Timmy RL Fake and Chairman of the Bored's blog: "Real Life"

Today I had a chance to sit down for a nice meal with some of my golf buddies. We met along with about 100 other people at Quinets Restaurant to celebrate our friend Mark’s graduation from college. Quinets hosts such events in a room with photos of local sporting events and athletes spanning almost a century. As we sat down one of my friends asked, “Is that Lou in that photo?” Sure enough, it was one of our golf buddies in his Marshall University basketball uniform. Beside it was another in his high school uniform, the same school where I graduated and played. I asked if they had all heard the story of Lou’s game against the great Oscar Robinson. Some had not, and so I told it, trying to tell it exactly like Lou has told us a few times. This is a true story, and if you know Lou or any Shortliner, it’s certainly believable, if not heartwarming and hilarious. Lou Mott might be the greatest basketball player to come out off my high school. He later became one of the greatest ever to play at Marshall. These days he walks the golf course with us. But in 1958 he played on a Marshall basketball team that found itself over matched against NCAA powerhouse the University of Cincinnati. Their captain was Oscar Robinson. At this point, it is prudent to mention that Robinson, in each of his three years at U of C, won the national scoring title, was named an All-American, and was chosen College Player of the Year, while setting 14 NCAA and 19 school records. He dominated opponents by averaging nearly 34 points per game. Later in 1960 he would co-captain the US Olympic team along with WVU’s Jerry West while earning a gold metal. (Not to get too far of the story line here, but that 1960 US team included Bobby Knight, John Havlicek, Jerry West, and Oscar Robinson…and they call the teams of today “Dream Teams”??) So, you get the idea - Oscar Robinson was a pretty big star. And so in the 1958 season, Lou found a spot at the edge of the center-court circle seconds before the tip off before the biggest crowd ever to see a basketball game in the city of Huntington WV. He felt a shoe against his, and then looked Oscar Robinson in the eye. With an intense look on his face, Robinson said, “I’m Oscar Robinson of the University of Cincinnati Bearcats. You see those thousands of people in the stands? They came here to see ME play tonight. I want you remember that from now on!” Lou didn’t back down, but stuck his chest out, pointed to a group of Marshall fans and said, “You see that couple sitting over there? That’s my mom and dad and they came here to see ME play tonight. That’s all that matters to me. You remember that tonight and then I don’t care after that.” Nobody was going to shut Robinson completely down, and the Thundering Herd was no match for the Bearcat team, but Lou held Robinson well below his 34 ppg average and the game was much closer than predicted. I can’t find the stats on that game, but that’s not the important thing. The important thing is the ties that bind athletes through the years, from basketball stars to weekday golf buddies, and the stories they share.

Twenty-four hours ago, I had several problems that were worrying me to the point of dysfunction. It was another bad day in another bad week on a whole string of them. Then I got a phone call from a friend. I knew it was her from the caller ID, but she didn't get a discernible word out for several minutes. She didn't have to say anything - I knew what she was calling to tell me. My friend George, who I had talked to online nearly every day for the last ten years had passed away after a long battle with cancer. Now, none of those earlier problems meant anything at all. I can't even remember most of them today, and maybe that's the best way to honor George. The last time we talked, almost two weeks ago, George did not tell me anything about his failing condition. All he said for our last few minutes together were, "Remember that time we were taking pictures in Phoenix?" and "We sure had fun that night at Hooters!" and brought up other god times that we had. It was as if he was giving me a pep talk, telling me to remember those times, and only those times. Well George, if you are listening, I am trying. Cherokee proverb - When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced. Live your life so that when you die, the world cries and you rejoice.

I used to take my youngest daughter to greenhouses every spring and let her pick out flowers to pot. On the deck off my kitchen I always kept about 30 clay pots and wine barrels of various sizes filled with flowers. It was always a fun thing for us and she loved caring for them during the warmer months. When she was four, I tried to steer her towards perennials but the color of the annuals always caught her eye. That year, when we had filled all the pots we had a small bunch of anemones left. I told her I would buy another pot, but she insisted on planting them 10 feet up on the weedy hillside off the back deck, near when we grew peppermint. She said, “This way you can see them from the kitchen window every year!” I explained to her that it was not the best location for them, and that they would only be there a couple months at the most, but she had her heart set on and so we worked to get the rocky WV clay dug up, added some potting soil, and planted them. That was 13 years ago. The past several years it’s been something that’s made me laugh, and her tease me, as we’ve watched them come up and flower for most f the summer. Earlier tonight, I saw them for the first time this year. There are only a dozen or so in bloom, and they are far from healthy and continue peeking through the weeds. I just can’t help but think of the symbolism of it all. I think of silly things like that – how each year those cheap annuals keep fighting, roots through clay and stems through weeds, almost is if to prove a point.

I crossed it the first time when I was three days old back in 1961. When I was in grade school I used to cross it a few times a week and have nightmares about it falling under the weight of our car. When I started taking serious landscape photos a few years ago, I looked at it as a work of art and a marvel of turn-of-the-century architecture, but never photographed it much because I just never imagined it not being there. Now in two years it will be gone. There's a folder in my photos labeled, "Minnie Bridge" if you want to see what it looks like. The Minnie Bridge connects the hollow of Minnie with Route 20 in mid central WV. It was built around the turn of the century but I am not sure the exact year because the DOH has been working on it and removed the plaque. For the past few weeks they have been resurfacing it and it's scheduled to be replaced in 2010. That will be the second icon from my childhood demolished, the other being the nearby mill and dam, which I never had a chance to photograph. This time I'm not going to let that happen. I'm going to photograph that bridge from every angle possible, in all types of weather and across all the seasons over the next two years. Hopefully a few of them will be good.

There is nothing like The Masters in all of sports because there's nothing like it on earth. The world's most competitive golfers being humbled by the world's most beautiful course is only the outer petal. Gary Player at age 72 is playing in his 52nd Masters competing with kids young enough to be his great, great grandsons. He will not make the weekend cut but holed out on 18 to a standing ovation just as he has for years. Every year there is a defining shot, a moment that sets it apart from all the others before it. It doesn't mater what happens in the next two plus rounds, for me the moment this year will be amateur Michael Thompson's bogey at th 15th hole. The University of Alabama student needed birdie to go below the projected cut line and give him a chance to play the weekend rounds. As he stood over his ball on the lightening fast green, his ball shuttered - by the slightest amount visible to zooming high definition cameras. He backed off and called a stroke penalty on himself, in effect, eliminating himself from weekend contention. Thompson did not make contact with the ball, but by rule th fact that the ball moved meant a stroke penalty. He could only call the penalty on himself - no one else could. No doubt as a spectator this weekend he will wish he were out there with the rest of the field, but his integrity has further solidified a most honorable sport.

I was cleaning out a file cabinet today and found a DVD, there for nearly three years, just gradually being buried under installation software and owners manuals. I sat there looking at it for a minute debating, but knew I had to watch it, even though I knew it would make me teary-eyed, and it did. It was the DVD of the 2005 cheerleading championships that my daughter’s squad won when she was a senior in high school. As a matter of fact I cried like I did three years ago. Now before you think that I am a wussy boy crying over a cheering routine, let me say there was way more behind it than that. I’ve attended thousands of sporting events since I was old enough to form a sentence to ask to go to them. My family is full of all-state athletes, major college athletes, and like me most of them support the kids by going to as many events as we can. I’ve seen some tremendous performances from both my relatives and other kids, but I’ve never seen anyone set her site on a seemingly unreachable goal and do everything to achieve it like my daughter Taylor did in the course of one year. At the 2004 championships, Taylor’s squad came in they came in forth, and the judges I think were generous. I’m no expert at judging cheering competitions but I know when you have two girls running into one another at full speed, that’s not a good thing. I knew her friends well enough to know they were not great athletes. I thought they lacked talent, but I guess my impression was jaded by their lack of dedication and enthusiasm. They were just very average, at best. Cheering is not even similar to when I was in high school. Cheerleaders are athletes – they work on tumbling, strength, stamina, and their bodies take a beating. The competitions take on not only the complexion of a dance recital, with all the primping and attentions to aesthetics, but have the hype and intensity of a football game. A couple hours after the 2004 competition we got home where I knew we would all be in front of the TV watching the replay. Our local stations do a great job covering the high school events. I just wanted to see my daughter on TV. Taylor grabbed a tape and recorded it. After it was over, she watched it again. A few hours later when I went to bed she was still watching it. Sunday morning I woke up to find her watching the tape again. Every few minutes she would drag me in the room and make me watch a portion, saying, “Do you see what that team did? Watch this part. They’re the best. We could do that if we worked at it.” A month went by and every chance she had she was watching the winner’s routines, studying them; moving furniture, and making me watch her. I’m a supportive parent I think, but I had reached my limit of tolerance. I told her I had seen the tape 100 times and couldn’t bear any more. Over the next several months is where the real story lay. Taylor coached and pushed herself and the other girls on the squad. One girl had some family issues, the kind that cause kids to drop out of athletics, and Taylor helped her through those, keeping her mind focused. Beyond the normal practices she made the girls watch the tape over and over just has she had done. Then two months before the 2005 competition their best tumbler quit. It was kind of like if Tom Brady left the Patriots during the playoffs. Taylor was an OK tumbler but she knew they needed someone better. She encouraged a sophomore to take over that part of the routine, working with the girl and even prompting her mother to allow time for her to work on tumbling, and that her daughter could do it well. All the girls worked very hard, but I was pleasantly surprised at Taylor keeping focused on that goal with such intensity and dedication for an entire year. This was the same girl who, when she got a C in science told me, “Dad, that’s all that I HAVE to do to get in college. So I’m doing OK. I don’t need to get A’s all the time. All you need is a C average.” (Yes, smoke came out of my ears.) A few weeks before the 2005 competition I was sure the girls would do their best, but there would be much better squads. The day of the competition I watched thinking they all were at least as good as the year before. Then came our squad and after a flawless routine I hide my face – I was crying embarrassingly knowing that they probably had won. I didn’t cry because of kids doing so well but because in an instant it hit me what their work had become. I’m sure there are stories every day in sports like that but this is one I had seen unfold firsthand. All the other parents were counting on me to take some good photos of the awards, and I guess I did but I can’t remember doing it. And so I watched this DVD today, of one of my proudest moments as a parent and I really did wonder about how much support from friends and family means, and of how focus and hard work can get you where you want to be. That’s a point I make when I encourage kids into athletics because I think it’s a place where they can find that for themselves in an apparent way like no other discipline. Then I saw I had dirty dishes in the sink and needed to vacuum too, but I thought that could wait until I felt more rambunctious. Maybe tomorrow... or Saturday.

I’ve changed a lot over the years just like we all have. I’ve gone from a kid who put on a bath rob and played a shepherd in the church manger scene then went home and stared in marvel at the Christmas tree to someone who is satisfied just to see people smiling more this time of year. The world is a much bigger place with people of different beliefs and of every level of spirituality, all hopefully valued. We live our own different lives and are all held together by a thread woven of love and hope. The single constant through every celebration of the season is sharing. The act of sharing is why we light candles, hang mistletoe and bake cookies. It’s why we make phone calls, travel miles to hug, and make gestures too often taken for granted. Creating something you think is beautiful is just time wasted, the funniest think you can imagine is just another fleeting thought, and singing so sweet and with such a passion that makes your own eyes tear is just another sound unless you share it with someone. It’s easy to convince yourself of this. Just remember seeing the most spectacular thing you have ever seen in your life; maybe it’s the Grand Canyon, or a sculpture that held you hostage for several minutes, or just a sunset some evening over a hill you see almost every day of your life. Now explain it to someone in a way that they see it too. It’s impossible. Now use any media you wish – sketch it, take a photo, or even digital video. You might have a great amount of artistic ability and shared an amount of the visualization, but it will always fall short. That is why nothing is as wonderful as time shared. Sharing is the one human necessity we mindfully neglect yet fully regret when we do. We hold things in, whether out of fear of being unappreciated or just carelessness, instilled in us by a threatening world. We’ve seen an ocean and ran across it to have out feet burned by the sand. We’ve hugged someone and felt much less of a hug in return. Our potential as humans will always be bridled by our past. That’s why it’s important to focus on our main objective, which is to share.

I've posted this before, sorry about that but a friend of mine wanted to read it again. This happened to me a few years ago. I was on a business trip in Houston a few years ago and had the opportunity to see a state of the art lab instrument with hopes of buying one for my lab. However that meant I would have to extend my trip almost 2 extra days, and it was two weeks before Christmas, I missed my family badly, and had not even decorated my house or shopped. All of my friends and colleagues had left at the end of our meetings and that meant I had to eat alone, kill time alone, finish paperwork alone, and I hated that. Our meeting had been at the Hyatt downtown, which was immaculately decorated but that only added to my feeling that I need to be home rather than a dedicated lab manager. After phoning home on my last night there, I walked out to the lobby and sat down with a list of restaurants, bent on picking out somewhere nice to at least treat myself and make the evening a little more enjoyable. My daughters had broken my heart on the phone earlier, as they were upset that I would be coming home so late in the week and that did not enhance my mood. There was a elaborately decorated stage in the lobby with several Christmas trees and a grand piano in the center. I sat by it with a chip on my shoulder and mauling over all these things. Why did I have to decide to stay over and be away from my family that much more? How can I make it up to my daughters? Why the hell couldn’t I have just looked at this instrument online, as it might not even work for me anyway? And what the hell does this hoodlum think he’s doing at the piano? A very tall kid in a black basketball shoes, black sweatpants, and a black hoodie which kept he had pulled over his head walked on the stage and sat down at the piano. I thought he might be an area college basketball player and he had more the manner of some punk on the street than a musician. He sat there few nearly two minutes, just looking around. He had no sheet music and in my mind no business in the middle of this display. I watch, looking around to see if anyone with the Hyatt would approach him. He then began to play music that I knew very well. It was Vince Guaraldi’s “A Charlie Brown Christmas” and he was playing it verbatim! I was almost impossible to tell the difference from the CD as he played the jazz pieces so beautifully. I sat there listening to this kid playing and tears rolled down my face. It would not have mattered if I was in a shopping mall holding my daughters’ hands, this was incredible to hear. A crowd of a few people gathered and people would come and go, some stopping and enjoying, and most hurried by, but I marveled as he played that entire CD which is my favorite holiday music. I watched his hands as they stroked the keys with the precision of a surgeon, coaxing notes and chords into an alignment that would have reached down into the deepest soul and brought out handfuls of illumination. Now reports, lab instruments, and dinner were all vanished to where they should have been in the first place and my homesickness was put in better perspective. Sometimes you just have to adjust the blinders that keep your mind’s eyes focused on critical issues and allow yourself to see more important ones, like how much beauty there is, everywhere, anywhere. I think of that scene often this time of year. I have a big and close-knit family and together we have built so many memories through the years, but that is one of my fondest holiday memories. I don’t look at my daughters’ friends as brainless idiots in need of a belt, but as individuals with a gift of free expression and the potential for greatness, as all people should strive to be. Maybe someday I’ll lighten up and bend my rule about my daughters not leaving the house with a boy who doesn’t respect me enough to remove his ball cap in my house…but I doubt it.

Last weekend my niece Emma was crying because she didn't want to go to a football game with the rest of us. It was her brother's last time playing in his his school band and so she was being forced to go. I tried to make her laugh but she wouldn't let me. My mom told her, "You sound like Tim used to when he was your age and we used to make him go listen to your Pap play music." I've always contended that my mom was the basis for the character Edith Bunker, but this time I'm sure she knows she made me think. In the 60's and early 70's my dad practiced every night. I used to sit with my face against the TV speaker or go outside so I didn't have to listen. Most Friday and Saturday nights they would force me to go to barn dances, old churches, union halls, and the Jamboree in Wheeling, where my dad's band would play. When I could, I would wander outside or maybe listen to a baseball game on the radio in the car. I remember "Wildwood Flower", "Your Cheatin' Heart", lots of the old classics, but the first time I ever really listened without complaining was at a barn dance in 1973. I was sitting in the car listening to a baseball game when I heard some older people walk past complaining, "I can't understand Mouse's band wanting to play that rock and roll crap..." When I stepped inside the barn they were playing "House of the Rising Sun". It sounded like a country band covering the song, but not too bad to me. I'd give anything to be able go go back, and listen closer to the dobros, mandolins, fiddles, even the steel guitars, just to hear the flavor. I think I listened enough that it helped to shape my appreciation for music and the artists that flavor it by pouring in parts of their souls. I go to hear all the live bands I can today and I'm thankful I was forced to when I was younger, just as I was forced to do my homework. One laughable side note - in the early 80's I was old enough and liked to go to some of the bars my dad's band played in. There was a place in Moundsville WV called The Hayloft where he played and sometimes a grade school aged kid, Brad, would bring his guitar around and sit outside picking and showing off for all of us. The kid could sing pretty well and sometimes the band would jam a little with him outside before they played. We all thought it was cute that he often commented that he wanted to sing for them some night, but of course could not go in the bar and would lower his head and walk home as we went inside. I guess little Brad Paisley got his wish some years later.

I was just watching “Flags of Our Fathers” and it bought back memories of my friend Jink who died a few years ago and was listed as MIA after that battle. After I graduated high school I took a job working at a saw mill, owned by Jink and Marry, the foster parents of my fiancé. It was meant to be something to do me until I found a better job and lasted almost 9 years during which time I finished college. Jink was one of the most incredible people I have ever met. He had to leave school in 8th grade to support himself after his mother died and his father set him and his brother out on their own. He gave John the chickens and Jink the horse. Jink was mad at first because John sold the eggs and made money every day, but he was one smart guy. He started timbering and made very good money for those days and by the time I worked for him he had a lumber empire. I could go on and one for days writing about him and in fact his wife Mary has a book published called “Jimmy Lee” about his youth. He was my friend and mentor until his death 5 years ago and I can’t begin to sum up the things he taught me about life. One day I saw a photo of him in a sailor outfit and asked about his experiences in WW2. He told me a couple humorous stories and then Mary said, “He gave us a scare one time. His name came up on the list of missing.” Jink would not elaborate, dropped his head and left the room. I wanted to know more and so I asked, but all Mary knew was his story of falling asleep behind a palm tree and missing his troop move out. Jink told a lot of stories in the same manner whenever it was something that would worry anyone, and no one could ever get the truth out of him. I asked Jink a couple times in the next few years as we held that saw mill together with a cutting torch and bailing wire. He would just laugh and say, “I fell asleep behind a palm tree and that bald headed (his slang for stupid) sergeant thought I was missing.” One day I got his brother John to tell me it was Iwo Jima, and that made me even more curious but I never got any more out of Jink. I always wondered, why not tell me? It was over 40 years since the war, I wasn’t the type to overdramatize or tell anyone if he didn’t want me to, but after watching “Flags of Our Fathers” I think I understand.