Singing in Arkansas

I took a couple of days off in March and joined a few buddies on a golf outing to northern Arkansas. Oddly enough, the highlight of the trip wasn't golfing, it was singing.

It took us about 11 hours to drive from the Twin Cities to Bella Vista, Arkansas, and we rolled in about 3 in the morning. A few hours' sleep and we were at one of the six golf courses in the area ready to tee off. It was about 60 degrees and after the miserable Minnesota winter, it was like heaven.

I didn't play particularly well, but that should have been no surprise. I haven't played particularly well since 1969.

It was just wonderful to be out in the sunshine. We golfed about 34 holes that day before we lost the sunshine.

Our plan that night was to drive down to Fayetteville, the home of the University of Arkansas, for a good steak dinner and to take in some of the local color. It's only about 30 minutes away.

The steak dinner was no problem. We went to a place called Doe's where you can order steak by the pound. There were four of us, and so we order two two-pound hunks of sirloin. When it arrived, both hunks were actually about three pounds. We were four pretty husky steak eaters, and we didn't even come close to polishing it off.

Out next stop was at Willy D's, just down Dickson Street from Doe's. Willy D's is one of those places where they have dueling pianos. When we got there, fairly early in the evening, the place was pretty empty because the entertainment hadn't started. We got a nice table not far from the door.

Pretty soon two piano players came out and for the rest of the night, it was constant high-energy wailing on those pianos. Plus there was singing and joke telling and birthday celebrations and at one point several members of the wait staff got up on the stage and danced.

The guys I was with kept sending up requests for the musicians to do the Minnesota Rouser. In Razorback Country, the chances of anybody knowing the Gopher Rouser were slim and none. Finally after a couple of hours of requests, each one pinned to a dollar or two of incentive money, one of the pianists admitted that he didn't know the rouser.

"Who's here from Minnesota?" he asked, and we raised our hands.

By this time there were probably about a hundred and fifty people in the bar, and we felt a little sheepish about being the group that had come from the furthest away.

"Well, said the piano player, why don't you guys sing the rouser?"

It didn't take too much encouragement and off we were off on our musical journey. The Arkansas natives smiled in amusement as we rah, rah, rahed for ski-u-mah. I don't think we excelled in harmony, but we hoped our enthusiasm and loudness made up for it. When we were done, there was a surprising amount of polite applause.

The piano player, knowing his audience well, then called for the Razorback Rouser. I can't remember how it went, but you should see 150 people waving their hands in the air and making squealing noises. When they were done, the four of us applauded politely.

We were back at our condo by about 11:30 hoping to finally get some sleep. At 9 in the morning we were standing on the first tee and enjoying the warmth and sunshine again.

We played a course on that second day that was one of the more interesting of my career. It had one hole where you teed off from cliff about 150 feet above the fairway, straight down. The wind was blowing so hard up on top that it was impossible to keep the ball on the tee. I finally backed off the edge a few feet to get out of some of the wind.

In all, we played about 70 holes in those two days. It was grand. In the end, as we made that long trip home, we only had one regret. After the rouser, we forgot to do the Minnesota cheer.

M-I-N-N-E-S-O-T-A

Minnesota,

Minnesota,

Yay, Gophers.

RAH!!!! 

July, 2008

Women on ships?

Women on ships?

Last month I alluded to this controversial evolution in the science of Naval warfare. Actually, it's probably not that controversial anymore since it appears that it's here to stay.

I spent my time on ship in a simpler era. It was time when you just put 5,000 happy souls on board an aircraft carrier and expected them to get along for nine months at sea. These happy young warriors were from every part of the country. They were of every race, creed and color. They had different jobs and different politics.

Yet, somehow it worked out. For the most part, they managed to keep on task and avoid getting their hands around each other's throats.

Although, during the end of the cruise -- when the war task was done and everybody had short-timer's disease -- the tensions began to erupt into some violence. The particular problem in those days, the late 1960s, was between blacks and whites. In the last few weeks as we headed for San Diego, I saw several fights on the mess decks. I also heard of one sailor who inadvertently (and probably drunkenly) wandered into a "black" bar in the Philippines and got his clock cleaned. They almost killed him.

Anyway, my point is that even under the best conditions, keeping everybody happy on a ship is dicey. It requires good discipline, good supervision, and a certain dedication of the crew toward the common goal of running a good ship.

Now, they have added women into the mix.

I ran into a guy recently who had served on the same ship I did but about 30 years later, and I asked him how it was with women on board. Now, understand, this was an old, crusty chief, but his answer was immediate. "It's a disaster," he said.

He elaborated that the problems caused by having two genders on a ship were insurmountable. Nature will take its course, and nothing in the Uniform Code of Military Justice is going to supersede that spark of romance that can ignite at any time between young, single people. When you have romances, you have all the baggage that comes with it including jealousy, intrigue, broken hearts, hurt egos, and holding hands on the hangar deck.

None of that is conducive to a squared away ship.

As I said at the top, it's a situation that isn't going to go away. One reason is that the Navy in order to find qualified, talented people is going to have to delve ever more deeply into the pool of female candidates. Secondly, women deserve every benefit and chance for advancement that men do. In the Navy, that means the opportunity to go aboard ships and use their skills.

So, then what? How do you make the problem go away?

Well, you could have ships that are gender specific, only men on some ships and only women on others.  But that's sort of like apartheid in South Africa or segregation in the U.S. -- neither of which worked very well.

The Navy, as might be expected, has decided to rely on its centuries-old tradition of discipline. I'm a traditionalist and on ships at sea, discipline will always be absolutely necessary. But there are limits.

I am aware of one case in recent years where a young sailor, who had an important job on a ship of war, smoked marijuana at a party. With its zero tolerance program, the Navy booted this sailor out with a less than honorable discharge overnight. Does that make any sense? Everyone should get a second chance, including highly (and expensively) trained young people who are dedicated to their jobs and their service. There must be a smarter way to handle this situation. Maybe flogging is the answer -- at least the offender gets to retain some dignity.

On the recent PBS series "Carrier," a model sailor who was actually active in giving lectures on avoiding gender fraternization on ship, had sex with another sailor while the ship was in port. The two had been drinking. They had been out at sea for a long time. The sex was consensual. It was a big mistake.

The punishment? This sailor will not be eligible for promotion for five years. That pretty effectively throws his career into the dumpster. The TV show didn't say what happened to the female sailor.

Does it make any sense to throw away such a valuable asset because of one mistake? Yes, you've made an example of out this sailor, but was it worth it?

I guess what I'm getting at is that harsh, unreasonable discipline will probably not solve the continuing problem of a bi-gender Navy. And harsh, unreasonable discipline will not solve the problem of young sailors smoking dope with their friends. 

You can't remove the humanity from human beings by immovable, unblinking adherence to a no-tolerance code of conduct. People are people, even if they go to war.

Aboard a ship it's imperative that every person can be relied on to do their job. You don't want them spaced out on loco weed or smooching behind the scuttlebutt when there's work to be done. Discipline is necessary.

But, and this sounds like treason to the old guard, it might be a good idea to ease up a little bit to make this two-gender Navy work. The problems are not going to go away, so why load extreme punishments on people who make mistakes? How could it be that a petty officer first class could give a lecture on avoiding sex one day and then commit that very act the next? Because he's human.

Back in old Navy, where the ships were made of wood and the men were made of steel, we were not allowed to grow beards. (This was in 1969.) And then Admiral Zumwalt issued one of his Z-grams that suddenly opened the door to have beards. At 21 years of age, I had a tough time actually cultivating fur on my face, but when I finally did I felt good about it. I think it made me a better sailor. The Navy was on my side.

If there is a conclusion to this meandering piece, it's that putting both genders on a ship is going to produce some real human problems. It's inevitable. To deal with those problems, the Navy is going to have to develop some real human solutions. Blind discipline and hanging sailors' careers from the yardarm isn't going to get it. It's bad policy for the Navy to waste such precious talent, and it's bad policy for the sailor who deserves another chance to prove his or her worth.

Lifelong lessons

This is a fish story.

When I was a young lad, my dad liked to take me fishing. Well, maybe he didn't like it, but he did it.

My father was one of Minnesota's great fishermen. He loved to fish, and he would be at some lake almost every weekend in the summer trolling for northerns or walleyes, or trying to get a few crappies in the boat. Because he put so much time into it, he became a very proficient fisherman. He won the Alexandria area fishing contest at least twice and maybe more that I recall for submitting the largest fish. People were always asking him advice. When he'd go to the bait shop, the owners would try to find out from him where the fish were biting.

He loved every minute of being in the boat, even if the fish weren't biting. His patience in traffic was about three seconds, but his patience in the boat was immeasurable.

And that was the problem. I kind of liked fishing when I was a youngster, especially if the crappies or sunnies were biting. My buddy and I used to go up this stream and catch enormous dogfish lurking in the dark holes of the moving water.

And I liked doing things with my dad. So when he said, "Let's go fishing," I was usually happy to do so. Out on the lake, however, we'd troll up and down, up and down, hour after hour. And then change to a different part of the lake and go up and down, up and down, hour after hour.

By the time I was 12, I'd had enough fishing for a lifetime. Not that I quit fishing. I've spent hundreds of hours in the Boundary Waters with my buddies trying to catch the elusive game fish. But the thought of dragging a line through the lake for hour after hour with no results gives me the willies. I'd rather watch a soccer match, and that says a lot.

Fishing is a great sport, but my early overexposure with my dad severely dulled my appetite for slow fishing.

Which brings us to this year. Because we're wild and daring and youthful in our outlook, us Edison Class of '66 mates decided to forego our usual Boundary Waters camping spot on the Kawishiwi River and instead try a new spot on Perent Lake. This group of fellows has been going to the Boundary Waters for 42 years now.

Left to my own devices, I could probably sit around camp most of the day or wander around the island, if we're camped on an island. The trouble with canoeing, though, is that it usually works better if there are two people in a canoe. And so if one person really wants to go fishing, I will usually get my paltry fishing gear together and join him.

We do a four-day trip, and I didn't fish at all the first day. The second day I spent about six hours in the canoe and caught one perch. The third day, we went out for a few hours in the morning, and I got zilch. From my background that I related earlier, you can see that I was pushing my limit for fishing enjoyment.

We took a long break at lunchtime in the camp that day, enjoying the warm weather, taking a dip in the cold water, throwing the Frisbee around, and taking pictures of mushrooms. It was a damp island, and there were dozens of varieties of mushrooms lurking everywhere.

I knew the time was coming to get back in the boat and so I had to come to some sort of arrangement with myself. I didn't want to sit on the lake for another three hours in a great blue ball of tedium. I made up my mind, I was really going to put some effort into it rather than try and catch a fish by accident, which is my usual approach.

John Hoyny, my canoe mate and fellow Polack from Northeast Minneapolis, is an excellent fisherman. He reminds me of my dad. And so I asked John what I was doing wrong.

His main advice was to get my propeller jig and minnow all the way to the bottom, and then pull slowly up. I realized that all morning, I had kept my jig off the bottom because I didn't want to get snagged on the rocks. Snags are a bother.

I told John that we were on a mission to go fishin' and I quickly got my line down to the bottom. Rather than just imitate one of the Boundary Waters rocks, which is my usual fishing form, I was into it. I was jigging and jagging. My bait was on the bottom, off the bottom, on the bottom, off the bottom.

And then the funniest thing happened. I caught a walleye.

It wasn't huge, but it was eating size. I was pretty astounded by this turn of events. A little while later I caught another one, and before we headed in I caught a third one. I also lost a couple along the way.

I found something out -- and it only took me 50 years to learn -- if you put some effort into your fishing, you get better results. Around the campfire that night, we had more fish than we could eat. The other guys had contributed a few too. And there's nothing in the world that tastes better than walleye you have just pulled out of a cold, northern Minnesota lake.

And, so, dad, here's to you as you troll that great fishing pond in the sky. You tried to teach me how to fish, but I wasn't ready.

Your lessons, though, are finally sinking in.

The problem with Legion Baseball

The 2008 American Legion Baseball Divison I Tournament has just ended, and it was a fine display of the American Pastime.

The folks in Burnsville who were putting on this event did a first-class job. The fields were great, the hotdogs were tasty, the PA announcing was wonderful, and the bleachers were full for most of the games.

They even had golf carts to cart the staff from the ballparks to the Legion headquarters office, about a block away. At first, we disdained the carts, saying we needed the exercise, but as the tournament wore on, we would fight each other for the cart, and if the cart wasn't there, you could hear moaning and wailing and gnashing of teeth.

The two teams that won the tournament, Eastview as the state champion and Eden Prairie as the runner-up, will represent Minnesota well in the national regionals -- and in the World Series if they can fight their way through the regionals. They are both classy outfits, well-coached and with some pretty talented ball players.

So with all that good news, why am I claiming that something's wrong with Legion baseball?

Okay, here's a hint: 21-12, 18-14, 22-10, 17-9, 25-11, 16-6.

No, those are not the scores from last week's NFL preseason exhibitions. Those are some of the scores from the Department's Division I Tournament. I don't know how it ended up, but we ran a check about two-thirds of the way through the tournament and found that the batters were hitting .342 as a group. There's nobody in the American League hitting .342 right now, but we had a whole tournament hitting at that level.

Why? Is the pitching that bad?

It's possible that the pitching isn't as good as it has been some years. But mainly, pitching is pitching. I don't think it's deteriorated that much, although I think the kids rely on way too much breaking stuff instead of just throwing heat in the right places. I think the last time Scott Baker pitched for the Twins, he threw 80 percent fastballs. You won't find too many Legion hurlers who throw that many fastballs, and I think it's to their detriment.

So, if it isn't necessarily pitching, what has led to the rash of double digit scores?

Part of it is nine inning games. Our Legion leagues in Minnesota play seven inning games all year, but the National organization requires us to play nine inning contests once state district play begins. Those two extra innings tend to pile up a lot of runs. I don't see why Minnesota can't play seven inning games if it wants to. National was afraid that we'd be saving our pitching for the regional tournaments. Eden Prairie had to play eight games to get out of our tournament. Do you think they could save much pitching playing eight games in four days? Plus, there's a four-day gap between the end of our tourney and the start of the regionals. That's usually how long it takes a pitcher to recover.

The other reason we're scoring runs at a ridiculous rate is the metal bat. In fact, metal bats are far and away the major cause of inflated totals. A friend of mine who has played and followed baseball all his life put it this way: "On every wooden bat, there is a sweet spot, where the ball will explode off the bat. A metal bat, however, is all sweet spot."

The Minnesota Baseball Committee has several times sent a rules change request to the national committee asking that the Legion switch to all wooden bats. The folks at National have not been receptive.

My opinion is that there are some people who are just a little too cozy with the metal bat manufacturers, and they won't even listen to the arguments for wooden bats.

There are two major arguments. One is that wooden bats are safer. This is a tough proposition to prove because a hard hit ball can be dangerous no matter what type of bat it comes off of. I would venture to say, though, that metal bats are more dangerous simply because there are more hard hit balls in a typical game.

The best reason to switch to wooden bats, though, is the quality of the game. Metal bats have made the game all offense, with runs crossing the plate like sheep going through the gate. Ninety percent of baseball, someone said, is half-mental, but we're losing the half-mental part. Metal bats are stealing the magic and fun out of the game. Baseball should be full of stolen bases, hit and runs, bunts, sacrifices, battles between the pitcher and hitter, and a thousand other stratagems and traditions. While strategy still survives in the Legion game, it is being pushed aside by constant pling, pling, pling of the ball flying off the metal bats.

More offense does not necessarily make baseball a better sport. Arena football with its high scores is not very fun to watch. Hockey would not be a better sport if the net was 10 feet by eight feet. Basketball wouldn't be better if the hoops were twice the size. Why do people think that baseball is better by using an artificial weapon to clobber the ball?

As I said, there's not much chance that the National baseball folks will change anytime soon. There may be hope on the horizon, though. Rumor central has reported that ESPN is unhappy with college baseball because of the metal bats, long games and massive scores. Like anything else in life, money talks, and I hear that the college baseball mavens are considering asking the metal bat producers to dial down their bats to make them less lethal. If college makes that step to softer metal, the Legion will quickly follow.

But if you're going to dial down the metal bats, why not just switch to wood? It seems to work just fine in all of professional baseball. Wood is part of the tradition of American baseball, and baseball captures our hearts and minds because of its strong and long tradition.

In the meantime, pass me some more Cracker Jacks, because this game is going to last a while.

Music through the Years

I had a chance at the National Convention in Phoenix to spend time with my 26-year-old daughter, Larissa. She motored over from Los Angeles where she is a medic and ambulance driver. We had a nice visit.

On the last day of the convention, she offered to get up early and drive me over to the convention hall, which was about 10 miles from the Arizona Biltmore Resort and Spa and Prison Compound. The Biltmore is a really nice place to vacation, but it's a long way from anywhere in Phoenix, and if you don't have your car or a rental car, you can certainly feel trapped. And with $4 coffees and $16 bacon and eggs, you're not only trapped but you're also going broke.

If you want to get over to the convention activities in downtown Phoenix you can either take a bus, which never seems to show up, or chip in a $35 taxi fee.

So, I was mighty grateful when Riss agreed to drive me over on Thursday morning. And it gave us one more chance to chit chat as we made our way through Phoenix's rush hour (not anywhere near as gruesome as the Twin Cities' dash to work.)

We got talking about music, and Riss asked me what I thought about U-2. She knows that I'm an amateur musicologist, specializing in the bands of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

I had to admit to her that I didn't know one song that U-2 did. I didn't know who was in the band, and I didn't have a clue as to what type of music they played. Larissa was shocked and dismayed.

Now, contrary to rumors, it's not true that I stopped listening to music in 1975, and that I'm oblivious to anything that has happened since then. It's only partially true. For instance, I like some of the people still working today such as Mark Knopfler, Jack Johnson, Bela Fleck and even Bob Dylan. I like almost any kind of Bluegrass.

What happened to me, though, is that in 1975, it was time to leave the shelter of the Great Gray Mediocrity, the University of Minnesota, and go out into that working world and support my family. So I took a job in Hibbing.

Up to that point, we were all pretty tuned into the music scene, and KQRS was the radio station of choice. And the stereo was always on wherever we were living. Toward the end of that era, I was getting into a lot of jazz. I think most people who really love music will eventually fall in love with jazz. (And I don't mean that lite jazz on the radio, which can be okay, but I'm talking about real jazz, like in a little bistro where the tables are crowded and the dudes are really grooving.)

So, anyway, now I'm up in Hibbing and there are two radio stations. One plays oldies and one plays country. Plus, now I'm working 50-60 hours a week, and when I'm not working I'm with my family. Music, except for throwing an album on the stereo on Saturday night, had pretty much disappeared for me.

So when U-2 came along in the early 80s, I was on another planet. I don't know anything about U-2 or Styx or Sting or Ozzie Osborne or Meatloaf or any of a hundred other singles and groups you could mention. And what I did hear, I wasn't very impressed with. I thought the really good stuff in rock and roll had already been done, and these guys were just riding the wave with subpar imitations.

I'm sure it's something of how my dad felt when the Beatles came out. One time I caught my dad tapping his foot to a Beatles' song, and I pointed out who it was he was enjoying. He was greatly embarrassed.

In other words, I had a prejudice against the rock and roll that filled out the rest of the century. And I've been unwilling to admit that much quality or innovation came out of that time.

Of course, I'm wrong. Although I generally feel that most of the music of the 80s and 90s was bogus and empty, you could probably say that about any era. Even when the Beatles, the Band, Bob Dylan, Van Morrison and dozens of other groups and artists were redefining music in America in those years, most people still listened to popular junk. And I did too. I still sing along to Three Dog Night, Spanky and Our Gang and the Peppermint Trolley Company.

So, what about U-2? I looked them up in Wikipedia and that source says that The Joshua Tree was their greatest album, one that both attacked and admired America. U-2 is an Irish group. The entry also says U-2 went from heroes to superstars with that album. Rolling Stone Magazine lists them at number 22 on its all-time list of artists. They were right behind Otis Redding on the list. 

So, maybe it's time I made up for this ghastly breech in my music education. Maybe I should sit down and listen to U-2 and find out what I missed during my sojourn on the Iron Range. Maybe I should look at U-2's lyrics and see how they stack up with the masters of the earlier days. Maybe I should immerse myself in the aura that is U-2 and enlighten myself.

Or maybe I should put on another bluegrass album and relax.