Revenge on the Yankees

Folks that know me know that while I do gloat upon any misfortune that may fall upon the Minnesota Vikings or the Oakland Raiders,the bulk of my sports venom is directed towards the New York Yankees. Unfortunately through the years,I haven't had much opportunity to gloat in Yankee misfortune. I still have fond memories of the 1966 Yankees however..the first Yankee team to finish in last place since 1912. Horace Clarke anyone?

The mid to late 1970's were a tough time if you hated the Yankees. It was the heyday of the Steinbrenner run teams..The Bronx Zoo,Billy Martin,Reggie Jackson,Thurman Munson,Bucky Dent. High Drama and pennants.You couldn't even go into a store without seeing the Reggie Bar on display. A Reggie Bar was a Snickers type candy bar named after Yankee slugger Reggie Jackson.

What made things even worse was that I was living in New York City during this era. Some of the time was spent in Brooklyn,I also lived in Queens for a time.  I moved to New York from Alaska in October of 1976.  The first baseball game I saw as a resident of New York was within weeks of moving to New York. I saw  Game 4 of the '76 Series between the Yankees and the Cincinnati (Big Red Machine) Reds.

I wasn't going to turn down a chance to go to a World Series game,but being the Yankee hater I am,it's hard to acknowledge that my first World Series game involved the Yankees.
Yankees lost and got swept in that Series,but to openly gloat over Yankee misfortune at Yankee Stadium would be akin to asking for a bloody face. I also knew within a month of living in the Big Apple that I was going to hate it.

Adding insult to injury was the fact that my favorite baseball team,the New York Mets, were in the midst of the worst era in the history of the franchise. Most of the heroes of the 1969 "Miracle Mets" or the '73 "You Gotta Believe" team were either gone or past their prime. M. Donald Grant was the worst GM in Mets history,and was the architect of what was known as the "Saturday Night Massacre" when the Mets in one day traded the cornerstone of the franchise Tom Seaver,and slugger Dave Kingman.

Yankee fans are among the most arrogant in sports and to be in the midst of them was almost unbearable. There wasn't much a Mets fan could do in the midst of it..or was there??

In New York in the seventies,I worked at a place called New Life Vinyl Repair. We would go to various car dealerships in Manhattan,Brooklyn,Queens,and Long Island to repair torn vinyl and leather in cars.
This was not a job for me.I had the amazing knack of taking what should have a simple repair and turning it into a major operation. I often created more damage than what I started out with. Dealerships would often call the New Life office telling the office manager to never send me to that dealership again. New York car dealers are not nice when they're pissed. I dreaded and hated virtually every day at work.

Under most circumstances,I would have been fired or allowed to quit,however New Life was not some normal job. It was owned and operated by the church group I belonged to called Gospel Outreach Ministries. Gospel Outreach Ministries was part of the "Jesus Movement" which sprouted up in the 1970's amongst the counterculture set. Gospel Outreach at its inception preached "discipleship" Its definition being giving up your old friends,in some cases your family,and material possessions to live communally,place one's life under the "authority" of church "elders" who by in large were pretty young (mid 20's and 30's) and to work for the church owned businesses.
Instead of being fired or allowed to quit,being incompetent on the job was viewed as a church matter,and the managers of New Life Vinyl Repair happened to be the church elders. Instead of being fired,facing failure every day was supposed to be looked upon as either some sort of character building exercise or as a means of rooting out sin. Failures on the job gave the church leaders an opportunity to "minister" to me. One elder told me that working for New Life was "saving me from a life as a Bohemian writer,who would hang at coffeeshops listening to poetry."

The ministering wasn't working though and with more and more dealerships complaining,something was going to have to happen and soon..

What was decided was I was to be teamed up with another who was undergoing the same struggles and we were going to either sink or swim.  I was teamed up with a guy named Michael Lanzillotta from Long Island. Michael was a talented pianist and songwriter. Repairing car seats was not anymore his thing than it was mine,but in Michael's case,the chemicals we used for repair would create rashes on his hands.

For awhile the experiment worked.We were getting the work done,and there were no complaints. Michael and I enjoyed working together as for us part of the workday would include listening to "forbidden"music,doing Bee Gees impersonations as well as working out various acting routines.

Then came the big test.We were being sent to a Mercedes dealership in Manhattan to repair a leather seat. Leather was much tougher to repair than vinyl,and generally New Life would only send its best repairmen to a Mercedes dealer.

The seat had a tiny scratch on it.Supposedly,this was the type of repair that should have taken no longer than a half hour to do. Started out as if was going to be a quick and easy repair,Michael and I would have proven ourselves and we could maybe be like the rest of the repairmen..Then problems arose..The paint we had sprayed over the repair didn't quite match the seat. With an old used car, we would have been close enough to let it go,but this was a new Mercedes and things had to be exact. We had to strip off the paint. Leather seats tended to be very sensitive to the chemicals we'd use,and now a larger part of the seat is beginning to peel. In attempting to straighten out that mess,some of the chemicals splashed onto the plastic rear windows many Mercedes had back then.

I cant remember if it was the rubbing alcohol or the methyl ethel ketone we applied to the window to clean it up,but whatever it was,we placed a permanent fog on the window and ruined it. We didn't do much better with the car seat either.

The next day Michael and I heard about of the thousands of dollars worth of damage we did to the Mercedes. We heard about the yelling our manager received from the dealership. Like I said before..a pissed off New York car dealer is not very nice. As it turned out the dealership had to make a few maneuvers in order to keep Yankee outfielder Reggie Jackson from learning his Mercedes had been ruined. I think the dealership manager was a Yankees fan too. And we had just destroyed the car of the one,who according to his own words was the "straw that stirred the drink" of those Yankee teams.

I guess on one level Michael and I were lucky that the damages didn't come out of our pockets,but I look at it this way. We were taught that good things can come out of disasters and if I was going to wreck a car,what car was going to be better to wreck than one of a New York Yankee! Praise the Lord!
Next: the story of how Bucky Dent's homer in 1978 got me in big trouble.

Travelling the Alcan

It recently came to my attention that the Alaska Highway,otherwise known as the Alcan is now completely paved. I feel a little sad about that.

The Alaska Highway was built during World War II by the US Army,though most of it is in Canada. It used to be an unpaved highway through British Columbia and the Yukon Territory,over 1500 miles of it.
For years there would be talk about paving it,but the discussion would always end when it would come down to who was going to pay for it. The U.S. would say because most of it was in Canada that the Canadians should pay for the paving,and the Canadians would tell the US: "You built it,you pave it." I'm glad a war didn't erupt between the US and Canada over this dispute. As far as I was concerned,they could continue disputing who was going to pay for it and leave it unpaved because in my book,the Alcan was the spot for the great North American Adventure.

First of all,how many highways have a book dedicated to it? The Milepost was a mile by mile guide for the Alaska Highway,and was considered a must have if you planned to travel it. It was especially important to know where the gas stations were. Back before it was paved,the Milepost told you things like expect your windshield to be cracked,and shut all your vents if you were travelling during the summer because the dust could clog up all the vents in your car. Right away,this tells you that the Alcan was not for the casual traveller.

The highway takes you through some of the most breathtaking landscapes on the planet. Mountains..lakes. forests.. Lots of wildlife around. I heard my first wolfpack on one of my travels.

I drove the Alaska Highway twice. After the first time I said I'd never do it again,yet when the opportunity to ride it came again,I jumped at it. It's that way if one has any sense of adventure. I view life in a sense as one huge adventure,and both excursions on the Alcan lived up to its billing.

My first Alcan Adventure came in the summer of 1974. It was with my college roommate David Trent. The trip for us began in Kansas City after a Crosby,Stills,Nash,and Young concert there.We were returning for school. We were later joined by Doug Shand,a hitchhiker from Winnepeg back in the days when one wasn't risking one's life picking up a hitchhiker.

In Dawson Creek BC,the beginning of the Alaska Highway,we were informed that it had been raining heavily along the highway and by the time we reached Fort Nelson BC,the highway could be closed. We were told to proceed at our own risk. We sure as hell weren't going to turn around,so forward we went with plans on arriving in Anchorage in a few days.
We got to Fort Nelson. By the time we arrived,the rain had stopped,but the rain had done its damage and the highway was washed out. At the time,the population of Fort Nelson was barely 1,000. Close to that many people were stranded there. I don't know it was like for the retirees riding in their Winnebagos,but for us college aged kids,this was like a 3 day party!
Because the General Store quickly ran out of food,the Canadian government resupplied it via helicopter and gave us all food vouchers. Rainbow Family-like food camps quickly sprouted,and at night,the bar never seemed to run out of beer.

Finally,the road dried up and there was going to be a convoy leading out of Fort Nelson. David,Doug and I tried to be at the head of the pack by hiding the car in the tall bush before the convoy was to begin,but the Mounties busted us and sent us to the middle of the pack. Just days before,this road was mostly mud..now it was kicking up dust. You knew why the Milepost told you to close your car vents now. Our windshield got cracked shortly after the convoy got started. The reason we attempted to get ahead of the convoy was to avoid what we knew would be excessive dust caused by so many vehicles travelling this road at the same time. There was so much dust,we could barely see the car in front of us when the convoy came to a sudden stop. Story goes is some animal cut in front of the convoy. We stopped before hitting the car in front of us,but that didn't stop the cars behind us smashing into us. For whatever reason,we found ourselves as part of a 30 car pileup. None of us were hurt,but the car was in pretty bad shape.
Doug chose to leave us at this point. He had to get on and knew nothing about cars and didn't feel he could help us. David and I knew nothing about cars either,but somehow by tinkering with wires,we got the car started,and by not stopping the car even when we filled up for gas,a couple days later,we hobbled into Anchorage.

I said at the time that I'd never drive the Alcan again,but a year later I was back at it. This time it was in November..winter on the Alcan. My passengers this time were an old high school buddy who decided to move from Connecticut to Alaska,and a friend of his.
It was on this trip where I knew I was in Jack London Call of the Wild territory when I heard with my own ears a wolfpack take out a domestic dog who had wandered into the woods. It was also on this trip where I saw my first Aurora Borealis.
There was one major problem however. The Milepost warned that chains were an essential item if one was to travel the Alcan in November. I relayed this warning to my buddy prior to making the trip.
His response? "No need for chains for my vehicle.I have the best snow tires money can buy!"
His vehicle was a rather bulky van..Impressive if one is driving the streets in Connecticut,but on the Alcan when we were faced with blizzard conditions riding up mountain passes with no guardrails,I was convinced I was riding in my hearst. Down below one could see car carcasses,no doubt from previous attempts to ride these mountain passes without chains. No doubt those vehicles were hearsts for the passengers of them. 10 mph seemed too fast going over them. There was a 2 hour period where all one could hear was the motor of the van,and the wipers pushing away the snow.
I've never been much for hard alcohol,yet when we landed on lower ground and camped for the night, a few swigs of Jack Daniels were called for.

It's been a few years now since I last took that road.Don't know if I'll ever have the opportunity to drive the Alcan again..I'd love to if the opportunity arose. Maybe this time the adventure would be actually seeing the wolfpack,or maybe an earthquake will change the highway landscape. I hope I'm wrong,but I cant imagine a paved Alaska Highway as being the same..