MY RACE WITH OTTO GRAHAM

Otto Graham
1921-2003

Otto Graham died recently. He was an All American football and basketball player while attending Northwestern University.

Once, many years go, I ran a race against this All-American football player, Otto Graham. It was 1945 and he and I were both in the Navy V-5 Pre-Flight School at Chapel Hill, North Carolina. During a Physical Education class everyone was required to run a timed 100-yard dash. Otto and I were in the same group and, even though he was a big football star he was required to run also. As luck would have it, I ran against him.

I had been training with the track team and Otto had been practicing with the football team. We got down to our starting positions. I glanced to my left and noticed he semed larger than when I had seen him from the grandstand at football games. I also noted he appeared to have very sturdy legs. I said to myself, “OK, Mr. Big Football Star. Now you are about to see what running is.” After all, I had been beating everyone on the track team. I surely could take this football player.

The starting gun sounded and I got off to a good start. When I looked up Otto was about a yard ahead of me. OK, so he got a lucky start. I’ll go get him. I ran as fast as I could but Otto was pulling away. He beat me by 5 or 6 yards and that’s a lot in a 100-yard dash.

Otto went on to have a great professional football career but I still remember the lesson in humility he taught me.

Otto Graham (click here for Otto's records)
1921-2003

Thanks Otto. Rest in peace.

THE ALL NEW EXCERCISE MOTIVATOR HAT

In my previous blog I revealed my newest invention. If you haven't seen it yet, please click here.
I showed it to my brother in an effort to extract some huge amount of money in order to get production and distribution going. He felt it would be more saleable if a different kind of candy bar was used. Realizing how difficult it would be to please everyone I made a quick sketch of the:

ALL NEW EXERCISE MOTIVATION HAT

The center part of this device is a timer which rotates 90 degrees every minute.

Anyone who is seriously interested in becoming very wealthy by investing a large amount of money in this absolutely unsecured venture can contact me at any time of day. Serious callers only, please.

A REAL EXCERCISE MOTIVATOR

Every morning I find that hardest thing about doing my walking-exercise routine is getting started.
The second hardest is to keep going once I have started.
I think I may have an invention that will at least solve the second problem and maybe the first.

Here is the first (that I know of):

Exercise Motivation Hat.

Click here to see latest model

MONGOLIAN SHIRTS?

What or where is Mongolia?
I recently open a new shirt to find the label indicating it was
Made in Mongolia.
Now this was a regular American-style shirt.
I don’t want you to think I had purchased one of those things that Buddhist monks with the big heads wear.

This was a regular American shirt except it was made in Mongolia.
How do they do that?
Does the shirt company send out a rep to find some out-of-the-way place where someone might be interested in learning how to make American shirts?
Does he jump on a camel and gallop across the Gobi desert just looking for someplace that might be able to help?
Maybe he carries a contract from the Garment Worker’s Union and shows it to every Mongolian. When one says, “What’s that?” (In Mongolian, of course) then the rep gets on the cell phone and says, “Send the sewing machines.”

WHY DO GIRLS GET PRETTIER?

Why is it that, as girls grow older, they get more beautiful and when men grow older they get -- well, they get old?

Here are my three daughters about forty years ago.

Now that's pretty, but look at them today forty years later.

Aren't they beautiful? But the old goofus wearing the hat certainly is no improvement over the guy in the red sweater in the first picture.

Is that fair?

I suppose it really is. After all, would I rather spend my elder years looking at the beautiful women around me or be surrounded by pretty men?

ALL THINGS ARE CONNECTED

Sometimes I wonder if I am the only person who notices strange things out which are certainly of the ordinary. This came to my mind once again when I saw an article in our local paper written by Ben Feller for Associated Press. The headline was:

U.S. Slips in Producing High School Graduates

This seemed puzzling until I read another story with the headline:

Educators Against Condoms in Schools

Admittedly, the second story was from South Africa, but hasn’t anyone else seen a possible connection?

THE BEST SUNDAE I'VE EVER HAD

Awhile back we saw some glasses we thought might look good in our collection so we bought two.

As you can see, they are rather plain looking but we thought they might be good for a desert someday -- when I had lost enough weight to indulge in deserts.

One day, that day arrived and it was decided I could splurge with JUST ONE sundae.

The freezer happened to hold a container of Black Cherry/Vanilla ice cream and that was used to create the sundae shown above.



It had been so long that when my hand shook when it came time to taste it.

But I did pick it up

and went to the patio to enjoy it to the utmost.
It was absolutely the best sundae I have EVER tasted.
Ever.

HOW TO RUN FASTER

A few years back I was chatting with a couple of relatives who happen to be marathon runners. I noticed they were wearing socks I was unfamiliar with. I have since learned these are called "quarter socks" but at that time I couldn't recall ever having seen them before.
A couple of weeks later a pair arrived in the mail as a gift from the marathonic relative. (I don't think marathonic is a real word but it sounded so good I left it in.)
Almost immediately I noticed something about these socks that apparently had been overlooked. Each sock was clipped to the other one with a metal clip.

... Not Good For Running

I quickly modified this by removing the clip and found I was able to run much faster.


..... Good For Running

I wonder if that might be the reason some of the Olympic races had upsetting results. If they had only removed the clips.

Could be.

HIGHWAY CHICKENS

I read an interesting item in the local paper, The Monterey (CA) Herald last Monday, 8/30/04. In her well-written article, Virginia Hennessy was writing about the deplorable condition with respect to trash being dumped on the highways in this area. One of her comments amused me. I was surprised to learn that “it is illegal to dump anything on the highways besides water and chicken feathers." Chicken feathers? I found this law so humorous that searched the Internet to find the actual law that specifically allowed chicken feathers to be dumped on the highways. I was unsuccessful so I e-mailed Ms. Hennessy and inquired as to the source of her information. She replied that the CalTrans PIO, who I assume is the Public Information Officer, gave it to her over the phone. It made me grin even broader when she further explained, “By the way, they have to be feathers from a live chicken.”
It’s been a long time since I’ve seen one of those trucks, piled high with squawking chickens, but it must be that the chicken farmers in days past had powerful political connections.

HOW THE BRAIN WORKS

I think I have finally figured out how the brain stores information.

This came to me after watching a good movie that I am sure we saw about three months ago. In spite of that, the plot seemed new to me though there were a few times there was a glimmer of something familiar.

This is how I think this must work.

The brain has different places it stores different types of things. There probably is a very large section reserved for storing important things such as your home address and how to get there from the library even though you only went their once a long time ago. Or things like remembering to look carefully before backing the car out of the garage so you won’t run over the neighbor’s cat and need to hear the screeching and then have to clean up the mess that’s left.

Then there would need to be a smaller section reserved for remembering important things for a short time so that questions such as, “How much did the toilet paper cost?” Ordinarily these need to be recalled for a day or maybe two at the most. After that, who cares?

Then there is the section for storing things like movie plots, jokes, and the names of the people you met at your niece’s wedding. I see this as something like a file drawer, except it has no back. As things get stored in the front, other stuff gets moved toward the back. Eventually it falls out the back and is gone. In this drawer, eventually everything falls out the back and is gone forever and this is probably a good thing.

It also seems that, for some reason I do not yet understand, this particular drawer gets shorter as it gets older. There probably is some percentage formula involved. It might be something like for every ten years the length of the drawer is reduced by ten percent. This makes sense, because doing it by a percentage of what is left will mean that it never is completely gone, though over the years it gets to be pretty darned small.

Before it falls out the back of the drawer, the movie is called
Something’s Gotta Give starring Jack Nicholson and Dianne Keaton. It was produced in 2003.