Kentucky basketball was his dream

    (Third in a series)
    Basketball was the sport Kenneth Harvey loved most, and it came to him naturally. By his eighth-grade year in Logansport, La., he was already on the varsity team.
    In fact, in March 1961, he was on the Logansport team that made the Class B state semifinals -- and played in the first Louisiana state tournament, the Top Twenty in Shreveport's Hirsch Youth Center.
      "The Shreveport Times mentioned that in a story," he recalled last week when we met in Logansport. "It said ... 13-year-old Kenneth Harvey." And he probably was 13 when the story was written; by the time the Tigers played in the tournament, he'd had his 14th birthday on March 2.
        But it's possible that 52 years later, he's still the youngest team member in state tournament history.
        Basketball was his best sport, but he had talent in football, too, as a quarterback and a safety. He was probably Logansport's best athlete in those early '60s years, and one of the school's stars in every way.
         He was 6-foot-3, 180 pounds, lanky but solid enough, a good-looking kid, and a popular, well-liked one. Look at the yearbooks from those years and he's always among the class favorites -- "most popular" or "most athletic" -- and MVP of the Tigers' football and basketball teams.
         He was the big guy who even on gamedays would stop and throw footballs with the little kids in the neighborhood or shoot baskets with them.

Senior year photo

        He was an honor student, a solid "B" student, Pelican State (or Boys State) representative, which meant a summer trip to the LSU campus in 1964.
        His goal was to play college basketball; his dream was to play shooting guard for the Kentucky Wildcats, for "The Baron," Adolph Rupp -- the country's premier program and its legendary coach (this was before UCLA's total domination and before John Wooden was a legend).
       Harvey was a two-time all-district player, and those that remember say he could jump as well as any white kid around, plus he had a shooting style that was exactly what he needed; his release point fully extended above his head, making him play bigger than he was.
        And he could play; I'd always remembered that because I saw him play in high school, I knew he had made all-tournament at one of the Shreveport tournaments.
        But, as I told him, I couldn't remember which tournament, maybe Byrd, Fair Park or Bossier.
        "It was Woodlawn," Kenneth said. "I had the (all-tournament] plaque from there."
         And, yes, that made sense because, as the basketball team manager at Woodlawn, I would have seen every game in our tournament, probably rolled out the ball rack for pregame warmups.
       Some in Logansport thought he could be like Charles "Cotton" Nash, who a few years earlier had come out of Lake Charles to be Kentucky's star player. Rupp had a history of recruiting Louisiana; the word was he'd also been interested in Ringgold's Barrie Haynie in the early 1960s.
        "I wanted to play for Kentucky," Kenneth said not long after we sat down to talk recently. Tulane had already offered him a scholarship; Northwestern State, the closest college to Logansport, was interested, and so were other area schools.
        But it was also possible that he would be recruited to play safety in college football.
---
        He'd played football his first two years in high school and started at safety as a sophomore, but when he injured an ankle in the summer before his junior year and it wouldn't heal, he decided to skip football that season and concentrate on basketball.
        Now he was back, perhaps somewhat reluctantly. He had started the summer making some spending money, bush-hogging people's pastures, but his teammates kept bugging him, kept begging him because they felt he was the missing piece, the key quarterback, for what could be one of Logansport's best-ever teams.
         Indeed, the Tigers were 8-1 and had gone undefeated in District 1-B to win the championship. All that was left to get ready for the state playoffs was the regular-season finale against Many, the bigger school from a parish just south.
        Harvey was having, Coach Johnny Haynes recalls, "a fantastic season."
        Nov. 13, 1964, was homecoming night in Logansport, a nice, clear 75-degree evening. There was Kenneth, with other senior players in uniform, taking part in pregame ceremonies, escorting one of the maids in the homecoming court.
        An hour later, his life -- and the lives of many others -- changed in one sickening moment. This is what can happen on a football field.
---
        Many, also playoff-bound, already had a two-touchdown lead in a game it would win 21-0; it had scored in the first quarter on a long interception return of a Harvey pass.     
        Now just before halftime, Many scored again. Trying to make a tackle on the extra-point run, Kenneth was at outside linebacker on a goalline defense and read the play perfectly. He ran up into the hole and hit the ballcarrier behind the line of scrimmage.
         But his helmet -- apparently too low -- banged against the thigh pad of the running back, and his head snapped. He didn't get up.
          "It was just a freak accident," remembers Doug McLaren, the offensive coordinator that season. (He was a football assistant coach and girls basketball coach at Logansport for eight years, 1957-65, but eventually was DeSoto Parish schools superintentent for 13 years, 1970-83).
        "I saw the hit, and I felt that he was hurt, but not to the extent he was," recalled McLaren. "I thought he'd get up, and it might be a concussion."
        "He was yelling, 'Let me up, let me up,' " Haynes recalled. "We were having to hold him down. We finally got him to his feet, and he staggered a few steps, got to about the hash mark and then he hit the ground. He started shaking, and we knew it was trouble."

         Walter Shinkus was the team's physically strongest player, a Class B All-State tackle. He said he "always worried about him (Harvey), about kids built like him -- tall and pretty thin, with that skinny neck.

          "When he got hit, it looked bad," Shinkus said, "and we were afraid that he was screwed up bad. But no one thought it could be like that, that he'd be out that long. In those days, when you're young, we all think we've invincible."
        McLaren remembers carrying the team doctor's bag out to the field. "He (Dr. Willie Garland) looked at him and said, 'We need to get him to Shreveport right away.' "
        Fire department volunteers at the game carefully placed Harvey in the back of a state wagon -- a small town such as Logansport didn't have ambulance service on hand -- for the harrowing 50-mile trip north to Shreveport, to Willis-Knighton Hospital. He was unconscious when they arrived.

--- 

      He never ran again. He never walked again.
      In the next few hours, weeks and months, his life was in the balance. He was in a coma for a month, his weight dropped from 180 to 100, he was hospitalized in Shreveport -- some 50 miles north of Logansport -- for months.
      It was not a broken neck, the injury that would become too prevalent in high-profile college and NFL cases over the next few decades and also would strike a few North Louisiana high school players, costing a couple their lives.
       Harvey's was a brain-stem contusion. Massive brain swelling put him in the coma; dislocated vertebrae and a pinched spinal cord would leave him paralyzed.
       But he lived. He came out of the coma, and he began the long rehab, regaining some weight, and he found religion, he regained enough feeling in his arms and hands that, with the determination and effort he had shown in athletics, he learned to make use of them.
      And eventually he found he could live a life, even a somewhat independent one.
      It was four months before he returned home to Logansport to his parents -- who had maintained an around-the-clock vigil in Shreveport, with Kenneth's high school coaches and townspeople sitting in to give them relief. And he joined a younger brother who had never walked, who had muscular dystrophy, and who in time would become Kenneth's greatest inspiration in his rehab.
       Two kids in wheelchairs. One town united in its love and support for those kids and their family.
        (Next: No easy life) 

'He is a joy to be around'

      (Second in a series)
      It is one of those familiar 100-degrees-in-the-shade days, and there is little shade this morning on the east side next to the Logansport, La., High School football stadium.
      But Kenneth Harvey, sitting in his wheelchair, has found that one shady spot under the roof of the ticket booth. He's been here a while; there was no set time for our meeting, but he didn't want to be late.
      And someone, thankfully, has provided him with a bottle of water. But Kenneth, waiting now with his old football coach, Johnny Haynes, who has just arrived, doesn't seem bothered that the visitor is just now driving up. We're soon joined Kenneth's old teammate, Doug Spears.

Coach Johnny Haynes and Kenneth Harvey

      His smile is wide as he extends his right hand for a handshake. His somewhat gnarled fingers are long, befitting his still-lanky frame, and his grip is surprisingly strong.
      "It's good to see you," I say. "It's been too long; I should have come to see you years ago. I'm glad you're here now."
      "Good to see you," he answers, his words somewhat slurred but understandable.
       First thing I notice -- his hair is still dark. Oh, there are some gray hairs and some gray in the neck area, but unlike the three guys with him -- two of them his age -- who are totally or mostly gray, his hair is about as dark as it was when he was 17.
       "How do you explain that," I say.
       "Just lucky, I guess," he says, grinning.
       I've been told that the white van he's driving -- it's parked nearby -- is about a year old; it's the fourth one he's had, and it is as much as symbol of his independence and the life he's been able to live as his place in the Logansport Seniors Apartments, where he's lived by himself for a decade.
       I notice his wheelchair looks new, too, and he tells me that he's also had it for about a year. And he likes it. 
       "It's a good fit," he says. "The one I had before, I kept sliding around in the seat, even when I used a seat belt."
       Later, I notice he has a black carrying bag tied to his midsection, and -- intrusive reporter that I am -- I inquire what's in there.
      "Billfold, checkbook, cellphone," he answers, grinning. He's organized. (But Coach Haynes laughs and spills a fact -- "he's not sure about the cellphone number.") 
---  
      We've met here in this spot, at Coach's suggestion, because off to Kenneth's left no more than 15 yards away, is the monument the town built to honor him. Sitting just inside the main gate on the stadium's home side is a five-foot black polished granite stone and a bronze relief plaque with an artist's drawing of Kenneth -- wearing his gold No. 45 jersey and purple pants -- in his quarterback pose. There are two marble benches nearby.
      The monument was dedicated on Oct. 30, 2009 -- Kenneth Harvey Day in Logansport. It was a tribute long overdue.
      The inscription on the base of the monument reads:
      "In honor of
      KENNETH HARVEY
      For his courage and 'Tiger Spirit'
      His life serves as an inspiration to Logansport High School teammates, coaches, athletes, cheerleaders, band members, classmates, faculty and community supporters past, present, and future."
       When I see it, I have to swallow back the tears, pat Kenneth on the back and tell him how nice it is and how much he deserves it.
---
        What's evident after a couple of hours together is that not much bothers Kenneth Harvey.
       He is patient and polite, he listens to the conversation, doesn't interrupt, and he can be animated when he answers a question or offers a thought.
      Accompany him to a couple of places -- the new DeSoto Parish library branch and the restaurant across the street -- or make a visit to places he visits, and you see how pleased people are to see him or talk about him, how they gravitate toward him, and how cheerful he is in return.
      What you hear -- not once, or twice, but repeatedly -- is that "he never has a bad day" and "he's always happy" and, from most everyone, "he is a joy to be around."
      And he is as happy to be here today as he has been to roll around Logansport -- in his chair, or in his customized van -- for most of 49 years ... or since that night -- Nov. 13, 1964.
       That's when, in one instant, it all changed for Kenneth Harvey and for the people of Logansport.
       (Next: A two-sport star)

      

A hero in Logansport

         This is the start of the story I've always wanted to write. It has taken me about 40 years to reach this point.
         Kenneth Wayne Harvey long has been a hero of mine, just as he long has been a hero in the small town of Logansport, La., some 50 miles directly south and slightly west of Shreveport.
         Last week I made the trip to Logansport -- finally -- and met this special man.
         For 49 years, Kenneth has been wheelchair-bound, unable to walk, after a brain stem and spinal cord injury sustained on a football field left him in a coma for weeks and paralyzed.
         I remember it happening because we were both high school seniors in the fall of 1964, and he was a star athlete in North Louisiana. He was a popular, personable kid, a team leader, a school leader.
         He had the potential to be a college athlete. His dream was to play basketball for the Kentucky Wildcats.
         I had seen him play basketball in Shreveport in December 1963. I remember how good a player he was.
         So when he was hurt the next fall, it made an impact on me. I would not forget the story. And 44 years after my fulltime sportswriting career began, I am writing about Kenneth Harvey.
          Cannot tell you how many times over the years, I have said to someone -- Beatrice, and some of my co-workers -- that I needed to write this.
           Until about a month ago, I wasn't even sure that Kenneth was alive. I checked with another former star Logansport High School basketball player, Wayne Waggoner, whose father, Bernard, was Kenneth's basketball coach.
           Wayne, who played two years at Centenary College (1977-79) when I was the sports information director and now lives in our area (Colleyville, Texas), assured me that Kenneth was living in Logansport -- and still is a man about town.
           He lives in his own apartment, drives his own van, gets out and visits with people and, in 2009, was honored with a Kenneth Harvey Day and a monument at the high school football stadium.
           He is, no question, one of Logansport's most popular treasures.
           He is an upbeat, positive, joyful, religiously devout person. He is an example of what is possible in life, despite limitations.
           But I didn't know any of that when I began researching a month ago. I received help from Lee Hiller at The Shreveport Times with details of Kenneth's athletic career and the events and aftermath of Nov. 13, 1964; I interviewed people with Logansport ties, and began planning my trip.
            It was always my belief that Kenneth's injury had received little publicity. It did not receive the amount of attention that these type injuries would over the course of the decades. But it did not go unnoticed.
              In the Logansport-Many game story in The Times the next morning -- a game Many won 21-0 -- there was a brief mention of the injury to the Logansport quarterback/safety, and his being taken from the field in Logansport to a hospital in Shreveport.
           A month later, The Times had a front-page story about Kenneth, detailing what had happened, describing how he had gone into a coma (and it was ongoing), his prognosis was uncertain, and there were fund-raising efforts in Logansport, Shreveport and Mansfield to help the family with medical expenses.
           And then, as far as I know, nothing more in the Shreveport papers ... until 2009.
           After weeks in the coma, Kenneth regained consciousness. But swelling of the brain and the compression of his spinal cord -- a dislocation rather than a break -- led to a brain-stem injury -- and paralysis.
           It was months before he returned to Logansport, to a new life. His parents cared for him, his younger brother -- who never walked -- inspired him in the long, tedious rehabiliation process, his aunt and uncle took over care some years later, and the people of Logansport supported him in every way they could.
         That is particularly true of his three high school coaches -- Johnny Haynes, Doug McLaren and the late Bernard Waggoner -- who considered him one of the best athletes they ever had and certainly the most memorable.
           Kenneth regained, through hard work and good fortune, limited function of his arms and hands. His speech was slurred but passable enough that he could -- and did -- speak publicly to church and school groups, and his mind is still sharp.
            He remained a sports fan, of course -- a constant presence at Logansport games, and in the years Wayne Waggoner played college basketball, a spectactor at his games. I saw him several times at Centenary games, and we spoke.
            But over all the years of sportswriting in Shreveport, through the 1970s and most of the 1980s, I never wrote Kenneth's story. Can't tell you why ... just never took the time. It was always there; I thought of it a hundred times, a thousand times.
           Life went on, he improved to the point that he moved for several years to Longview, Texas, to live near his aunt and uncle, and his maternal grandmother.
            Meanwhile, I moved on to Florida, then Tennessee and finally Texas. But Kenneth Harvey never left my mind. Eventually, he came back to Logansport to stay.
            I didn't know about his "day" and his monument, didn't know that in July 2009, The Times' Vickie Welborn had written a major piece on Kenneth's story and the upcoming honor. Coach Haynes sent me a copy last month. With Ms. Welborn's permission, I will use some portions of that well-done article.
             My desire to write about Kenneth never waned, and this blog provides the opportunity. But just to visit with him for a couple of hours last Thursday (Sept. 5) was gratifying.
           This is a man who is an inspiration to all who know his history -- and I am fortunate to be one of them.   
            (Next: "He is a joy to be around")

Estella -- Dad's first love

Dad and his first wife, Estella, in September 1941

(Ninth in a series)
      Her name was Estella Halberstad -- Stella -- and she was my Dad's first true love. She was his first wife, the first Mrs. Louis Van Thyn. She died in a World War II concentration camp.
      She, more than diamond cutting, is what lured him back to Antwerp, Belgium, in the summer of 1940, after he had been a POW with other Dutch Army personnel following the Germans' invasion of The Netherlands in May.
      In his 1996 Holocaust interview with the USC Shoah Foundation, Dad admits that being let go at that point was a puzzling development. But to be free at that point seemed fine. However, the Germans (Nazis) kept a record of their released prisoners for future reference.
       They would be back in touch.
       Dad could've remained in Holland with his family in Amsterdam -- his parents and two brothers were there, and Hyman, his older brother, had just been married.
       But Dad's life, at that time, was in Antwerp, where he had gone to apprentice in diamond cutting and lived with his aunt and uncle and two cousins. And there was Stella.
       They had met playing korfball -- an offshoot of basketball, a mixed-gender sport originated in The Netherlands and Belgium (which to this day are the world's reigning powers and have been forever; in the nine World Championship tournaments, they've been the finalists each time, Holland winning all but once).
        (I knew about korfball as a kid in Holland. Suffice to say, it is a strange sport with strange rules -- 11 1/2-foot baskets, no nets, no dribbling, no men guarding women, no women guarding men, etc. )
         Dad played the sport as a young man, and loved it, got his basketball genes from there. Plus, Stella played the game, too. So they met and before the Dutch army drafted Dad -- in April 1939 -- they fell in love and were engaged.
        "In Holland, you first are engaged for a couple of years before you are married," Dad said in his testimony, recalling the times. But when he went back to Holland in the Army, Estella moved to Toulousse, France. (I don't know this, but I imagine she went there for work, perhaps thinking, too, that France was safer for Jewish people at that point than Belgium.)
         But once they both returned to Antwerp, things began to change. Conditions for Jewish people considerably more difficult.
         "The first couple of months we had no problems with the Germans," Dad said in his interview in reply to a question about the Nazi occupation. "They let us work. We were working at the airport, [but] then they found out we were Jewish, and we were all fired.
         "Then we did some odd jobs. Didn't have much trouble, but then they started giving us yellow Stars of David [to be worn on clothing, signifying that the person was Jewish]. You couldn't work anymore, but I work illegal. I took the star off (he was riding his bike, another outlawed right), and did some odd jobs."
           What he found out much later, he says in the interview, was that the conditions for Jews were harsher much more quickly in Holland than in Belgium.
          The next crackdown was a 7 p.m. curfew for the Jews, which meant that Dad couldn't see Stella after that time. So the solution was: "We decide to go be married and stay with my in-laws, and that was better."
        This was September 1941. But the marriage would be short-lived -- not by their choice. By May 1942, they were split apart, never to see each other again.
---
        Looking at the photo of Dad and Stella on their wedding day, she looks taller than my mother (but then who wasn't?) and thinner. I can't relate what she was like, but I can imagine that my Dad -- who was basically a sweet guy and did what my mother asked, was just as caring with Stella as he was with Dr. Rose.
       I know this -- for the rest of his life, he kept their wedding photo in his billfold, as well as the one of him and Mom. That was fine with my mother, who also lost her first spouse (Moses "Mo" Lezer) in the camps.

Eva Furth-Halberstad (she was our
Tante Eef in Amsterdam)

       An aside here: There are gaps in this narrative of those years, missing pieces which I never asked Dad about, and I wish I could. Neither my sister nor I pressed Dad about Stella; it wasn't a subject that came up. But if we would have asked, he'd have been glad to answer. He was never hesistant to talk about his past, painful as it was at times.
       We did, however, have a connection to Stella -- her sister Eva -- older sister, I believe. This was  Tante Eef (Aunt Eef) to Elsa and me in Amsterdam in the early 1950s.
        Eva was an Auschwitz survivor, too, and in the diamond-cutting business. After the war, she and Dad found each other and Eva then married another survivor, Jacques Furth, who lost his first wife in the war but whose son, Dave, was a hidden child in Holland and reunited with his father late in 1945 (Dave was 4).
        Eef and Jacques were my parents' closest friends in Amsterdam, other than my mother's first cousin, Maurits Kopuit (also hidden as a young man during the war). Whenever my Dad visited Holland after we moved to the United States, he stayed with the Furths (even after Eef died in 1988). They were both among the founders and active members of the Dutch Auschwitz Memorial committee.
          Many a day Eef and Jacques baby-sat me, and Dave -- six years older than me -- was my first friend. I have distinct memories of them all.
           Eef was loud and opinionated, but also passionate and kind. And one other thing: She was a member of the Communist Party. I could not make this up. She believed in Communism, which confounded my parents, of course; Eef and my mother had some, well, very spirited debates, especially once we moved to the U.S. (For those who knew my mother ... can you imagine?)
---

        So Stella and Dad made whatever they could out of their married life in Antwerp for little more than half a year, with Jewish people's rights and movements severely restricted.    

       "It was early in 1942 when [the Germans] started calling up people from Antwerp, young people, and they went to camps in France," Dad said in his interview. "I was called up in May to go to France, to a war camp."
       It was an ominous journey, and only a beginning.
      There would be little but misery for the next three or four years -- and among that misery was the slow realization that -- unlike him -- his family did not survive.
---
      Jumping ahead in the story a little, Dad was in a transit camp in Malines (French name) or Mechelen (Belgian) -- in Belgium, about 25 miles from both Antwerp and Brussels; it was the last stop before he was put on the train to Auschwitz. 
       "We were with the 15th transport out of Malines, and we find out that my wife and her parents and so many people were already gone to Germany," he recalled in the testimony. "They were with the 13th transport; they were a couple of days before us."     

      The interviewer asked when he found out about his family in Amsterdam? "We found that out in 1945," Dad replied. "We didn't find that out in Auschwitz."

      How did you know they were gone? "I think we got a letter in the mail [from gentile neighbors in Amsterdam]; it [the mail] was still going then, it was coming to Antwerp, and we found out that they were already gone. My father was in the camp, and my brother was in the camp."
       But he had no idea which camp. "In that time, I didn't know they were gone to Westerbork. My father was in a war camp in Holland. Where I don't know. These are all things we found out when we came back [after the war]. The Germans were real secretive about these kind of things.

       "My younger brother was home with my mother. She was picked up Oct. 13, 1942, in Amsterdam. My father was already in a camp in Westerbork, but I didn't find that out until later."
        In the end, they were all gone -- father, mother, older brother and his wife and baby, young brother, Estella's parents ... and Estella, his first love. 

         Next: Going to Auschwitz

 

TCU's Coach P (p for paranoid)

      Gary Patterson screams at his players, yells at his assistant coaches and trainers and anyone in his path on the TCU sideline, points and sweats and rants, and offers advice -- no, berates -- game officials.
      It's all OK with the TCU faithful, who like the way the Frogs win football games under Patterson. That's just him being Coach P.
      He's also been known to be verbally abusive to media members, complained to their bosses, and to cut off their access to TCU players and staff, everyone but himself.
      That's not OK with me (retired sportswriter) or my media buddies. Coach P -- Coach Paranoid, or  Coach Petty -- is often secretive, manipulative and distrustful with media.

The maniacal Gary Patterson: It's a football thing
 (photo from blogspot.com)

      I bring this up today because the aftermath of the LSU-TCU football game -- a conflict of interest for me -- reminded me of Patterson's  media manners.
      In his Sunday morning game column, Scott Rabalais of the Baton Rouge Advocate included this: "... Patterson also refused to let his players talk to reporters who cover LSU,  a silly example of coaching paranoia (They may put something on the bulletin board!) that must be addressed by the Big 12."
      Rabalais -- one of my Louisiana media friends -- also calls Patterson "obsessively competitive." (I can identify with that; people can say the same about me.)
      Indeed, complaints were filed to the Football Writers Association of America and to the Big 12 office.
      This is not new, this has been going on for the decade-plus that Patterson has been the head coach -- beginning about a year before I came to Fort Worth to work in Star-Telegram sports. Player interviews are very limited and almost every season, without fail, Patterson has cut off access to his players totally at least a couple of weeks. He rarely makes assistant coaches available for interviews. They might as well be mutes.
      It's the "one voice speaks for all" approach, and he's the one voice. He uses the media to send messages to his team, opposing teams, fans, the world, whatever. In my opinion, he plays mind games with everyone, slanting it just the way he wants. Part of that is ego, most of it is paranoia.
      Often, when he does allow players to be interviewed, he has TCU sports information people sit it on the interview -- to monitor the question and make sure nothing objectionable can be unveiled.
      And here is what I find most distasteful of all, and this comes from the TCU beat writers we had in my time at the Star-Telegram (we had at least five in 10 years): Patterson has screamed right in their faces -- about stories that displeased him, or a question that irritated him, or perhaps just in his post-practice wind-down when he was displeased with his team.
      I've heard about this too many times for it to be incidental. "Obsessively competitive" has its place. This is not it.
      He's treated the media as if they were his players or his staff. And that's totally uncalled for.
      He's threatened to have them taken off the TCU beat, as if he had a choice in that decision.
      This is a guy making, what, $3 million a season, and he's yelling at young people -- conscientious, hard-working young people -- making maybe $40,000 a year. It's pitiful.
      Obviously, the TCU people in charge -- chancellor, athletic director, big-money boosters -- don't care enough or don't know enough to do anything about this. He's Coach P after all; he wins, and he runs his program the way he wants.
      There certainly are other head coaches -- college, NFL -- just as paranoid; it's become a business of "control freaks." Patterson might not rival Bill Belichick, who from all accounts is the most media-control freak of all, but checking with some of the people I know who cover college football, TCU's dictator is among the most paranoid.
---
      Let's be clear about this: This is my biggest (and perhaps only) sore spot about Gary Patterson.
      I'm like everyone else -- I think he's a terrific coach and he does run a program the way it should be run (media matters excepted). Sure, there have been off-the-field issues -- grades and drugs and misbehavior -- but that happens everywhere.
      The TCU staff, over the past decade, has done one of the country's best jobs of identifying talent to recruit for their school, moving players to positions they can best play and help the team, and then coaching on the practice field and in games. Patterson is considered a defensive whiz, and the statistics -- and records -- bear out his success. You can't say anything but "well-coached" about his Frogs.           
      He's the biggest factor in taking a football program that was once woeful and is now a national player, and in raising the funds (it's a private school) to get a new stadium built.
      To be honest, I've never talked to the man, only seen him in person on campus a couple of times, and from what people close to the TCU program tell me, he's a genuinely personable guy away from football. I read that, too, in the wonderful story (Aug. 25) by the talented writer Tim Madigan in the Star-Telegram.
      And I've come to admire TCU. I've lived close to the campus now for seven years and cross it almost daily on my walks. It's pretty, beautifully landscaped, and ever-changing with a couple dozen new or renovated buildings -- including the football stadium and indoor practice facility -- in the time we've been here.
      The campus motif is neat; follow the yellow-brick buildings.
      We've found a lot of nice people and interesting events at TCU. It is a real asset to the city.
       Sure, I was rooting for LSU on Saturday; I have 55 years of being an LSU fan. But this game was a conflict of interest for me in that I've grown accustomed to TCU.
       Still, it confounds me how Patterson can be so stubborn and, yes, so paranoid about the media.
       During Saturday's game, one of my close friends sent me a text: "Patterson is a complete ass." I can't agree; it only has to do with football, and with the media.
 ---
        These head coaches have every right to run their program the way they want, and certainly they do this in the best interests of their players -- their kids -- and their team.
        Got no problem with closed practice; that's done everywhere and it's understandable. No problem with how Patterson has handled disciplinary cases; that's his and the school's business. But handling the media; that's a business on which I can comment.             
        Freshman players not being allowed to be interviewed, that's fine; the adjustment to college football and to college life can be challenging enough. Nick Saban at Alabama has this rule, and so does Texas A&M I believe, recalling that Johnny Manziel never spoke to the media last year ... until his Heisman Trophy candidacy late in the season made him an exception.
        My belief is that players should be coached about doing interviews, what to say and not say, just as they are on the field. It's part of the college learning process. They should know better than to be negative or critical of teammates or opponents ... if that's what Patterson is worried about.
        And he does, I believe, worry about "inciting" the opposing team or his players alienating someone. Maybe that's where the paranoia is.
        A TCU grad, a 1960s football player, suggested to me that Patterson had been "burned" by media in the past. Could be, it happens. Maybe a quote or statement was taken out of context, maybe facts were wrong. I've been accused of doing that a few times -- and perhaps rightfully so. It wasn't done on purpose.
        Plus, I've been screamed at by coaches, ordered out of locker rooms, had the phone slammed  on me, had interview requests ignored or denied. But no more than a handful of times. So I've been there; it doesn't feel good, not when you're trying to do the best job you can.
        Totally cutting off player interviews, to "home" media or away, is just ridiculous, in my view.
        If they are a "distraction," as Patterson has claimed before certain games (SMU a year ago comes to mind), I disagree. No game has ever been won or lost because of interviews; I found that usually these games are settled on the field, between those white lines.
        But if he feels that he has to control things that way, he can do that -- unless his bosses tell him differently.
        Several people have pointed out to me that Patterson is fortunate in that being at a private school, the spotlight isn't as severe, the media group isn't anywhere as large, as it would be at a major state school. That if he faced as much media daily as Mack Brown, Les Miles, Nick Saban or Bob Stoops -- just to name a few -- maybe he wouldn 't get away with screaming at media so much.
        Hard to say. We know what we see, and sometimes it's just unbecoming. Maybe the Big 12 can suggest/demand mandatory player and coordinator interviews a couple of times a week.
        TCU football is back in the big time. The chancellor, AD and especially head coach should rewrite their media-access playbook, and make it big time, too.                   
                 

Old school? Yes and no

       I am old school; I am not old school. Going back and forth on this as I thought about it the past week or two.
       Yes, some changes from "the old days" -- the 1950s and '60s when I was a kid -- bother me. But I  love today's world. We have so many advantages now, and it's silly to want to turn back progress.
       But "old school" means I like my watch with hour and second hands pointing to numbers going clockwise (bad pun) around the face; I don't want a digital watch. But a digital alarm clock next to my bed, that's fine.
       Old school: I don't want an electric can opener. The old-fashioned turn-the-handle kind is good ... but then how often do we open cans these days?
       Don't want to use an electric razor; I never did. I'm an old-school blade guy, and not the three-, four- or five-blade type, either.
       I much prefer air conditioning. There was a time when we had very little of it -- at home, in school, in stores.
       I am certainly not old school about television, about the 24-hour news cycle. I'm not old school about the Internet and Facebook and Twitter; we are so connected with the world, with our friends, and it's good.
        We have so many choices. We're looking for something to watch on TV the other night and click on the U-Verse guide to check the old movies on Channel 790. Channel 790?
         Remember when we only had two channels to watch in Shreveport-Bossier, and they went off the air at midnight when it became test-pattern time?
         Cable TV was 30 years away, maybe; you had to get up to change the channel manually -- remote-control clickers, are you kidding? -- and if news broke, you might find out about it hours later ... unless you were listening to the radio.
         And if you listened to ballgames on the radio -- for us that meant the Cardinals or, in the '60s, the Colt 45s/Astros and, for some reason, the White Sox -- you might get up-to-the-moment scores and an occasional game detail.
         I am old school about dressing up -- suit and tie -- for most weddings (but not every wedding party requires that) and certainly for funerals.
         But where I used to dress nicely for work almost daily -- slacks, shirt (but no T-shirt) and regular shoes -- I turned into a tennis shoes/T-shirts/shorts or jeans guy a couple of decades ago. Thought people might faint on the (very) rare occasions I would show up at the office in coat-and-tie.
         Here's an old-school wish: Can we turn gasoline prices back to 19 and 23 cents per gallon? Sure, my wife says -- and then you also have to do with a standard-shift transmission (I never did learn to operate that) and without power steering, automatic turn signals and seat belts, and the various safety measures.
          Let me assure you that putting out newspapers these days is SO much easier than when I broke into the field in the 1960s. Now a story or a photo can be on a page in a matter of moments; a process that used to take hours.
         I have no longing for the old-school days of newspapering. When they did away with composing rooms and the people in them -- they were, to be tactful, often a pain in the rear end -- it was a great day. Sorry if that offends some of my old buddies.
         However, I am very old school about writing and editing. I will not use -- it hurts me to even type this -- "newbies" or call people "dudes" or abbreviate all sorts of things -- and I believe in putting commas where they belong, such as in front of but or then when a sentence is in transition. I have hundreds of editing quirks, and I'm not apologizing for them.
         Of course, newspapers themselves now are becoming "old school" because there are far less readers and they generate far less revenue. I don't like that because it was a good way to make a living.
         I was fond of my VCR and video tapes; what great technology when they were introduced. Now they're old-school, and I'm up for whatever is next.
         Cellphones are one of the great inventions of our time. Don't want to go back to rotary-dial phones or -- oh, my gosh -- party lines.
---
       Now, turning to sports ...
       I am old school in some baseball traditions -- stirrups (socks) showing (but not too much); to heck with today's players who wear their pantslegs down to the ground. I liked it when relief pitchers worked two, three or four innings, not just one inning (or one batter). Talk about slowing down games; how about all those pitching changes.
      But I'm OK with the designated hitter; not crazy about it, but OK. Only thing is, when pitchers in the American League feel like throwing at batters, they don't have to worry about coming to bat -- and being thrown at -- themselves.
      I liked it when they began putting players' names on the back of uniforms. However -- old school -- the Yankees are the only team in the major leagues that doesn't ever do that, and I hope it stays that way.
      I am not old school about football; the game today is faster and, because of that, more violent in a sense, but it's always been violent when you consider the rules in the old days that often meant dirty play went unpunished.
      I don't have a problem with the increased protection for quarterbacks and other skill-position players. I don't like seeing anyone get hurt, but if you're going to play that sport, you know the risk.

The photo and story that inspired this blog
(from Sports Illustrated, Aug. 14, 2013)

      I am somewhat old school about football uniforms, which is one reason that brought this blog to mind. Looking at Sports Illustrated's college football issue two weeks ago, a picture of a 1965 UCLA team huddle reminded me how much I loved the Bruins' uniforms -- powder blue jerseys, old-gold helmets and pants ... but nothing written that said "UCLA." Still, I knew that was UCLA.
      I remember, too, how LSU had the gold helmets with just a player's uniform number on them, and the jerseys didn't say LSU. Same gold-white-gold look, though, and it was cool. I remember Louisiana Tech's red helmets ... before the logo of the state of Louisiana and the "T" coming out of it.
      And I believe that's it's wonderful that some teams have the "old school" helmets without any decals -- Notre Dame's gold and the Cleveland Browns come to mind. But is there any football team out there without some sort of identification on its uniform?
      I'm not a big fan of the no-huddle, hurry-up spread offenses. I like a huddle-up, run-the-football-when-you-need-to offense (and give your defense a good rest), but maybe that's old-time thinking and I should adapt.
       I actually like the 3-point basket in basketball now, although I didn't care for it much at first. It gives the trailing team, or the team with lesser talent, a chance to catch up. The long shorts players wear today? Silly at first, but now I've gotten used to the fashion.
      Sometimes I wish they'd take the shot clock out of college basketball, and give a team the chance to spread the court and hold the ball. Sure, it was boring -- very boring -- but it was a strategy that could give a lesser, smaller team an equalizing weapon. Just an old-school thought.
      Women's basketball? Great, especially once they made it a five-on-five full-court game, not the three-on-offense, three-on-defense '40s-'50s-'60s version (so old school).
      Instant replay, video replays -- fabulous. It changed our world. No old-school wishes there.
      Wish they'd expand the use of instant replay in baseball. I am very much in favor of the way it's used in college football and the NFL. Yeah, it slows down the game a bit, but it also means the calls are correct 95 percent of the time.
      Here's something I wish was "old school" -- baseball (or sports in general) without steroids or performance-enhancing drugs or blood doping (hello, cycling). Just get sick and tired of reading or hearing about it.
      I'm not for the pre-players' union days, but I wish the players didn't have as much bargaining power as they have now. In baseball, the players' union -- not Bud Selig and his cronies -- really run the game. Don't believe otherwise.
      We could use more "old school" compromising in American politics; is that even possible these days? I do have dreams. Civil rights, social rights ... I would hate to see us turn the clock back on so much that has been done.
      And that's the point, I suppose -- we shouldn't turn back progress. Today's world -- in general and in sports -- is a wonderful place to be. "Old school" might be good in a few instances, but mostly it's not and I like it that way.             
                     
                

Memories of Shaw Hill

      I never became a very good fisherman, although Howard Shaw -- my father-in-law -- did his best to help me pursue that desire. He loved fishing and knew all he needed to know about it.
      I did become a very good fish eater, and still am, partly because Laura Alice Dickson Shaw fried up plates and plates of bream and white perch (crappie) and put them in front of me, and also taught her oldest daughter Beatrice how to do that.
       Give me bream, crappie or catfish -- fried, of course -- and I'm happy anytime. Even if it's bad  for my cholesterol.

Laura Alice and Howard Shaw, 50-plus years together

       One of those good fortunes in my life was our visits to the little house on Shaw Hill -- that was our name for the homeplace -- in Jamestown, La. I think our Jason and Rachel, two of the Shaws' 13 grandchildren, will tell you the same.
        There are plenty of people we miss, and Granny and Paw-Paw -- that's what our family came to call them -- are among those we miss most.
        We lost them 20 and 18 years ago. It hardly seems possible that it's been that long. But the memories are sweet ones.
         Those who know me might find this hard to believe, but there was never a cross word for me from either of them. I could not have been treated with more love and respect, and I hope I returned that because they deserved it. And I kind of liked their oldest daughter.
---
         They were country people living in rural conditions, without a lot of modern conveniences. Don't take that wrong -- they were good as gold, with plenty of smarts. They made do with what they had, but at times it was tough, especially when Bea and Howard Jr. and Brenda were small.
          The baby, Alice, came along a few years after that, and soon the family moved from a farmhouse on the property to the new home -- the one we knew -- built on cinder blocks. A company put up the frame, but Mr. Shaw did all the inside work -- the three bedrooms, the living room, the kitchen and, after a few years, the plumbing for the bathroom. None of it was very roomy.
           This was Paw-Paw -- he could do most anything. He loved that piece of land; he'd always lived there. On it, he kept extensive garden; he'd plow the land and work it. He could build things, do plumbing, fix motors (cars, lawnmowers), and people from all around -- Ringgold, Castor, Jamestown -- would come to him for help. Sometimes, but not often, he'd accept money for it, usually at their insistence.
             And the kids all remember this -- he kept a wormbed, a big one, thousands of worms. He'd sell them; better yet, he'd use them for our fishing trips.
              Here's where I came in, in 1976, having fished only a few times in my life but really liking it. Liked the quiet, and the challenge, and here was a man who loved to take people fishing. Mrs. Shaw loved fishing, too, and so did all the kids -- they'd been out there on Lake Bistineau and other places with him often.
             So off we'd go; Bea often went with us. He'd hook up the trailer/boat to his truck and travel the back roads to the launching spot at Lake Bistineau. He  knew practically every inch of that lake, had a bunch of favorite fishing holes, and he so wanted me to have fun, and to catch fish. So if they weren't biting pretty quickly, he'd move on to another spot.
             In time, I even learned to bait my own hook, tie on a hook (after losing one when I would invariably get the line caught). We'd spent hours out there -- if it wasn't too hot -- and we had some very good days, and some very dry ones.
             Best thing was, after the good ones, we'd come home and scale the fish, gut them and clean them -- I learned to do that, too -- and then Mrs. Shaw would go to work in the kitchen. If we didn't bring home any fish, she always had a ready supply in the freezer.
               And, yes, eventually, I could cook them, too. But only when Bea didn't want to.
  ---
               But the most memorable thing about Paw-Paw: his stories. Despite not much of a formal education, he had an education of the world -- he saw some of the country in the Civilian Conservation Corps of the 1930s and some of the world in the U.S. Army during World War II. He had tales of his boyhood, of hunting and fishing, and of adventures with the kids -- often featuring "lil' ol' Buster" (Howard Jr.).
                Or he'd make up stories. Bea remembers those from the early days and she and her siblings would often urge him to "tell the one about ..." He was more than happy to comply.
                When he'd finish a story and he knew you were pleased, and so saw he, he'd chuckle: heh, heh. The chuckle was part of it.
                He was at times, Bea said, a stern and demanding father. I never saw that side; only saw him be adamant once. I know what it was about, but it doesn't matter. I knew he meant business when he addressed Bea as "Annett" -- her middle name (without a final e) by which she was known in her younger days.
               One of his stories, and mine, in his later years was about the day we went into the woods just down Highway 154 from the house in search of what he referred to as Black Lake. It was actually a stream that had been good for fishing. Jason, about 4 or 5, went with us. We walked for 15-20 minutes, and couldn't find it. It had dried up so much, apparently, and Mr. Shaw was wandering around.
               "Are we too lost, Paw-Paw?" Jay asked. Mr. Shaw loved that one.             
                We did find enough water to go fishing, and brought back a nice string that day. And Paw-Paw had a story.
---
                 Mrs. Shaw was quiet, a dutiful wife and mother and grandmother wanting to please everyone. She was sweet and lovable, and every now and then, she'd contribute a thought to the conversation. Mostly, she was always busy in the kitchen, preparing butter beans and greens and whatever else she could put on the table.
                 Bea remembered how beautiful she looked in her younger days and how when Bea was young, she'd greet her every day when she'd get home from school, sit and work with her on homework and draw; she had artistic ability.
               Rachel, too, remembers Granny sitting and drawing with her and how she'd always spread her arms for a hug and ask for "sugar" (some kisses), and how she'd give Rachel a spoon to let her play in the dirt outside. Jason remembers her lumpy mashed potatoes and the Tang to drink ("only place I'd ever get that") and, at meals, how Paw-Paw loved to mix the cornbread with his buttermilk.
---
             They were both pretty upset when we decided to move to Hawaii in 1980 for my job with The Honolulu Advertiser. Jason was 5, Rachel was 10 months; they thought they might not see them. But we were back in a couple of years, so the trips from Bossier City to Jamestown came often in the 1980s.
             Then when we moved to Florida in 1988, the trips back home, to Jamestown, were really special.  Really special was their 50th wedding anniversary party, a family gathering on the old place.
They were so proud that day.
             Little more than a year later -- on May 29, 1993 -- we got one of those calls, though. Granny had died, in her typical fashion, very peacefully in her sleep. It wasn't a total surprise, but it was still a shock.
              Paw-Paw's grace at the visitation and funeral was admirable. Life was tougher for him after that, and his health declined. It was probably cancer, although never officially called that. His body really just wore out, but his mind didn't. The stories were still there to the end, and so was the chuckle.
               And he gave us one memorable moment. He could hardly walk on his own, but as we sat at the kitchen table one day, while Jason -- now a student at LSU -- mowed the grass in the back on Paw-Paw's riding lawnmower. Suddenly Jay ran the lawnmower up one of the poles on a swing set.
               Paw-Paw, sensing that Jay might flip over with the mower, hurried from the table to the back door; I don't know how he moved that fast, except his oldest grandson might be hurt. He wasn't, and Paw-Paw was relieved.
               Mr. Shaw died two years, two months and two days after Mrs. Shaw. His youngest sister, Lola Mae Hammett, still lives in Jamestown -- right across the street from Shaw Hill.
               They are buried, with much of the Shaw family, in Providence Cemetery on Highway 154 between Ringgold and Jamestown, and we don't get there often. Rachel stopped by on a trip from her home in Knoxville, Tenn., to our home in Fort Worth and let Josie see where one set of her great-grandparents are buried. Josie was too young to grasp it then, but someday hopefully she'll appreciate it.                                           
             Granny was a sweetheart; Paw-Paw was a man's man. We love the memories.
          
         

Reading 'Tides,' football and coaches

                It is mid to late August, and football season is coming -- I don't count the NFL preseason -- but my life has changed, and I'm not obsessed about it.

photo from bdcdn.net

          In a previous life, for about 45 years, I would have been writing and/or editing stories on football, visiting high school (and some college) campuses and talking to coaches, and otherwise to to them on the phone.
            I love and admire most coaches. I've written that previously on this blog many times, and coaches have been my subject matter repeatedly. They were a huge part of my life.
            However, one of my obsessions these days is reading -- especially reading books. Part of that is our little book club here, another is that for 1-3 years, I had eight books sitting here by my desk that I had intended to read.
            And I have done it, thank you. In fact, thanks to a lot of time at the nearby Barnes & Noble (yes, free reading), I have done 16 books in four months (several provided by Celeste Williams at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram).
            One needs an asterisk: We listened to the audio discs of Rob Lowe's autobiography, sent to us by our reading-obsessed daughter.
             Of course, most of those books are sports books -- four on the New York Yankees. There was one on the Connecticut Yankee (by Mark Twain).
             I have to credit Rachel -- perhaps the most avid reader I know -- for spurring my interest, and also my wife, who is an eclectic reader, too. They encourage me and support the effort. Plus, my sister a couple of weeks ago suggested I read The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy; she was listening to the audio discs for the eighth time.
             Elsa thought I would like it because the narrator/protagonist is a high school football coach, Tom Wingo, who once was a very good high school and college player.
             Rachel, of course, has read it; she thinks the prologue is one of the finest pieces ever written. Bea had read it three times, but she was ready to read it again.
             Two weeks later, we are finished -- 664 pages of the paperback version. It is a powerful, dramatic, and often sad, book. At times, it was so riveting, and so deflating, I couldn't go on that day.
             It's mostly about a shrimper family's fractured relationships, life in a rural South Carolina lowlands setting and then in New York City, about love and hate and therapy, psychologically complex, about  murder, rape and mayhem, infidelity, manipulation and deceit, politics and much more. First published in 1986, this novel is beautifully written by Conroy and he also helped with the screen play for the 1991 movie directed and starring Barbra Streisand (with Nick Nolte).
             But if you're more of a novel reader than I am, you probably knew all that.
             Really, the book has little to do with football, but it's obvious that Conroy had played the game and studied it, and studied coaches. I want to stress that a lot more of the book stuck with me in the family dynamics realm, but he wrote one section about coaching that I loved.
             A coach occupies a high place in a boy's life. It is the one grand component of my arguably useless vocation. If they are lucky, good coaches can become the perfect unobtainable fathers that young boys dream about and rarely find in their own homes. Good coaches shape and exhort and urge. There is something beautiful about watching the process of sport. I have spent almost all the autumns of my life moving crowds of young boys across acres of divided grass. Beneath the sun of late August, I have listened to the chants of calisthenics, watched the initial clumsiness of overgrown boys and the eyes of small boys conquering their fear, and I have monitored the violence of blocking sleds and gang tackling. I can measure my life by the teams I have fielded and I remember by name every player I ever coached. Patiently, I have waited each year for that moment when I had merged all the skills and weaknesses of the boys placed in my care. I have watched for that miraculous synthesis. When it comes I look around my field, I look at my boys, and in a rush of creative omnipotence, I want to shout to the sun: "By God, I have created a team." 
            The boy is precious because he stands on the threshold of his generation and he is always afraid. The coach knows that innocence is always sacred, but fear is not. Through sports a coach can offer a boy a secret way to sneak up on the mystery that is manhood.
           Now Pat Conroy has made a helluva lot more money writing books than I have (millions for him, zero for me) and he -- and many others -- can write this a lot better than I can.
           What he says here is so, so true. I think about the coaches I knew, those who were part of my life and affected it -- as a team manager and then a sportswriter -- and I am so thankful for those people and their roles, and the path that I traveled.
           And now I'm thankful for my reading time, too.

Weighing in on what we should eat

     I love red meat and potatoes -- a T-bone steak, ribeye, porterhouse, filet mignon, roast beef (rare, please), and mashed potatoes, baked potatoes, fried potatoes, french fries, steamed or smothered potatoes.  

Mint chocolate chip ice cream: Oh, how I love you
(photo from fanpop.com)

     I love ice cream -- most any kind, really, but especially mint chocolate chip and that plain soft vanilla from Dairy Queen. Love banana splits and banana pudding and pies with whipped cream.
     Love cookies, especially chocolate chip and Oreos. But just about any kind will do. Love candy and chocolate. I have a lifetime history with Mr. Goodbars, and Tootsie Roll pops are close.
     Love fried fish -- catfish, bream, white perch. Those all-the-catfish-you-can-eat nights we had many years ago at the old (now burned-down) Cypress Inn in north Bossier were a Shreveport Journal sports department special. John James Marshall called them soirees, all-you-can-ram.
      And in the all-you-can category, crawfish. Put me at a crawfish boil and give me a couple of hours. If I have a "favorite meal," this is it.
      My folks loved to eat, and so do I.
      Well, so did I.
      When I kept looking at my expanding waist, and my clothes didn't fit so well anymore, and then when my vision kept getting blurry at work, and indigestion was becoming a daily problem, it was a miserable feeling.
        So miserable that -- at my wife's insistence -- I went to get my eyes checked by an opthamologist. And the result was ... there was nothing wrong with my eyes. But the doctor suggested I go see my general physician because the cause of my blurred vision might be that roll around my waist.
         When I stepped on the scales at the doctor's office, it read "178." (To be honest, I had been avoiding stepping on any scales.) I couldn't believe it. It was a long way from 125, which is what I weighed coming out of college.
          The doctor suggested we do a complete physical; I hadn't had one in years. When the results came back, he was adamant: My cholesterol was too high; my triglycerides -- whatever those are -- were out of sight.
          I needed to lose weight, or he said I needed to take medicine (statins). I had no desire to do that; Bea knew that the statins can have uncomfortable side effects.
          I really wasn't a total physical wreck; I still was doing my daily walk, 45 minutes to 1 1/2 hours, and had been for 15 years or so -- not fast walking, but steady. But then I would eat anything I wanted (see above), and I would eat late at night -- after work -- and I never ate breakfast (worked nights, so I wouldn't started my day until about 10 a.m. and didn't feel like eating.)
           It was time for some changes, and Bea -- also not happy with her weight -- felt the same way.
           This was some three years ago, just after our vacation/return trip to Hawaii, where the pictures of me with my old friends from The Honolulu Advertiser show just how prominent a belly I had. I would post some of those "before" photos but, gee, I can't locate them right now.
 ---
          We cut down on the white stuff -- white bread, mashed potatoes, most potatoes, white rice, white pasta -- and cakes, cookies, candy. Cut back on using butter and on French bread with garlic, which we both loved. Very little red meat. Very little ice cream. Very little canned goods of any kind.
           We began reading the many articles available on the best things to eat, and we began to check the packaging/ingredients. Sweet potatoes are on that list; those who know me know that was one of my least favorite things to eat; I always avoided them. But we substituted sweet-potato fries (baked) for french fries, and I actually like them.
           We now eat wheat bread and wheat pasta, and lots of salads -- spinach-based, with fruit and mushrooms and green peas, raw vegetables, avocados, olive oil. Sometimes Bea adorns the salads with salmon or tuna salad and sardines (oily fish are highly recommended). Nuts are a good thing to eat, too, and we buy some every week.
         So we eat lots of raw stuff. There are some side effects -- well-known, but we won't talk about that here.
         I'm eating kale, and okra, and turnip greens -- would've been very reluctant in the past on all those. But spinach and broccoli have always been favorites.
          And every day I eat breakfast -- usually a bowl of cereal (with almost no sugar), blueberries and almond milk.
          I used to drink one Diet Dr. Pepper a day (sometimes two). No more. Now it's lots of water, some tea (mostly green tea) and one cup of coffee a day (supposed to be good for you).
          We cut back on salt. I did use it liberally; now I use it sparingly. We try to stay away from sugary stuff. Now when we get something with salt or sugar in it, the taste is exaggerated.
          We've tried to eliminate milk chocolate; we do buy a dark-chocolate bar weekly ... one piece a day. We have substituted low-fat yogurt for ice cream.  
           At Bea's direction, we now take a daily regimen of pills -- vitamin supplements, Prilosec (to control the indigestion), fish oil, L-Lysine, magnesium, a baby aspirin. I don't like taking pills, but I do it because I'm told to.
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           OK, I want to stress this: We are not perfect at this; we don't think we are obsessed; we are not weight watchers to the point of getting on the scale every day and fretting about it. Every now and then -- once a week, once every two weeks -- we both feel like eating an "old" meal. So we go get a hamburger, and maybe some fries, or a corned-beef sandwich at Jason's Deli, and then we have the ice cream, too.
           We might even have some mashed potatoes once a month or a small steak -- a real small steak. Still eat more cheese than we need -- goes with our wheat-bread sandwiches -- but not nearly as much as before.
            Candy, or chocolate, still tempts me when we walk into a place with a candy jar. But because I don't go to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram sports department all that much any more, I can stay away from all that candy in Celeste Williams' office. Always love visiting with Celeste, but that candy was not doing my waist or health much good. Good thing, too, that I don't get to Strawn's in Shreveport too often for a piece of banana pie (or the whole pie) with whipped cream as the topping.
           And then there's crawfish. Our son, Jason, puts on crawfish boils, and we went to one this spring. I ate and ate and ate -- crawfish, plus the small potatoes and the corn and the sausage -- and I was so full when I was done. Felt absolutely miserable the next few days; didn't even want to look at much food.
            Portion control remains an issue some days. Snacking remains an issue. My problem is still too much of a good thing.
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           So these days the scale reads between 155 and 160, a loss of about 20 pounds. It actually happened pretty quickly, once we changed our diet and our eating routine; it was only a couple of weeks before people began noticing and asking if I'd lost weight.
           After a couple of additional visits to the doctor's office, the doctor read the cholesterol and triglycerides numbers and was very pleased, saying, "You've done good work. Keep it up."
            My weight has stabilized. Meanwhile, Bea -- having stepped up her exercise routine -- has lost more than I have, weighs less than I do, is still losing some. She not only feels good, she looks good (not that she's ever looked bad).
            We've each had to buy new clothes because some of our stuff is now too roomy. I've gone from a 36-38 waist to 34-36; I can again wear a suit that I had outgrown, but I had to give up some of my Dad's handdowns that once fit but now are too loose.
            I probably could lose another five pounds or another half-inch off my waist, and be even more fit. But that might mean buying even more new clothes, so I'm fine for now. I feel healthier, my vision is OK, and my wife seems satisfied with our efforts.
             But, gosh, how about a big T-bone steak, mashed potatoes, and a gallon of mint chocolate chip ice cream?