Fall is my favorite time of year.¹ Cooler temperatures,² colorful foliage,³ fire pits and, of course, football. This past weekend was a doozy for the football teams I love! The Green Bay Packers beat the Los Angeles Rams 24-19 while withstanding a last-minute drive by the Rams via a brilliant play by rookie safety Evan Williams out of Oregon. The Hogs beat No. 8 Tennessee 19-14. Redshirt freshman quarterback Malachi Singleton filled in for an injured Taylen Green late in the fourth quarter and with just over a minute left, scored a TD on an 11-yard run. Arkansas State University, my alma mater, also won in dramatic fashion. The Red Wolves were down 16-15 and they, too, had just over a minute on the clock. QB Jaylen Raynor lead the team on a 60-yard drive completing seven passes. With 10 seconds left in the game, Clune Van Andel hit a 34-yard field goal to give the Wolves a two-point victory!

High school football is also in full swing. I keep an eye on several teams: Hot Springs Lakeside Rams, Little Rock Catholic Rockets, Jonesboro Hurricanes, Little Rock Central Tigers, Warren Lumberjacks, Blytheville Chickasaws and Gosnell Pirates. I have personal ties to all of them. The Local Controller went to Lakeside where she was a star cheerleader and homecoming queen.⁴ My fraternity big brother and best friend also went to Lakeside, as did his two younger brothers and sister. I remain very close with all of them. Three other college mates and fraternity brothers went to Warren, Blytheville and Gosnell. I keep up with them just to give each of the guys some grief when they don’t play well! Franz, Colin and Wells⁵ went to Catholic High and the Local Controller in training, Bliss (aka: The Daughter, The Little General) went to Central, where she followed in her mom’s shoes and cheered all four years. Let me tell you, for a good seven years the LC and I would load up the bus on Friday afternoons and head to various stadiums around the state. Between Colin playing, LC in training cheering and generally being fans, we saw most of the state! And we loved it!

Yep, I do like fall sports. Heck, it’s the best time to watch baseball. Playoff time! When I was 12 the Oakland Athletics began a remarkable championship run. They won the World Series in 1972, 1973 and 1974. The only other team to have climbed that mountain is the New York Yankees, who actually won five straight from 1949 to 1953.⁶ The A’s of the early and mid-70s were phenomenally talented and a tad on the wild side. For instance, most of the major league teams of that era forbade facial hair. Not only did the Athletics allow it, but they also encouraged it by paying bonuses to players who did so! They were known as the “Mustache Gang!”⁷ Hall of famer Reggie Jackson took the first step and grew a mustache. He caught flak from the establishment and some of his teammates. Four pitchers decided to grow mustaches thinking the manager would tell everyone to shave them off. It backfired. The notoriously cheap owner Charlie Finley was loathed by the players, but he was a sly marketer and salesman. Instead of instructing the manager to enforce a no facial hair rule, he turned the tables. He gave any player who grew a mustache a $300 bonus!⁸ Now remember, this is the era of bellbottoms, shaggy hair and rock and roll. Finley banked on that and he was right. The fans loved it, me included. The most famous was Rollie Fingers, whose handlebar stache became the thing of popular legend.⁹ If he played today, that mustache would have its own social media channels and endorsement deals in the millions! The A’s played the Cincinnati Reds in the 69th World Series in 1972. The Reds were well known for being straitlaced and well groomed. The match up quickly became known as the Hairs versus Squares!¹⁰

The other thing that sticks in my mind are the names of the players on those teams. Reggie, Rollie, Vida Blue, Catfish Hunter, Blue Moon Odom, Diego Segui, Sal Bando, Bert Campaneris, Billy Conigliaro, Joe Rudi, Manny Trillo, Angel Mangual…I can still hear the announcers calling the game saying the players’ names with gusto.¹¹ ¹²¹³ I listened to some of the games on my AM transistor radio¹⁴ that I bought with money from my paper route. My recollection is it was GE model that I bought at Sears or Montgomery Ward. I’m going out on a limb here, but I strongly suspect some of you younger readers have never heard of those two merchants¹⁵ and likely don’t know what “AM radio” is. Ugh. I’m old. Oh boy, LC is chuckling now. I also recall the radio was solid state. I have no idea what that means but Google does.¹⁶ My parents weren’t big sports fans, but I did get to watch the World Series on our Magnavox¹⁷ color TV with a screen the size of an airplane window. Not just 1972, ’73 and ’74, but I also got to see the Yankees’ run in 1977 and ’78 with both Reggie Jackson and Catfish Hunter on the roster of the Big Apple’s storied franchise.

The A’s Finley was certainly a character in his own right, but Yankees owner George Steinbrenner¹⁸ was in a class all to himself. He bought the team in 1973 and promised to be hands-off. He did just the opposite. Steinbrenner was harsh with the players, often instituting stringent regulations regarding appearance and criticizing them in the public eye. He had public spats with many of his staff members; he fired general manager Billy Martin five times.¹⁹ The fiery Martin²⁰ gave as good as took, once saying: “Sometimes I would do just the opposite of what George wanted me to do, because I won’t let anyone tell me how to manage.” He also said: “The two of them [Reggie Jackson and George Steinbrenner] deserve each other. One’s a born liar; the other’s convicted.”²¹ And then there’s this: Martin and Jackson got into a fist fight in the dugout over a fly ball!²²

It’s amazing how indelibly imprinted those memories are. I can see the TV, the couch, the rug, the chairs, coffee table and lamps just like I’m still sitting in the room. I can recall every detail of the basement where I’d fire up my little radio, lift some weights and cheer. Life was simple then for sure. Those years following the A’s, then the Yanks, while suffering through the awful Packers but cheering on the Milwaukee Bucks make for great memories. While sports weren’t their gig, my parents gave my brother Pete and me great, well-rounded exposure to many, many things. We went to the Milwaukee symphony, the Chicago Museum of Natural History now known as the Field Museum, the Mitchell Park Domes Horticultural Conservatory, the international air show in Oshkosh, fishing in the great northern woods of Wisconsin and spotting eagles at the Horicon National Wildlife Refuge. Wow, that’s a lot…too much according to the Local Controller! I’m getting the “You’ve written 1,700 words without a single mention of your job, cities and towns or municipal services” stare.

The point…let’s get to it before I’m in more trouble than I already am. The point: Y’all provide environments for life to thrive. You provide communities where 12-year-olds like me in 1972 could spend a carefree day in a park, sit comfortably and safely watch TV with the family, play baseball/soccer/kickball/volleyball on beautiful fields of grass with nice bleachers and a place to buy a hot dog and a soda, and to do so many more things that would be hard to list in a complete way. Now, imagine the alternative. What would it be like if on the way to a 10-year-old’s baseball game the city streets were so full of potholes that the family sedan would need a full front-end alignment and a new tire or two? What would it be like if the city water being drunk by thirsty patrons at your parks and rec facilities or meeting hall was full of toxins? How well would it be received that your municipality didn’t make the proper safety inspections on new buildings and one of them partially collapsed as a result? What would it be like for kids to ride their bikes on a city trail only to be accosted by an adult because the city didn’t properly patrol the area? How many elections would you win if every medical emergency and fire resulted in death and damage because your public safety officers didn’t have the equipment and personnel to make sure that the 12-year-old’s grandmother was safe and sound?

My memories and feelings about fall and fall sports are happy because the cities I lived in were committed to me and my family. They were and are committed to my neighbors, the folks I went and go to church with and the sanctity of the municipal mission…making your city or town better every single day. At the heart of a good and healthy childhood is to live in a place with a sense of positive experience. To use municipal services because they work. To know those services are reliable thanks to diligent, hard-working public servants. At its core, that’s what you do. You provide a space for people to live well. Take pride in that. Not a lot of people have jobs that make the profound difference that you make. Pretty cool stuff really, and I’m honored to be able to support your work. Rest assured, the nearly 100 employees at the League show up and work hard every day to give you as much support and as many services as you need.

Time to sign off, but before I do let’s all take a breath of the cooler fall air, let’s enjoy the leaves and deeper blue sky, let’s cheer for our favorite team and let’s not forget to cheer for team city and town!

Until next time, Peace!

1
My bride, the Local Controller, is much less enthused with this time of the year, particularly the cooler temperatures and nighttime now arriving around 5 p.m. LC thinks it’s full-on winter when the temps hit 72 F or lower. She’s the only person I know who will watch TV indoors with a sweater on, a blanket and a knit hat while making sure Haddee the orange cat and Olive the something doodle are in her lap or next to her for the “body heat.” I could cook a pork roast with the 30k BTUs flying off her! BTU stands for British thermal unit for those that may be interested. https://armuni.org/3YdggCa
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We use the Fahrenheit temperature scale, with 32 degrees being the freezing point of water and 212 degrees the boiling point. https://armuni.org/4ezQnCb Celsius is used by most other countries in the world much as the metric system far outweighs our use of the Imperial system. https://armuni.org/3Ydx8Zo https://armuni.org/47ZSNaQ
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I was going to insert a footnote on why leaves change color, citing things like shorter days and less sunlight, the lack of chlorophyll and sugar being trapped in the fiber of the leaves, but given the stare I’m getting from LC I best move on. “Good grief man! You’ve written two sentences but have four footnotes!” says the 5’4” brunette. My retort: “You didn’t count the headline or the byline.” To be fair, I only retorted in my mind. Even I know when to run and hide versus allowing my witty quips to rain down upon her. Onward!
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Oh boy. She ain’t happy with that revelation. And yes, that makes me smile!
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My sons!
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The Regency TR-1, created by Industrial Development Engineering Associates and Texas Instruments, was the first transistor radio and it was built in 1954. https://armuni.org/4gZEW8E
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Here’s the history of Sears, Roebuck and Company: https://armuni.org/3Nm35bT and the history of Montgomery Ward: https://armuni.org/3ZWUHad. Here’s the third department store of my youth: https://armuni.org/3zHaakb. I bet Mother Hayes and Pop Hayes bought nearly everything in our home and on our bodies in the 1960s and 1970s from one of those three stores!
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My Google machine says solid state was a new and cutting-edge technology that used solid non-moving parts to receive and amplify a radio signal. Prior to its invention radios used vacuum tubes that were easily broken by dropping them or shaking the radio. https://armuni.org/400SfiX
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Magnavox built its first TV in 1948! And no, I wasn’t alive then! https://armuni.org/3Nkk522
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