The 15 Minute Blog — Remembering The Terrible Twins of Norman Football
So, we need to be somewhere and have just 15 minutes to write and post a blog.
That is the challenge.
We are not sure what the topic should be.
Possibly jihadist terrorism. Or ducks. Or Bruce Springsteen. Or the Terrible Twosome.
Yes, we will write about the Terrible Twosome, my childhood best friend Steve Madden, and our football buddy Dallas Pryor.
Steve and Dallas were stud-hoss lineman on our sixth grade Cleveland Cougars’ champeenship team.
As I recall, Dallas, appropriately, wore a crummy, old Dallas Cowboy’s helmet. The rest of us wore new white helmets, with black stripes down the middle, custom-made with electrical tape.
Mr. Uhles’ Store
(WARNING: reading this blog could give you hypoglycemia)
I honestly don’t know why Mr. Uhles put up with us.
He ran the neighborhood store that was exactly 79 steps from my best friend Steve Madden’s front door on Nebraska Street.
We went there so often we wore a trail along Berry Road to Mr. Uhles’ store.
We loved his store, but we hated his old, asphalt parking lot.
It would heat up to about a billion degrees in Oklahoma summer.
Since we were always barefoot, we’d have to hot-foot it across the “lava”, trying not to get a stubbed toe or cut on glass or concussed by our buddy (because boys are always smashing each other just for fun).
Mrs. Uhles had let it be know that we had to smarten up before coming into her store.
That meant wiping the small stones and tar and glass and goatheads from our feet.
Once accomplished, we’d then storm into the store like the U.S. Marines.
At least 900 times every single summer day.
The Missus and Her Ducks
The Missus was going to name her boy ducks Donald and Daffy, until I explained that high-priced Disney lawyers would cover her with so many writs she’d never be able to feed her ducks again.
Hence she named them Dicky and Dashing Duck.
Dicky’s wife’s is Dancy.
This is because the Blog’s Missus likes alliteration, and this lady duck likes to wiggle her bootie a LOT. (“Like they do in Grease”, the Missus says).
Dashing Duck does not have a Missus, but, without wanting to start rumors, he appears to be crushing on Dancy. In fact, he played an active role in the, uhm, “loud and quacky courtship” of Dicky and Dancy, if you get our drift, which prompted Dashing’s Duck’s then girlfriend to fly the coop.
Whipped With a Hankie
My Great Grandma Ashley wasn’t big as a minute.
So when she threatened to whip me, I wasn’t scared, even at age three or four.
Besides, when she threatened to swat me, she was smiling that sweet old lady smile.
And brandishing her embroidered hankie — that’s what she was going to whip me with.
My Miracles 2 — ‘It Wasn’t Long Before the Church Began to Resemble a Battlefield, with Bodies Literally Strewn Everywhere’
(Not your normal bill of fare, this)
Back in August, I wrote about the many miracles that surrounded my Mother’s death in 1996. But, I never mentioned the related miracles that occurred in New Zealand … until now.
In 1994 or 1995, Mom was on oxygen 24/7 and had wasted away to 75 pounds. An undiagnosed spore had destroyed her lungs and was killing her. We were all praying for a miracle.
So when I was asked to organize a “healing Mass” in Auckland, New Zealand, by a miracle-worker named Father Peter Mary Rookey, I said ‘yes’! But only after I’d done a fair bit of homework to ensure his bonafides, as old reporters are wont to do.
My research included reading Man of Miracles, the book respected British journalist Heather Parsons wrote about “the famous healing priest from Chicago”, who himself had miraculously regained his sight as a young child.
Heather had “embedded” herself in Fr Rookey’s healing ministry, following him across Ireland, and chronicling what she called “miracles of biblical proportion”.
“From the altar, the church is a sea of humanity. The sick – in wheelchairs, on stretchers, carried or supported by others – push forward in their thousands to reach the silver-haired priest. Arms held out, Father Peter Mary Rookey OSM (Order of Servants of Mary) stops and blesses each one, laying his hands on their heads, calling on the power of Jesus to heal all their ills. And as he prays, miracles happen. The blind see, the deaf hear, the dumb say the name of Jesus and those in wheelchairs stand and walk.”
Obviously, a secular journalist writing about miracles impressed me. But what impressed me most was the old Servite priest’s humility, a quality always tied to holiness, and something that I hadn’t seen much of in my newspaper career.
As a journalist in Texas, Singapore and Washington, D.C. (1980-1988), I’d interviewed my share of big shots – senators, rock stars, sports legends, and even a billionaire. To a man, they had Frank Sinatra-sized egos and let you know they had done it “their way”.
Are All Millennials Douches?
I ask that headline question, knowing the answer, but wanting to make a point.
No, obviously, all Millennials are not douches. My son and his cousins and mates are all pretty great people. Maybe it’s a Catholic thing.
And many of your kids and grandkid Millennials are good people.
But it’s pretty obvious that there are a LOT of Millennials out there who, probably due to lousy parenting, and the corrupting influence of the Internet of Everything, are up to douchery that is beyond any douchery that has gone before.
A trio of cases in point follow:
Read More…
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