A debate always involves two two-person teams, one affirmative and one negative. The topic for the next year is selected and announced in late spring. The order of the speeches is 1AC-1NC-2AC-2NC-1NR-1AR-2NR-2AR where A=affirmative, N=negative, C=constructive (10 minutes maximum), R=rebuttal (5 minutes maximum). The 2nd affirmative speaker can give the 1AR. This is called “insides.” His partner’s role, which is considered insulting, is called “outsides”. I performed outsides as a sophomore and insides at one tournament as a sophomore. I was almost always 1N, but during 1966 I was 2N and then again when we used the Emory Switch. I may have done 1AC and 1AR in my sophomore year, but only once or twice.
For each debate the host school generally provides timekeepers who hold up cards with the number of minutes remaining in each speech. There is also a 1/2 minute card and a stop card. Judges are supposed to ignore anything after the appearance of the stop card.
There is no preparation time. When one speaker finishes, the next is expected to start. A little leeway is given, but some judges might tell the timekeeper to start timing before the speaker stands up.
There was no cross-questioning in 1966-1970. However, at some point between 1970 and 1974, the rules were changed to allow each team ten minutes of prep time. In addition a three-minute cross-questioning period was added after each constructive speech.
Debates always have an odd number of judges. Each judge must vote for one team or the other and assign speaker points (usually 1-30) to each speaker. The judge fills out a three-part ballot with plenty of room for comments. Most judges use this area to explain why they voted as they did.
Tournaments consist of preliminary rounds (“prelims”) in which everyone competes and elimination rounds (“elims”). At the top tournaments there always are eight preliminary rounds. Smaller tournaments often have six. There is (except in the NDT) one judge per round. Judges are usually debate coaches or former debaters who seem qualified. Each team debates half of the prelims on each side of the question. No one faces the same team twice. Some rounds are usually power-matched, which means that the teams with the best records face each other.
The number of teams that qualify for the elims is usually 16 or 8. Qualification is based on number of wins and then total speaker points. If two or more teams are tied, a predetermined method of breaking the tie is used. The teams are seeded based on records, and a single elimination bracket (1 v. 16, 2 v. 15, etc.) is used. If two teams from the same school are scheduled to meet, they can debate or they can designate which team advances. The round with 16 teams is called “octafinals”.
Elimination rounds are open to the public. Debaters from the home school or a nearby school might ask to attend a prelim round, but they would probably ask permission of both teams.
The debate season starts in late September or October. The last tournaments are the National Debate Tournament (NDT) and the Tournament of Champions (T of C) in March. California schools host consecutive tournaments (“west coast swing”) over the holidays. New England schools host tournaments (“east coast swing”) in early January.
I flew home to KC. In those days the airlines had student-standby rates that were very affordable. My parents picked me up at the Municipal Airport, which is right across the river from the downtown area. Landing from the west was a terrifying exercise in dodging skyscrapers, but it was actually more dangerous to land from the east. If you overran the runway even a little, you might end up in the Missouri River. All my records and my AR speakers also made it home, but I don’t remember how.
I had nothing scheduled for the entire summer. My parents lined up one task for me—painting our house. I planned to just hang around until I got drafted, and I also hoped to play a lot of golf. I also watched the mailbox closely.
My report card for my last semester at U-M (the first time) arrived shortly after I did: I got an A (speech self-study), a B (Russian lit), a C (anthropology0, and a D (linguistics). I was greatly relieved not to see any E’s or I’s (incomplete). Michigan issued E’s where everyone else issued F’s. So, as expected, my very first semester’s average was my best, and my last semester’s was my worst. But it was good enough.
My diploma arrived a few days later. I finally got a chance to look at my transcript a couple of years later when I applied for jobs. Nothing on it indicated that my excess hours in math would have affected my graduation. Maybe I could have dropped the Russian and linguistics classes and still graduated. I needed to enroll in four courses to be a full-time student, a requirement for intercollegiate debate, but nothing prevented withdrawals. Of course then I would have had to explain to the parental units why they had to pay for four courses when I only really took two. That might not have been too pleasant. I think that it all worked out for the best.
I wondered to myself how in the world I managed to get a B in that Russian lit class. Clearly those papers that I saw people turning in must have been voluntary and clearly not much attention was paid to attendance at the recitation sections that I completely avoided. I must have also aced both tests.
There was one other possibility. Perhaps the professor was both a caligrapher and a Detroit Tigers fan. Maybe he really gave me a D, but it was misinterpreted as a B.
I also received an envelope from the Society of Actuaries with my test results. I was astonished to see that I scored a 6, which was the lowest passing score. I somehow passed the probability and statistics test without answering a single statistics question!
I received nothing from the Selective Service in June, July, or August.
As a freeloader I could hardly complain about painting the house or any other mundane chore—mowing the lawn, trimming bushes, weeding the roses, etc.— that I was asked to do. I probably grumbled to myself while I was doing them.
My dad’s company provided him with a membership in the Blue Hills Country Club, well to the south of us and on the Missouri side. Dad was a VP in the sales department and was expected to entertain agents and other business associated. The club had a swimming pool and a golf course, but the only feature that interested me was the golf course, which I was allowed to play on for free. I took advantage of that feature as often as I could. I sometimes played with my dad on weekends and with my mother on weekdays. A few times my dad took a day off, and all three of us played.
Occasionally I played by myself. I was very careful not to impede or hurry anyone. I was a courteous guest.
Summers in KC are hot. On one such day I was playing by myself, as always carrying my clubs. I finished the front nine with an indifferent score and bought a coke. I then walked over to the tenth tee, from which point almost the entire back nine was visible. I was surprised to discover that no one at all seemed to be playing. This was puzzling. There was no indication of a special event.
With the course to myself I played three balls. This was strictly prohibited, but if I saw anyone approaching I would just stop doing it. I certainly would not be holding anyone up. Even playing three balls, I could play faster than any twosome in a cart.
I finished the round and walked past the clubhouse and the putting green. The assistant pro, Rick, was doing some maintenance on the putting green. I called to him and asked where everyone was. He said, “Are you kidding? It’s 106° out here.”
I honestly had not really noticed. In those days I had almost infinite tolerance for heat. I almost never wore shorts.
My sister Jamie had just finished the eighth grade. She was a lot more socially active than I ever was. She could also play the guitar. She had a book of Bob Dylan songs, and I could do a passable imitation of the Nobel Prize winner. When I sang in my own voice I always went off-key at the break, but I could pull off the songs in her book pretty well using my Dylan voice. I remember “The Times They are a-Changing” and ‘Mr. Tambourine Man” in particular.
The letter from selective service came in September. It did not begin with “Greetings,” as was commonly reported, but with “Greeting:”. I had to report for my induction physical at a building in downtown Kansas City on Monday, October 5, a day that will live in infamy. My mother drove and dropped me off. I did not see her again for eight weeks.
The exam was a complete joke. There were a few dozen of us. About 30 percent of the guys were carrying briefcases or satchels with documentation of some real or imagined ailment. All (or at least nearly all) of these people were declared 4-F. I suspect that fifty years later not many people realize how widespread this practice was. More than a few doctors were willing to attest to very questionable ailments like bone spurs.
The rest of us passed. Some people found out that they were color blind. Other than that, the doctors (or whatever they were) basically counted our limbs and stamped us Grade A if we were not missing any.
A common misconception was that they rejected men with flat feet. If I had amputated my toes (some people did!), mine would have resembled Donald’s or Daffy’s. Here is how the foot examination went: We all lined up facing away from the doctor. He called out “Raise your left foot; right foot; thank you.” The pause for the semicolons was no more than two seconds. Many guys never even got their left foot raised.
Arlo Guthrie and the movie Stripes claim that they asked about ever being arrested. If so, I don’t remember that.
They measured me at 6’1″, 145 pounds. I told you that I was skinny.
There were maybe twenty or thirty of us. I expected to be taken to the nearest training location, Fort Leonard Wood, about 200 miles from KC. Instead they flew us to Fort Polk, LA, which was 680 miles away. The base had an airfield, which was where we landed.
I remember that one guy announced that he wanted to be a butcher. He thought that this would be a good way to avoid going to Vietnam. The sergeant who was escorting us advised him that that would be terrible duty, and he should try for something else.
Heretofore I had led a quite comfortable existence that was rather easy to comprehend. The next eighteen months and five days would unquestionably be the most bizarre of my life.
On December 1, 1969, the first draft lottery was held. #154 was assigned to my birth date, August 17. In 1970 they started drafting with #1. No one predicted that 154 was a safe number. As it turned out, the lowest safe number was 196. Bill Clinton got 311, and George W. Bush got 327.
I thoroughly enjoyed my first four years at the University of Michigan. I lived in the dorm all four years. It suited me perfectly. No worries about rent or food, clean linen, and a floating bridge game in the lobby, which was right next door to my room. As much as I appreciated this arrangement, by New Year’s Day of 1970 I was very tired of anything to do with actual classes.
Instead, in my last semester I planned to spend a LOT of time on debate. This was my last chance to qualify for the National Debate Tournament. This adventure is described in 1970 Part 2. Compared to debate and research for debate, sitting in the classroom and preparing for classes seemed excruciatingly boring.
Allen Rumsey House was new in 1937. My room 1968-70 was the corner room on the ground floor.
To give myself more time for debate, I resigned as president of Allen Rumsey House (a dorm of just over 100 guys in West Quad) so that someone who was returning the next year could get some experience. I resumed editing (which meant writing, mimeographing, and distributing) Rumsey Rumors, the newsletter published occasionally for residents.
I had thoroughly researched the school’s catalog for the second semester to construct the easiest schedule that would allow me to graduate in May. I was only three credits short of the required total, and I had met all the requirements except for one, which I planned to fill with an introductory course in social anthropology. I don’t remember exactly why I selected this course, but it met my own main requirement (no papers). Moreover, a sophomore who was a friend of mine was also taking it, and he was a skilled note-taker.
I was pretty sure that ten of my credits would not count for graduation. The catalog said that one could only have forty credits in one’s major. I had fifty in math. So, I calculated that I needed thirteen non-math credits in the last semester. As a four-year debater, I was allowed to take a three-credit individual study in speech communication. That would require little or no work. So, I needed two more classes.
My first choice was a 400-level Russian literature in English. I had read a few Russian novels, and I really liked them. I was worried that papers might be required, but someone who had taken the class assured me that there were no papers.
For my last class I picked introductory linguistics. How hard could it be? I had taken twelve semesters of Latin and Greek in high school and nine semesters of Latin, Greek, and Russian at U-M. I also took a language theory class in the Communication Sciences department, but it was mostly computer-oriented.
At the first linguistics lecture the makeup of the class startled me. It was about 70 percent females, most of whom were packed tightly in the first few rows of the auditorium. Furthermore, most of the guys were in small groups spread around the rest of the room, and they all seemed pretty big. What really struck me was the prominence of their jawbones.
Almost everyone fell into these two categories. No one looked like me. I was probably the oldest and certainly the skinniest (perhaps 140 pounds) of all the male students.
When the lecturer appeared, I understood the female part. He was good-looking and very personable. He began his presentation by explaining how the class would work: students would be allowed to assign their own grades! There would be no tests, and the only homework would be a workbook that we would be required to fill out and submit. That explained all the athletes; I knew for certain that the athletes had a formidable underground network for locating “gut” classes. This one must have been close to the top of the list.
That was the last linguistics lecture that I attended. I could hardly believe how lucky I had been to find this class.
A small fraction of the reading list.
The lecturer at the first Russian lit class distributed the reading list, which consisted of at least six heavyweight tomes, none of which I had already read. I also learned that there would be both lectures and discussion groups led by graduate students. I never attended any of the latter.
I attended the lectures in the anthro and Russian classes for the first five or six weeks whenever I was in town. After that I took the midterm exams, but I never even picked up my results.
Meanwhile I had been attending debate tournaments, which took up a LOT of time. I also spent a lot of time in the library researching for debate. I also played bridge in the dorm, but I was not serious about it. A few of us played in the club game at the Union once or twice. I was quite serious about intramural basketball. I played on our team in the “B” division. I did not contribute much, but we did win the tournament. We also won in B volleyball. I was the captain of that team. Allen Rumsey House, the oldest and smallest of all the dorms, won the overall intramural dorm championship with the highest total score ever recorded.
At some point in February I quit going to classes altogether. I judged that I could pass my two real classes by cramming for the finals. This was undoubtedly hubris. I had no plan B.
1970 was, of course, a very tumultuous year at every college. Young people were fed up with a stupid war in Asia in which they were supposed to do the heavy lifting. At U-M this discontent was joined by a separate issue called the Black Action Movement, which challenged the university to come up with a solution to the extremely low percentage of black people enrolled at U-M. This movement was championed by my debate partner during the first semester of my junior year, Alexa Canady, who quit debate and focused her attention on pre-med studies and editorials for the Michigan Daily. BAM called for everyone to go on strike, which fit in perfectly with my plan.
BAM Rally
I participated in one of the marches that BAM called for. I marched with them, mostly as a lark. I was accompanied by my outside agitator friend, Dave Bartlebaugh, better known as “The Ball”. He didn’t even go to U-M, and he didn’t care at all about the Black Action Movement, but he was a great agitator. He kept shouting “Free Huey! Free Bobby! Free all political prisoners!” He banged on trashcans as we passed them. I had trouble suppressing my giggles. I did join in the “Open it up or SHUT IT DOWN!” chants. It was a great time.
The Ball was a real character. During my junior year (1968-1969) he started hanging around in the lounge of Allen Rumsey House. He lived in an apartment off-campus, he already knew some of the guys in our dorm, and he liked the fact that some kind of nonsense was always going on. A the end of the 1970 spring semester he had successfully avoided the draft by failing the physical due to high blood pressure. I guess that he had somewhat high blood pressure anyway, but he augmented it during the week leading up to each physical exam through a regimen that included, among other things, a lot of coffee. According to this website he has been in the music business for the last five decades.
The BAM strike actually did some good. The university subsequently worked hard to help students from Detroit public schools to meet the school’s entrance requirements, which even for in-state students were pretty rigorous. When I returned to Ann Arbor in 1974 there were obviously more minority students.
A point system for admission to the college of Literature, Science and the Arts that aided minorities was also implemented. In 2003 it was declared unconstitutional by a 6-3 vote of the U.S. Supreme Court.
I spent the weeks before finals speed-reading difficult Russian novels and memorizing my friend’s notes. I liked most of the novels, but I had zero experience in how to prepare for a test in a college-level literature class. I had not taken even one class in the English department. I was supposed to take the Great Books class in my freshman year, but by the time that I got to Ann Arbor the class was closed. Because I had passed the Advanced Placement test in high school I was excused from the university’s English requirement.
The anthro test went about as expected. I thought that I did OK. The Russian lit class was another story. As I approached the room in which the test was held I was greatly concerned to see a large number of students handing in what appeared to be papers. I never did discover whether these were assigned in contravention of the information at the first class. They might have been extra-credit assignments from the leaders of recitation groups.
The test itself seemed to go pretty well. It required several short essays. I was able to write something reasonably sensible for each one. Keep in mind that my goal was just to pass, and at Michigan a D would suffice.
After the tests I started doing the exercises in my linguistics workbook. It took a couple of days. I went to my teacher’s office in the evening and slid it under his door the day before grades were due. I lacked the audacity to assign myself a grade.
As always, I did not pick up my exams. I could only guess how well I actually did. My grades were mailed to my parents’ house in Kansas City a few weeks later.
Exams were over by the end of April. I stayed in Ann Arbor for a few weeks. Bill Davey and his roommate let me stay in their apartment. I think that I slept on the floor.
I was busy with two things—the actuarial exams and the Junior College National Forensics Tournament, which U-M hosted in 1970. I took part 2 of the former and judged an astounding twenty-four rounds in the latter. I supplemented my income from judging with the proceeds from the sale of all my remaining textbooks to one of the bookstores. This is what I lived on.
I was in Ann Arbor for the graduation ceremony. Even thought the speaker was U Thant, Secretary General of the United Nations, I did not go. I was too afraid that they might not read my name.
I had passed part 1 (calculus) of the actuarial exams in my junior year. Part 2 covered probability and statistics. In both of these areas U-M offered courses tailored to the exams. I took both classes in the first semester and received a B in each. I also sat for the part 2 exam in November, but I did not pass, which surprised me a little. I had not studied much, and I was distracted by debate, but I was reasonably familiar with all the material. The grading for these exams was designed to penalize guessing, and I did my share.
In May I devoted not a single minute to studying for the exam. At some point it occurred to me that I should avoid guessing. My strategy was to work carefully on the probability questions and to answer only those statistics question that I was certain of. In the end I skipped 100 percent of the statistics questions. This meant that my best possible score was probably around 50 percent. For one of the few times in my life I was pretty certain that I had failed a test.
I had already decided that I would just go home and wait to get drafted. That’s what I did.
My parents told me that it was over 100° when I was born in St. Luke’s hospital in Kansas City, MO, on the afternoon of August 17, 1948. I was two days overdue. I have always claimed that I stayed inside until it was warmer outside. My recollection is that my parents told me that I weighed seven pounds and eleven ounces. In most respects I was quite healthy. My eyes were what people call hazel—brown in places, green in places, some other colors, and changeable. My hair, when it arrived, was a very dark color that matched that of both of my parents.
I lived the first twenty-two years of my life in the KC area, but on the west side of the Missouri River and State Line Road, i.e, in Kansas, the Sunflower State. I have almost no memories at all of my first four years. Since I spent those years in and out of hospitals, it might be a blessing. I was born with a cleft lip, which the doctors fixed with a series of operations that in those days were quite novel. I will spare you pictures of what people with this condition look like.
Fortunately for the family, my dad worked for an insurance company that provided health insurance for all its employees. I am certain that my parents and grandparents would have done anything that they could for me anyway, but it would definitely have entailed some hardships. When I was little, we did not have much money.
I have retained only two memories of being in the hospital during that period. I recall a plastic toy tank that someone gave me. A rubber dart could be mounted on its gun barrel. There was also a round semi-spherical rubber piece on the top of the tank. When you pressed on it the dart went flying. I loved it.
The other memory is shorter but less pleasant. I vaguely remember being strapped down in my bed. Somehow I had become dehydrated. The family legend relates that my grandmother, Hazel Wavada, could see that something was wrong with me, and she raised hell until the hospital staff addressed the problem by pumping me full of something. To this day the only phobia from which I suffer has to do with needles. If you see me with a tattoo or a piercing, you will know that aliens have taken control over my mind.
I think that our house at 40 N. Thorpe used to be white. The Milgrams’ house, which was much larger, is on the right. Beyond the back yard was an alley that separated us from houses on N. 13th St.
We lived in a house owned by my maternal grandparents, John and Clara Cernech1. I don’t remember them ever living with us, but they might have when I was an infant. A man whom I called Uncle Richard did live with us. His last name was Keuchel (rhymes with cycle), which indicates that he was related to Clara. He might have been her brother—Clara had lots of brothers and sisters. He might have been a cousin.
I am pretty sure that, as my dad would say, we didn’t have two nickles to rub together. We did not have a car or modern appliances, but I certainly never felt deprived.
I can still rather easily visualize parts of the house. I had my own tiny bedroom. My most precious possession was a green cowboy blanket, which I dragged around with me. I kept one of the corners between my right forefinger and middle finger. I named the four corners after political figures. Those areas were all worn out. My favorite was Adlai Stevenson, my dad’s political hero.
The basement was a spooky place. There was a coal chute. I have no idea how the coal got into the heater or from the street. I can hardly imagine my dad shoveling it. Maybe we no longer used coal. I also remember a washtub with a wringer. Later my dad and Joey Keuchel2 built a rather elaborate train set on two or more ping-pong sized tables. This was supposedly mine, but they messed with it much more than I did. When our little family moved south, the train accompanied us, but not the tables. We never set it up at our new house.
I remember the kitchen as a very wholesome place. My mother painted an apple tree on one of the walls, and she did a very good job. I have no absolutely no artistic taste, but everyone complemented her on her work.
I sometimes went to the store with my mother. How did we get there? We must have walked most of the time. There were “street cars”, which is what the locals called trolleys, and buses, but I have only vague memories of either one. Central Ave., a main drag was only two blocks from the house.
KC KS used a monetary currency that I have nowhere else encountered, plastic coins called “mills”. My recollection is that the green ones were worth one tenth of a cent, and the red ones were worth half a cent. I might have this backwards. They were used for sales tax.
I have a few other vivid memories of those years. I had two friends, Larry Boatman and David Milgram. They were both about my age, but I do not remember going to kindergarten with them. I think that David might have been visiting (or even lived with) his grandparents, who lived next door. There was a third kid whose birthday was the same as mine. He lived in the house directly across the back alley from ours.
There were no girls in my age group in our neighborhood. At least I have no memory of any. It is quite possible that I just ignored them.
I was called Mickey, probably after Mickey Mantle, who played for the Kansas City Blues before the Yankees called him up. My dad told me that he once saw him hit two homers in one game—one right-handed and one left-handed.
One day I announced that I would no longer be called Mickey. The other kids had been taunting me: “Mickey Mickey Mickey Mouse; when he grows up he’ll be a rat.” Thereafter I was Mike Wavada.
We had a black and white dog named Trixie. I think that she was a terrier. I don’t remember much about her except that she could really jump. She might have been my mom’s dog. She must have died before we moved to the suburbs.
Before I was old enough for school my parents enrolled me in speech lessons. Despite my rather severe birth defect, I can never remember anyone having trouble understanding my speech. I am not sure that I actually needed the speech classes. At any rate I aced them. I was awarded a sticker depicting a hippopotamus for reciting my assignment well. Because “hippopotamus” was considered a difficult word to pronounce, the hippo sticker was highly valued.
Who was going through the front door and who would sneak around to the back?
I cannot remember much of the pre-television years. A family legend persisted for years about the occasion on which my parents and I were all attending mass at St. Peter’s cathedral. At some point I got bored and started complaining vociferously about the fact that I was missing the Lone Ranger.
I played by myself a lot. I remember that my mother made a train for me consisting of cardboard boxes. I had a cylindrical toy box, but the only one that I remember was a stuffed dog named Timmy. He was all black and had floppy ears. I had a red tricycle, which my sister eventually inherited.
I recall that I enjoyed parading around the house using the lids to pots as cymbals. My dad bought me some baseball cards. He was upset when I traded Mickey Mantle for Vic Power.
Despite the presence of so many heathens there, my parents enrolled me at Prescott School, the local public school, for kindergarten. St. Peter’s, our parish, had a grade school, but no kindergarten. I do not remember my kindergarten teacher’s name. I think that I walked to school. It must not have been far. (If I remembered the name accurately, the school apparently no longer exists. My efforts to determine where it was failed.) Maybe a few of us walked together, or maybe my mother walked with me.
I don’t remember learning much in kindergarten except when to keep my mouth shut. I fondly recall that we each had a towel or blanket that we used at nap time. This instilled a napping habit that has served me very well for my entire life. I also remember making an imprint of my hand in clay, which someone painted dark green. It was on display in our house for quite a while.
One kid in our class was BAD4. In addition to other high crimes and misdemeanors, he threw rocks at the other kids at recess. Did we even have recess? Maybe it was after school or before.
The boys, of course, would never report him because of the sacred obligation of omertà that juvenile males seem feel instinctively. The girls may have reported him to the teachers; I don’t know. All I know that he was still at large.
Believe it or not, I was the biggest kid in kindergarten. One day I had had enough of the rock-thrower. After school I hid behind a bush past which I knew that he had to walk. When he approached, I sprung out and punched his lights out. Actually, I don’t remember the details. I may have only hit him once, and then he may have run away. The next day my teacher took me aside and told me that I must never do that again. I nodded agreement.
My recollection is that the teacher did not promote the other kid at the end of the year. He actually flunked kindergarten. I, on the other hand, passed with flying colors.The other kids were learning their letters at school, but I was learning to read and write at home. My mother took me with her on the streetcar or the bus to the library. There I got to pick out a book or two from the children’s section. I favored the ones about cowboys. By the time that I started first grade, I could read pretty well.
All my relatives are Catholics. There was never any question that I would go to St. Peter’s School for first grade. I walked there, too, but my recollection is that a group of us walked together. I think that some of the others were of the female persuasion.
I remember a candy store near the school. I seriously doubt that I often had any money for candy, but it is possible that Uncle Richard occasionally gave me a nickle or a dime once in a while.
This is St. Peter’s Cathedral. I think that the school building that I attended may no longer exist.
My teacher in first grade was a nun; I don’t remember her name either. She was not as nice as my kindergarten teacher. Also, there were no daily naps, and the classes were at once boring and frustrating. We probably did some craft things that I don’t remember. I have always been incompetent at anything vaguely artistic.
The activity that I most clearly remember involved slates and boxes. The boxes contained small light green cardboard letters, maybe 1/2″ x 1/4″. The other kids’ boxes contained a few dozen, but mine had between four and five million. The teacher would write a word or a phrase on the blackboard. Each student’s job was to find the letters in their own personal box and to place them on their personal “slate”, which was actually a paper and cardboard arrangement that was the size of a standard sheet of paper with rows in which the letters could be mounted.
It was kind of like Scrabble, but the letters were smaller and in boxes. The problem was that the letters in my box would hide from me. Items have hid from me all of my life; I have never figured out why or how they did it. If you asked me to get a bottle of Worcestershire sauce from the fridge, I probably would not be able to find it even if you told me what shelf it was on. Other bottles always conspire to conceal it, or maybe the target bottle would don a disguise. Or both.
From my poor performance at this activity Sister Whatever concluded that I was dumb, and she informed my parents of this at a parent-teacher conference. I can almost hear my mother saying, “But sister, I know that he can read and write already. He does both all the time at home.”
It does not look familiar, but it is a 1954 Ford.
This episode occurred in 1954. It was perhaps the only bad thing that happened that year. My dad must have gotten a big promotion because he bought a blue and white Ford. We had our own car!
The other big news in 1954 was that the hapless Philadelphia Athletics were moving to Kansas City. We were going to be a major league city!
From KC KS to PV.
My travails at St. Peter’s school were short-lived4. Early in 1955, while I was still in first grade, we moved south to Prairie Village. For the rest of the year I attended (or at least was enrolled at) Queen of the Holy Rosary School. My teacher was Sister Mildred, and she taught her students to read and write, not to extract clandestine letters from cardboard boxes.
1. The Cerneches moved to Grand Island, NE, at some point.
2. Joey Keuchel became, unbeknownst to me, a doctor who practiced in Tulsa. He died in 2014. His obituary can be read here. Click on “print”.
3. Note: in my day problem students were not diagnosed with ADD or ADHD. Instead they were considered “dumb” or “bad”.
4. If you read this sentence aloud, please pronounce the last syllable as a long “i”, like eye. The compound word means having a short life. If someone has short sight, everyone calls them short-sighted, not short-seen, right? The principle is the same. Yes, yes, I know that the dictionary prefers the short “i” pronunciation, but it is just because lexicographers tired of correcting the unwashed masses.
The 1960 version of the Holy Rosary Rockets kind of fizzled. Americans in those years were used to fizzling rockets. At QHRS we had high hopes for the 1961 version.
Not really. Most of the decent players had graduated. One of the few good players in last year’s seventh grade class, Bill Locke, moved to a different parish that did not participate in the CYO league.
On the other hand, there were three very welcome additions. Bernie Bianchino was an eighth grader whose family had moved to the parish over the summer. He was big (at least twice as heavy as I was), and he liked football. The new seventh graders also provided two valuable new additions. Bobby Hrzenak was a good runner and all-around athlete, and Jeff Mork could actually pass.
The worst news was that we often had only twelve players suit up for many of our games. The meant that many people, including me, played every play. I was wingback again on offense. I also played safety on defense and returned punts.
Some details are worth telling, but they will make more sense if I explain our offense in a little more detail.
The backs were numbered 1-4. The tailback was 4 and the fullback was 3. The gaps between linemen were numbered 1-8. The ones on the right were the even numbers starting at the center: 2-4-6-8. The odd gaps were irrelevant. Those guys could not block. We had only one play that went to the left of center.
Every play had a two-digit number. 48 meant that the tailback (4) would run around the right end (gap 8). We ran this play a lot because we usually had the defenders outnumbered on the right side, at least early in the game. Later they might figure out that we never went to the left and overload their left side.
There were definitely some embarrassing moments for me. Once I was called on to return a pretty high punt. By the time that I caught it, opponents were quite close. I tried to retreat and run around them, but they caught me, and I lost yardage. My nose also got smashed in the process. I came out of the game for a while, which meant that someone even worse than I was had to play my position.
The other two major setbacks came on a play called 48 Reverse. This play started like a regular 48 end sweep, but instead of blocking, the wingback (me), ran towards the tailback’s right side, and he handed the ball to me so that I could run around the left end.
Now, keep in mind that the guys on the left side of our line could not block very well. So, we almost never ran that way. On the other hand, the defenders on that side were likely just as good as the ones on the other. They had probably been pushing our guys around all day, but they had never seen any action. Then, all of a sudden, this really skinny kid comes toward them, and, mirabile dictu, he has the ball!
I vividly recall one of those occasions. The opponent was St. Peter’s, the school in Kansas City, KS, that I had attended for the first part of first grade. As I took the handoff, I saw two very large kids dressed in green blocking my path. In my mind they were 6’8″ or 6’9′ and very muscular specimens, but that can’t be right. Anyway, they were salivating over the prospect of dismembering me, who still weighed less than 100 pounds. They did not bother to tackle me. One grabbed my right arm, the other took my left, and they made a wish. Needless to say, the ball came free, and one of them recovered it.
We tried this play a few more times over the course of the year. I think that I got back to the line of scrimmage only once. I hated that play.
We also had a pass play that ran off of the same setup, 48 Pass. The tailback, Jeff Mork would run to the right, stop, and then pass. The primary receivers were our two ends, who both ran down field ten yards and then cut to the right. The quarterback would, in theory, make his way through the line, find an empty spot, and serve as a safe target. I went downfield five yards and then cut to the left. I was running away from the passer and everyone else on our team.
We called this play against St. Ann’s, the parish in Prairie Village that was actually closest to where we lived. The head coach happened to notice that I was wide open, but Jeff threw an incomplete pass elsewhere. The same play was called again, and the coach told Jeff to look for me. Jeff held the ball for a while and then got tackled.
We tried it a third time, and this time Jeff saw me and threw a nice spiral in my direction. I caught it and made a sharp right turn. To my amazement absolutely no one was near me. I took off at top speed.
We were playing at St. Ann’s field, where there were no yard markers. There might was probably some indication of where the end zone was, but it was not obvious. I knew that I would look foolish if I ran all the way to the parking lot, but it would be unpardonable if I stopped short of the end zone, and they tackled me. So I just kept running and running.
That was the only score that we made in that game, and St. Ann’s scored two or three times. However, one of the players who carried the ball was disqualified, and so we actually won the game by forfeit. Technically, therefore, I did not score that touchdown, but everyone at QHRS knew better.
Neither Joseph nor Dolley had anything on my three-colored jersey.
The coaches then bought me a new jersey. Everyone else on our team wore dark blue with gold trim. Mine was yellow with one red sleeve and one green sleeve. Seriously.
The jersey helped. Jeff found me in another game, and I scored another touchdown. I don’t remember the opponent, maybe Blessed Sacrament. In the St. Peter’s game he led me just a little too much on a pass that would probably have been a touchdown. I got a couple of fingertips on it, but I could not bring it in.
So, in the two years that I played at QHRS I scored two touchdowns, and the rest of the team scored zero. The other teams scored a lot in 1961, but not as much as the previous year. Our defense improved, at least a little.
In fact, my biggest play of the year came on defense against St. Joseph’s of Shawnee. With only a couple of minutes to play in a scoreless game, St. Joe’s faced a fourth down and goal inside our ten yard line. They called a pass—a crossing route. Both ends were open, but the quarterback threw the ball right between them. One caught it, but he immediately ran into the other guy and fell down as I leapt to try to tackle him. The ball was placed just short of the goal line.
It was now our ball. Jeff called the 48 Pass, and he threw it to me. I gained about thirty yards after I caught the ball. We then ran out the clock to win the game 0-0.
