A continuing compendium of reflections upon the desk calendars I found in my junk drawer recently. The calendars run from 1976-2000 and contain much stuff.
Let’s take a look at what can be gleaned from looking through the 1978 calendar:
As a ninth-grader, I volunteered with a friend of mine to go to a couple elementary schools and teach fourth-graders about vandalism. It got me out of class. I think that was my main motivation. There were a few ninth-graders and a few eighth-graders who volunteered. We went in pairs to do the presentation, which included a movie and then a discussion. I thought I was going to be paired up with my friend, which was one of the reasons I signed up. That was not to be, but it was OK cause I got to do my presentation with this really cute eighth-grade girl. So it was all good.
My first presentation was at 9 a.m. on Feb. 8, 1978 at the school I attended previous to the junior high experience. I recall watching kids run shopping carts into parked cars in a grocery store parking lot. I think these hoodlums tipped over garbage cans in the park, too. I’m a little hazy on the details. But I do remember asking the kids what they thought of vandalism, how they could help stop it and the like. Two weeks later, we hit another local elementary school. All in all, it was a good thing for me. I had to be poised under pressure and act like a responsible, mature person, which was difficult for me at the time. Heck, it’s still difficult sometimes!
I’ve got my whole high school track schedule written down that year. The first meet we had was an indoor meet at West Allis Central on March 3. I think I ran the mile there. I remember running the mile at Whitefish Bay on the 8th. Then, there was the two-mile at Waukesha North on March 14. If I recall correctly, the track at Waukesha North was 12 laps to a mile, pretty darn small. So we ran 24 laps in the race. It seemed as if you were leaning into the turns almost the whole way, which, when finished, made you feel like you were walking crooked.
As a freshman, I stunk. I didn’t get all that much better the rest of my high school running career. Oh, I got better. But I got discouraged, was a numb skull and didn’t realize what it took to reach my full potential in high school. That assessment didn’t just have to do with running, it had to do with just about all aspects of my life. I made excuses and whined instead of doing something about my situation. Thank God I changed my ways.
I worked at the St. Bernard Catholic Church Fun Fest from 6-8 p.m. on June 4 of that year. It was our church’s annual fundraiser, which included kids games, live music and food. My dad usually worked the corn roast. Hank Raymonds, head coach of the Marquette University men’s basketball team at the time, was also working the corn roast this particular shift when I showed up. I needed to do some community service for Boy Scouts, and this was it. I always liked Hank Raymonds. He spoke at a father-son breakfast at church once, discussing motivation.
In July, I worked a few days at the Greater Milwaukee Open … I think. This is the annual men’s pro golf event played in the Milwaukee area. Our neighbor down the street (who incidentally really was at the Ice Bowl) was in charge of the running the parking lots at the event. I got drafted to work a few days. We had to get there really early in the morning, and Mr. Cartier (the Ice Bowl attendee and head boss man) drove me there. Me and two other guys, a teacher form somewhere and a guy in my school a year ahead of me, were in charge of one lot. I found it interesting that people didn’t want to park where we told them to park. For some reason, they thought we were making them park father away than they really were. We did have a nice big rut going through the grass lot as it had rained heavily a day or two before.
This was about the most boring work I ever did. I guess it would have been less boring had more people showed up. But I didn’t really like telling people where to park anyway, so I guess it was about as good as it could have been.
There were these cute cheerleaders from Brookfield Central High School there for some reason and me and the other minor male among us had a crush on the same one. Of course, she hung around with him and not me. Oh well.
I was at the GMO one other time … as a Boy Scout. I carried the scoring standard for a group during the second or third round. Jay Haas and Scott Simpson were two of the three golfers. I don’t remember the third. All in all, golf is a boring game for me to watch. I don’t mind playing once in a while, but it’s not an exciting game for me to watch. Some people say that if you do not find a certain sport exciting or interesting to watch, then you must not know how it’s played. That’s not the case with me and golf. I was a sportswriter for 12 years and I understand the game. I just do not get all that enthused about other watching people smack a ball around.
I showed up for orientation at Wauwatosa East High School on Aug. 30 of that year. The building housed 10th through 12th grades. You could participate in some of the activities as a freshman, but you were housed in the junior high building in ninth grade. I’d run cross country and track, and swam on the high school team as a freshman while still attending Longfellow Junior High School. But now it was time to enter the high school.
It was another cross country season that fall, and the big highlight of the season was on Oct. 18, the final meet of the year. My dad offered to give me (I think it was) $10 if I broke (I think it was) 19 minutes for my 3-mile race. That would be my best time to that point. I was running a junior varsity race against our heated rivals, Wauwatosa West. I recall trying to catch this one guy on our team just about the whole second half of the race. He was a freshman and I really didn’t want him to beat me. I kicked as hard as I could about the last quarter of a mile and caught him just at the finish line. In the process, I leaned forward, slipped on the damp grass and sprawled forward into the chute, sliding on my front side.
It was pretty cool. It was also cool when my dad handed the cash over to me. I think I beat the goal by about 4 seconds or so.
This was also the year that several of us started attending as many home football games as we could. Some of my friends were in the marching band. So we’d sit behind the marching band when they came up into the stands after halftime and cheer the Red Raiders on. The best high school game of my entire life occurred at Hart Park on Oct. 20, 1978. Our team was playing one of the better teams in the state in West Allis Central. They had this awesome fullback named Jim Melka, who went on to become an all-conference player in college at Wisconsin.
It was a heck of a game. But in the final minutes, it looked as if West Allis Central was going to sew up a close victory. We had them pinned back near their own goal line, and it was fourth down, but all they had to do was take an intentional safety and punt the ball away, and we’d be toast.
However, instead of kneeling down in the end zone and giving us two points that wouldn’t really matter, Melka got the ball and started to run out of the end zone. My cousin was an assistant coach on the Central team, and he later told me Melka thought he saw an opening for a touchdown. Our guys tackled him as soon as he got out of the end zone, which gave us the ball back on about the 1-yard line. We ran the ball into the end zone to get within one point on the last play of the game. It was up to the two-point conversion try to either give us the win or the defeat. I think they ran the same play and we scored, giving us a one-point win, and sending the whole student body overt the fence and onto the field to celebrate.
I remember giving Coach Richmond (J.R. to many) congratulations after I got out onto the field. After I figured out there really was no other reason to be out there, I started heading toward the end zone closest to the locker rooms, where there was an exit. I saw Melka standing up against a goal post crying with his head coach’s arm around him. In all my elation over my team’s incredible upset win, I found myself feeling compassion for the other team’s star.
I don’t know why, but I wrote down the Green Bay Packers’ 9-7 victory over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Oct. 29. Hadn’t written any other scores the whole season. I probably shouldn’t have done it. The win gave the Pack a 7-2 record at the time. They only won one more game the rest of the year, finished 8-7-1 and didn’t make the playoffs. It’s my fault.
I was also keeping track of how many consecutive days of school I was attending at the time. I used to get incredibly sick near the end of the first semester or the start of the second semester. It was my annual flu bug or infection of something or other. Made it all the way to 83 straight days, which ended on Jan. 12, 1979. Missed one day and got right back to school. Although I stopped counting four days after that.
