Vancouver Island November 4, 2024
Fall is here, the salmon are running, swimming, actually, and they have just about all run/swum their races, spawned and died. But the bear, and seals, sea lions, and sea gulls are more than happy they got to the finish line. It's too cold and rainy to go out today and test the waters, so I'll sit in front of the hot stove and jaw a bit.
Salmon spawning on the Puntlege River Nov. 2 link (Here's a 35 second video I took of two salmon in the spawning grounds three days ago.)
At the same site two days later. Not much to look forward to after procreation (if you're a salmon).
A Trip Home
For three weeks in late September and early October I returned to the old sod of Southwest Ohio and traced the trails and sites of a sometimes misspent youth. Passed by places I'd long forgotten, failed to find ones I still remembered. My granddaughter Izzy loaned me her car to get around. I felt like Mr. Magoo driving in Midwest traffic. Aren't you supposed to slow down when the light turns yellow? Three cars pass me as I stop at a red light. The main thing I brought back was a case of Covid which I gave to my wife. We're both over it now. And we were vaxxed to the eyeballs. Maybe it would have been worse had we not had the shots.
Some Highlights
1. A stop where I ran my first race. How many of you can remember when you first wore a uniform for a school or club and set off at the sound of a gunshot to see what this sport was all about? My son Jacques and I made a day trip over to southern Indiana, near St. Peters where the first Broses of my line settled in 1835, but on the way we passed through the suburb south of Dayton called West Carrollton. Travelling along an old highway to avoid interstates, I noticed a nearly abandoned stadium by the old West Carrollton high school. It was there in 1958 that I was baptised into the the sport. The grandstand was still there, but the track and athletic field were long gone. It looked like the concrete stand was still being used for storage. We got out and took the picture below. An old football blocking sled was left just outside the fence.
I can barely remember that day or the race, but I was able through newspapers.com to find a box score from the event, a triangular meet between West Carrollton HS, Patterson HS, and my alma mater Belmont HS. We won the meet. I got fourth in the mile as a freshman running varsity. The winner was 4:57. I think I ran about 5:10. Equipment was sparse. Two other runners and I shared one pair of Riddell spikes. One of the guys was a broad jumper, and I remember some sand still in the shoes when I was running. Shelby Rogers our pole vaulter also doubled in the mile and got second place. He was a senior but was kind enough to take me under his wing and teach me the ropes of being a miler that first year. At the end of the season, Shelby and I drove up to Columbus to watch the state high school meet and saw Dave Mills from Lakewood High School in Cleveland set the national high school record of 46.6 in the 440. The meet was held in 'the Shoe' the Ohio State football stadium. That 440 was run around only one turn having started in the chute outside the stadium. In eight years I would improve a little over a minute in the mile. It would pay for my college 'education' and set me on a rather crooked path around the world, ending up here in British Columbia more than fifty years later.
If you scrunch your eyes a bit, you can see in the box score below that I was fourth in that first mile race.
2. The old track at Belmont High School.
I visited the old track at the site of the Belmont HS I attended. It could easily be called an archeological site. With a metal detector I'm sure you could find some old blank pistol cartridges, a cross bar and maybe even a switch blade knife or a zip gun. The original school built in 1955 was torn down about 15 years ago and replaced with a more modern but less substantial cracker box funded by the fines paid by the cigarette companies. The track wasn't much better than what you see in these pictures, but they did run a few meets there, usually JV or freshman meets.
3. A Best Friend's Gravesite
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One of my best friends in the track world was Steve Price, former coach of the Kettering Striders, U. of Dayton, Bowling Green State University, and Findlay University. Steve passed away two years ago during the Covid crisis and I was unable to attend his funeral. But on this trip I was able to get together with his wife Christine for dinner, and then on a second occasion travelled with one of my other best friends in the track world Bill Schnier, former coach at the U. of Cincinnati up to Piqua, OH to visit Christine and see where Steve is buried.
Oak Tree and Plaque planted by Steve's former runners at the track in Kettering, OH before he died.
Christine Price and Bill Schnier at Steve's gravesite.
4. Visit with Bob Schul
As mentioned in an earlier posting, Bill and I made a visit to Bob Schul at his senior care center in Middletown, Ohio. In that post I encouraged readers to send Bob a card for Thanksgiving or Christmas. That address is:
Bob Schul
Bickford of Middletown
4375 Union Road
Middletown, OH 45005
USA
5. Camden, Ohio and Sherwood Anderson
The writer Sherwood Anderson came from Camden, Ohio, a small town located between Middletown and Oxford. His book Winesberg, Ohio was based on life in that village. Jacques and I passed through Camden which today barely claims Anderson as a former resident. Anderson was responsible for befriending and later sending the young Ernest Hemingway to Paris in the 1920's and was later betrayed by Hemingway when he wrote a parody of one of Anderson's books. Whenever I travelled through Camden I was amused by the sign above a local watering hole. It is short and to the point.
6. Ohio State University and the R2D2's
I picked up my granddaughter's car in Columbus and she gave me a short tour of the campus including the library, her class buildings and a few other sites. I was intrigued by little robots on wheels that traversed the place delivering sandwiches and other items to the students at their dorms. The little carts converged at street crossings and obeyed the lights. They would stop if I got in front of one. I never heard of such a thing before. Oh yes, I saw the Shoe from a top floor of the library.
7. Okie Football in Cincinnati
The University of Cincinnati played their inaugural game in the Big 12 against my alma mater, the Oklahoma Sooners. Jacques and I were lucky to get some tickets from Bill Schnier who was out of town that weekend. Great seats on the 20 yard line, but an unbelievably noisy P.A. system that never let up for four hours. The Sooners won but not by much against the Bearcats.
8. Louis Tewanima Shirt
This piece happened after my return to Canada. I like to look for the occasional collector's item related to Track and Field. This tee shirt turned up in a thrift store called Value Village in Courtenay, BC. It's not old (2016). It commemorates a race in Shoongopavi Village, Arizona the home of Louis Tewanima. Louis was a Hopi and contemporary of Jim Thorpe at the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania. Louis placed second in the 10,000 meters at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics. Interesting that the only two medals the US has won in that event were by First Nations Americans. He also ran in the marathon at the 1908 Olympics in London. As you may recall, the Italian Dorando Pietri was DQ'd for getting aid to cross the finish line, and the American Johnny Hayes came in next and was declared the winner. Louis finished ninth in that race, but what I recall is a picture of Hayes being carried by his teammates on an "impromtpu" table of honor. Louis is on the front leg of that table holding Hayes above his head. I can't imagine having the strength to do that after completing a marathon.
Here is a link to Olympedia's comments about this great runner.. Louis Tewanima on Olympedia
This year was the fiftieth anniversary of that memorial race. Here also is another link about the race.
Fiftieth Annual Louis Tewanima 10 Km Race The announcer makes a mistake on his 1912 race which was the 10Km not the marathon.
8. Milan, Indiana ??
Again on that road trip another stop was Milan. For those of you familiar with the movie "Hoosiers" starring Gene Hackman. That is where the legend took place. Milan, a very small town, won the Indiana state basketball championship in 1954 the victory upon which the movie is based. The town still celebrates that win with a museum in an old bank. The hostess that day was happy to share stories of the players and their families and describe the fiction and the facts in the movie. A great visit if you are ever in the area.
And that is it for today. Looking forward to your comments. George
I once considered a retirement adventure of running a mile around every track in the United States, but I decided there were too many. But I still look for tracks when I am on Google Earth.
My first running was at St. Ignatius. I didn’t originally “go out” for the track team, having had visions of glory as a football star instead, so I struggled through my freshman season collecting splinters on the bench. However, a combination of my weight (115 lbs.) and a good performance in an intra-mural track meet easily persuaded Kevin Donlon, Freshman Football Coach, that my athletic future, such as it was, lay on the cinder circuit. He eagerly turned me over to Head Football and Track Coach Ralph J. “Mal” Malliard.
Two weeks before the end of the school year and the Catholic League Finals, I started training. Round and round the Quonset hut gym we’d circle singing “Sioux City Sue” to set the tempo. Our typical training routine had us running in a long congo line with the last runner in line sprinting forward to take the lead at the conclusion of each two or three laps. On good days we would travel by street car to Rockne Stadium on Chicago’s South Side to use the outdoor track there.
In the late 40’s it was felt high school freshmen and sophomores couldn’t stand the rigors of running a full mile so we only went three quarters in the Finals. At the starting line in Rockne Stadium that morning I felt excited but relaxed and easy (lack of knowledge is a wonderful thing). By the conclusion of my first real race, my lungs burning and gasping for air, I had finished 5th out of about 40 runners. I was out of the money, but a lot smarter about foot racing. I had never tried anything so hard…..nor did I want to again.
Then Mal, a rough-visaged giant, wrapped an arm around me and walked me across the infield with that pigeon-toed John Wayne style of his. He congratulated me on my race, told me I would have won if I had had more time to train and said he was proud of me. I was hooked. In all the years I ran for Mal he never gave up on me although I rarely ran up to his expectations. He was father figure, tyrant and masculine power at its gentlest, strongest, best; a helluva of an idol for a young boy trying to become a man.
1 comment:
George,
I very much enjoyed reading about your meanderings through Ohio. Coincidentally, just yesterday, I was reading something about James Hyslop, a professor of psychology at Colombia around 1900 (I wrote one of his bios on the Internet) and noted that he was born and grew up in Xenia, Ohio. I decided to put it into a Google Earth search to see exactly where Xenia was. I explored the whole area, over to Dayton and was looking for tracks. I'm pretty sure the one as West Carrollton that you mentioned was one of them. I had never heard of the place and suddenly it comes up twice within 24 hours.
I once considered a retirement adventure of running a mile around every track in the United States, but I decided there were too many.
I recall my first race, 180-yard low hurdles at Bellarmine High School outside of San Jose, CA, in 1951, my freshman year of high school. Bing Crosby's son was one of the students there. It was for rich kids only. I was leading going over the last hurdle, but the coach forgot to tell me that the race didn't end with the last hurdle, that you still had to go another 20 yards or so. Everyone was yelling at me to continue on as one of the Bellarmine runners passed me before I reached the finish line while walking with hands on hips. I ended up second of four runners in the race. The coach later tried to talk me into running the 880 as Bellarmine had only two competitors and it would have been a sure third place for me. However, I couldn't imagine running that far and declined. I think I thought that you had to run all-out from the start. I hadn't heard of pacing oneself.
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