Freddogg Off The Chain

I told my daughter, an avid Eagles fan, that I was not a fan of any team because I’m a professional sports writer. She said,”Three of your children are Eagles fans and so are you and you know it and I don’t care what you say.”

Today I was sitting in a parking lot in Philly at 1:30 p.m.for the Eagles versus Atlanta division on the line game. Somewhere nearby a radio station was doing Karioke and some young guy was singing the Barry Manilow hit,”You know I can’t smile without you I can’t win without you. I can’t laugh and I can’t sing I’m finding it hard to do anything.”

And then the chants started first by a few then joined in by the D.J. then and entire parking lot, “Homo! Homo! Homo!”

I realized why I love Philly culture because the love homos-not actual homos but calling people homos. A homo may be a person who boots a ground ball, misses a lay up or drops a sure touchdown pass.

When you hear Michael Boulton sing you realize that he really sucks while Manilow is just a Homo!

Keep rocking

freddogg

There he was slathering a Wawa 10 inch Classic with extra mayonaisse and getting paid for it. Meanwhile over at the “make a career fixing your own coffee” counter a white couple with sloped shoulders and hamhocked necks were looking perplexed and boflexed because there were two tops to consider, the pre-drilled black one and the hermetically sealed white one, and how in the hell can one size fit cups from 12 to 24 ounces?

Then the happy hoagie maker-I know the guy and he is a bit of the moron not that there’s anything wrong with that- he begins to laugh loudly like a mule just grabbed by the testicles. What caught my attention was that these so slow and barely aware of the enviroment around them “creepy coffee creamers “ who snapped their fatback necks 180 degrees towards Mr. Mule Skinner and had a look like “What kind of dumb mother fucker is that?”

I was watching them watching him and no doubt someone else was watching me because I was actually scratching myself with a homestyle doughnut I bought for the dog. So what if my hand was down the front of my pants-"life ain't a game horseshoes it's quates!" my gradmother said in a bit a fruedian acuity.

My New Years resolution is to not make fun of people but if they provide the script what am I supposed to do?”

Talking Freddogg

Grim Reaper Hockey mask. In the words of Jessica Simpson,"I don't know what it means but I want it."

The Atlantic Porcupine Puffer Fish kills quickly but it will take minutes before the gates of heaven open because everyone in receiving will be laughing what used to be thier asses all the way off because to be terminated by a porcupine puffer fish is just stupid funny in any dimension



"The grella put the baby porkypine in the inkabaiter." Philly boy science.

I am a journalist and columnist for the last 25 years. My weekly column 'People in Sports' has not missed a week in all that time and over the last four years it has run twice a week. But I don’t do 'Year in Review' pieces because I honestly can’t remember what happened and anyway it already happened and as my grandmother Rose told me, ”Those who study history are condemned to remember it.”

Most yearly reflections look back at who died and what fun is that? As John Prine wrote, ”I never will remember what I never did forget.” I once mentioned all the students of mine who had passed since I was already 30 and the number approached 60. I did it in an Easter column with the idea or rebirth and eteranal spiritual hang around and never forgetting because to remember is a good thing. I can pull those names out of my head year by year because I never did forget those people. However, I’ve been known to screw up a name about once a week so I did send a soul to the far side who was actually alive and well.

I found out from her mother who told me at a baseball game that she had gotten a few calls because Fredman had harvested her daughter to work in Saint Michael’s garden. I was fortunate that the mother was way cool and laughed saying in effect “everyone knows you and knows you are capable of getting the living and the dead mixed up on your lineup card.”

Happy New Year and Glad you are still here—or not!

Father Freddogg

Those who have followed this blog know that I lost a Temple teammate named John over the summer and only found out about it when another teammate named Rudy in the throes of a late night drunken depression wrote to me and said I was an asshole for continuing to send my funny ramblings to a dead friend. I wrote back and said “he was the asshole and that my dead friend could speak for himself.”

I saw James Brown live in 1965 when it mattered as part of the only audience that could rock the room like soul out of control into orbit before Apollo at the Uptown Theater. I was the only white person flanked by my colored friends Kenny 6’8” and Kirby 6”5”. We listened to 90 minutes or warm ups from the Orlons to the Impressions but the headliner was James.

I heard him introduced to a theater of silence. ‘And now ladies and Gentle it is star time.” Then more silence. Then a faint “Ow”! The Fabulous Flames cranked from the orchestra pit then stopped. James flew from stage left to center on one foot. Then stopped! Then the roof came off the building to the new hit with the new language “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag.”

James had his hands under his belt just watching his feet take him all over the stage. Everyone was on their feet or feets. I saw the invention of the cape routine to “Please Please don’t go—I love you so” and everyone understood.

Later Michael Jackson would bring pop to hip hop but Michael was no James Brown. believe that!

James played too hard and stayed too long and didn’t grow old gracefully because the man was flat out wild and may be the first departed “Soul” to glide through the gates of heaven on one foot.

God the Father and the Godfather of Soul are hanging out—believe that!

Freddogg

"It was Christmas in the prison and the food was real good we had turkey and pistols carved out of wood.” John Prine

A beautiful and unseasonably balmy Christmas morning in the greater northeast quadrant of the United State as dreary weather moves in which makes me happy because of low expectations to get out of my own way plus “ The sound of gunfire off in the distance I’m getting used to it now” as the Ducks Unlimited UnNaturalists drink ginger brandy, laugh heartily at nothing the way rednecks do, and thank baby Jesus for a surplus of geese.

I was working out on the floor at Gold’s Gym on Christmas Eve not noticing the music until finally I looked around and everyone was gay except for me and the song, ”Because I’m your lady and you are my man” and I wondered if a gay man could think that song was beautiful because personally I think whiny and longing laments suck, preferring a line from an Eddie Murphy song, ”Put an alligator in your butt.” And is it possible there was no gay apostle? Then why the biblical rule? No need for the rule then no rule. "Thou shall not lie day with animals except to keep warm" is also somewhere in the book.

“Darby you’re looking particularly fluffy this morning but wait—there’s a rule about such unnatural acts-let’s go wax some geese and you can swim out and bring back the dead ones. No rule against that!”

Merry Christmas and remember when old friends don’t recognize you on sight it’s never good news for you.

Peace and Harmony

Professor Freddogg

If I were god I would get us today! I left my satellite radio on the hard core rap station the last two days and I’d have to conclude that the shit I heard was funny to a point but mostly stupid and an insult to whomever it is supposed to represent and anyone who imitates the language pattern ain’t gettin no real job no time soon all up in here know what the fuck I’m talkin about?

Then the Duke rape case became the Duke penetrated with something not a penis in someplace not the Vagina case and if I heard one more mainstream media person or that Colonel Sanders looking defense lawyer say penis one more time I was going to call in and say, ”Don’t say penis because no one in the real world uses that word so just shut up.”

Then the Saturday Night Live uncensored skit of the white rappers giving their girlfriends a Christmas present and the rap titled “dick in a box” which is a lot funnier than penis in a box.

We have debased our culture but the better news is the sickest bastards are vacationing in Thailand and maybe the tsunami wasn’t a divine wakeup call but keeping talking about bitches and penetration but not with a penis and singing ‘Dick In A Box” songs and god is going to become a hardcore playa because degradation is one thing but lack of cleverness and comedy is just plain shameful.

Freddogg Outta The Box

I see Barack Obama as the Hootie of white democrats. I wonder what would happen if one on air cable news political pundit called Obama a rising rap star instead of rock star of the Democratic Party. Possible the Jay Z of the Cul De Sac.

Obama may be equal parts black and white but you can’t have it both ways in American public life. I saw it happen once in high school when this beautiful mixed race girl ran for Homecoming Queen. She seemed a sure bet but couldn’t carry the black vote in the final tally. In fact, I heard one black girl say ‘I ain’t voting for that pretty white bitch.”

So ultimately the loquacious and gracious not to mention erudite and half white Obama won’t be able to rally the support or Urban minorities who can’t relate to his rap and as much as I like John Edwards and believe he is honest every time he smiles I say, ”Fuck this guy! I ain’t voting for him.”

Obama Mania is a white thing and even though Madison Avenue is pushing more black images into the middle class ‘Every Kiss Begins with Kay’ that’s only because white people ain’t buying no stupid $69 dollar diamond.”

“Oh look, honey loser no booty boy. Did you go to Jared , Kay Jewelers or the flea market for this and pray tell what Ho wrapped this Bitch?”

Trust me, a Johnny Ringo reckoning is coming for Obama and it will be Black America without following the lead of Al “Not To” Sharpton who will ask him to ‘Represent” and when he responds “represent exactly what?” he will be burnt toast.

Fred-doggie-dogg

This is an actual before and after MRI. Imaging is everything.




You can't make up George. He is hilarious.




I saw her today. She was incongruent and not in harmony with her appointed Christmas task. She was the obese mailcarrier, rolling mail in a canvas bag, supported by four wheels, across a paved parking lot. How can you deliver tons of mail and still support tons of fat? She had a match up problem and an image problem but nontheless there she was crossing my path like a black cat except she wasn’t a cat or black but nonetheless I saw her as a symbol of bad luck and was reminded that we are all incongruous at tmes.

Did you ever tell someone the truth and have them look you up and down and give that subtle look like”Yea I’m sure you went to college on a basketball scholarship or “you used to run marathons and do triathlons faster than me? What happened to you? "

Personally I get those looks too when I tell someone,”No, actually I’m here to buy a Christmas tree just like you. You’ll have to dig it up yourself.”

I once had a mid thirties guy who fancied himself a basketball player say,”They tell me that Fredman was ‘the man” when it came to basketball and I said,”Fredman? The man? No kidding?”

I guess “fuck you, you no count, narrow shouldered, punk ass” was a bit of an over reaction but if there’s a game afoot I am always a player.

Imagine you didn’t know George Bush but you were sitting in a saloon drinking with him for three hours. Then you asked, “So you are retired what did you used to do?”
“Well I was President of the United States for eight years and before that I was Governor of Texas and before that General Manager of the Texas Rangers and before that I flew fighter planes and way back I graduated from Yale.”

At that moment I’d have pegged him as a standup comedian and a pretty good one.

Are you in harmony and have you reached your destiny or were you supposed to be something else and what would that be? This is an extrapolation of the "trapped in the wrong body" horseshit.

I'm outted! Freddogg

“Are you crazy Charlie?”
“Sure I’ll be crazy if you want me too.”
Are you the devil Charlie? “
“Sure I’ll be the devil if you want me to. I’ll be anything you want but if I get up there on that highway I’m going to start my new life by whuppin the dog shit out of you.”

San Quentin interview Geraldo and Charles Manson


I was interviewed on a late afternoon a.m.radio station some years back about the Lewes Polar Bears, a club I started that goes into the Ocean five times a winter and is part of a big fund-raiser for Delaware Special Olympics.

‘So you’re the Papa Bear, ’the host asked me.

“Sure I’ll be the Papa Bear if you want me to.”

Then the phone calls started coming in and I was instantly cold water authority and talked of endorphines and warm blood rushing to the trunk which is why your feet hurt and mind over matter”if you don’t mind it don’t matter” and the big woman who fell under and her top came down”attack of the frozen jello molds” and how I helped her up and she never said “top of the morning boobala” and I was just so witty and clever and such a loser boy for being on that lame station.

Then an authoritative voice obviously belonging to a local and lonely nut case came on the air.

“I have a question, not for the Papa Bear but for the Teacher Man.”

“Are you the Teacher Man,”asked the host?

“Sure I’ll be the Teacher Man if you want me to.”

Mr. Teacher Man, there have been only five pure democracies in the history of the world. Can you tell me what they were, afterall you do make a living being Teacher Man?

Incredibly I was instantly panicked like I had been outted as an imposter which I mostly am but aren’t we all? I had some ideas but didn’t like the thought that some clown educated at the Donut Connection was putting me on the back pedal.

“Yo man, this ain’t College Bowl,” I said. “Shouldn’t you be busy changing the oil on your 12 year old Craftsman underpowered riding mower? Don’t you have a weed whacker to restring, perhaps you can re-hang your yard implements on the workshop pegboard by progressive handle length?”

“But seriously,”I went on and the host was nervous,”have you read Firth’s ethnography on the Reindeer Chuckchee from the Kamchatka Peninsula of Eastern Russia?”

“Actually, no I haven’t”

“Because if you had you would know there were six pure democracies but only the Chuckchee—not to be confused with Chuckie Cheese- used a fat virgin to bite the testicles off a reindeer at the start of the winter solstice fetility ritual and the demoracy stayed pure because both the Virgin and the reindeer be liken it."

Pagans always had the best rituals.

‘Sure I’ll be the reindeer if you want me to.”

Peace Professor Freddogg

The best time to watch a double overtime NBA regular season game is at 3:30 a.m.on the couch while fading in and out because of insomnia.
Throw in the mumbled voice of Bill Walton who once followed the Grateful Dead around the country while helping to keep Patty Hurst underground—a good place for that bitch—and you are sure to be put back into active nap phase.
Walton’s voice woke me up when I heard him say,”Oh my, we are going to yet another overtime, only because, “Kwame Blew The Bunny.”
“Kwame blew the bunny” was a sentence I had never heard in my entire life. Just four words I couldn’t get out of my head,”Kwame Blew The Bunny.”
I began to talk to the puppy Darby Doodle. “Why Kwame gotta be blowing the bunny Darby? Why can’t he just leave the bunny alone?

Later that afternoon I was trying to nap again because I am just always so naturally hyped and alert but I can’t get no sleep then the color man on a college basketball broadcast said.
The guy in the back of the zone needs to be more disciplined and stay home he shouldn’t “scamper like a hamster” everytime the ball changes direction.

Another four-word sentence was etched into my consciousness “scamper like a hamster.” Hey Darby Doodle, why the man gotta ‘scamper like a hamster?”

I need to begin my tee shirt business. Don’t tell me your wouldn’t wear a “Kwame Blew The Bunny T –extra for art work-or ‘Scamper like a Hamster. “

The Elephant in the Middle of Your World
Freddogg

I spoke briefly to the sewers of the seeds of education yesterday and I quickly understood why the reapers of the rewards of imparted knowledge are at best selectively attentive and at worst comatose by 8:10 in the morning and are always on two hour fog delay.

Teachers don’t like to listen to anyone about anything mostly because they spend their days talking to an audience that is not remotely interested in what they are saying. I used to say that being a high school teacher is like being a beach lifeguard with no ocean or attending a Grateful Dead concert with no instruments. Teachers are the only professional class I know that will continue to talk, explain and give examples to individuals who are stoned, asleep or preoccupied with not being occupied with any active thought processes. I used to interject a sentence like “Forget Iraq! Let’s talk about your mothers for awhile.” It would take about seven seconds but finally someone, usually a girl, would say, ”My mother’s a slut and I don’t care if you talk about her.”

I presented the new high school principal with the fourth hubcap that will fit perfectly on the bare wheel of his used black Corolla he showed up with back in September replacing an outgoing black principal who drove a White Jaguar. In a room of 60 only about five got the joke which shows you how acutely and astutely perceptive the class of teachers rolls through the halls.

Speaking of rolling, back in 1977 I was on a yellow school bus leaving Widener University late at night after a five hour invitational coed track extravaganza. We were climbing a hill through a narrow Chester Street flanked by row houses on the way to I 95.
This short, overweight, but at least weak, white shot putter said, ”Hey Coach Fredman. “I think this is the street my grandmother lives on?”

“Really, what’s her name?”

“Georgia Gillettie,”she said.

“You are kidding me? Old Double G is your Triple G Grand mom? That’s incredible! When did she get out of jail?”

“Last year,” the girl said angrily. ‘But she never gave dirty magazines to those little kids. They were lying and everyone knows it! And another thing…”

“Stop! In the name of who cares, ”I said. “I never heard of your Grandmother. Why in the world would I have ever heard of Georgia Gillittie of Chester?”

“Cause she seems to be the kind of person you might know,”the girl said in all honesty if not accuracy.

Two hours later at 2 a.m.in the morning the bus pulled off the side of the highway next to the road leading into a community called Slaughter Neck. The interior lights went on.

“O.K. all you Neckers wake up and grab your stuff, ”I said.

Shot put girl shouted back, ”White people live here too!”

“I said Neckers girl! The black athletes grabbed their stuff, shook their heads in stupid white people disbelief, but made no move towards the front of the bus.

“And what are we waiting for, ”I asked.

“Coach you know that no black people are getting off this bus at 2 a.m.and walking down that dark road.”

“Don’t worry, a person would have to be crazy to be out in the dark at this hour, ”I joked. But they weren’t afraid of people but rather the dogs of the night that prowled and howled in fear that Quinton the Quixotic Psychotic dog driller was up to his old tricks and I don’t mean fetch.

Here’s Howling at you kid.

Freddogg

I was calf raising the stack at Gold’s Gym this morning when a nearby, way too fat guy said, ”Don’t you wish the rest of our body's looked as good as our calves” and I realized that this non committed to self improvement client of a personal trainer was making a way too personal identification with my ass and I didn’t like it.

I did notice later that all the lights in the multipurpose windowless workout room were off and body pumped women—the SUV driving morning mommies of the Western World- were in there lying on their backs contemplating themselves in a relaxation warm down . It had to be Yoga and I thought “Creepy Yoga” a new stretching regimen after my curls and calves routine.

Just Grandpa, in the middle of the floor, surrounded by warm blooded mommy mammalians, still active in the breeding population of the human race while I circled the rim digging in the dirt looking for my misplaced food cache.

I don’t trust men who hang around groups of women because I respect women, I like them, but I ain’t going to train them or coach them or mentor them or teach health in an all girls school. I’m a real guy and I know there are things I shouldn’t be doing.

Once I was in a class of seniors and a tennis girl asked, ”You know about sports and athletic injuries, right Fredman?”

“Yea, right Goldie.”

The she raised her right leg up over her head like it was perfectly normal and asked, “Could you feel my hamstring and tell me if it’s a cramp or if you think I pulled something.”

Needless to say every teenaged boy in the room said, ”I’m going to be pulling something here in a minute.”

I told her to put her stupid leg down in a social studies class and if she had anymore questions she should raise her hand.

Another time a young girl wearing a European running outfit with barrel top—never trust a man who know what a barrel top is-was kneeling on the carpet doing behind the head pull downs on the universal machine.

Fredman, can you come in and over here and hold me down while I’m doing these?”

“And who is going to hold me down, ”I joked, and she asked “huh” and I said “what” and she said “You can think what you want Fred BUT, the next time you see me coming, you better run”
“I said that could be easily done, just find me down Highway 61.

Chillin with Dylan Tangled Up In Pabst Blue

FReddogg

My problem with Christmas presents goes back to when I was 14 years old and just learning how to curse for real. I have always been open to assimilate new words into my vocabulary but I was slow to understand that not all words are acceptable in all situations although they may be the best words for the moment.

The cardboard box from Seattle arrived the week before Christmas like it did every year of my life. It was dropped on the living room floor and ripped open from the top and out came the newspaper, then the Holly, and I always thought Holly was from Seattle, only because I never saw any in Philadelphia.

Mrs. Greer, who met my parents when my father was in the army and stationed in Seattle, always sent the package and presents for the children.

My father was in a wheel chair, totally disabled by MS, and getting worse by the day, but nevermind all that, what was in that box for me?

Here’s yours, my big brother Tom said, throwing something oddly shaped inside a box at my head. I opened it and out came a plastic player ukulele and when I turned the handle it played, ”Oh Suzannah.”

I cranked it and cranked it and finally blurted out,”A fucking ukulele! Just what I always wanted, a fucking ukulele! Am I the only one here with a fucking ukulele?”

My mother, smiling a vacant Christmas smile, while her one true love of loves Tommy, sat terminal in a wheelchair, surrounded by her three children, swooped across the room, ripped the ukulele from my grip in the middle of “don’t you cry for me” and whacked me over the head with the flat part, as the ukelele broke in half and she was left holding the shaft.

“Easy come, easy go, ”she said. “David no longer has the only fucking ukulele in the entire fucking town.”

My father laughed, like a lions roar. My siblings smirked because I was an idiot.

Men spend their lives not looking for Christmas presents because in America if there is something a man wants he already has it and if I ever find a player ukulele that plays Oh Suzannah I will keep it next to the tree ready to crown the first person who cracks wise,”Oh look what I got from Fredman, a coupon from an extra cheese pizza. Fucking way cool!”

Yours in dueling banjos

Pappa Fredman

What do you call a retired school teacher with insomnia? Not worried about a damned thing, that’s what.
I have been up and down all night but mostly up thanks to an older lab in gastric annoyance and a psycho Siamese that wanted to play cat and mouse with me in the dark for 20 minutes before I finally caught him and launched his boney ass towards the empty bird feeder swinging in 20 degree gale force winds blowing from the north
Throw on top of that pile Darby Doodle the four month old gay circus puppy who actually talks in love muffin growls which mean “Don’t walk past here without rubbing my belly bitch” and you have the lead character in an all creatures great and small all night episode.
I was offered at chance to do a talk radio show last year but they wanted me to do the 3 to 8 p.m.shift, but what losers listen to talk radio during those hours? I wanted to be the midnight man who talks to fisherman and coke heads, anxiety ridden non sleepers and late night lovers of themselves. “Listen to them, creatures of the night,” said Bella Lagosi in empathetic delight.
And so I may drive off to WaWa or the all night dinner where I can check out other creatures of the night and grab new material.
And what do you call a mildly attractive woman alone in an all night dinner at 3 a.m.? I’d call her a police decoy and let in go at that. Here in Sussex County you can find really giant and fat woman alone in the dead of night. I call them magnum decoys, which I discovered actually exist, because I have a friend who owns one. A giant Canadian honker the size of a Volkswagen beetle-someone had to conceptualize then make it and then sell it- which then gets set adrift to entice an entire “what the flock” of migratory geese stoned on hallucinogenic corn to swoop down for a closer look before getting shredded by some Ducks Unlimited fuck head with an ecological conscious who never heard of Darwin who found love on a deadend street but lost in on a lonely highway to hell.
I’m done just ran out of coffee.

Nighty Night Night

Freddoodle

I read a Science Fiction short story 30 years ago based on the premise that aliens had infiltrated the genetic coding of the human brain accelerating every human’s I.Q by a power of 20. This resulted in a new language based on short spurts, stops and starts and sudden disinterest in the expressed thoughts of others, because everyone knew what everyone else was going to say before they said it. Here in the new millennium it’s called A.D.D. but all the “attention getting” medication in the world can’t make you hang around for the anticipated completion of a thought or joke from a person that is totally predictable in delivery, like a retired Dominoes guy on your front porch, who does too good a job to be taken serious, while wearing a vest and funny hat.

Back in 1976 I was coordinating a work study program for special education students who went out for a few hours and then at the end of the day we did the old round table “how was your day and what did you learn on the job” bullshit discussion?

On this particular day James had been fired from his rewarding placement: cleaning up a hoagie shop from 8 a.m.to 10 a.m.

James was called ‘Red’ by his friends because that was his skin color and that of his dad and his 11 brothers and sisters. They were the Red family and if you asked a Red sister, ”Is your brother Red in school,” she would answer, ”Which Red you talking about because we’re all Red.”

Red was fired for doing his job—that Red Boy could clean his ass off—then curling up and going to sleep while waiting for me to pick him up. The owner of the Sub Shop awoke from his hung over alcoholic haze early and came to the shop to find James curled up and asleep on a maroon ‘pleather’ sofa .The conflicting colors gave bald boy a redneck headache and he snapped at James and fired him.

Later that afternoon we went roundtable,10 kids and two teachers, myself and a 60 year old soon to be retired guy named Dick, who was an absolute saint and loved all those kids.

I started by asking Charles why he didn’t show up for his job of picking up trash around the school grounds. “Trash is not my bag, ”he said.

Dick looked at Chuckyin a moment of ministry weakness and asked “Chucky, when is the last time you cried?”

Chucky didn’t flinch, ”I don’t know man? When’s the last time you got off?”

I went into my boring lesson about how even if the job is done and done well if there is time left on the clock you have to get busy looking busy and they all agreed that was really stupid especially if you could get some rest to get busy later when it actually meant something.

I knew they were right and that I was too white but I pressed on and then they all looked at me while pointing at Dick whose head had dropped because he was sleeping but at least he was also wheezing.

Each kid spun silently out of their chair and found a piece of carpet on which to curl up and laugh alone and silently. They loved Dick and didn’t want to disrespect him.

I got them back into their seats, Dick nodded back into real time focus, looking confused, as steady John asked me, ”Fredman, do you know that dude lives back around Coolspring named Bungaloo? And do you know his brother, well it used to be his brother but now it’s his sister?”

“Really John? Which one am I more likely to know, the brother or the sister?”

‘Well you see the brother was always a little funny—you know—a punk—so he went to New York and got an operation and changed his name to Kitty Carlisle.”

“Is that the truth John, ”I asked?

“I am here ‘To Tell The Truth”, John said, and Red added “he sure enough is.”

I miss my world of unanticipated behaviors and unforeseen responses.

Professor Freddogg

He could have been an Olympian and gotten his picture on a Cornflakes box.


Another great track team back in the early 1980’s and we were on our way to 30 straight wins. We were midseason sitting at 6 and 0 when some of my sprinters came to me and said we had to get Kevin out for the team, that he was shot from a gun bullet fast but said he didn’t feel like running.

I talked to this young kid who had been less than successful academically and had a very unsual shape to his head with a boney ridge running down the top center making him look a bit like a rooster but amazingly he had escaped nicknaming and people just called him Kevin.

I tricked Kevin into running one 100-meter race by getting him out of class and offering a 10-dollar bill to the winner. My fastest sprinters were there, more intersted in 10 dollars than any recruiting trick to snare Kevin.

I waved the 10 dollars before five experienced sprinters who took to their blocks while Kevin stood straight up in lane three. I fired the gun and it was over. Kevin was out and gone so quickly and decisively that my good guys started to shut down at 60 meters. The race was untimed but Kevin was sub 11 and potentially State champion quality.

He was an instant legend and star around school, which was amazing for a kid who had experienced no success and had low self-esteem because of that rooster head thing going on.

I found Kevin the next day and was ready to give him a uniform. Ironically he said ”Not so fast. I ain’t running no track because I know what yaw are trying to do.”

“And what are we trying to do Kevin,” I asked him?

“You guys haven’t lost a meet in three years so you get me to come out so if you do lose you can blame it on me,”Kevin said, and there was no talking him out of that logic, so the other sprinters started saying ‘didn’t nobody need his Foghorn Leghorn Self anyways” and I felt bad but Kevin didn’t care because he had my 10 dollars for less than 11 seconds work and they could call call him Ronald Reagan he didn’t care.

Freddogg

His name was Dexter, he was Afro American when they were still black, he virtually never spoke, and all his friends just called him “Shock Waves.”
This 1983 movie about a sunken German Submarine whose zombie crew walked out of the Atlantic wearing big assed sunglasses was shown repeatedly on the early days of the Movie Channel which you could get illegally by wedging a butter knife behind your channel changer and getting the dial to stop between channels 10 and 11.
Dexter wore the big dark glasses all the time earning his nickname. Dexter spent all day in Special Education classes where teachers paid 50 grand a year to remediate him gave him grades like 23 for English and 17 for Math.
But Dexter wasn’t stupid, everyone else was. I knew the glasses were symbols of his hiding and I also knew he was the fastest person in the school. I had him “Indvudualized Educationally Planned” past the eligibility Nazis claiming it was part of his socialization. Dexter loved me I could tell by the way he looked at me through the glasses.
The first day of practice I gave Dexter and the sprinters a workout to be conducted by Coach Tom Hickman who had survived five combat campaigns in World War Two had won the Silver Star and had actually killed Germans. But Shock Waves was the ultimate challenge for this great man other teachers just called Reverend because of his ministry in helping kids especially black kids.
I warned Hickman that Dexter wasn’t about workouts and not to take it personally. The workout consisted of two sets of three times 200 meters walking the 200 meter interval.
Dexter ran the first 200 and blew everyone away. “That’s it Dexter, way to go Dexter, ”Hickman said.
The next one Dexter ran half and walked the other half. “Confound you Dexter, c’mon Dexter, you can do it Dexter.”
The next time Dexter walked the entire 200 meters. “Confound you Dexter, c’mon Dexter, you can do it.”
Then Dexter busted another, then walked another, then refused to walk or run the last one and all the while it was “way to go Dexter, confound you Dexter, you can do it Dexter “ from Hickman.
Finally, the no talking Dexter turned to his teammates and spoke, ”I know one damned thing! I gotta change my freaking name!”

Peace Coach Freddogg

Note: Actually Dexter's first sentence at practice contained stronger language but this is American where first amendment priviledges are best used carefully and selectively.