.

Many years ago I stopped being astounded by the stories and “legends” that surround my Dad when it came to football coaching and the remarkable and sometimes not so remarkable relationships he had with his players.

One year he was so mad at his players because many of them stayed out late at the Jackson County Fair.  Those guilty were quite sluggish in practice that morning.  He told them that if they liked the county fair so much, he give them their own county fair and proceeded to make five different conditioning stations on the field.  One in each corner and the fifth at mid-field.  To this day many coaches have a drill they call “County Fair” and they don’t have a clue where it came from.

I also hear stories about how my Dad drove kids home after practice and made sure they were safe before he took care of his own needs.  How he was a good example and a father figure to many of the players who could not depend upon their own fathers.

Now that football season is upon us,  I know that I will run into so many different folks that will inquire about how my Dad is.

He is doing fine.  I played golf with him a few days ago.  He still reads his Bible in the morning and drinks too much coffee.  He plays golf regularly.  He works out at the local YMCA.  He sings in the choir at church.  He still watches football and as he watches, he still “gets into it a little bit.”

With that said, know that I too appreciate the man.  He took me to more ball games than I can count.  We used to pitch the baseball until the sun gave out on the day.  He still beats me at H-O-R-S-E.  And I am truly blessed.

In earnest  I can tell you I was actually saving words like these for another day.  Then I called an audible.  Why wait?

I ask you the same thing.  Why wait?

Your homework is to find a someone that is close to you and let them know you care.  Let them know that you know they have made a difference.

This past Spring I called a North Harrison baseball game against Brownstown Central on the radio..  John Lawson, Brownstown Central’s  coach, and a few years my senior, and I exchanged emails before the game.  I was looking for information on his team.  His last words via email were…”Tell your Dad I said hello.”

And so it goes.

At a Football Reunion in Brownstown a few years ago, the coach that hated to talk to the media was giving a reporter a full report.

While I made mention of a couple of movies recently, I can honestly say that most of my movie watching days are behind me.  I am not sure why?   I have never liked horror movies.  I thought Freddie Kruger was a sissy.  I don’t like movies where folks are shooting at one another and killing each other.  That is no fun.  I like fun.  But I don’t like fun that is nasty and raunchy and stupid.  Seems like there is a great deal of that out there too.

What are my favorite movies?

“Bull Durham”.  Not the most wholesome of programs, but a funny one.  This is a great story about one of my favorite pastimes…minor league baseball.  Want some fun?  Go watch the Asheville Tourists.  That is the team Crash Davis sign on with at the end of the movie.  My dear wife, Carrie, and I saw a no-hitter thrown there.  It was in June of 2000.

“The Prince of Tides”.  I am a romantic at heart.  This Pat Conroy adaptation gets it right.  Carrie and I were at a dinner party for Pat once and he is one of the most interesting people you could ever run into.   Nick Nolte and Barbara Streisand make a great on-screen romance.  The movie is also partially shot in Charleston, SC and I love the place.  The music?  The soundtrack is on my IPOD.

“The Wizard of Oz”.  I still like to watch it all these years on.  I love the Scarecrow.  I think the Tin Man is a weenie.  The Lion is painful to watch at times.  Overall, this is as classic as you will find.

“The Ten Commandments”.  I’d sit and watch this just to listen to the guy narrating the story.  He really sounds like he was there.  The colors and the sets and the dude that is Charlton Heston. The hours….many of them for you that know it…fly right by.

“The Homecoming”.  The original movie that started the saga of Virginia’s Walton family in the Blue Ridge Mountains.  Carrie and I watch this movie every Christmas season.  What I would have given to of had a chance to take a seat on one of those benches around the Walton table at supper time.  Those were some great characters.

“Space Cowboys”.  We lost James Garner a week or so back.  Jim Rockford does not disappoint as “Tank” in this one.  Space Shuttles have always fascinated me.  Guess that is over.  But…this movie is not.  It shows up on television now and again and gives me a reason beside football season to pay for my DIRECTV.  The banter between Clint Eastwood’s character and Tommy Lee Jones’ character is infectious.

“TEACHERS”.  Another Nick Nolte gem.   He plays a bit of a rounder with a heart of gold.  He is all about helping the kids in a school that is going through some political upheaval.  Gee…that never really happens.  The music?  If you can find the soundtrack, let me know if it costs less than 50 bucks.  It is very elusive for some reason.  I had the cassette when it came out.

“MIRACLE”.  The hockey movie.  I really do like it.  I wasn’t just saying that on another post.  This is my favorite sports story of all time.  In large part, I love it because I remember it.  To this day if I hear Al Michaels asking us if we believe in miracles, I get goosebumps.

“Stand by Me”.  It clocks in at about 90 minutes and I wish all movies could do that.  Coming of age tales have potential to stay with you.  I have not forgotten this one.  Though it was set in a time before I remember and a place I have never been, there is plenty there I am familiar with. Verno said it best, “This is a really good time.”

“Children of a Lesser God”.  Wow.  This filmed got hosed at the Oscars.  It was the best picture.  Platoon was not…too much shooting and killing and hamburger meat flying around.  I have never seen a picture before or since that appealed to me as visually as this film does.  As dark (literally) as some of the scenes are, they are intrinsically brightened by the optimism they hold.  Marlee Matlin won best actress… I think.  William Hurt should have won one too.  One of the greatest love stories ever made.

Fun at a minor league baseball game.

Nick Nolte’s characters usually spoke the rights.

There is a print of a painting in our kitchen.

The same likeness is hanging in large form in my office at school.

There is another matted copy of the same image sitting a few feet from where I type these very words.

Let me go get it and put it in front of me for inspiration.  Hang on a minute.

The price tag is still on it.  How I ever got out of The Art Institute in Chicago by only paying 15 bucks for this thing is dumbfounding to me.  I’d of paid $75. So is the price of art, I suppose.

I really don’t know that much about the great artists, or the periods of art, or the major influences of the biggies.  Yes, I have been to many art museums. They fascinate me.  Art fascinates me.  On a visit to Minneapolis to see a true artist, Brett Favre, my dear wife, Carrie, and I went to the Walker Art Center.   This is a place that concentrates on modern art.  I found it fascinating. There was some stuff there made by Yoko Ono and I just did not get it.  I didn’t expect to.  Beatle fans have to stick together.

They do have a great outdoor exhibit at The Walker as well.  I think they call it a “Sculpture Garden”.  There is a big SPOON with a cherry sitting on it that gathers a great deal of attention.  I thought that was pretty neat.  The Walker Museum was not a waste of time.  If I had the time, and I was in Minneapolis, I would go back.  I really would.

Like I said,  I don’t know that much about the great artists, or the periods of art, or the major influences of the biggies.

I do, however, know my great artist.  I do know I depended on him on more days than not during my 11th grade English class, 5th period after lunch, and to me he was a biggie and he was…and still is… a major influence on me.

I don’t know much about the painter,  Edward Hopper.  In earnest, I am reluctant to find out too much in fear that I might find a reason to think ill of him.  That would be difficult to me and my system of beliefs.  Sometimes there are circumstances where we know too much for our own good.  I don’t want that to happen.

This is what I do know:  In 1942, the same year my parents were born, Edward Hopper completed a painting he called “Nighthawks”.

“Nighthawks” is a street view scene into a cafe that houses three customers and the gent behind the counter.  He is obviously tending to an order of one of his customers.  One customer has his back to us.  The other two are sitting looking not at each other, though they are looking forward to a degree.  It looks as those these two have a great deal on their minds.

This painting saved me.

In 1984 I was in an English class with a teacher I could not see eye to eye with if I was lying on the ground or standing on a step-ladder.  As a student,  I never walked into a class with the intention of giving any teacher a hard time.  My Dad was a teacher.  I understood this stuff.  What I was not prepared for was a teacher, a female person… that was totally satisfied with listening to the sound of her own voice without giving sincere care to the voices of the students around her.  Maybe she was scared.  Maybe she was dealing with a confidence problem.  Maybe…well, who knows?

In the back of our class Literature Book, there was period art to augment the significance of the day.  That is where I found Edward Hopper’s “Nighthawks”.

When I became unaccountable to the mess of the English class I was subjected to, instead of making a horses-butt of myself, which I was more than capable of, I turned to the back of our book and stared intently to the small rendition of Hopper’s masterpiece that had found its way into a text book in Southern Indiana when I needed it the most.

The original has a home…The Art Institute of Chicago.  The first time I visited there it was on loan.  This past February, our last visit to Chicago, it was on loan to another museum.  I think it was in France.  But…I have seen “Nighthawks” a couple times.  It is much larger than I ever imagined it would be.  The few inches by a few inches I dreamed about as I was looking at my 11th grade textbook was suddenly a masterpiece before me that measured in feet by feet.

I wept the first time I saw it.  If it was in front of me today, I would probably look for a crying towel.  And to think, in 1942, Edward Hopper was just sitting down to paint.

His painting speaks the rights.

The closest I have ever gotten to a hole-in-one.

This was at #7….New Salisbury National Golf Course, two years ago.

I did make the putt, by the way.

Speak the rights.

Danny Johnson

I have seen plenty of movies about sports teams that did not drive me to be a fan of that team.

The movie “Miracle” about the 1980 U.S. Olympic Hockey team beating the Soviets on their way to a Gold Medal is probably my favorite movie themed around athletic endeavors.   Speaking of which, I spoke the rights about that team and that movie in a guest column once.  I will pull it out of mothballs and place it here soon.

Though I have the warmest of affections for that movie and what it meant to me, I still don’t give a hootie-hoot about the game of hockey.  As athletes, I appreciate what hockey players have the ability to accomplish…just don’t ask me to watch.

Still, more times than not, when I mention my dear wife, Carrie’s, and my sincere affinity for watching the Marshall Thundering Herd play football, most folks eventually ask if I was ultra-inspired by the movie about the 1970 Marshall University Football Team’s plane crash and the resiliency of a town that was portrayed in  “We Are Marshall”.

I was inspired by “We Are Marshall”.  I’d say anyone whom ever laced up a pair of cleats and understands the team dynamic that goes into playing the game of football was inspired…or depressed.

No…that wasn’t it for me.  How we got around to following Marshall football is really a simple story.  I think it is a neat and even kind of sad story…the 1970 plane crash notwithstanding.

My Dad was a football coach when I was growing up.  I was his shadow from the time I walked onto a practice field.  The game has never left me.

I had hoped to one day coach my old high school team to better days.  Things have been rather woeful at the old alma mater for a very long time.  I had a plan to lift them out of the bowels of lethargy, though many administrations there have made it clear over the years I am not a welcome sight.

While I love the game, it does not drive me.  I have never been one to chase down a coaching job for the sake of being a football coach.  I already know I can be one.  I know what it takes. I last coached in 1994 as I was finishing up my college education.

The school where I am employed does not play football.  We are too small.  And that is okay.  Like I said, the school up the road with the field I ran up and down is the only high school football coaching job I ever wanted.

With all that said, I have never gotten the game out of my system.  I still love it.  I have never lost  the desire to give a team my all, even though I was denied that.

My dear Carrie and I vacation in North Carolina every chance we get.  To get there we travel Interstate 64 East from Indiana to Kentucky to West Virginia and then make a route changing turn In Charleston, WV.  I could not tell you how many times we passed right by the exit for Hunting, WV, the town where Marshall University is located.  We were racing for the coast…not the hills of Appalachia.

Then one year, on the return trip from a summer visit, we were doing everything we could to stretch just a few more hours into our vacation.  When we passed the Huntington exit, we pulled off to look around.  It was mid to late July.  I told Carrie it was our duty to find the stadium where the Thundering Herd play football.  After all, I had seen it many times on television.

How fortunate and blessed we were to find that Joan C. Edwards Stadium, “The Joan”, was holding “pick your seat day”…a season ticket opportunity where folks come in and pick the season tickets they want.  Some folks like to sit low.  Some folks like to sit higher in a stadium to get the vantage point they desire.  Carrie and I strolled in and looked around.

There was no holding me back.  I was not there to buy season tickets, but you better believe I did Carpe Diem right and made my way to standing on the field so Carrie could take my picture on it.  Wish I could find it.

I was impressed with the place.

What happened next was the stuff of legend.

Carrie and I found a place to get a bite to eat.  The folks in the establishment were all talking about Marshall Football.  We went to some downtown shoppes.  They were talking football.  Everywhere we went people were talking football…and they were serious about sizing up the season.  I could tell they were an informed bunch.  They were also very sincere about the whole thing.  We weren’t subjected to any hot-aired bravado that would have turned us off in a heartbeat.  What we heard and what we felt was a town’s heartbeat that was close to their team.  Heck, the fire plugs in town are painted green and white…the school colors.

I looked at Carrie and told her we needed to get back in the fall to see a game.  We did just that.  We saw Marshall play Southern Mississippi on an odd college football Sunday night game.  That was 2007.

We have been back ever since.  In 2010 we had season tickets and made it to four of the six games…the biggie that year was the last time they hosted big-brother… the West Virginia Mountaineers.  You couldn’t fit anyone else in that stadium with a shoehorn.  The Herd lost 24-21 in overtime.  They had a 21-6 lead int the 4th quarter.  The townsfolk still talk about that one too.

Since we have found the Herd we go to two, three, maybe four games a year.  They played a track meet up at Purdue two years ago.  51-41 I think it was.  The Herd got beat.

This year they are not supposed to get beat.  The schedule is cream-puff soft and they have a very solid football team.  Their cream-puff schedule is not completely their fault.  The conference they play in has gone through many changes, just like the rest in college football.

Game day in Huntington is fantastic.  There’s a buzz in the air.  Folks are feeling good.  The local paper is great.  They have a curmudgeon of a sports columnist who would complain about the rope at his own hanging, but he is still a great deal of fun to read.  He knows his stuff.

The fans are ready for the 2014 season.  I too am ready.  Like they say in Huntington: Go Herd or Go Home!

Now that is speaking the rights.

As good as my memory is…and if anyone here has read much of anything I have written on these pages you know I have a vault…I still fail miserably at remembering to get to all that I need to in order to make things right.  Well, if not right, a least a little better.

When Doug Rothrock’s Dad passed away I failed to send him an email.  I failed to send him a card.  I failed to call up.  I failed.

What was my excuse?  I read about it online when I was out of town. Of course, I thought, I will get around to getting word to Doug as soon as I get back in town.

If Doug reads this, it will be the first he has heard me make mention of it.  Shame on me.  Don’t ask me how long that has been.  That is even more shameful.

Doug and I went to church together.  Doug and I played softball together.  Doug and I did business together.  I suppose if I had needed a loan, he would have heard from me sooner.  More shame on me.

I have no idea where Mrs. Patti Miller is these days.  She had no idea how a few strokes of a pen helped my ego when I needed it most.  “You are an excellent writer”.  That is what she posted not online…but in my 10th grade high school yearbook some thirty years ago.

Mrs. Miller knew I loved to write.  And guess what?  One of the few things I feel I can actually give my high school credit for…understand I am talking about the school and not the great teachers I had…the school let Mrs. Miller teach a Sports Literature class.  It was the first of its kind and probably the last of its kind.  Why they let Mrs. Miller teach it, I have no earthly idea.  Don’t care.  I do know her sports acumen was limited.  Mine was abundant.  Also abundant was my curiosity with putting words together to both sound good and stir some kind of emotional chords.

I was writing prose.  I was writing poetry.  I had no idea why and very few around could understand why or how I was so attached to my notebooks that housed verse after verse after verse of my attentions of the day.  Well, I guess things have not changed a great deal in thirty years after all.  I was mistaken.

But I was not mistaken by the words that Mrs. Miller put in my yearbook.  They were encouraging words.  I believe they were honest words.  She didn’t have to choose those words.

Though I have not looked upon her handwritten message in many years, I still remember how it is sitting on a page somewhere in my office.  That old yearbook is holding up a great deal of significance.

Words like that matter.  I am fortunate to have other first-hand knowledge.

We’ll call her “Annie”.

Annie was in a 9th grade English class I was teaching and she worked very hard.  She was a fair athlete.  On the track team that spring, she threw the shot-put.  When she found out a meet was going to be held never my old high school…I live nearby…Annie asked that I come to the meet and give her what I call an “inspirational address”.   I gave said address.  Annie broke the school record that day in the shot-put.

When Sectional time came at the end of the season, Annie asked that I I give her another “inspirational address”.  I told her I could not be at the meet.  I then told her I had an even better idea.

What I did was write Annie an inspirational address.  I gave her a pep talk on paper.  The words were in a sealed envelope with her name on it.  I gave her explicit instructions on when to open it along the bus ride…about half way to their destination.

I wish I could report some great result from the Sectional Meet.  I can’t.  I don’t remember what she did.  I do, however, remember her thanking me for my words of encouragement.  I was thankful she was thankful.  Then I went about the rest of my business of the day and probably never gave it another thought for nearly year.

Annie never asked for another inspirational address from me.  I never asked if she wanted or needed another one.

When the Sectional Meet came around at the end of Annie’s sophomore year she participated again.  When the team loaded onto the bus, Annie was carrying a shot put in one hand and a year-old envelope in another.  When the bus driver quizzed Annie about the envelope, she told him it was Mr. Johnson’s “inspirational address”.

The words I never gave Doug Rothrock.

The words Mrs. Miller gave to me.

The words I gave Annie.

They all matter.

So…speak the rights.

Danny Johnson