Of Devil’s Lake, body passing at Camp Randall Stadium and more (1982 Part 3 of 4)

More college daze (and other crud) from 1982.

Had lunch with Aunt Jeanne on April 14th. She paid. This was my dad’s aunt, I think. Her son and I were born two days apart in the same Madison, Wis., hospital, and she’d bugged me about having lunch some day as I was attending the University of Wisconsin-Madison and she worked in Madison. I remember seeing my first auto racing with my cousin Charlie and his dad years before. Angel Park was Sun Prairie’s racetrack. As I recall, it was dirt and we watched midgets (cars, not humans!) speed around the track form the top of the bleachers.

April 19, I had an orthodontist appointment. It must have been one of my last ones. I didn’t have braces much after that, if at all. Had them way too long. Here’s a suggestion for you kids who have braces: wear the stinkin’ rubber bands! It makes the process go a lot faster. I was dumb. I didn’t like the rubber bands (who does?), and wouldn’t wear them as often as I should. I kept telling the orthodontist I was wearing them, though. So, he’d give me stronger rubber bands , which were that much more uncomfortable. So I felt like wearing these even less. It was a mad circle that I lost at. Eventually, they just took the braces off. And boy, did my teeth feel long all of a sudden.

The camping trip that began the year before my freshman year in college became an annual event in 1982. The second, end-of-summer trip to Devil’s Lake State Park in Wisconsin was conducted from Aug. 15-17. This is a place where I acquired a taste for amaretto … mixed with sour mostly. But it also mixed with root beer, cola and any assorted soda we could think of. One of the parts of these campouts was walking on the entrance road to the camp from the main road at night. The trees lining the road were so thick that they provided a cover overhead so dense that even a full moon with no clouds could not penetrate it. It was so incredibly dark that you could not see more than a couple feet around you. I don’t think we were supposed to be out walking on that road at that time of night, but it was cool. Also, the lake had been created by a glacier that rolled though and left cliffs full of large boulders that were incredibly interesting to negotiate from the rim to the beach. I wouldn’t dare try to walk up this formation.

As the years went by, Devil’s Lake campouts were followed by campouts elsewhere and finally, an event called EdFest that just had to be experienced to be believed.

By the end of August, I was back at Mad City for my sophomore year of school. By the end of September, the NFL players were on strike, and with the Packers sporting a 2-0 record at the time! Man, what a bummer. After way too long a period of time, the sides settled, the Packers finished off a 5-3-1 record and smoked the St. Louis Cardinals in the first round of the playoffs. They had a truly explosive offense with Lynn Dickey in his prime, James Lofton, John Jefferson, Paul Coffman and a two-pronged rushing attack with Eddie Lee Ivery and Gerry Ellis. Oh, that would have been fun to see that group together for the entire season.

The Wisconsin Badgers were having a good season that fall, too, and I made sure to see my share of home games. The first year, I got season tickets in the upper deck, and some lady had to use the bathroom like 15 times each game. This year, my tickets were in the student section and we saw some cool games, including a game against Illinois where the Badgers employed a trick play for a big TD. Quarterback Randy Wright, who started for the Packers later and also married the sister of a high school track teammate of mine, threw a pass to Al Toon, a wide receiver who was in the process of putting up some very impressive professional numbers before concussions ended his NFL career. Wright threw the pass back and skipped it off the artificial turf at Camp Randall Stadium. So I’m not sure if it was officially counted as a lateral or a fumble. Anyway, the ball bounced true and right into Toon’s hands. He turned and fired downfield to a streaking Jeff Nault from his tight end position. Toon threw a strike to the wide-open Nault for a fairly long TD pass. I actually saw the play coming when I saw Toon line up well behind the line of scrimmage. I just didn’t know Wright would skip the ball to him. That was so totally wack. Unfortunately, the Illini had a potent passing attack and beat the Badgers, 29-28. Still, the Badgers went 7-5 and qualified for their second bowl game in as many years (a rain-soaked victory over Kansas State in the Independence Bowl) … a miracle in Mad City back then.

The very next Saturday after that disappointing Illinois loss, the Badgers pumeled Northwestern in Madison. I had some friends from high school go to Northwestern and they came up to Madison for the game. Beforehand, we hung out on State Street and they would whoop it up whenever they saw somwone else wearing Northwestern gear. They even got hugs form girls wearing Northwestern sweatshirts. So I said
“yeah, Northwestern!” once just so I could get a hug. I spent that game in the press box helping the student radio station broadcast the game. Well, we would have broadcast the game except for the fact that they put the station in a different booth that season, I guess, and the cable they needed wasn’t long enough. So, everybody did it for practice. I was the spotter, helping the “on-air” talent figure out who was making tackles and such. It was fairly cool, even if we were not really on the air.

I found out later that on of the Camp Randall traditions at the time cost the Northwestern crew one of the girls they came there with. They used to do body passing, where someone would stiffen up and they would pass the person up the stands from row to row until they reached the top. I guess by this time, the practice was considered unacceptable. Supposedly, this group of friends passed the girl up and they never saw her again. She just sort of disappeared. I wonder if she got booted from the game for allowing this to take place.

Of Mr. Dynamite, Wisconsin/Marquette basketball and more (1982 Part 2 of 4)

We continue with my life as I remember it through a bunch of old desk calendars I recently found in a junk drawer. The year is 1982.

OK, folks. This is very weird! I’m listening to the radio as I type this and the song “Message in a Bottle” by the Police is on. I’m listening to an oldies-type station and that song is about 25 years old. As I look at the February 1982 calendar, I see “WLHA 9-12 64AM” written down on Feb. 20. That was my first gig as a radio DJ. My roommate and I saw that the station was looking for DJs for its 9 p.m.-midnight shift on Saturdays. As neither of us were big party animals at the time, we offered our pathetic services. I recalled that I had, for some reason, written down every single song we played on the air during our shows. So, I went and found the folder that housed these songs. Opening up the playlist from that very first S.O.S. Show (I think we named it that cause we needed help) was that very same Police song, “Message in a Bottle.” Now, that’s wack.

Our first show was quite interesting as we had never been trained to run a sound board, a cart machine, turntables or pretty much anything else you’d need to know in order to get a radio show out on the air. We got to the station a little before our show was to start. Mary, one of the station’s student leaders, and Tony, the DJ who had the shift before us, were there.

We told them we were the next guys but didn’t know what we were doing. They rolled their eyes, and offered to stay and show us the ropes quickly. So, our show got off to a shaky start … not that it ever really stopped being shaky. However, we learned how to say “WLHA Lakeshore 64,” turn the record back a quarter turn so it would get up to fell speed before the song started and put commercials and PSAs into the cart machines. I don’t think we ever perfected timing the newscasts that came though at whatever time it came on.

Our first show featured blocks by the Doors and U2. We got to combine our musical tastes into one power-packed show … when we weren’t talking. It was good for us novices to have each other to bounce things off of since neither of us really knew what we were doing. Our first show concluded with “My Way” by the Sex Pistols. The song symbolized the fact that we did our show our way … badly. Hey, at least we actually played a few songs off the WLHA playlist … there weren’t all that many we liked and we never heard some of them either. We also played Devo’s “Working in a Coalmine” single at 33 RPM instead of 45 RPM. Slowing it down really created some artsy effect probably.

Over the next 14 months or so that I did the college DJ gig, my show was named the Amateur Hour, Morning Madness (although there was very litte madness), Music Explosion and Paul I Show. Seems I got the itch to change about every four weeks or so. I also went by some wacky radio names such as Mr. Dynamite and J.D. Morrison (back from the dead apparently).

The music varied, although I can saw mostly the stuff I played consisted of early 1980s new wave and punk, stuff by local artists if I had it and some regular old rock like Doors, Beatles, Kinks, Rolling Stones, etc. … and we’re not talking just the hits from those bands. Pretty much it was anything I liked or thought I might like if I’d never heard it before. The musical mix led to some interesting segments. I’d go from the GoGo’s to Jimi Hendrix to the Sex Pistols to the Raspberries, the Ringo Starr, Duran Duran and back to Hendrix and The Byrds. That was an actual segment from a March 6, 1982 Amateur Hour with your host, Paul I.

I actually ended up getting the first real date of my life through this DJ gig. The first weekend in April, the radio station conducted a 24-hour trivia contest in which all the Lakeshore dorms participated. All the station personnel took turns on the air spinning records and asking trivia questions. The dorms had teams that would call in and try to answer the questions correctly. If they did, they scored points for their team. Once they got the right answer, they kept calling back trying to clog up the phone lines so that the other teams couldn’t get through. We also had station alumni return for guest shows, and I recall some big-time Madison DJ came back while we were there.

Anyway, you get a little wacky answering phones over and over and over at 2:30 in the morning after a few hours. So you’d have brief conversations with the people who called. I started telling female callers that they had the wrong answer, but they had a nice voice. Actually, there was one in particular, by the name of Faye, that I kept telling that to. She seemed to appreciate that.

When the trivia contest had ended, I looked up all Fayes in the campus phone book who could possible have lived in the dorm that her team was from. I found just one, and called. We talked for a while and I asked her to go see The Shivvers the following Saturday at Headliner’s. She said yes. I was shocked that I asked and shocked that she said yes. I had no clue what to do.

But I showed up at her dorm room, and a very cute brunette answered. I was hoping it was her. But that was her roommate. However, when Faye came to the door, she was very pretty. She was blonde and had glasses and I don’t remember anything else about her really. I had problems concentrating on anything she had to say because I really couldn’t even believe I was on a date.

We went to see The Shivvers on April 10 (I, of course, have that written down on my calendar). We sat at a table for most of the show, as I’d never danced with a girl before and had no clue what to do. We talked, although I couldn’t hear much of anything except the music. The band dedicated a song to us, as my roommate spilled the beans to them that I actually had a date. So I told Faye we had to dance to that one as the band dedicated it to us. I also took her backstage afterward to meet the band. I felt so awkward. I walked her home and probably didn’t hug her or kiss her or anything. Again, I was so completely clueless.

I called her a few days later and asked her if she wanted to come to the radio station sometime to see what goes on inside the studio (not much). But she said I woke her up from sleeping and I’d have to call her again. I never did. Guess I got scared. I wasn’t sure what to do. I saw her once after that … that I know of. We passed each other on campus and she said “hi” as I passed. I hadn’t recognized her until she spoke, so I didn’t even get out a return hello until she was past me. Not exactly a grand start to a dating career.

Anyway, my final radio show was Dec. 9, 1982 as I would be transferring from the University of Wisconsin-Madison to the Milwaukee campus at the end of that semester. The final song? “The End” by the Doors.

Getting back to the calendars I’ve been reminiscing over…

On Feb. 22, 1982, I saw U2 at Headliner’s, a club in Madison, Wis. This was well before the band became a megahuge, stadium-filling rock act. The band, in fact, would not crack America’s Top 40 for almost three more years. But those of us with an ear for that kind of music could tell they were something special. My roommate used to write for the Mad City Music Mirror, a small paper that covered the local music scene. So he would interview all these bands as they came into town for gigs. He interviewed the likes of Nick Lowe, and Paul Carrack, not to mention Bono of U2.

I saw some good bands in Madison, including U2 and X. X put on one of the best concerts I’ve seen. U2 was good, too, but the only thing I really recall from the concert was that they let some goofball on stage at some point to sing Neil Young’s “Southern Man.” The dude in Army fatigues yelling into a mic and the song blasting Southern folk didn’t really fit in with the rest of the show.

I attended the Marquette/Wisconsin men’s basketball game on March 9, taking a Wisconsin fan bus from Madison to Milwaukee for the game. I sat in the nosebleed seats at the MECCA, previously called the Milwaukee Arena. The fan bus featured lots of beer, of which I did not partake, and several rowdy fans, some of whom I had to sit near during the game. Now, I grew up a fan of both teams. I followed the Marquette Warriors as national powers throughout the 1970s. I was as excited as anyone when the Warriors won the NCAA championship in 1977. But I was always a Wisconsin fan, too. I rooted for the football team through the Dark Ages of Badger football, listening to the games each Saturday afternoon on the radio while helping Dad change the oil on the car or whatever other task had to be done. I was also a big Wisconsin hockey fan as the Badgers won national titles a few times in the 70s. The basketball team was usually horrible, but I rooted for them anyway. And when it came to Wisconsin/Marquette, I opted for Wisconsin.

Although I wanted Wisconsin to win this game, the behavior of one or two adult males rooting for my Badgers sitting in front of me left me with a bad taste. I’ve always been pretty much a guy who enjoys rotting for a team and not against the other team. Some of the insults leveled Marquette’s way included assaults on the Warriors’ head coach, Hank Raymonds, who went to the same church I did while I was growing up. I knew this guy and it upset me that people who never met the man were yelling out that he was not very smart (in a not-so-nice way).

So, this 18-year-old, snot-nosed, sober little punk actually worked up the nerve to tell these 40-some-year-old, inebriated, red sweater-wearing guys in front of me that Hank Raymonds was a nice guy and didn’t deserve such comments. One of the guys turned around and said he didn’t mean to insult me, as I was obviously a Marquette fan. I told him I wanted Wisconsin to win and  was a student at UW, but that I knew Hank Raymonds and knew the kind of person he was.

The guy actually said he was sorry or someting like that and said he didn’t mean anything personal. He kind of toned it down the rest of the way.

I’d also been through something similar in Madison the year before when Marquette visited UW. I sat next to two high school friends during that game and wasn’t real pleased with some of the negative comments tossed the Badgers’ way. After these two incidents, I was kind of over that rivalry for a while and haven’t been to anymore Wisconsin/Marquette games since. I watch that rivalry from afar.

March 28- Went to see the Police concert at the Rosemont Horizon in suburban Chicago. Joan Jett opened. I sat really far away and didn’t see all that much.

Spreading the good news of cherry pie

I wrote this column for a newspaper. It appeared on July 31, 2008.

Let’s say I had this absolutely delicious cherry pie. I had eaten a piece and it was so incredibly wonderful that I just knew that anybody else who tasted this pie would experience the same euphoria that I did.

So, I say to my friend, “Hey, try some of this pie. It’s unbelievably tasty. It’s the best pie I’ve ever had. I just know you’re going to love it, too.”

My friend is also somewhat of a cherry pie enthusiast. And knowing that I am a cherry pie freak (in a good way), he has complete confidence that I know my pies left and right.

Therefore, he accepts my offer and takes a nibble. He is immediately flabbergasted at its sweet cherry goodness and flaky crust, thanks me profusely and asks for more.

Not only do I give him more, but I also give him the recipe so he can make some for himself. That way, he can make the pie himself and share with others, too.

Unlike my friend, there are people who may be a bit skeptical of my pie-making skills and knowledge of such delicacies. Or perhaps they tasted some poorly made cherry pie once that made them nauseous. They are afraid that this pie will be just like that one. They may be quite hesitant to try any.

But, I just know they’ll be flipping head over heels if they taste this one. After all, I have experienced all the wonderful feelings associated with eating this pie. I know what it did for me. And I also see how it was such a positive experience for my friend.

Therefore, I add a few more reasons for these unsure folks to try it.

“That previous cherry pie could have been made by someone not well versed in preparing cherry pie. They may have made fatal errors in the creation process or used poor quality ingredients,” I may say before adding, “This particular pie was made from only the freshest of cherries, delicately hand picked at the height of tastiness. So they are guaranteed to tantalize your taste buds.”

And for the clincher:

“Cherries are a good source of Vitamins A and C and potassium, plus they have a number of anti-oxidants,” I may remind these folks. “So, in addition to being the most scrumptious pie you’ll ever have, it’s also very, very good for you.”

This reasoning may persuade some folks to go ahead and try some. Others may stick to what is comfortable for them.

“I’ve had no cherry pie since the cherry pie incident of ‘78 and I have no desire for cherry pie. Even though you make a good argument for trying this pie you made, and I am sure that this cherry pie gives you warm and fuzzy feelings all over when you eat it, I do not feel that I shall eat it,” they may say, sort of like what I say about liver except that nobody has tried to convince me to eat that since my parents made me.

Even though some of these people did not try the pie, they are not upset that I have tried to introduce it to them. They are confident that the pie has been good for me and for many others. It perhaps is not for them … at least not at this time.

There is yet another group of people, though: the anti-cherry pie league. They get ornery anytime someone mentions cherry pie. And they don’t much like rhubarb, peach or pecan neither. When they see a picture of cherry pie in a magazine, they cross it out with a black permanent marker.

And anybody who dares tout the goodness of cherry pie? Woe be to that person.

If I were to try to tell them the good pie news, they may very well reply with a grumble and a snort and growl this retort: “You cherry pie freaks are all alike. All you want to do is make people eat cherry pie. Well, I don’t like cherry pie! And I don’t like you and your kind. Cake rules; pie drools. Don’t bother me, you cherry pie freak!”

Then, they turn their back on me and walk away.

How can this be? How can they think cherry pie is no good for anybody?

I mean, this is the best cherry pie ever, even better than Rachel Ray can make. And surely, they will derive pleasure from it. I know I did. And I know many others who have. If only they would just take one little bite.
Should I continue making a case for this pie? They already feel I am a nuisance.

Should I follow them and shove the pie in their face and force them to eat some?

Will forcing someone to do something against their will can cause anything good to happen?

God gives all free will. We make our own choices.

It is unfortunate, I think, that they will not enjoy this pie. However, I can’t make them try it. And if I try to make them, they will probably become even more bitter and angry toward any future pie man they may meet.

I could try to shame or guilt them into eating pie.

“You anti-cherry pie people should be ashamed of yourselves for not trying cherry pie!” I yell at them “This cherry pie is the only good thing to eat in this whole town. All other pies cower in its presence.  And your children will suffer horrendous things if you do not eat this pie!

“So there, take that.”

Will this convince them to try some?

When I was in college, we had a preacher come to our quad a few times. Brother Jed would hold a Bible in his hands and pretty much insult everyone he saw, using some interesting words I won’t print here, telling them they were going to Hell because they were all sinners.

After watching one young lady unsuccessfully try to convince him that this was not the way to accomplish his goal, I just walked away.

How successful do you think Brother Jed was in persuading people to try the version of cherry pie he was sharing?

How many simply got a bad taste in their mouths?

Brother Jed knew what he was supposed to do. He just didn’t understand how he was supposed to do it.
He had been instructed to go out and spread the good news of Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” (John 3:16, NIV)

The problem was that either Jed had not been properly instructed in how to do this, chose to ignore how to do this or was just struggling with doing it.

Brother Jed would have been wise to keep another Bible verse in mind while trying to save us sinners.
“But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect.” (1 Peter 3:15, NIV).
The key part of that verse is “with gentleness and respect.” That’s the “how.”

If Christians want others to listen to their message, we need to make sure we  do it in a Christian way.

Of Irving Shain, Joan Jett’s sweat and not much else (1982 Part 1 of 4)

1982 was a very interesting year for me. It was a year of major decisions. It was the year I finally started to take control of my life instead of allowing life to control me. Of course, all this stuff didn’t happen until the very end of the year, and there is so much cool stuff to get to before we get to that. So, without further delay, here we go … 1982 in all its splendor and glory.

We begin with an 18-year-old college freshman in the midst of changing his major 15 times. Well, maybe seven.

I went back for my second semester at the University of Wisconsin-Madison on Jan. 17. At the end of that week, I was nearly crushed at a tiny little club in Madison called Merlyn’s while watching Joan Jett’s guitar go over my head and her sweat fall on my person. My roommate, Paul II, got tickets for us well in advance of the show. He was going to write a review for the Mad City Music Mirror.  He knew all about Joan from her previous band, The Runaways, an all-girl punk band. She’d had this Blackhearts thing going for an album or so, and we figured it would be fun. Well, by the time the show arrived, Joan’s first hit single was climbing the charts. ”I love Rock N Roll” eventually hit the top 40. In March, it hit No. 1.

We had no idea she’d become so popular in such a short time. I guess her management didn’t either as this tiny little club was filled beyond capacity. I’m glad there wasn’t a fire. Anyway, this band called The Suburbs opened. They were somewhat dark and from Minneapolis, which back then was a somewhat hip place to be from, musically speaking. They weren’t bad.

We were used to seeing a local band, The Shivvers, perform there, and there was always room on the dance floor. This time, the dance floor was pretty well packed. After The Suburbs finished, my roommate and I managed to slip up to the stage, such as it was. I think this stage couldn’t have been any higher than 18 inches off the dance floor. We stayed right there, just a tad to the left of Joan’s microphone. And that’s where we stayed until the show was over.

It didn’t take long before the crowd to press forward and force us to put our knees against the edge of the stage to keep from falling right on top of Joan’s high-top Keds. The bouncers sitting on the edge of the stage did a good job trying to keep us upright, but we ended up hunched over much of the show. To her credit, Joan saw us getting squashed and asked everyone to back up a bit. It was to little or no avail, however. My roommate was in even more dire straits than I was as he seemed to be crushed to the floor on a few occasions. But he said he was most comfortable that way. As for me, I just tried to keep from falling into a mic stand or guitar as my knees rubbed ever so hard against the stage, which was carpeted.

When we finally got free and left the place, I was so hot that I walked out in the Wisconsin winter carrying my coat. There were holes in my jeans and blood on my knees. It was my own personal badge of honor.

I ended up seeing the Joanmeister two more times that year. She opened for the Police at the Rosemont Horizon in Illinois, and played at the Wisconsin State Fair.

That semester, the tuition was raised $30. My roommate and I considered this somewhat of a minor travesty, and he decided we should write a letter to the editor of the school newspaper, and also send a copy of it to the chancellor, Irving Shain. I have a couple copies of the letter. It ran in the Jan. 28, 1982 issue of The Daily Cardinal. Here it what it said:

Letter to Shain

We, the undersigned, as students of the University, hereby give you, Chancellor Shain notice of a lawsuit currently pending in Kangaroo Court Circuit Number 873. Named as the defendants in this suit are Chancellor Irving Shain, the Board of Regents and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The plaintiffs claim unjust economic and psychological hardship induced by the Regents’ imposition of a $30 tuition surcharge this semester.

The suit seeks the following settlement: The revocation of the surcharge, the refund of all surcharge fees to the students who paid them and, in compensation for the great psychological hardships caused by this unforgivable action, the elimination of the College of Engineering.

The plaintiffs, however, expressed willingness to negotiate an out-of-court settlement. They have cordially invited you to lunch at Pop’s Club in Gordon Commons on Friday, Feb. 5, at noon to discuss this most distressful matter. We sincerely hope that you will attend this important meeting.

Paul A. Swinford

Paul J. Hoffman

Anarchists at Law

We never actually thought the chancellor would show up for lunch at a student hangout, and we never expected the chancellor of a Big Ten university to even respond to this letter that obviously was written in jest. In fact, we figured some secretary would read it, grumble and/or laugh … or both … and toss it in the wastebasket.

So imagine our surprise when we actually got a letter back from the chancellor. I wish I had that letter. But basically what he said was (in a similarly tongue-in-cheek serious tone) he’d love to discuss this important matter with us, but he thought our choice of meeting sites was not up to snuff for a matter of such grave importance. Therefore, would we meet with him and the dean of students, I believe his name was Peter Bunn, at Ella’s Deli, a fine establishment in downtown Madison.

So we did … on Feb. 26.

The two of us actually had lunch with the chancellor of a Big Ten university twice. And he paid both times, which was cool. We had lunch at Ella’s Deli, then we had lunch at some fancy joint out in Cuba City. It was one of the cooler experiences I’ve had in my life.

Years later, after Chancellor Shain retired, and I’d become a sportswriter at the Milwaukee Sentinel, I wrote him to let him know what had become of me. I think he’s still living in the Madison area, which would make him about 138 years old about now. What a great guy.

Of Halloween in Mad City, The Shivvers and more (1981 Part 3 of 3)

These memories from 1981 are bought to you by my old Hackbarth Insurance desk calendars that I found a short while ago in a junk drawer.

Here we are in October. Among the items I chose to mark down on my calendar that month were a couple of dates that a Milwaukee-based band called The Shivvers played in Madison, Wis., while I was attending the University of Wisconsin-Madison. My roommate, Paul II, was a big fan of this band, partially because the lead singer was cute and reminded him of Wendy Wu of the British band, The Photos. I’m not sure where he saw them first. But he introduced me to the world of groupiedom.

This band was a power-pop band consisting of a drummer, rhythm guitarist, lead guitarist, bass player and singer/keyboardist. They had some really good songs and were fun to see. Paul II also convinced me that you had to dance to every single song whether anybody else was dancing or not. So, I did … as weird and as self-conscious as I felt at times — I still did. I’m sure people thought we were weird or light in the loafers or something. Most of the time, a bunch of people, females included, joined right in.

We went to see this band every time they were in Madison. And sometimes when they were in Milwaukee on the weekend, we’d go back home to Milwaukee and see them. I procured the “official” Shivvers T-shirt, getting a yellow shirt with black lettering that said “I’ve got the Shivvers.” The “Shivvers” lettering was kind of jumbled as it was meant to evoke a feeling of shivering. Band members started calling us the Bees because of our yellow-and-black wardrobe.

My first real actual date was at a Shivvers show at Headliners in Madison. It was kind of a blind date with a girl I’d met on the phone while I was helping conduct a trivia contest on the student radio station.

We managed to get the band named the top local band in the Milwaukee Journal. My roommate and I and our friends all got the coupons out of the Green Sheet and mailed them in, citing our favorite radio stations, national bands and the like. There was this old guy at one of their shows that winter who kept telling us we’d better make sure all our friends voted for them. So, I made sure everyone put down The Shivvers for their favorite local band. There may have even been a couple I filled out for friends whose musical tastes I was very aware of, and who, given a heart-wrenching speech by me, definitely would have succumbed to my wishes and put The Shivvers down as their favorite local artist. Years later, I found out The Shivvers had been accused of stuffing the ballot box. They had nothing to do with it.

I have to admit that I became somewhat smitten by the lead singer, too, wrote her a letter at Christmastime, asking her if I’d managed to correctly decipher the lyrics of the single they had out on the market, and ended up allowing her to view many of the lyrics I’d penned to that point (most were horrible).

They band has some videos on YouTube, and there is even a Shivvers channel. Here it is: http://www.youtube.com/user/TheShivvers

The two videos on that channel were taped at a Madison TV station for a show on an extremely cold night on Jan. 9, 1982. My friends and I were supposed to go. But my dad wouldn’t let me use his car because it was so incredibly cold. He said that if the car wouldn’t start or we slid off the road, there might be nobody around to help us and we might freeze to death. So, we didn’t go.

The Shivvers eventually moved to Boston, but never got going out there as the lead singer got sick for quite a while.

Also, in that October 1981 calendar I have, I’ve got our vaunted Badger football team beating both Purdue and Ohio State at home to complete a sweep of the three teams that annual held down the top spots in the Big Ten in those days. The Badgers had been very mediocre for a number of years, then all of a sudden ripped off this great streak. They lost at Michigan State and Illinois before coming home to spank Northwestern on Halloween.

Halloween in Madison was a bizarre deal back then. I mean really bizarre. You’ve got a bunch of college kids, the drinking age was 18, you’re in a state that practically encourages drinking at every turn and you’ve got free music and cheap beer available everywhere. Plus, people dress up in costumes. It’s a recipe for disaster, and it often was. By the time I got there, the city has taken to greasing the light poles and electrical poles on State Street, a street where no traffic was allowed except for buses and bikes that ran from the state capital building to the campus.

Anyway, the Badgers finished off a pretty good season in November and went on to play Tennessee in the Garden State Bowl, losing to an unbelievably fast Volunteer squad.

That December, the Green Bay Packers lost to the New York Jets in their final-regular season game of the year, costing them a berth in the playoffs. A win there and they go. But they messed up and the end and missed a long field goal. That seemed to be the team’s modus operandi often during that stretch. Get very close to making the playoffs only to blow it in the last game.

The last week of December, Marquette University always hosted the Milwaukee Classic, a men’s college basketball tournament. There would be two first-round games one night, followed by a third-place game and championship game the next night. My friend, Pat, had an extra ticket for me this time, so I attended both games. Marquette beat Arizona State for the championship that year, and Pat and I got all the Marquette players’ autographs. That included Glenn “Doc” Rivers, who is now the coach of the NBA champions Boston Celtics. It also included Terrell Schlundt, who grew up in Antigo, Wis., my mom’s hometown. One of the dumbest things I’ve ever said I said to Terrell Schlundt during that tournament. When I got his autograph, I mentioned my cousins who lived in Antigo, and he knew who they were. So we chatted briefly about Antigo. Then, when I said thanks, I said, “Win one for me, Terrell.” Man, that was soooooo stupid! I didn’t really mean for it to come out like that. Pat teased me about it for months, adding in a whiny, schoolboy voice that I swear was not in the original line.

Oh well. We also got the autograph of the guy who hit the winning shot in the third-place game of the tournament. I’m going to have to look this one up as I can’t recall the team he played for .. his name was something like Pierre Jeanvier.

Oh shoot. I just found the program from the Milwaukee Classic I had been thinking of. It was actually contested in 1980. Marquette beat Arizona State in 1981. But the Pierre Janvier winning basket came in the third-place game in 1981 as Cal. State-Bakersfield beat Illinois State. We were sitting close, and got the guy’s autograph as he ran off the court. Marquette played Clemson in the championship. That Clemson squad featured Larry Nance, who went on to some NBA success.

Of ROTC, the Garden State Bowl and more (1981 Part 2 of 3)

Here comes some more of 1981:

I’ve got a couple paydays marked down in August 1981, the month of my 18th birthday, and the summer after high school graduation. On Aug. 13, I got a check from the Lutheran Home for the Aging in beautiful Wauwatosa, Wis., for $276.15. Two weeks later, I got a check for $253. That was big bucks back then and I was putting in basically full-time hours over the summer. But alas, my time at the home was to end soon.

I worked some after that, over school breaks. But that was the last fulltime gig with all the characters there. There would be no more old Jamaican guy who got angry all the time because a woman was his boss. He kept saying that in Jamaica, “the man is the king and the woman is the queen. The woman does not tell the man what to do.”

Soon, there would be no Mexican woman boss type person for him to get angry with. There would be no more hanging out with the young, white dude with the bushy hair and mustache who let me friend and I drive his turbo Trans Am to McDonald’s once to get for lunch. And the young black guy who had attended Alcorn State University for a time and took the bus out to the suburbs from the inner city. Of course, anything in the city was considered inner city by us suburban boys. There was also the black guy who sort of kind of wanted to get fired, so he didn’t do much. He wanted to leave and become a member of the CIA. I wonder whatever became of him.

The residents were interesting, too. We had one guy we called “Beh” because that’s all he ever said. I guess he couldn’t talk, and that’s the only sound that came out of his mouth. You could sort of tell what he meant by the tone of the “beh.”

There was another guy who used to make stuff with wood in the maintenance department workshop until they decided they weren’t going to allowed residents back there anymore. Seems they thought someone might hurt themselves.

Then there was the guy who sat in his wheelchair in his robe and slippers half the time, with a corncob pipe sitting in his mouth, telling us about how he got a sexually transmittable disease in World War I.

And another guy used to come up to us while we were cleaning windows or something and tell us a better way to do it. It usually had to do with old newspaper. He also like to play number games. He’d ask you to pick a number and he’d have you perform some sort of mathematical computations with it. Then he’d guess your answer.

On Aug. 23, I made my way to college … the University of Wisconsin – Madison. THE big UW. Bucky Badger and everything. 40,000-some undergraduates. Big Ten football. Dorm life. Roommates. People staying up late. Drinking (not for me, though … not at that point in time anyway). Navy ROTC (for one semester anyway).

My first semester in college was quite a unique experience for me. There was a lot of freedom, which apparently, I was not very good at handling at the time. I put things off until later. I didn’t always show up for class, especially for anything earlier than 9:50 a.m. I did, however, make it to almost every home football game as I got season tickets. It was a good year to see Badger football as they upset Michigan in the season opener and ended up going to their first bowl game in eons. So it was a trip to East Rutherford, N.J., for the Garden State Bowl … it was a bowl game!

I joined Navy ROTC when I went off to college. I didn’t get a scholarship, just signed up. Dad told me it would be a good way to get college paid for. If you did it for a year successfully, they’d probably give you a scholarship the the rest of the way, then you’d owe the Navy three years as an officer. If you signed up before you got there and they gave you a four-year scholarship, then you owed them four years afterward. That’s how I remember it.

I enjoyed ROTC. Among the highlights were early morning runs around Camp Randall Stadium while chanting in cadence, marching with rifles and wearing the uniform. I remember running the three miles in the physical fitness test, and also having guys yell to encourage you as you struggled to make just one more chin-up. And those shoulder boards were so cool. I even had a small kid come up to me once in Madison and salute me and say “hi, sir.” That was wacky. Here I was, some 18-year-old snot-nosed little punk, and a small child salutes me.

But, after a semester, I decided that I didn’t really want to spend three years of my life on a ship. As it was, I was fairly directionless at that time, and started making decisions … some good, some bad. But I needed a direction.

There was a guy who became a friend of mine through ROTC and Russian class. After I dropped Russian and ROTC, I didn’t see him for a good 25 years. Through the power of the Internet, I tracked him down and found out he was living within about 90 minutes of me. He’d stayed in the Navy for 20-some years, spent time in San Diego and Greenland, among other places, and retired from the military. We got together and had plenty to talk about.

My college roommate and I were quite a pair. We had the same first name, so we decided to name ourselves Paul I and Paul II. I was Paul I because Paul II decided that he could never be first at anything. So, with his poor self-image driving the name game, I became Paul I on the eighth floor of Sellery Hall Tower A. It was a fine floor … Nardin House. There was a girl there whose birthday was exactly one year before mine, and I quickly developed a crush on her. But alas, she was way more mature than I in the ways of romance. I was a bumbling fool.

He was into punk rock and new wave. I was a Doors, Beatles, Police and Cars fan who enjoyed giving new music a try. So I got sucked right into the power pop/new wave/punk scene. One day, we went to lunch together, he in his yellow Devo radiation suit and me in my Navy uniform. What an interesting sight that must have been.

Our favorite activities were going to see bands, playing basketball at the old rec center and collecting Old West buildings from boxes of Waffelos cereal.

One of the first bands I saw when I moved to Madison for school was a Doors cover band called Riders on the Storm. Paul II had already turned in some concert reviews for a local music magazine called The Mirror. That sounded like fun. After I got to the gig, I thought it would be neat if I could do that, too. So, somehow I managed to get ahold of the keyboard player and interviewed him at the bar between sets, writing my notes on napkins. I hadn’t planned on even talking to anyone, so I didn’t exactly go there prepared. It was a nice chat, the band was pretty good and I planned to try to write a review in the next day or so. But I was lacking for confidence, didn’t think I could write something good enough for publication, and never wrote it. Some start to a career in journalism, huh?

Well, I am running out of gas. And I’ve just got two months of calendar on this one. I am getting so more vociferous here. I guess there’s a lot more to say about 1981. So I will bid adieu to you for now, my gaggle of fans and be back another day with more from this momentous year.

Knowledge – “General Semantics: An Outline Survey” XXV

The final in a series of posts of notes from a book by a college professor of mine at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. I took the class “General Semantics” from Kenneth G. Johnson in the early 1980s, and found it to be the most enlightening class I ever took. I hope you get something out of it, too.

XXV.

It is useful to talk about several kinds of “knowledge.”

Knowledge1: What you know from experience. Strictly speaking, all of this knowledge is out of date. Much of it probably is still useful, but you can’t be certain of this. All of our knowledge has a probability attached to it. Much of this first-hand knowledge is either ignored as unimportant or dismissed as obvious. If you are certain, you do not need faith; if you are not certain, all you have is faith.

Knowledge2: What you know about (from reading, listening, etc.). Much of your knowledge falls into this category. At best, this kind of knowledge is an abstraction of someone else’s  abstraction of an event. Such knowledge sometimes comes to us in some fashion as this: a report about statements about generalizations from inferences about events, etc. Strictly speaking, this information is also out of date.

Knowledge3: What you know you don’t know: You perhaps know that you do not know how to read Sanskrit or make an atomic bomb. To be conscious that you are ignorant is a great step toward knowledge.

Knowledge4: What you don’t know that you don’t know. To be ignorant of your ignorance is a serious problem. Before it was proved that the earth was round, people “knew” that it was flat. Before bacteria were discovered, people acted is if they “knew” there were no bacteria. Some areas of thought are closed to us because we have not developed language to represent them. For example, the invention of “zero” spurred the development of mathematics. What action will someone take if on meeting a stranger, his language is limited to terms for “friend” and “enemy?”

Knowledge5: What you “know” is not so. “What ails most people is not that they are ignorant, but that they know too much that isn’t so.”

Knowledge6: What nobody knows now. What new knowledge will come out of a more powerful telescope or microscope or closer relationships with each other?

Knowledge7: What you believe with such conviction that you feel you “know.” For example, “I know he will show up soon.” or “I know she is not be capable of such an act.” Knowing in this sense is personal, unique, not publicly demonstrable, therefore not subject to scientific analysis. Every man, whether religiously inclined or not, has his own ultimate presuppositions (which sometimes change over time). For him, they are true. Such presuppositions — whether they are called ideologies, philosophies, notions or hunches about life — exert creative pressure upon all of his conduct. It is important to be aware of the personal nature of this kind of “knowledge.” One can’t “prove” it in a scientific sense, nor can a person insist that others believe as they believe. Many arguments result because the word “know” has so many different meanings. Perhaps if we recognize that all evaluations, inferences, generalizations, etc., are actually “beliefs,” we would be more willing to use that term.

Mouse and a maze – “General Semantics: An Outline Survey” XXIV

Another in a series of posts of notes from a book by a college professor of mine at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. I took the class “General Semantics” from Kenneth G. Johnson in the early 1980s, and found it to be the most enlightening class I ever took. I hope you get something out of it, too.

XXIV.

Man’s ability to create and his ability to communicate are related. Without a good self-image, you can’t communicate well; you will constantly talk about your own misery. The best way to create a good self-image is to create. And you can be more creative if you open yourself to experience.

Instead of perceiving in predetermined categories, a creative person is aware of the moment at hand, and is open to many experiences that fall outside the usual categories. For example, many may say “this tree is green.” But a creative person might see the same tree and say “this tree looks lavender to me in this light.” The creative person is more open to his or her own experiences. There is less rigidity in the boundaries of concepts, beliefs, perceptions and hypotheses. It means a tolerance for ambiguity where ambiguity exists. It means the ability to receive much conflicting information without forcing closure on the situation.

Man’s ability to survive depends on creativity. We have to continually develop new sources of power and food, new ways to combat disease or bring about understanding, etc.

In our educational system and in our society, we place a great deal of emphasis on learning to conform — to think in terms of what we think the other person will think. Often, we are taught what to think, not how to think.

An educational system in which a child is told he is not supposed to make a mistake is bound to have have difficulty creating. He will look for safe little places where he is not likely to make mistakes.

A mouse that is put into a maze that runs it correctly the first time hasn’t learned to run the maze. It doesn’t learn to run the maze until it makes mistakes and learns from them.

Form the habit of reacting “yes” to a new idea. First, think of all the reasons it is good; there will be plenty of people who will tell you it won’t work.

When we look for differences instead of differences instead of similarities, it is practically impossible to get new ideas. Seeking differences is one of the basic techniques of originality or creativeness.

The novelist – “General Semantics: An Outline Survey” XXIII

Another in a series of posts of notes from a book by a college professor of mine at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. I took the class “General Semantics” from Kenneth G. Johnson in the early 1980s, and found it to be the most enlightening class I ever took. I hope you get something out of it, too.

XXIII.

The language of literature and poetry emphasizes expressions of feeling, subjective responses, uniqueness. In these types of writing, as well as in fiction, myth, legend, etc., we are not concerned with actual maps of real territories. When we say writing of this type is “true,” we do not mean scientifically or historically true. The plays of Shakespeare or the poems of Milton produce in us attitudes toward our fellow man, an understanding of ourselves or feelings of deep moral obligation that are valuable to humanity.

Science enables us to cooperate; the arts establish a flow of symphony and understanding so that we want to cooperate.

The novelist abstracts only the events relevant to his or her story and then organizes them into a meaningful experience.

Creating problems – “General Semantics: An Outline Survey” XXII

Another in a series of posts of notes from a book by a college professor of mine at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. I took the class “General Semantics” from Kenneth G. Johnson in the early 1980s, and found it to be the most enlightening class I ever took. I hope you get something out of it, too.

XXII.

The language of science emphasizes definitions, objectivity and generalizations of high prediction value.

Modern scientific methods may be summarized as follows:

1. Ask questions in terms that suggest observations that can be made or experiments that can be performed.

2. Observe or experiment.

3. Describe the results in specific terms or record measurements.

4. Arrange, order and classify the results.

5. Make tentative inferences, hypotheses, generalizations.

7. Collect more data by further observation or experimentation in order to check predictions.

8. Revise inferences, hypotheses, generalizations in light of new information.

9. Repeat the process again and again as necessary to get the desired precision.

10. The goal of all this activity is to be able to predict. The value of a theory lies in its prediction value.

Science as method is continuous; all of its conclusions are held subject to the further revision that new observations may require. Dogma says: “This is so.” Fiction says: “This isn’t so, but let’s pretend it is.” A hypothesis says “Perhaps this is so; let’s see if it is.”

In scientific method, generalizations are treated as tentative, provisional, probable — rather than certain.

The scientist, by his very nature, creates more problems. The measure of our intellectual maturity is our capacity to feel less satisfied with our answers to better problems. Scientific inquiry encourages doubt instead of suppressing it. Doubt creates the motivation for conducting a particular piece of research.

The methods of science can be used in many everyday problem-solving situations. Note the order of the major steps: observe, describe, hypothesize, predict, observe again, etc. Science is a generalized way of solving problems and is an effective method of time-binding.