The Machine Jack Built Is In Working Order

In 1957, Owensboro’s incredible Eastern Little League All Star Team continued its dominance in the state by winning its second consecutive state championship. The year before, led by Randy Embry, they won their first. This time out it was another standout player who made such a remarkable difference. Bobby Woodward.

Bobby and Sherman Chappel were a duo of animals, both sluggers and throwers. Bobby, who actually had another year in Little League left………….which was unheard-of, an 11 year old doing what he did…….and they went and won, well, everything. For years………..but let me digress…………these guys were good!!

The kids beat Lexington and Martin, Ky for the state championship, then ventured to Huntington, W Va for the Divisional matches, winning over Bristol, Virginia and Montgomery, W Va to set up a 4 team, winner-goes-to-Williamsport prize for the 4 team final round. It was eventful as hell and historical in the end. These guys were good!

In the first game, Owensboro came out hot, leading 8-3 over Knoxville, Tennessee after only 2 innings. But they got tied in the top of the final 6th inning, creating extra innings. Then David Kirk launched a walk-off homer in the 8th for the win. They were 3 games away from the National Title. Terrific drama………..made more so by the “Angel” on the Monterey team, from Mexico.

Angel was also a baseball miracle in human form. He pitched either right handed or lefthanded, it made no difference. He was the best player on the field no matter where he was. He batted .510 in the tourneys, so far. And he batted right or left on how he felt.

Then there was the publicity. It was about this time when the story of the Monterey, Mexico Little League team became national. Angel was a legit true phenomenon and the kids all came from a poor section of already-poor Monterey, mentored by an ex major leaguer who loved the game of baseball. They played tight defense and ran like crazy..

…..if they got on base, lol.

I recall the hype, living in Bowling Green, then, and reading about Angel like every other kid in America. What startled me later was that it was Owensboro who were their very tough match-up this time around. I think the state was already accepting Owensboro as routinely good.

In the first innings, first baseman and cleanup hitter Sherman Chappel was hit by a pitch in the helmet. No biggie, but, according to strict LL rules, he had to sit the rest of the game out. Huge loss. He was killing it. And he was fine, of course. Sherman’s replacement had 2 hit balls go by or through, which scored Monterey’s runs. Bobby only pitched 5 innings but struck out 10. Monterey hit the ball fair only 6 times. But they managed to scrape across 3 runs to Owensboro’s Tough loss.

Monterey went on to win the World Series Title, and repeated the next year. Later there was some contentious noise about the “real” ages of the boys from Monterey, but the impact was honestly fascinating and huge for Little Leagues everywhere. It was a legit good story. Here is the Movie:

From Wiki:

“The 1957 Little League World Series took place during August 21 through 23 in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. Industrial Little League of Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico, defeated Northern La Mesa Little League of La Mesa, California, in the championship game of the 11th Little League World Series. Ángel Macías threw the first and, to date, only perfect game in an LLWS championship.

Different Machinery, Same Source, Much Much Later

In 2009, Owensboro High School baseball received the blessings of real ghosts. I can think of no better analogy for a program which saw its team take an absurdly terrible 4-15 regular season record into the gratefully final morsels of this miserably failed season only to discover themselves 3 weeks later playing for the State Baseball Championship.

I was living in Portland, Oregon at the time and had just recently discovered the wonders of the Internet and all those weird and wonderful ways to reach out and touch people. As I prodded and push-buttoned my way through elements of my past and the elements of my trade, I rediscovered the local Owensboro newspaper – The Messenger & Inquirer of  my youth, at the same time as the initial games of that season’s baseball District Tournament. Dang!! Bad timing!! 

It was with serious despair that I noticed that pathetic record, not entirely understanding the various dilutions of talent and energy which had infected my high school alma mater. I reconciled myself to a more tepid fanhood but resolved to explore the experience of their eventual and rather imminent final collapse. In other words, as always, I paid attention to the Senior High Red Devils.

I got a shock in my mini-depression, as Owensboro actually won their important first game and many of the obstacle teams later fell as well as they played through. They lost to the very favored and strong Apollo team in the District Final – to no one’s surprise, of course, but they still prolonged the season with their automatic berth no matter the result of the final game. It was an unlikely series of events. Not one bit of any of it so far had been the slightest bit predictable. But, incredibly somehow, they managed it. I gained a tiny smile between the winces over future pain, but that was enough for a beer. Therefore, all was not lost.

Owensboro showed some signs of life, even with bearing such a heavy load that their record indicated. They had made their overall record to 7-15. It was somewhere around here that I suspect Owensboro’s historical angels hopped on board.

Heroes and the blessings of the past

In the Bourbon mash-scented mists of the early 50’s and 60’s, the boyhood heroes of legend for Owensboro baseballers toil in a ghost-like Chatauqua Park Field of Dreams. Purposeful and relentless competitors, these idols exist in an approximate dream-like status which Owensboro boys have dreamt of since the seminal seasons of the early 1950’s and the incredible achievements of that era.. Their memory carries to this day a Supernatural Thrill in acts which eerily resemble that novel and film in every conceivable emotional and spiritual way. This time they would heal a season of pain and dysfunction and reveal themselves one more time for all the doubters and to this rapt observer.. 

For me, the names of Harold Pugh, Dicky Cobb, Woosie Woodward, Paul and Richard Anderson, Jan Aldeman, Allen Emerson, Ricky Nash, Randy Embry, Johnny Maglinger, Tommy Gentry, Denny Doyle, Frank Ballard, Stan Markham, Jimmy Oller, David Wolfe, Tommy Kron, Jimmy Howes and Bobby Woodward – competitors within and without the Owensboro line of succession who preceded my own little legend – are names which roll off the tongue in awe and respect. They still people my dreams. The severest admiration simply exploded in a direct line of succession which we aspiring ballplayers perceived like that Baseball Holy Grail – Owensboro Baseball  – which was always the primary nexus and impetus of this biography and historical study.

And here we reach a confluence of legend and reality…………….a stunning historical event whose supernatural magnitude has never been adequately addressed. I say this because I doubt anyone has spoken of these ghosts and legends made quite so clear in one club, 30-50 years after they roamed the fields.

I was so reminded of these names, their teams and their legendary and provocative energies which survived enough in the baseball spirit of Owensboro to lift this very flawed latest version of ourselves into some exemplary and very rare atmosphere. In a phenomenally-impossible series of events, this Owensboro High ball team swept through the Regional Championships to take the crown and win a trip to the Semi-State Championship. The record was still a dismal 10-16, even after the successful wins in both the District and Regional Championships. The Impossible was leering at us from over the Horizon and I became utterly mesmerized at my seat in far off Portland, Oregon.

The death of Hope which had defined the regular season had found this bizarre region where all the factors inherent in baseball – luck, adequate pitching, amazing defense, timely hitting and general head’s up play had simply conspired to make comfort impossible for those who competed against them.

Jack Hicks’ accomplishments were rather legion and many took place in fields away from the baseball diamond. To the townspeople, Jack was an affable friend whose gifted steerage of the Sportscenter saw its emergence as a true engine of culture and a factor in the diverse entertainment environment Owensboro has since enjoyed. To boys, he was a giant presence of ineffable wisdom and authority, the “inventor” of Owensboro Baseball as we have come to know it. 

When I speak to Jack’s former players younger than myself, just as I nervously and respectfully regard those who preceded me, an unbroken line of awareness penetrates the moments. We are each the representatives of legends, a million unasked questions on our lips.

I was at a University of Louisville baseball game a few years ago, wandering down to grab one of their very average but cold beers at the concession as is my wont. It was around the 4th inning of the game and I had earlier seen a large bus pull up and disgorge a team of what was obviously high schoolers, where they would catch the last of the game. As I waited in line, I could not help but notice the red and black school colors and the ubiquitous  “O” on the hats they all wore together. I waited in line with these kids and began a fascinating conversation.

“So where are you guys from?”

“Owensboro.” came a respectful, somewhat proud reply.

Uh-Oh………..

“Oh wow. I played my high school ball at Owensboro Senior,” I smiled widely. “You guys walk by the picture of our team every day! I played in 1964 and we won the first State Championship Owensboro ever won.”

Their eyes grew wide and I had their attention, those who believed in such a coincidental meeting, waiting for Nacho’s. They were catching just a little magic when they least expected it and what was even more weird was that I was supplying it. Suddenly, I felt sort of responsible!

I heaped praise on the efforts of the team two years prior and asked how many were on that team – they were all listening to me now – and 4-5 guys raised their hands. I then asked:

“How unbelievably cool was that??” and they all laughed. 

“Crazy cool”, came the best response from a veteran. My smile could not have been wider. “Keep doing it!!”, was my parting shot.

I left them there and strode out under the passageway into the ramp behind home plate where I have sat near Muhammed Ali watching baseball played at an incredibly high level at these free admission ballgames. As I made my way in, I saw Kip Walters, the coach of the Owensboro team which had gone so far. I introduced myself and invoked the name of Eddie Parish who, it turned out, was Kip’s best friend and fellow teacher at a Junior High in Owensboro. What a great guy who I have spoken with often since.

But that day, as we cut up a little, I asked “What the heck happened? How did you guys do so well??”

I could not believe my good fortune as the KHSAA began streaming the entire Kentucky state baseball tournament on their own web site. It allowed me to see every pitch. I really thought I had died and gone to Heaven, way up in rainy Oregon as I paid the most rapt attention to the games. It also turned out that Jack Hicks made a game or two. What was made more compelling was how the KHSAA recognized Jack in front of an adoring crowd of wild applauders, reciting his amazing accomplishments and publicly celebrating his entry into the KHSAA Hall Of Fame. It was an amazingly memorable moment for his fans but perhaps even more so for his family – and allow me to presume to feel a part of at least his “Baseball Family”, because therein lies the magic.

The first game lasted a while. It went 10 innings with Owensboro beating a very good Lawrence County team 3-2. As I watched the game, it dawned onto me how the experiences of losing so many regular season ball games had delivered a team so toughened by disappointment and hardship that they had acquired a completely bend-but-don’t-break attitude which could be an astounding asset, and which was the case! Jams, tight spots, then timely hitting all proved a mettle which no one had seen coming, including Kip.

Next, we faced Bullit East who, along with Lexington Catholic, were the first and second-best teams in the state by consensus. To make a long story short, we won that one, too, also by one run. There were so many key plays, events and pitches during this game – totally similar to the first game – they are impossible to list. The pressure was huge – just incredible – but the Devils hung on for the wildly impractical win. By this time, absolutely no one was counting Owensboro out.

The Final Game was a loss and somewhat anticlimactic for that. Catholic was a skilled and veteran bunch. The 5-3 score overlooks the late inning rally Owensboro put together and the legitimate fright to the marrow the team gave the eventual winners. But, alas, the magic ended.

But it ended in Heaven and not one second sooner. What an incredible ride it was. I had never been quite so proud of any team I can remember.

“Everything we did began clicking in the District,” Kip related. “My pitchers were finally hitting spots and our team’s concentration suddenly focused on the job at hand. Our defense really came together as our shortstop refound his baseball muscles and instincts after a season of basketball. It all became sort of fun and then it just built on itself.”

My Conclusion

Us angels helped. 😉  And there are a slew of us. The baseball gods smiled on Owensboro 100 years ago and they have been smiling ever since. The team photographs of all the state champions which adorn the hallways of Owensboro High School catch the results, but not the many other workers and supreme athletes which made this all possible.

The 1960-61 Owensboro Baseball team sent 6 guys to Div 1 colleges on ball scholarships and 2 signed professionally. The names I listed above do not even include the names of great later players and competitors such as Mike Sturgeon, Bernie Strawn, Dale Law, the awesome later phenomenon of Mark King, Frankie Riley, Phil Munday and so many others who followed me but who were every bit as powerful as Icons for accomplishment young players so looked up to and admired and who set the bar of accomplishment which only the highest attainments are good enough for.

And make no mistake, not just anyone could have done what the Red Devils did. To call it a virtual Impossibility would actually be an understatement.

Dam near Supernatural………….

Beauty on the couch:

“…Consider the interesting case in which happiness in life is predominantly sought in the enjoyment of beauty, wherever beauty presents itself to our senses and our judgement–the beauty of human forms and gestures, of natural objects and landscapes and of artistic and even scientific creations. This aesthetic attitude to the goal of life offers little protection against the threat of suffering, but it can compensate for a great deal. The enjoyment of beauty has a peculiar, mildly intoxicating quality of feeling. Beauty has no obvious use; nor is there any clear cultural necessity for it. Yet civilization could not do without it. The science of aesthetics investigates the conditions under which things are felt as beautiful, but it has been unable to give any explanation of the nature and origin of beauty, and, as usually happens, lack of success is concealed beneath a flood of resounding and empty words.”   Sigmund Freud

Here is world famous Brazilian landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx verifying Freud’s claims.

Please click any image and enlarge

Not many landscapers begin blog posts with quotes by Sigmund Freud – I fully understand this and like to think I respectfully comprehend the potential failure of my own possible pretension. But I believe he captures the nuggets of our desires, including the hopelessness of fully explaining why we react as we do to not just beauty itself, but to beauty’s evolving and ever-changing expression in the works of those artists who challenge us the most. The mysterious processes of the artist are part craft, part imagination and part fearlessness, allowing one’s Muse full reign in physical expression with results which can be catastrophic failures, mildly amusing or else world-changing.

So what the heck is this?

“This” is a glimpse of the ceiling, taken from the floor, of the incredible world-famous Sagrada Familia, the church designed by Antonio Gaudi (1852–1926) in Barcelona, Spain whose construction passed the “mid point” in 2010. The world-wide recognition of the genius of this masterpiece of architecture has consistently produced funding from various sources, whose stop and start construction began in 1882. Gaudi was famous for his iron work, producing gates, fencing  and apartment patio security rails in his buildings which, alone, would place him as uncommonly talented.

Gaudi’s world included the implementation of the new technology of cement and the plastic formative originality it offered. He used cement to express a rebellion against classic forms, utilizing curving lines and it’s potential free-form solidity as a finished product. He began architecture’s rebellion against straight lines and the results were incredible.

Gaudi was the inspiration behind architects for 100 years, culminating in the works of people such as Frank Gehry, who took the plastic fun of Gaudi’s cement into his own creations of metal:

These very arresting pictures push the edge of Beauty into places we never imagined. Some of them even torture our original aesthetic senses and we end up staring at them hoping some idea will flit through which identifies with our own visions of beautiful things. If so – and even sometimes if not –  then the artist has been successful, in my opinion. After all, the restlessness produced guarantees we spend those moments within our own creative selves.

Body Art

It is the similar with the modern passion for body art – from painful-looking piercings to the modern passion for tattoo’s as a means of expression.

We are all familiar with bad body art. Bodies which are “too busy” with unrelated tales tattooed all over themselves in a rather uncoordinated fashion generally serve to repulse us, telling us more than we wanted to know about personal taste – especially in such visible fashion. Because many of us are unfamiliar with an art once restricted to coastal seaport towns and cities rife with sailors on a lark, we tend to miss the products which are actually intensely interesting – great decisions which mar our understanding of our own body representation, yet a fully embraced joy for the artists and the subjects who pull off amazingly creative and tasteful body art.

My nephew Aaron Campbell is one of these types. Hard-working with a great artistic pedigree, Aaron faced choices ranging from working for Disney to arting around  with Marvel Comics as career decisions, yet he chose Tattooing. I think the tension of ‘getting it perfect or else’, lol, tempted his “risky” gene. Inasmuch as there are no real ‘do-overs’ in Tattooing it does legitimately ask an ongoing perfection right from the start of a project. Tattoo’s are one time things. I have really enjoyed some of his work.

Complex and detailed beyond belief, these body art renditions are pretty much as good as it gets.

The landscaping Avant Garde shows itself as well in large cities, such as this view of downtown Osaka.

Or the amazing and refreshing ‘vertical garden’ views of Patrick Blanc, whose creations climb the walls of buildings and give a forest look in the midst of major cities:

………..or for that matter, inside buildings in major cities………….

There’s lots of amazing stuff going on out there in the landscaping and urban design field, even in The Oregon Garden in modest Silverton, Orgeon:

 

Burle Marx again, downtown.

What is avant garde about this gorgeous chain of blooms? Simple profusion and that is a personal choice of someone prone to excess. 😉

The River Walk in downtown Portland, Oregon.

Once more with Helen Nock.

And Gaudi………………..at Park Guell in Barcelona

Oh yeah, and Noguchi’s Osaka World’s Fair hanging water features.

That’s it today.

‘cept for this……………..

 

 

In a way this is a story of extreme local interest to the denizens of Owensboro, Kentucky and almost no one else. My hometown, Owensboro is a sports-mad town with a legacy in the state of Kentucky as something of a traditional athletic power. No team in the state has won more State High School baseball titles. Just last year they won a very competitive, basketball-crazy state’s Championship in basketball. Two of the city/county’s other 3 high schools have also won baseball championships – Owensboro Catholic High and Daviess County High. The 4th, Apollo, has actually come close. When I attended there, we won state Track and Field honors regularly and, as many who know me realize, we won the first of 6 eventual school titles in baseball with me patrolling shortstop as a 10th grader. Bear in mind, this was all in open competition with no “subdivisions” based on school size. In other words, we competed with all the teams from Louisville as well – yet another sports mad city, just 10 times larger.

Basketball and football were king, with baseball and track being increasingly popular due to some fairly outrageous successes. Football in Owensboro has consistently produced individuals who competed at the next – and even higher – professional levels. The Friday Night phenomenon so popular in Texas and down South included Owensboro as a preferred local Friday Night recreational ticket, so often followed by dances and mingling events hosted by the school following games. Yes, as always, football was a pageant….a literal pageant, with our crackerjack band, lovely cheerleaders and 5,000 rowdy fans cheering it all.

It was into this matrix where I evolved into a reluctant participant. In my day, kids with some talent played every sport – it was, frankly, one of the secrets to Owensboro’s long legacy of success. Players like Bobby Woodward, Richard Anderson, the incredible All American duo of Dickie Moore and Frank Chambers who I practiced against daily – one, Dickie leading the nation’s small colleges in rushing 3 years in a row and having an evemtual career in the CFL, and the other – Frankie, attending Alabama, along with our coach……… Kenny and Dwight Higgs, Frankie Riley, Gigi Talbott, Ike Brown, Sam Tandy, NBA Hall of Famer Cliff Hagan – it’s a long list – played every sport they could. It was just what we did. You could see many of the same athletes doing well at each sport in their own rights. The coaches were cooperative for the most part and the new muscles required at each sport created a sort of 2 week No Man’s Land of conditioning for each kid, developing and discovering new muscles and pains relative to their sports.

The feeder system of junior high schools fed dollops of players into the matrix, featuring the raw athleticism and sometimes dominance of certain star-quality individuals into a hard-fought mix of competitions. This is where my individual story as an “accidental tourist” begins………..

It was in the 8th Grade at Southern Junior High where I began my march to cooperating with talented mesomorphs and psychotics in the sport of football at both the coaching and playing level. I recall the first days of football camp – begun a week or two early, prior to even school openings. It was a bumpy career ride.

Another of my friends saw the wisdom of an early retirement from football, especially after enduring the humiliation of being youngest on the club and getting an unbelievably embarrassing set of football tools, complete with the hazing of the team’s managers whose laughter at the stuff they were reduced to handing out was bully-like but real, unfortunately deep laughter – it was that bad. The helmets handed out to the 8th graders were literally from an earlier era. What we referred to as “’47 Crash Helmets” – real leather helmets, ha ha, and more experimental, weirdly-shaped types of modern helmets (are you reading, Steve Bare, ha ha ha?) provided a completely embarrassing look for each of us as we dredged up equipment handed down from decades of predecessors. Inasmuch as this was my first football since a tentative experience one year in Little League football while living in Bowling Green…………………….

…………………..I actually quit the sport after a few days.

(An angry Father of mine intervened somewhat dramatically. Football was his sport, having played it at Eastern Illinois University in the 30’s and attracting attention with his speed and ability, thus earning the title of “Flash” which my friends teased him remorselessly about. “Flash” actually came from a headline or two celebrating “Freddy The Flash”, who made football look almost easy. He did not agree with my quitting – and did not agree most forcibly, one of his few interventions as a sports Dad. Needless to say, I reported back out to the field in rapid form. The moment did not increase my respect for the sport. I always viewed playing football as a survival sport not particularly suited to my skill set. Yet, there I went, learning the game, playing for 5 straight years at a program well-known for its superlative players.)

In Junior High, I was a fullback/running back on offense and a cornerback on defense. Later, in high school, I became a wide receiver in a pro-style set, occasionally playing Tight End when personnel issues like injuries loomed. I never shook the unreality on the field, no matter what level. I often wondered just exactly why I was playing – what I had done right to earn the dubious distinction of occupying the same field as the incredible players we had who loved it all. That is how uncomfortable I felt with a sport I had zero natural feelings for.

Here are some of this tourist’s memories of the sport:

As an 8th grader, the season dragged on while I waited for my second favorite sport – basketball – to commence. We played 8th Grade football against other teams, so we had our equals to compete with, and it became interesting for that reason. Make no mistake, I really enjoyed my team mates, all personal friends already. And also make no mistake that this level of competing saw some very satisfying times – great defensive hits on my part, the sensation of “team play” where we sacrificed for the betterment of our record and witnessed, first-hand, what “team play” could coalesce into – a winning formula. I recall – vividly to this day –  few truly embarrassing moments of incompetence as I watched Marvin Robinson streak outside for repeated touchdowns on plays where I – the cornerback – was supposed to “turn the play back inside” from the outside, whereupon I did not, ha ha. Marvin just ran around me, untouched for a couple of long TD’s. Learning from mistakes also took place on a visible level. Just like the embarrassment of incompetence provided an alchemy I adjusted to in my sporting life as time rode on, making me better, if addled..

But Fate had a new plan I would never have guessed at, even in the 8th grade. Southern had 5-6 guys kicked off the team for the abhorrent crime of smoking cigarettes – an unusual penalty in some ways, considering the wild number of farmers who grew tobacco in the lush Western Kentucky fields and the humongous warehouses that hosted tobacco auctions in a clearly tobacco-centered town like ours. But nevertheless, these guys were goners, and they were some of our best players, no less. Well, into the breach go I.

It was our final game of the year when I found myself starting in the backfield for the 9th grade – the “big” – team against traditional heavy rival, Daviess County. Yes, I fully admit my excitement at such a weird opportunity. I was most definitely “playing up” now. I felt a strange sense of destiny, warming up, for real. I had planned to do absolutely everything I could to help us win a pivotal, pennant-clinching game against our rivals and competing first-place qualifiers.

So we kick off and hold them enough to make them punt. I was not a defensive player in the game inasmuch as the defense suffered fewer scratches from their end. So out I went to join the first team offense.

Our very first play from scrimmage was for a screen pass from the excellent and very experienced Terry Tyler to yours truly, a young Walter Mitty. The surprise play took advantage of a very startled Daviess County defense and, catching the ball all I saw was a wide open field ahead of me. I was shocked at the crazy opportunity, the first time I had ever benefited from another team’s defensive mistakes. Naturally, I did what I was supposed to do – I ran like hell.

Well, I scored on that play – 65 yards long – our very first play from scrimmage. At the very end of the run, just as I crossed the goal line for the score, I felt the presence of a defender making an attempt at a tackle. To this day the name Barry Beck haunts my dreams. He launched himself at me in the “good old college try” – well into the end zone, no less – and I attempted to vault him, jumping over his sliding self but catching just enough of him to literally pinwheel me in the air, creating a sort of “flip” which I rotated a full 180, coming down hard from a substantial height of leaping momentum and tackler-propulsion. On my way down, I stuck out my left arm to cushion the fall and I heard my arm snap. Completing my fall, I lay there for a moment with the ball in my right arm, satisfied about the score with a warm feeling. I then took a closer inventory, lying there, of my arm and I suddenly had a sinking feeling that I was looking at 2 elbows. My arm had broken between the elbow and wrist, making a literal “L” out of the forearm. I mean, there was absolutely no doubt I had the first broken bone I had ever seen this close-up. I remember Roy Kennedy’s eyes as he looked at me through the tiny gap in his helmet, and then watched him turn to throw up.

(Interestingly, (if you are a ghoul) my Mother reminds me that she had only just shown up to the game – it was that early in the contest. Walking into the stands to join my Dad, she asked “So how are we doing?” in all her innocent hopes, even before she sat down. My Dad pointed out a cluster of people standing and leaning into a player on the ground in the end zone. “Your son is on the bottom of that pile.”)

Well, I was driven to the local hospital where I remember seeing my rather breathless parents arrive. Walking in the door with a towel over my arm, I remember the sounds of my huge football cleats hitting the slick tile floor, then finding myself in the air again as I slipped and fell, right back onto my back. Finally lying down for a doctor’s perusal, I recall the sense of comfort that mom and Dad had joined me here. The doc told me to count backwards from 100 and I got to about 97.

I remember waking up in the Recovery Room, alone and quiet. I looked down and saw this cast on my left arm – a whole new deal. None of the implications for the future loomed at all. I was also merely the 3rd kid on that team who had broken his arm playing football that year, including Jerry “Jumbo” Elliot’s compound fracture – a “Kevin Ware” type injury with protruding split bone featured –  just for an arm and not a leg – during a completely average play. It was my last visit to a hospital for sickness or injury until 2011, lol, a span of 49 years.

Mom and dad showed up, concerned and loving, God bless them, and even brought a magazine – a Sports Illustrated – a fave of mine back then. As we sat talking, here comes the denouement of the day.

Coach (Yogi) Meadors came into the room, all smiles and concern. After quickly getting the questions in about my state, naturally I asked him the results of the game.

“Steve, we got beat 27-0. Your touchdown didn’t count because we were offsides on the play. It was called back.”

Thus began my love/hate relationship with football.

The next season saw me in a far more prominent role. As starting fullback, I got a number of carries and learned quite a bit about twisting and turning, doing complete 360’s – spins – to keep balance and deal with initial hits. I began becoming a far more efficient cornerback, having learned my lesson about “containing” the play in front of me and learning to throw myself in some organized manner at ball carriers. It was a season of successes, actually, and I even had this 75 yard punt to brag about as the team’s kicker, a ball that hit the frozen ground of that day and literally received a prop boost as it bounded away down the ‘frozen tundra’ of that exceedingly cold day. The only real negative of the season was my bursting through the line on a dive play right up the middle and receiving a helmet in my face after 3 yards, hit by a large middle linebacker who broke my nose – yes, through the face masks. Bleeding on the bench at the halftime break, my coach was livid at how we played and he questioned my courage. It seemed like such an incongruous thing – after my broken nose, I still never missed a play. I recorded the humiliating event as yet another strike against the sport in my world. We won the game, 7-0, on a literally last second, 60 yard pass from Landy Lawrence to Gerald Woods, our athletic freak of nature

The next season was very real. Showing up at high school practice now, as a 10th grader, we endured summer two a day practices run by the local psychotic, Ralph Genito, who had played his own football at the University of Kentucky during their highlight season of all time on the Orange Bowl #3 ranked team and whose coach was the legendary Bear Bryant. Genito was a football-mad semi-tyrant who developed an animus towards me early on. Channeling The Bear, his view of the world was that there was football………………………and that’s about it outside of flirting at the local Country Club in his role as lifeguard, ha ha. But I digress.

The camp he ran that season, before school even began, was one of the most brutal experiences of my life. Later on, when I went through Basic Training in the Army, I found the process suspiciously easy. I wondered if I was somehow missing the difficulties others faced as I pranced through basic with a smile, never bothered in the least by the physical nature of the process. I credit Genito with preparing me for the military very well indeed. That initial set of practices saw our numbers of participants steadily decreasing as people quit, finally resulting in a football team consisting of 31 players only. Yes, it was that bad.

Next post – Steve discovers what a concussion is.

Finally, I arrive at the nuts and bolts in my semi-autobiographical rendition of a life in the landscaping business. I apologize for taking such a long break in posting, but – hey – it’s my blog and I’ll blog if I want to.  😉

Another miscreant – John Bufton – and I were working for the largest maintenance business in Vancouver, BC in 1978 – now known as David Hunter Garden Centers. While together, we had long talks about the world around us and, among other thoughts, we found a mutual interest in trying to go off alone in a business. John, in fact, already had a few “side jobs” where he spent his “off days”, working his butt off for a couple of wealthy contacts, courtesy of his Mother who was in Real Estate. As we spoke, we realized we brought mutual strengths to the idea – John with a local connection and existing contracts and a deep history of lawn and garden maintenance, and me, with abundant experience in estimating and installing landscape construction projects. We made a business plan of sorts – believing a Spring start and the abundant work involving “power-raking” – the removal of thatch and moss built up through the cool, damp Winters of the Great Northwest – which was highly profitable – could supply our financing. From that, we would attempt to form a “base”, a ‘bread and butter’ aspect of the business in the form of maintenance contracts for homes throughout the city.

John’s mother co-signed for a loan to purchase a beater pickup truck, we invested our pay into purchasing hand-outs, prime for Spring labor, which we would distribute door-to-door to likely customers. In February we began, quitting at Hunter and venturing out on our own, dazed but explosively hopeful. Our handouts were a complete success – actually far beyond what we had imagined. In fact, John began complaining about the radical numbers of calls. Nevertheless, it was what we had asked for and so commenced a fairly robust season. After one day we were able to buy our very own weedeater and in ensuing days, we purchased all the maintenance machinery and tools we would need for the entire year. After a week, we were on our way! We were bursting at the seams, happy, tired and full of optimism.

It wasn’t long until we had some landscaping to look at. Over the course of the first month of business, we acquired a $28,000 contract to upgrade a series of apartments managed by one of our newly-acquired maintenance contracts. It required designing and a small hand-drawn idea of our intentions relative to the places and was impressive enough to please the client. Suddenly, we were a 2 crew operation and we purchased yet another beater truck. We entered the Federal and Provincial Era, where we began complying with the standards of employment in general, submitting taxes and deducting them from wages. Within 3 months, we had become “Bona Fide”. It was a heady period, to say the least.

We pretty much did everything right and we certainly could not be faulted for effort. We worked constantly. However, in this success, we encountered the beginnings of our eventual dissolution. The landscaping end of the business had encountered a subdivision of one acre lots during the period of serious economic expansion, house-flipping and people making humongous money as house prices skyrocketed locally. Fortunes were being made and lost over the housing bubble of the late 70’s in British Columbia and we experienced our first loss. Someone decided not to pay – or actually, could not pay. And this after an incredibly busy season. The timing was dreadful inasmuch as we had plowed our money into the business itself. Suddenly, the landscaping end of things realized its inherent risks, certainly compared to lawn and garden maintenance, which was sufficient unto itself, easily done and very predictable.

We found ourselves at odds over directions and John – who had 3 beautiful baby boys – was feeling pressure not only from his wife and family but from himself over realizing the inherent risks in the trade of landscaping. We became poor again, quickly enough, and John expressed his willingness to separate. Aside from it being a literal study in what can go wrong in business, it was somewhat heart-breaking. It felt sloppy and depressing, and this after a year where we were as busy as anyone in the entire town.

I spent most of that Winter in a funk. It was difficult resigning myself to going back to work for someone else, but it seemed the only way to survive. I felt alone and despairing. And then help came from a surprising source.

I got an offer from someone who wanted to help some small business as a silent partner. Our efforts had not gone unnoticed and he lived in the neighborhood of one acre homes which I had had such a difficult time leaving, since literally everyone there hired me as they moved in. He called a mutual friend who highly recommended me as someone who he might be interested in investing in. It was serendipitous, strange and relieving. As a former IRS (Canada Version) agent and an accountant, he was set up to be the most incredibly apt person to help I could have found. As we spoke, I suddenly understood he was dead serious. My heart was a’ flutter.

So with Spring approaching and a couple of small projects underway, John went onward to his life’s work without me. In a year, so incredibly much had happened no one had time to remind ourselves of the actual events – a miasma of happenings complete with small stories, a lot of success, some tragedies and an amazingly eventful series of events.

Ray soon showed up at my place with a brand new 1980, dual wheel 1 Ton Ford truck with a flatbed which raised and lowered by electric motor. It was a dream machine, the envy of the city dump! (Let it be known here and now that the girls liked it too!). Clean and sleek, it could handle the landscaping chores in ways which shot our productivity through the roof.

We moved back into the famous one acre lot territory, this time taking no prisoners and designing stuff like mad. We also acquired a couple of small commercial contracts which I had estimated for and with an eye towards moving towards a much larger commercial side of the business. There was big money there. Little did we realize we were attracting attention from larger fish. Well, we worked hard and met some amazing people.

(We did a project for Leslie Nielson’s older brother, redoing his entire back yard and fence, patio and raised bed planters. This was the pre-Airplane, pre- Detective Frank Dubbin Leslie Nielsen, whose other brother at that time was the head of the New Democratic party in the national capital – a major political player. I only name drop like this to mention that each man – who we met – was an absolute gas of a person – just nice as could be and warmly appreciative of our efforts.)

It became this sort of highlight of the season because the entire year was composed of such small successes and this project was a minor one financially but not without major fun. It was a great year and we did about $384,000 in total volume, in 1980 dollars. Extrapolated to now, that’s about $750,000. People were noticing and our reputation had become excellent.

Winter in Vancouver is a fairly bizarre thing. While I spent later years not missing one day of week day work, generally we shut down the landscaping during December to mid February. Say 2-3 months. It is actually welcomed by owners and planners as it gives a period to take a breath and assess directions and processes. Oh yeah – and have a beer.

During this down period, I got approached by another interested party who had money, bulldozers, back hoes and whose home I had worked on laboriously dynamiting trees, scraping 10 acres of land and then decorating it up in my own trademark ways. Mario – an Italian with toys and attitude – approached both Ray and I with a deal: Bid on the largest work in the Province and he would help finance the delayed payment schedules, provide machinery for the work and actually attend work every day like a working partner. Inasmuch as he was a home builder and a successful one, his record was pretty impeccable for profits. To Ray and I, it was a near no-brainer. Onward and upwards. So we two became 3. The only caveat was that we would need projects to work on, lol. If I could supply a contract, Mario would join. Suddenly my onus became clear. I had to acquire contracts.

For the next 45 days, I spent every waking hour in front of blueprints, estimating them. I would visit literally every major construction company in Vancouver and surrounding towns, asking to be put on their bid lists and begging for blueprints from which to draw and submit estimates. Finally, I got a call.

I visited this business – a $20 Million a year construction firm who was looking at new landscaping companies because of some unfortunate events with others. My price interested them but my approach interested them more. They allowed me to explain my history, assessed my principle partners and awarded us an $84,000 contract to begin in a few weeks. I drew up a contract, showed it to Ray and Mario and suddenly we were a viable business. We began the contract the day we could start, with Mario unloading his bulldozer and us pushing dirt which was partially covered in snow. For the next 60 days, no one took a day off and we put in 12 hours per day whereupon we finished to an immensely-pleased client. We hired one other person and no more, lol. We did it all.

In the meantime, I was still fielding calls and bidding projects. We were awarded another one – this one far larger – which I failed to even look at. In fact, the day we were to begin, as we were toting our equipment jobwards, I suddenly realized – along with my partners – that I hadn’t the remotest idea where it was! Both the other guys were shocked – I had been so thorough with the other ones. I became nervous, lol, as we approached the place. But as we arrived, the project supervisor came out and introduced himself. Word of our competence had spread and he was asking if we felt we could somehow manage to take on some extra work, prior to the landscaping.

“Duh”, was my reply. 😉

He wanted us to build retaining walls out of pressure treated 6″ x 6″‘s, at 5 different locations on the site, each of them over 100′ long. Each location required 3 walls of 3’ high apiece. It was an enormous undertaking. He asked for a price and we huddled. Between the 3 of us, we came up with a figure and he gave the go ahead after a brief call to his office. Suddenly, we had 3 months of very profitable work ahead of us. It was a dream.