Freddogg Off The Chain

Grouchy old men And I was one of them. I’m not grouchy but not middle aged either because I have a son approaching the middle which means I am on the rim of old.
We had gathered for noontime bratwurst inside an old fish house along a tidal canal with floating docks all owned by a friend of 85 who had an air tank hooked to a diesel horn and he blew it repeatedly when happy families heading to the bay to boat threw up a bit of the bullshit wake.
I thought it was a joke until I realized everyone was bitching and I thought, “Life has been kind to use all but blessed are the chronic complainers for they shall inherit the fish house.”
One friend said he never went out on the main highway anymore because there was too much traffic and they all agreed then two other guys started talking about restaurants in Key West and I shouted “Not more rich white guys who go to stupid Key West talk! Talk about here and now don’t drift away to Margaretville and anyway Jimmy Buffet is a parrot headed sell out and so are his queer “lawyers in love” fan base. Can I get a witness?”
Then a young conch catcher docked his large wooden boat and was invited in for a bratwurst. His bulldog boat dog came along inside and tried to greet everyone but was hit which much criticism for being undisciplined and I said, ”He is a happy bull doggy living the high life and worse than a happy bulldog in your lap is an unhappy one.”
And then this hard looking woman, raw hide skin hanging all out of her clothes, on a lunch break for “soda blasting” sat down across from me and I asked, ”And what do you do here?”
“ I’m an airplane mechanic, ”she said and I responded “must be slow I’ve never seen an airplane in here” and she came back at me “I said outboard mechanic” and I asked her if she heard any good strokes lately and if she went away to boarding school to study” then recently back from the dead man began to laugh and everyone ask him why and he said, “I wouldn’t mind if the rest of you never spoke again but Fredman just makes me laugh.”
Outboard woman was joined by outboard man and they began to go off endlessly talking about how stupid each and every one of their customers were and I was befuddled that under the blue collar lurked such nastiness and disrespect for the people who paid them and needed their help.
And then talk turned to “every Mexican you see working is really a Guatemalan” because Mexicans are lazy and don’t like working.”
Finally, I asked about a mutual friend, a retired teacher from Pennsylvania, with a soft voice and great sense of humor, and I was told he was just pretty much drinking to excess then beating up his wife although occasionally a bystander just knocked him out because of his grating and obnoxious voice.
Finally after too much fun I was walking to my truck. A young man approached and said, ”Good afternoon.”
The older man next to me said, ”Don’t you wish you could walk like that. He just bounced along and right past us. Ah, sweet youth! “
I went home mildly disappointed that an afternoon with such a promise of happiness transitioned into a encounter group where feeling good had to come at the expense of those not present.

Freddogg

Teddy Forest had taken one too many nun beat downs over eight grades so when Sister Saint Frustration of the order of the Immaculate Heartless swooped down aisle three for the purpose of implanting permanent hand prints on Teddy’s face, the boy who suffered from extreme erectile dysfunction, having previously been ordered to keep his hands on his desk or have his pockets sewn shut, sprung up and bolted towards the gym.
“Hey Habit”! I screamed as Nun on the Run gave instant hot pursuit before the trail went cold.
I needed to see the resolution of this unlikely chase because even at 13, I knew my purpose on the planet was to bear witness to the follies and foibles of full speed women dressed as predatory penguins.
I’m not a huge fan of slapstick comedy but when it happens in reality where it ain’t supposed to be the least bit funny, it can be deadly disabling.
Teddy ran into the gym onto a newly polished,buffed and glaringly clean linoleum floor and ran the direct hypotenuse line to the exit door along the opposite wall. He forearm shivered the metal handle but the door was on lock and Teddy crumbled like a Corvair head on into an out of commission World War Two Army Tank.
I reserved laughter for the resolution and here came sister, big breasts flopping under a white cardboard bib, face all red and flushed with every intention to beat Teddy’s behind until he begged for mercy from the Lord who she claimed was her husband.
Sister, who was wearing patent leather black nun shoes, was cranking for Christ, at full speed but instead of employing the instinctual hypotenuse direct line to prey route, she got a bit off line, then overcorrected with an abrupt obtuse angle and her feet went out from under her.
No one with any perceptual abilities and sense of normalcy can stay together when confronted with the site of a rolling nun into a row of folding chairs.
I would give anything to laugh that hard just one more time in my life. It was worth the resulting assault as a virtual nun riot broke out inside the Our Lady of Grace gym.
“I hope you did something special to deserve those handprints on your face and haven’t taken to smacking yourself in the head,”my grandmother said, as I walked into the kitchen after school.
I told her the story and she began smacking herself in the face then ordered me to stop! Write a book "The Nun Also Rises" she laughed. 'You gotta do it! Promise me you'll do it!"

Freddpuppy

I recently received a group media email release inviting me to a golf course to do a story on a man who on his 60th birthday was going to play 60 holes of golf just like his father did when he turned 60.
I thought to myself,”Play golf until all the displaced by golf course cows come home I don’t really care. Why is this personal goal worthy of public attention?”
And so we are smack dab into the personal goals of endurance requiring much disposable time pay attention to me period and throw a disease fund raiser on top of that and its hard to avoid not only paying attention but writing a check as well.
I don’t know where the empathy for fellow man begins and the pay attention to the spoiled child in all of us begins. The new phenomena is for individuals to raise money in their hometown for a competition in a place thousands of miles away to raise money for some human pestilence that has affected us all.
Let’s talk abut me for awhile! I have done marathons, half marathons, triathlons, weight lifting competitions, weight loss competitions, open water long distance open swims, hundreds of polar bear jumps and I’m currently contemplating crossing the country in a Volkswagen beetle convertible with a plastic flower on the aerial just to record how many times my fellow countrymen yell out to me, ”Hey Faggot!”
I also thought of pulling over in a brand new Toyota Land Cruiser in the heart of a nearby ghetto-they are all over the place-and taking a nap at 3 a.m. just to see how long before someone tries to kill me.
Anyone can run, hike and bike, I’m talking about the real challenge of pushing up against class and culture conflicts, real people who don’t much care about pledge forms and training logs.
I want to Scooter up in front of a North Philly liquor store-often a gathering place for non goal directed unemployables- and shout,” How come ain’t nobody got no job all up in here?”
And then the chase to the I 95 on ramp-man versus machine- all for the cause of trauma research.

Dr. Freddogg

Ten O’clock on an early May morning 1986 inside my College Prep Problems of Democracy class at Cape Henlopen High School and there I was discussing gender equity issues as they related to Title 1X and sports.
I had always been an advocate for women’s rights and, in fact, had thrown away an assistant’s position on my track staff so George Pepper the girls coach could make the same salary dubbing myself “overpaid at any price.”
And I remember limitations in the distance events were different for women as administrative experts perceived a mile/two mile double as too strenuous for young and fit women runners paying no attention to fat male shot putters on punishment runs in the two mile for failure to break 30 feet.
I would argue the unpopular position that field hockey and women’s lacrosse do more to inhibit the athletic talent of young women with their abundance of safety rules and game stoppages than any gender inequities perpetrated and promulgated by men’s sports programs.
In fact, I will argue any stupid position I so choose, because my job is to foster discussion and thought and if that means “students come loose” once in awhile and have their securities shaken then so be it. I let them know I’m not married to any position, popular or otherwise, and it’s not that I vacillate, I’m just willing to have my mind changed by strong, well thought out and backed by documentation logical arguments.
And so I’m rolling and ranting and story telling in my usual style and I make the statemen: “See Marty Shue sitting there? She is one of the best distance runners in the state. She’s a Conference champion in cross country and second place finisher in the State Cross Country Meet. She is on her way to the Naval Academy where she plans to run the 1500-she would later be a college all American-but if she were a guy she would simply fall back to average.”
I knew Marty well and expected her to smile and go along with the joke but she wasn’t laughing being way too busy instantly and relentlessly hating me.
"In fact, I could pull a boy from this class who has never run a race, train him for two weeks and he would kick your butt Marty.” I panned the room then said, ”that boy is you Peters!”
John Peters a tall and blond surfer boy with no body fat did not hesitate to answer back. “F You Fredman!”
“Maybe so Johnny Boy but if you don’t do what I ask then your average of 47 will remain 47 so cancel the graduation parties at least your own.”
It was argued that I couldn’t do that, and of course I wouldn’t do that, but Peters grew uneasy correctly perceiving in me a bit of the crazy man.
My handlers took Peters to the boardwalk after school with instructions to get him up and back no matter how many times he stopped-a distance of two miles-and to report back in class as to his physical condition.
“It’s ridiculous, ”Fredman. “Once he stopped to throw up and he stopped again for a cigarette. And he just kept saying, ’F Fredman!”
Cut to show time period two on a Wednesday morning. Marty went straight to the locker room while the rest of the class escorted Peters and his high top chuck Taylor’s and surfer shorts to the track. The word had spread and the entire school was filing into the stadium, the biggest crowd outside of a bomb scare ever witnessed. Kids didn’t care about passes or threats of suspensions because this was a happening, a rare chance to have a bit of fun in school.
Peters warmed up by sitting on the grass and calling me names. Marty made a dramatic appearance on the track with pig tails and European running uniform, she looked young and fit and beautiful. The crowd cheered. Marty was focused like I’d never seen her before. Runners don’t draw this kind of attention and I thought it was a good thing to be recognized, for all students to be able to watch this gifted athlete bury Surfer Boy Johnnie, who I liked beyond words, no matter how many names he called me, after all, I started it.
“Listen John, it’s time for Fredman’s coaching pointers on how to win this race. Marty will go out the first half lap before settling into a pace she can handle for eight laps. Don’t go with her just hang back but no further than this.” I walked 8 meters away. “If you’re this close after four then cut the deficit in half on each succeeding lap. “If you’re on her shoulder on the bell lap just stay there until the final long straightaway then kick for home. Got it?”
“F you Fredman!”
The race started, Marty took off and Peters loped behind. I saw it instantly! Peters was a natural runner, a fluid glider with high back kick, extremely athletic and coordinated and I realized “I missed one” as this talent was soon to graduate.
The stands were filled with students chanting “Peters! Peters! And as he passed the lap one line he reached out and made a overhand double gesture like he was honking a pair of Model T air horns. “Peters! Peters!”
Cruising by on lap 2 his gestures went underhanded. I screamed at John and threatened to wrestle him off the track.
Marty was circling running sub six pace and Peters just stayed there looking totally comfortable.
Bell lap and down the backstretch they ran and I began to feel weird like no matter who won this race I would emerge a loser. I loved Marty and as boys coach had watched every race of her track career. And I was her teacher and a friend but what had I gotten us all into?
Coming off the turn Marty downshifted to kick mode. Peters had her set up. He just had all the slow twitch and fast twitch muscles, you could tell.
“Peters! Peters!” The crowd was hysterical!
And then Peters took the biggest dive since Sonny Liston in the second Clay fight. John hurled himself into the infield and rolled onto his back, limbs up in the air like a dog playing dead.
I walked over and stared down at him. “In the end when push came to shove through eight laps of self discovery you dialed in your talent but you are just too much the nice guy, you are the quintessential gentleman John, for to have beaten Marty in front of the school would have be wrong and just plain rude.”
“What the hell are you talking about Fredman! She broke my heart and I couldn’t run another step. Now will you please stop talking about my 47?”

Marty I’m happy to say is still my friend and opening up a running store in Annapolis. She is married with children.
I saw Peters last year getting out of a white work van down at the boardwalk. It was late fall and getting dark and the ocean was kicking. Peters, wearing a wet suit was rock hard muscle guy underneath. He grabbed a surfboard and without hesitation headed into the scary surf alone but at least it was dark with no moon.

Lawn tractors, edgers, hedge trimmers, mulch and compost, aeration and grub control. Nothing gets between a real man and his lawn except the handle of his spinner spreader.
Relentless lawn care and concern is a disease that appears to be productive but it’s an obsession indulged at the expense of actual human interaction.
Most of us with a piece of the grass don’t go ape shit over shaping and cutting it but we do what is necessary because neighbors and small animals just look better on green carpet rather than shrouded by brown crab grass.
But what about those nasty yet normal people, those personally groomed and perhaps with a skilled job, but the bitches just won’t cut the grass. I mean is it depression or a sign of being well adjusted?
I pass a house and lawn of this body building Portuguese young guy with dark black hair in a pony tail and I mean the boy is ripped and he restores high end cars that are totaled and does beautiful work but he lets his grass grow to 4 feet and last summer he had this 70 year old skinny black guy out there cutting it with a push mower made from parts he scabbed together and I thought, ”What is that all about”” because righteous black man didn’t get that old doing chicken shit jobs for common ass Portuguese insurance scammers so what is up because somebody is getting over if not run over like a box of kittens in the high grass?
“Things that are incongruous are never what they appear to be,”my grandmother Rose said. “There is always a pattern to overt social madness. Flying in the face of a cultural norm is revealing of something very sinister just below the surface.”
I instinctively know that if I asked this Portuguese man of war when the skinny old black guy was planning to cut the grass that he would commence to kill me with a frame straighter.
Here’s U Tubing You KId

Lawn Dogger-Blogger

Sounds like a leading man in a video from the Judge Clarance Thomas collection

Super skinny people can go hump back skeletal on you like they’re hanging from your front door and they will stay there until you say something like, ”Have you lost weight fat ass? The reason I’m asking is you look like a mother humping hunger striker on day 42. But you do look hydrated.”
Food is fun and ritualistic and the better it taste the more you need to eat lots of it. Otherwise it would be natures joke like the stuff that tastes the best is the worst to eat. What evolutionary sense does that make?
Power up to your caloric intake and let the double recessives of your body type pop out for all to see. Trust me the boomer generation currently moving out of tanning booths and into retirement communities is the first to have a plastic BMI Xrated caliber inside their tote bag right next to the performance enhancement medication.
‘What is this Waldo and never and I mean never ask me to pinch your 35 percent Triceps fat again and then say ’while your about measuring things’ because I’m not about measuring anything that can’t be made into a cake.”
Irish breakfast is the key just down it all from cheese omelet to sausage, toast and butter and ham and juice and hash brown potatoes then go out and do something besides hanging around waiting to eat again.
Healthy eating and a well balanced diet are about the most boring thing you can do with the rest of your life. You know those people under a lifetime of restraint and always in control? The common denominator is they are never funny and rarely interesting I just want to force feed them deviled eggs like pushing a heartworm pill down the gullet of a reluctant retriever. Now here comes the cookie dough Abra Cadaver!
I know you’re thinking this rant is a “thin” disguise for self loathing but with Memorial Day and graduation parties and June weddings coming around on my calendar I say, ”Get that skinny no butt guy off a grill duty and don’t ever let that recovering alcoholic serve me another drink”.
What are you trying to tell me because I ain’t listening.
Friedrich Nagel rhymes with Bagel and he was a paradoxical philosopher which is exactly my point and if you think animal fat doesn’t feed starved brain cells then you are probably skinny and stupid too.
"I will lick the bowl before I roll." Grand Mom Rose

Friedrich Von Freddogg

Flint and Falwell “inextricably intertwined” as writers of Soap drama would like to say but they can’t because the viewers are too stupid to comprehend and are probably naked as well.
The People versus Larry Flint and Hustler Magazine –what ever happened to New Jack Hustler-sued by the Reverend Jerry who among other things was a Tinkie Winkie Conspiracy Theorist-my grandson is gay and that purple telletubby showed the way.

Hustler had an inside glossy page which depicted a caricature of Falwell with a West Virginia backyard as his background. The title said something like Falwell: ”I had my first sexual experience with my mother in a West Virginia Outhouse when I was 12 years old.”

The suit went to the Supreme Court which ruled in favor of the magazine and its First Amendment right to lampoon public figures no matter how distasteful the satire or the subject. Sandra Day O’Conner after having numerous issues of the magazine wrestled from her death grip said,” Any dumb ass who goes to Hustler Magazine for factual information does not deserve any legal protections beyond “shot on sight.”
The decision clarified that public figures cannot recover damages for "intentional infliction of emotional distress" based on parodies.
Satirist and humorists enjoy broad protections under the law which doesn’t mean they can’t be fired like Imus just not successfully sued or criminally prosecuted.

A former college roommate of mine was Athletic Director of Falwell’s Liberty University for just seven months last year and resigned due to telletubical differences with the Reverend who kept a Tinkie Winkie doll on his office desk.


Triangle man, triangle man
Triangle man hates person man
They have a fight, triangle wins
Triangle man

Freddogg

I found out why commentaries about American Idol always find their way onto legitimate newscasts because I am always screaming back at the television “Why are we talking about this crap” and to borrow a line from Marty Feldman as Igor in Young Frankenstein “I don’t know I thought you wanted to.”
Web hits are monitored then legitimate news outlets succumb to the basest of base level interests and give American morons what they don’t even know they want but what they don’t want is anything extending beyond three paragraphs that involves compound and complex sentence structure because we have become a nation of verbal idiots and if you don’t believe me check out the winner of the last two presidential elections.
A recent as yesterday published study found that 30 years of required college prep core subjects taught at the high school level reveled that only 25 percent of those students who take the dumb assed ACT test for college demonstrate a level of proficiency equal to C work in remedial classes.
Princeton testing types are appalled and promised to stick their heads back up their own butts for another 30 years while secondary educators across America have exclaimed,”Don’t try blaming that shit on us. That’s what happens when students wear hats and smuggle pop tarts into classrooms.”
In fact, it is a collective cultural effort to dumb down the populace, so they won’t notice that five percent of the non talented Americans have most of the money.
Ever try having an in depth conversation-a little intellectual jousting- with a high school honors student? Don’t because they are project and performance driven seeking the gold star at the end of the rainbow bumper sticker, synthesizing information and actually learning from another person is just not what they do.
I volunteered to teach a non credit course to wallowing and languishing in IR-Independent Research- students-the old study hall minus the study part-titled “Testing Your Beliefs” where smart kids would have to logically defend what they actually believed to be true, the problem is that most of them respond to global issues with a shrug of the shoulders, preferring to argue their rights to park near school when construction is in progress.
Forget “American Idol” bring the “Gong Show” back to the high school classroom.

Professor Freddogg way off the chain snapping at butterflies and barking into thin air.Somebody please fill my water bowl!

Everyone has a story about a person in their lives who informed them of their limitations. In many cases it was a school guidance counselor who said something like “College? How about considering a career in Cosmetology?”
I think almost all people react badly to a statement such as “Stay away from commenting on this subject because you have ventured out of your league.” As if there is a league where you are forbidden to venture with your commentary. Grandmamma Rose always said, “Anything on the entire planet comprehendible by one is comprehendible by all. We are all pretty much stupid the same but only the truly smart ones comprehend that reality while the others hide behind their bullshit hamlets of expertise.”
And so when I recently received a letter from Congressman Castle’s Office suggesting I stay out of politics because I wasn’t any good at it I went and got a ladder then hit the roof. Bad qualities oozed through my cool protective outer shell and I came all the way hot. I found myself about ready to -dial a diatribe- “Do you know who I am” listing a sorry litany of my academic and literary accomplishments.
Political commentary requires exactly what level of talent I wonder. Most politicians are rich assed white guys who call themselves public servants and when is the last time you heard a servant tell an employer to “shut up?”
“Back to sports Fredman. Leave American foreign policy commentaries to the junket jingoistic jet lagged politicos who truly know what’s best for all Americans.”
I always told my students “The world is not compartmentalized everything flows into everything else but if your sink clogs up call a plumber.

Professor Freddogg

Back in the fall of 1976 three of my EMH Educable Mentally Handicapped sophomore girls failed Foods 1 out there in the mainstream and because I was their on- board advocate I went to the galley to find out why.
The next day I was called to the Principal's office who told me I had to back down from my abrasive confrontations with mainstream teachers and my responses was “what the hell are you talking about” followed by a long explanation that “it was a joke” but if you ever find yourself explaining a joke well “it ain’t no joke no more.”
I said to this Homey Economics Teacher that I wanted to run a series of two word meals past her critical reviewing expertise starting with Grilled Cheese and scrambled eggs and ending with an advanced three item Sunday dinner like Tuna Casserole and deviled eggs which involved boiling and mixing, cutting and folding and shit like that there.
My girls, who were so nice and just a bit backward, failed Foods 1-yaw ready for this- because in spite of repeated tutoring through worksheets and retakes of tests they couldn’t set a banquet table.
I just responded “You are all the way freaking kidding me, aren’t you?”
Three years later I took the soon to graduate young women-this is before slash and burn up the bodies No Child Left Behind Legislation- to a local furniture store for their free little wooden hope chest boxes given to high schhol girls who were graduating.
The young week day a.m. furniture guy handing them each a cardboard information card to fill out and the girls looked back at me in a panic.
Now if you’ve ever been handed something to fill out you do it quickly then hand it back then an annoyed with your dumb ass clerky person fills in all the shit you missed.
My girls looked to me for help and I explained “Where it says name write your name and so on.”
This guy looks at me and said “These people are graduating from high school and can’t even write their own names”?
“Listen to Mr. Furniture Store guy getting all uppity,”I said. “Trust me you don’t want me to start working on your overachieving ass I’ll have you eating every throw pillow in the place speaking of stuffin and home economics.”
These same three girls sent kids to the high school a generation later who were Honor Society and college scholarship type people which just goes to prove one thing, I only wish I knew what it was.

Fondue You Too

Ballpark Freddogg

Grandmother Rose possessed with a futuristic wisdom was always throwing down nuggets for her grandchildren to pick up but I’m the only one who paid attention because I knew she was “hard wired” into a philosophy so basic it was like splitting the atoms of human behavior.
“Every time Poppy gets a new machine (car) he re-centers downward the age of the women he lusts after,”I overheard her telling one of my adult relatives who had no idea what the freak she was talking about but I did and I was only 10.
Suddenly she glanced down at me and said, “Never have a serious conversation with a naked person be they stranger or spouse. Just follow that rule and you will never regret it.”
Now I’m retired old guy who goes to the gym in the morning and yesterday I walk into the locker room and there is retired “talks too much” guy fresh out of the shower and he is naked with a leg up on a bench toweling himself a hand on each end of the towel like he is sawing his crotch in half with a terrycloth tool. I felt like I was an extra in some bath house movie.
I averted my eyes because I knew “we’re all men here” but nobody needs to see that freaking planet of the apes bullshit. Then he starts up a conversation and I’m thinking “where’s macular degeneration” when you really need it. By the way this is not a gay thing it’s just a naked guy thing as there are men who have a naked personality like they think it’s relaxing or o.k. but to me it is only one thing and that is all the way weird.
"My grandmother told me when I was 10 never to have a serious conversation with a naked person and the reason I remember that from 50 years ago is that she was naked when she told me just to drive home her machine or as we say in modern times-her point," I told the man who had no idea what I was talking about so he ironically concluded that I was strange.
Imagine a woman saying to her husband,”Get naked but don’t even thing of touching me I just want to clarify some things and asked you a few questions.”
That boy will run like Carl Lewis and if you ever see Carl Lewis hanging naked in a locker-room you will run like Ben Johnson.

Peace
Freddogg

Danny Harmon pictured racing to victory on anchor of Sprint Medley at Bennett Relays

Helen Miller sister and Calvin Harmon brother stand with picture of Danny at 2006 summer rememberance


Danny Harmon would bounce and float into the air while standing next to me like a kernel inside an air driven Hamilton Beach until I paid attention to him. “What should I do,” Danny asked me the first day he arrived late to practice in the spring of 1981 running over from the eighth grade already three grades behind?
“Jog eight laps and call me in the morning, ”I said, then yelled the way you do when the third runner on the 4 by 200 doesn’t cut in-“I’m kidding”- but he would just be gone.
Danny wasn’t an afterthought on a deeply talented team featuring Tony Sheppard, Rodney Smith, Bill Zimmerman and Vincent Glover, he was a backwards glance. I used to joke that I only coached talented people and that some one else would have to deal with the 6-foot vaulters, 14 foot jumpers, 12 second sprinters and six minute milers and other earnest athletes hoping to someday earn a third place point in a lopsided victory against a depleted team. Everyone laughed knowing I couldn’t be serious until one day when Antwan “Swan” Ford took a triple jump route that plotted like a fat lady’s EKG landing at a right angle with only the back half his feet in the pit. We were coming back on the bus and Swan announced to the team; ”Coach Fredman is wrong! ‘He told me, ‘this ain’t no Special Olympics’”. Danny Harmon loved that I would throw a dagger through the chest of any athlete; it is what defined our team and kept us loose.
The first scrimmage in March of Danny’s first competition we were going against Bob Ward’s Newark team that featured a distance stud named Andy Klemas who would be going head to head in the 1500 and 800 against Sheppard the reigning Division 2 cross country champ. Danny Harmon was an afterthought I had dropped into the 3000 meters.
Klemas ran Sheppard off and broke his heart in the 1500 and Tony didn’t like it. I told him “you can’t hang and kick against an experienced strong kid who will just run the pop out of your legs.” I told him to expect wire to wire in the 800 and although it was early and cold Klemas could get down near 2:06.
Klemas and Sheppard stepped onto the track for the 800 along with too many other throw-ins or throwbacks depending on perspective.
“How many laps is this,” Danny asked, making a circular motion with his hand.
“Two,” I said, and he responded, “Can I run this” and I said, “sure”, then he asked “what should I do” and I joked “see Tony and that other guy. Don’t do what they do or you may get your heart broken Ever hear of Grizzly Adams the bear guy? Well if you run with Tony you’ll be running with Grizzly Adams on your back the entire second lap.”
Danny looked around and all up and down, then just shrugged his shoulders like ”I don’t see Grizzly Adams anywhere” later to learn that “the bear” is the trickster of track and always out of hibernation.
Sheppard and Klemas battled at the front with enough space and time between them and the pack to construct a Safeway with groundbreaking ceremony as they headed down the backstretch of lap number two.
Into the turn they stroked and it was anybody’s race. Coach Wes Stack tugged on my sleeve and pointed to the backstretch where short of stature Danny Harmon, a descendant of the Nanticoke Indian tribe and cousin to Chief Roadrunner, was blasting at warp speed.
“Too bad he didn’t leave sooner, ”Stack said. ‘He’ll never catch them but he’s reeling them in, they are falling back, he is making up ground.”
“I get it Coach!”
The long straightaway of the metric track had doomed many a distance strategist when being “humped down” by a sprinter who can still crank an 11 flat at the end of a race.
Danny barely got them but they did get got! Coach Stack flashed his stopwatch into my face but said not a word. It read 2:02 as in two minutes and freaking two seconds. Danny joined the Cape ranks of the unexplainable talent tribe-he was a race and recover guy for the next three years-because to send Danny out on a long road run was to invite mischief and mystery because he was all the way the trickster himself and was best kept on the oval where he could be stop-watched.
Harmon won some shorter races in his first dual meet against rival Lake Forest then in the last event the 4 by 400 with the meet on the line he took the stick 20 meters behind on anchor and ran it home to a meet victory.
Coach Jim Blades came up to me and said, ”I think we have a problem. “My kids are telling me that little guy is still in eighth grade ”and I said,” Correct Coach and too old for ninth grade which by rule puts him in 10th grade for competition so get used to seeing him for the next three years, the good news being after his 10 grade actual year he will be done his senior athletic year.”
Coach Jim Blades saw more of Danny Harmon then anyone had a right to and he always looked like he thought that long and deadly kick in the mile somehow resembled a cruel cat allowing a field mouse to think it had a chance of getting home.
Tony Sheppard was Division 2 Cross Country State Champion in the fall of 1980. Dan Harmon was 3rd in Division 1 in 1981 and Division Two State Champion in the fall of 1982. In the spring of 1982 he anchored our winning 4 by 800 team in the Meet of Champions as Darren Purcell, James Johnson, Hank Stack and Danny Harmon ran a Cape school record of 7:59.6 that has stood for 25 years.
During the 1983 Indoor season Danny Harmon won the 800 in 2:06 then came back and captured his first 3200 ever run indoors throwing down a negative split in the second mile to win in 10:03.
“He wanted to know where the leader was at the mile mark and I told him the guy was right behind him,” said teammate Tim Bamforth. “There were 11 laps to go and every lap I would point and say, “there he is.” Danny caught Mike Spence from Tower Hill who had been fourth in the Division Two State cross-country meet. No one knows what he ran just way under five and fast.
The spring of 1983 was absolutely insane for the depth of Boys talent in Delaware Track and Field.
We took a trip to the Bennett Relays just for a place to play and weren’t set up to win the event. We were battling in the sprint medley when 400-meter runner Kyle White looked like he’d been shot in the leg. “There goes Kyle’s hamstring, ”I said. “There it goes again! How many hamstrings does he have?”
Jimmy Sumstein of Bennett a local star now a distance Coach at Cape took off with a big lead over Harmon.
“How many hamstrings do you have, ”I asked Kyle White. “My jock strap broke and my junk kept falling out, ”White said, uttering a sentence most English teachers never get to hear.
Harmon looked off into the distance and focused on Sumstein who could not have guessed he was still in Harmon’s area code. It was the longest way any 800 man on anchor I coached had even come back to win a race as Harmon’s split was 1:55. He also anchored winning teams in the 4 by 400 and 4 by 800 relays.
That May at the Dover Relays Cape set a state record in the 4 by 1600 with 18:29 as Tim Bamforth 4:36, Hank Stack 4:32, Mark Wagner 4:44 and Danny Harmon 4:30 kicked in the victory. The 4 by 800 team came back with Harmon on anchor to win and set a meet record of 8:06.
The same meet saw Howard High School set state records in the 400m, 41.6 and 800 m relays 1:27. And Dover, with sophomore Bruce Harris 1:53 on the 800 anchor leg of the sprint medley ran a sizzling 3:28.
Dan Harmon versus Bruce Harris of Dover in the 1600 and 800 was always a show. In the Henlopen Conference meet that spring of 1983 Harmon won the 1600 in 4:21 flat with Harris in second at 4:21.6.
Harris came back to set a state record in the 800 meters 1:52 with Harmon behind him at 1:55.9. Harris always broke Danny in the third 200 of the 800 meter race because he knew he didn’t want him anywhere around for the final 180.
Howard’s great team of short and long sprinters was too much for Cape minus ineligible pole-vaulter Bill Zimmerman as the Vikings lost to the Wildcats by 8 points in the 1983 state championship meet.
There was a final Meet of Champions and once again it was Harmon versus Harris in the 1600 and 800. There were other coaches who thought their kids had a chance but I knew it was the Danny versus Bruce final showdown.
Danny Harmon ran a 4:17.3 to once again out kick Harris and his 4:21.Harris ran a 1:53 in the 800 meters outlasting Harmon who was starting to get used to the hurt of 1:55 and I could see he had faster times inside him.
Danny Harmon spent his next two years fooling everyone and kept coming to school and he graduated and was very proud of himself.
Bruce Harris would run a 149:4 his junior year at Franklin Field in the Meet of Champions. Bruce already scholarship secured to Villanova was academically ineligible his senior year when he took a half credit speech class –a great kid but introverted- and was failed for his troubles. Ironically Harris would graduate from Villanova and become a state police spokesperson.
Danny Harmon who was absolutely a dream to coach and never game me a moments trouble had his “unlawful behavior” moments and spent some time through the revolving door of Sussex Correction Institute as an adult. I once asked Trooper Bruce Harris if he was aware of Danny’s troubles and he said he was but offered no criticisms just remembering “Man he could run.”
Danny Harmon was leaning against a car out by the road in front of his mother’s house in Belltown in August of 2002. It was dark just beyond twilight. Danny was 38 years old. A hit and run driver clipped him and Danny was thrown to the road and taken away from all of us forever.
Every August I attend a family remembrance celebration in Danny’s aged mother’s front yard. Under a tent a family D.J. announces my arrival and I also receive applause when I leave. Danny’s family honors me for standing beside his memories. I represent a big part of the best part of his life and he does the same for me. I am and always will be to them “Danny’s Coach.”

Note: Some years after high school Cross Country State Champion Tony Sheppard took his own life in a moment of despair and despondency. He was always regarded by everyone who knew him as a very nice and respectful person.

“reakazoids...robots..please report 
freakazoids...robots...please report to the dance floor

z-o-i-d-s 
z-o-i-d-s, freakazoids
z-o-i-d-s 
z-o-i-d-s rock baby
”

I am plagued by song lyric disorder this morning. “If a man could be two places at one time I’d be with you.’
Really Professor Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz? Sounds like you’re getting your monads and gonads crossed once again.
“Say it’s only a paper moon sailing over a cardboard sea but it wouldn’t be make believed if you believed in me.” Really Spinoza? I am not a Fig Newton of your imagination? So tell me “who put the bop in the bop sho bop sho bop or did an apple just fall on my head and no that's not a flashlight in my pocket?”
Don’t you hate it-or is it just me-question asked and answered-when someone reads another’s words at a solemn occasion like a funeral or wedding.
“I’d like to close with this poem by T.S. Elliot which I think best described the life of the man all of his here knew as Dick Face. “
That’s what I’d like to hear, the unexpected. The sucker punch line you just don’t see coming. “No he didn’t!” “Yes Karen I believe he just said Dick Face.”
“Do you Karen take Dick Face here to be your lawfully wedded Has Been?”
“When your rooster crows at the break of dawn look out your window and this cock will be gone!”

Roll over Beethoven this is Rehoboth

Peace Just a walkin The Freddogg

Sit me down across from a zealot for wind power and if you don’t provide me with a rear exit door I will be forced to strangle them or her I really don’t care. I firmly believe that anyone who has a 4 paddled reversible hard on for wind power is totally and completely out of their minds and it has nothing to do with whether it’s a good idea it’s just their passion like having a passion for recycling which I’m not into either. I do trash and I do hydroelectric so freaking sue me, because environmentalists are like religious proselytizers, you just can’t trust fanatics.
But how much are my grandchildren going to spend for energy? What? Listen you know those shadowy evil doers congregating inside Iraq because we want them to, well why not tell them now and get it over with that we intend to take their stuff once it gets too expensive for us to stay warm and comfortable and if you don’t realize that go build a windmill in your front yard and start separating your trash with your snout.

Save the planet! Watch out for Global warning, El Nino, La Nina, The Coriolis Effect and all other natural mysteries that must be caused by us because we are so special.

An administrator once gave me a bad evaluation and on the envelope she wrote, “Please return, I recycle.”

“Save The Whales” is what I wrote.

Peace and Prosperity

Freddogg

The children of the Sixties have produced the full blown parents of today. And what do it all mean Kingfish?
As a sportswriter it means micro managed lives captured on camcorders. It means more “personal agendas” than the Staples surplus outlet all for the good of the team. It is rampant and all over the place. Kids themselves have an expression for it; it’s called having a parent up your butt. It’s mostly a white thing but not exclusively
Last fall there were fathers cooking burgers for consumption after a football scrimmage. Black players called them the Burger Daddies. ”You know the players with the Burger Daddies are going to start,” two black players said to me.
“Dam straight, ”I said. “But what about Jordan and A.J.? They’re black and their dad has a giant drum of a grill he trails behind his pick-up. I mean he’s a professional. He can feed the whole team by himself and sometimes does. You know his kids are starting.”
“Yea, but they’re starting anyway,” Fredman. “But some of those Burger Daddy Children we ain’t so sure about.”
I find that most of these over the top parent general managers do more harm to their own kids than any inadequate coach or coach who doesn’t like the kid because the parent is a jerk could ever do.
I don’t react well to parents up in my face because they think their kid’s team doesn’t get equal coverage in the newspaper because I know they could give a dam about any team it’s all about their team more importantly their kid and usually the kid doesn’t care so all that is left is the parent. The parent wants to strut in a “my kid is better than your kid superiority” which usually reflects that the same parent could never get it done on the playing fields when they were younger because real athletes who have been in the wars and have made a difference know how to behave.
“Stick your travel ball Dad! I’m skimming this summer!”
“Great lets go out and buy some world class boards from the local surf shop. I know they have a competition team just for teenagers. And skim and surf camps. They go all the way to California to skim. I’ll get you a coach and you’ll work harder than all the rest and be on the cover of skim magazine.”
“Dad have you even noticed I’m anorexic masked by habitual steroid use and I like to smoke weed?”
“Great there’s this place in Utah with horses and other rehab sports like rafting and hiking and spelunking you’ll come back in such great shape you’ll have to start at the wide receiver position then I won’t have to spend so much time cooking burgers and can concentrate more on simply dogging your mother.”

”Word, Pops! “

Freddogg

Bill Zimmerman showed up at Cape, a 1981 sophomore from Pennsylvania, and he was the prototype Pole Vaulter, with a better body than Tarzan, certainly greater speed and a fearlessness when putting that all together for his aerial acrobatics that made him a potential 15 foot jumper but also an adventure at all lower heights.
The first day of practice on a cold and windy blustery March afternoon my black sprinters were doing their usual pre-practice warm-up of huddling together under the pit cover telling stories and reminding me how it was “too cold” to be out there in the first place.
Zimmerman asked them to get off because he was going to jump. They all looked at him then back at me and started to laugh. Zim ignored them as he somehow alone set the bar at 13 feet. I can still see Timmy Gray and Yogi looking straight up at the bar then over at me and they started laughing harder.
Zim stood at the end of the runway, pole on his shoulder and he looked Olympian. And then he took off with his sprinters speed and there was no look of hesitation on his face. The pole slid into the box and made a thud then there was the bend to the side. Zim was up and over and as he came down many of the sprinters had career starts. It was all the way hilarious.
Tim Gray, an all state nose guard, who went on to become a Major while serving in Iraq, looked at me with a smile and said, ”Fredman, you had better talk to your boy because he can’t be raining down from the sky like that on a bunch of black people.” Yogi who looked like a big old bear just walked over the squeezed Zim’s bicep then laughed a “lime in the coconut” deep laugh and said,”It’s about time we got some pole vault points around here.”
Zim was lovable and irascible harboring immense talents of the body and brain but he was also a heartbreaker.
Zim’s junior year he was obsessed with obtaining a longer pole as I once saw him pick up a sawed off 12 footer and jump 13 feet with it. I also saw him come to a complete stop going for 14 and come straight down on his side landing in the vaulting box. I drove my pickup onto the track put him into the bed and drove down to the emergency room at Beebe Hospital.
Zim was laying on his side, his injured muscles already blue, when the Middle Eastern Doctor, after listened to the adventurous mishap, touched Bill where it sort of hurt then said over and over, ”I have never seen a body like this. You can see every muscle and there is no discernable fat. I’ve never touched a patient with muscles so hard. He is the fittest human being I have ever seen. He”- “Hey doc, enough already! - Can we get some x-rays so I can get this sky pilot back in the air”.
Bills 15 foot banana pole arrived during an actual meet versus Seaford as the event had already been won with a jump of 10 feet. Bill ran over and unloaded his pole and was back on the runway. I couldn’t talk him out of trying it. He put the bar at 14’3” raced down the runway and sailed over the bar for a school record. I suggested “that was enough” but Zim wanted to break the 15 foot barrier.
Down the runway he rumbled as everyone watched, the plant was perfect but the bend was way radical and the pole broke into three pieces. A short middle piece hit a Seaford athlete straight in the stomach knocking him over which my sprinters found uproariously and hilariously slap stick funny.
Then there was bill running anchor on the 4 by 100 as under the roof shadow of the concession stand regular track fans looked at me watching Zim put down tape and said, ”Coach Fred what are you thinking? You know no white boy is supposed to be running anchor on this relay. Have you lost your mind?”
I reminded them that they were in a reserved section and if they weren’t on probation they would have to move. Everyone thought that was funny and most everyone was on probation for some jive deviation from societal norms.
Why is it that so many tremendous track athletes have hands of stone? And some of my best track athletes have been among the worse basketball players I have ever seen.
Zim flew out of the Zone as we rounded the third leg with a big lead. The incoming runner was screaming “Hey! Hey!” while the All Pro section was yelling “were you going boy?”
Zim was rocketing out, the pass was made barely legal but then that sound of a metal baton bouncing on a tartan track.
“We told you Fredman but you don’t want to listen to nobody, “my barely legal fans complained.
And as it turned out Zim was the quintessential risky relay runner so I sent him to the discus where he uncorked a 120 the first time he touched it and so that became another event for him.
Zimmerman qualified for the Penn Relays and on that Saturday rode to Franklin Field with his parents while I did “search and secure sprinters duty” under cover of darkness before making the long ride to the relays. I remember I had a new shirt that was dark blue with little red lines and looked so Penn I thought I may be recruited for a regatta when we got there.
I was sitting under the overhang and young Rickey Pitts was sitting a bench below just starring at my face as if to say “Thanks Coach for bring me to the big city for the first time.”
“What’s up Rick isn’t this something,”I asked. Ricky reached towards my face then pulled a stiff piece of cardboard out from under the collar. “Did you want to keep that in there because most people take them out,”he said with a little smile on his face.
Finally Zimmerman appeared across the field by the pole vault runway. I never counted my guys as arrivals until they touched down.
Zim was sitting on the infield talking with my other vaulter Shawn then I saw a tall guy wearing a red cap talking to them both. Shawn headed towards the stands then Zim began to sheath his pole. I knew there was trouble so I found my way all the way down and across the field.
The big clock had the big hand on the Roman numeral eight. I told Bill to stay where he was and talked to the official with the clipboard. Is Bill Zimmerman from Cape Henlopen registered in this event,”I asked. “Not anymore, “he said. “He was removed by that tall gentleman over there with the blazer and red hat.”
“Really and who is that gentleman?”
“That’s Jim Tuppany, ”he said. “Tuppeny, like in Director of Penn Relays and its ten thousand athletes? You mean that Jim Tuppeny? “
I went over to Coach Tuppeny and explained the nature of the high strung personality that was Bill and lobbied for his reinstatement. Bill had given Coach Tuppeny some advice as Coach was telling Shawn to get into the stands. Bill saw it as sticking up for his friend.
Tuppeny told me if Bill would come over and apologize to him in the next five minutes he would put him back into the meet. “Man, I was good.”
I went to Bill with the great news-that’s Jim Tuppeny- and even told him what to say explaining away his rude behavior by reason of emotional temporary insanity.
“You want me to go apologize to that guy,”Zim said. “You didn’t hear how rude he was to Shawn.”
“Shawn did not belong out here in the first place. Now get over there and apologize.”
“Apologize? I’d rather punch him in his face.”
I kicked Zim off the field myself and went and told his parents who were sitting in row one by the pole vault pit what had happened. They just dropped their heads while his dad apologized to me. It was a heartbreaking moment all around not because of the event but because Bill was out of control.
His senior year Bill was doing his thing and we were undefeated and feeling pretty good about our chances in the Division Two Championship Meet.
Then the third marking period grades came out and I was told that the best athlete in the school was ineligible because he failed gym and a two credit shop class. Both classes used a demerit system for grading which was an “academic bear trap” for the personality like Bill.
I was devastated because I kept a close watch on my high risk athletes but Bill was 1200 SAT guy. I just never saw it coming and what was worse the shop teacher lived across the street from me. No warning, no heads up, followed by some story about not finishing his personally selected Num Chuck project.
News Journal reporter Jack Ireland found me by phone that very afternoon. “I hear you lost Zimmerman,”Jack said. “Can you still win this thing?”
I told him everything, he asked me how I felt and I said, “Taking the Pole away from Zim because he failed shop is like taking the basketball away from Doctor J because he can’t make a bookcase.”
The next morning the quote was in bold type on the lead sports page of the New Journal. I was called to the Principal’s office and he had the paper laid out on his desk.
“I have a very upset shop teacher right now, ”he said, looking for empathy in all the wrong places.
“Permission to speak freely,” I asked, not that it ever mattered to me because I was more like Zim throughout my life than anyone else in the school.
“Freak the shop teacher! He should have told me! I could have stopped it! I could have saved Bill!”
We went into the state meet and lost the title to Howard by 8 points when I thought Bill was worth 14 but he wasn’t there and every coach has a sad story to tell so all is fair in love and war.
Bill Zimmerman was a passenger in a car that went off the road and hit a telephone pole one late night. Bill was not wearing a seat belt and went through the windshield. A few days later he died at 27 years of age.
My wife and I attended Bill’s funeral over in Denton, Maryland and I kept fighting but kept losing emotional control. Sometimes as a coach the athletes who test you the most you love with the deepest connections because they force you into introspection as you try to corral their talents just because you want them to be happy.
I discovered that Bill Zimmerman will always be a special part of me from down deep inside and I cry as I close out this story because that’s where he left me.

What is the difference between a nunnery and a convent not to mention a Mother House and the answer is "no difference" they are all scary places populated by elderly women driving shinny electric golf carts down slippery tile hallways on the way to the cafeteria were the food is served by happy Christians who don’t expect tips other than “the idle mind is the devils workshop” Or is that Idol Mind or Billy Idol dancing with himself which is a confessable sin I believe as in the Apostles Creed. “I believe in one god the Father Almighty who sometimes breaks into three but not really so don’t worry be happy because you can never understand.”
Last Saturday I went to the 75th jubilee of Sister Martina Catharine Nolan who is just shy of 90 and is my wife’s grandmother’s niece. Sister Martina is from the order of Grey Nuns of the Sacred Heart and mostly they have been teachers and principals of Catholic schools and their average run to full blown golf cart retirement is 60 years give or take.
There were four nuns totaling 300 years-hence called Jubilarians although quite frankly they didn’t look all that happy- as their families came to celebrate but as the statues of Joseph , Mary and Baby Jesus looked out over the church so did I and I noticed no little children and I know why because Children are little disrupters of ceremony and everything else for that matter which is why Freud called them “emerging savages” and nuns call them “little heathens” or “pagan children” although not so much anymore. I was called a pagan child so many times in the primary grades I thought my parents were in a motorcycle gang.
There was the “everyone offer each other the sign of peace” mass interrupted moment of conviviality which I hate because it’s so Christy Minstrel Folk Mass like and then every one went to communion except the noticeable me because currently Mr. Pagan Baby can’t see much difference among Idol worships although I do have a McNabb Bobble Head.
I saw the three priests killing the left over wine swishing around the deep bowl of the gold chalice and I said to my wife,”Now there’s a surprise” and she said they had to do that because “the wine had been consecrated” and I thought “I’ll have to remember that one next time I’m too far down bourbon street to turn back.
After Mass there was real wine and Coors Lite in the cafeteria and the food included sliced roast beef, lasagna and lobster tail chased by little puff daddy desserts lanced with a large wooden pick then shoved into the chocolate fountain and my daughter Carrie asked the obvious question “Where do Catholics get all their money” and all I could think is they collect all the time but are tax exempt and just a bit sneaky.
Ceremonies and long sit down dinner confabs make my feet hurt and make me tired so I retired to my 4runner where Donovan and I listened to the NFL draft and you should have seen him bobble when the Eagles selected a quarterback with their first pick.
Keep the faith McNabble!

Peace be with you

Father Freddogg