Thumbnail Sketches from a (nearly) 60 Year Old Part 2A (The 70's)

I could have easily subtitled this segment "A Tale of Three Places" because in many ways it's true,and that's how I'm going to share it.

 Connecticut

By this time,sports was becoming a huge thing in the Daniels household,which was interesting because in the interest of pushing books over bodies,sports were not emphasized.

Thanks to my grandfather,Sandy Evander Jones who from the time I can remember would travel from Washington D.C .to spend holidays at our Connecticut home and whom we would spend our summers with in his home,watching football was becoming a Daniels Brothers ritual.

In 1970,the Minnesota Vikings played the Kansas City Chiefs in the Super Bowl.My brother Austin  because of their purple uniforms became a Vikings fan. Howie and I rooted for other teams,but for the Super Bowl we teamed up against the youngest Daniels. On a tiny cassette recorder,we recorded all the scores of the game.The Chiefs took up most of the 30 minute tape.There was however room on the tape to record our merciless trashing of the Vikings. Last words from a crying Austin: "The Vikings are still good". 

Then there's the memory of Christmas of 1971 with my Grandfather,my Dad,my Brothers,and some of the neighborhood boys glued to the TVwatching the longest game in NFL History between the Kansas City Chiefs and Miami Dolphins.

In 1970, I was part of a lesson in stereotyping gone wrong.Being one of a handful of black students at Watkinson,when I arrived on campus,it was assumed by many a white student that I knew a thing or two about playing basketball. Previous to my time at Watkinson,I played basketball enough to know I wasn't very good at it,and only played it when forced to in gym class.When invited to tryout for the team,I looked at it as an opportunity to show well meaning but naive kids that Oscar Robertson I was not. I was told prior to the tryouts that Watkinson wasn't very good. I should have listened.They were worst than I thought and I ended up as a starting player for all four years I attended school there.

In 1972,my grandfather passed away in my arms at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington DC.

In the summer of 1972,my mom and I  attended the Democratic Party Platform Commitee meetings in Washington.Saw Sargent Shriver become the Vice Presidential candidate.At a Youth for McGovern party,Maria Shriver became the first woman I ever hit on.(Thwarted when my mom showed up)

In the fall of '72 on a senior class camping trip at Lake George in the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York I smoked marijuana for the first time.Returned from Lake George and started reading Thoreau,Emerson,and the poetry of Richard Brautigan. I was becoming the hippie folks were afraid I was years before!

Later in the fall of 72,I was accepted at Alaska Methodist University in Anchorage.

Graduated from Watkinson in 1973,and in the fall of 73,left Connecticut,never to live there again.
The Alaska Adventure was to begin..