Character Building

Like many middle aged former athletes and guys in general I am a huge football fan. And by virtue of birth and the grace of God I am a huge University of Iowa Hawkeye fan. Growing up in this part of the country I did not have the priviledge of having a major league sports team to root for. The Hawkeyes was my major league team,College football is our major sport. I grew up 20 miles from the University and have watched, cheered and fretted over the Hawkeyes and their seasons for 40 years.

One of my best memories is sitting in my room at the age of 14 listening to Iowa play Nebraska on the local am radio station. Iowa whooped their ass. What made it especially exciting was Iowa was a huge underdog and at the time Nebraska was one of the country's elites. Iowa was supposed to be the pre conference cream puff for the Huskers but it didn't quite turn out that way.

So fast forward to today..this game between Nebraska and Iowa should be character building for me. Iowa has had a very bad year, they will not be going to a bowl game and Nebraska is probably going to contend for the Big Ten championship. Iowa will probably lose but hope springs eternal. I will watch the game and complain and think about next year.

So GO HAWKS and F..k Nebraska!!!!!

Grandparents

I was riding home in the back of a van last weekend. My Father was driving this van  and it contained one of my brothers, one of my sisters, my nephew and my youngest child. Everyone was asleep but my Dad and I was staring out the window at the countryside of western Iowa. We were on our way back home from helping another brother move and it was a 5 hour trip. 5 hours of cornfields, farms and small towns. My mind started to wander and I starting thinking about my Grandparents Leo and Helen. I started to think about their farm and the time I had spent on it.

Everyone in my family until my generation had been farmers. My Dad's generation grew up on farms but moved to the city and no one in my immediate family still tills the land. Being older I was one of the few grand kids to see my Grandpa's farm. My Grandpa retired from farming when I was about 13 or so and moved first to a small town then to a larger city.

I still remember staying there on weekends and over the summer. How we would wake up early, ungodly early for a city kid like me and go milk the cows. I can still smell the barn, its aroma of cowshit, milk and straw. I can see the big vat of milk as it was pumped full and then later in the day when the milk tanker would come by and empty it for the next day. I remember hearing popular songs of the 60's and 70's on WMT radio 600 on the old transistor radio nailed to the barn wall and covered with fly droppings.

I remember coming inside the house after morning chores and removing our clothes so as not to track in the house. Then Grandma would make breakfast with fresh milk and bacon. Eggs fried in the bacon grease. Maybe some cheese and always bread and butter at every meal.

We would go out again, maybe we would bail hay and Grandpa would let me drive the tractor, except he would turn it at the end of each row because I didn't have the arm strength. Or he would use the end loader to clean out the hog pens and I would have to get the corners with a scoop shovel. Sometimes my cousins, sister, and I would climb up to the top of the corn crib and kick the corn down into the whirling screw of the hopper as it ground up the cobs into feed for the dairy herd. Or we would catch the horses and go for a ride. Sometime Grandpa would send us off with the tractor and wagon to fetch a newborn calf or we  would walk to call the cows in for the afternoon milking. They didn't need us though as they were already headed to the barn just like clockwork.Sometime we played hide and seek in the corn fields.

Lunch would be sandwiches and more milk or maybe hamburgers. Grandpa would pay me a nickle a bird to shoot the Starlings and Sparrows in his barn with my BB gun, as they would eat his grain. Often I was in charge of feeding the calves and would mix formula and goose eggs together with water and feed them with huge baby bottles. They would suck on the nipple so hard I could barely hold on.

Dinner would be pork chops or chicken, with more bread and butter and maybe a dandelion salad drenched in bacon grease and vinegar ( don't turn up your nose it was delicious). Sundays we would eat duck or goose and have a huge meal for lunch. And pie, my Grandma made the best pies ever.  I still love pie to this day. Sunday afternoons we would watch the Floyd Warren Jubilee or Professional Wrestling which my Grandfather loved.

Grandma was a painter and a gardener. Her garden was bigger than most people's yards and she had vegetable and flowers that were amazing. She ran the LeHe art gallery out of her basement. She painted the most incredible pictures of clowns, little trolls, still lifes and landscapes of the Iowa countryside. She won many many ribbons. She had a library also, in my Grandma's library I first read Sherlock Holmes and James Bond, Tom Sawyer and Robinson Crusoe.

In the evenings we would all take our baths and hang out in the living room. We would eat popcorn, homemade ice cream and apples. We would drink green Koolaid out of a ice cold metal pitcher. So cold frost would be on the outside.

My Grandpa passed away in 1998, the last time I saw him we had some pie together. My Grandma died in 2009 the last time I saw her I held her hand but she didn't know who I was. They are together again now.

Sometimes I miss people

http://thegazette.com/obituaries/hanson-helen-ada-miller-2/
http://www.mcelmeel.com/records/hanson/LeoHanson_01OBIT.html

Extracurricular Activites #3 :Reserve Deputy Sheriff

As I have written before besides my regular job I also work/volunteer at a few other activities. I officiate high school sports and work as a Emergency Medical technician. Another activity on my ADD inspired list of tasks is I am a reserve deputy sheriff in a rural county in northeastern Iowa. How I got hooked up with this activity was a somewhat long process. I happened to be talking to one of the security officers that works for my company and he mentioned he was a reserve officer in this county and that they were hiring reserves. This interested me for several reasons. This county is the county where my family is originally from and I used to visit it quite a bit when I was young. I have always been interested in law enforcement and I also thought it may give me a more well rounded approach and add some credibility to my day job as operations manager for a contract security company.

So I obtained and application and turned it in. And I waited and waited and waited.. eventually I forgot about it entirely. One day over a year after sending in the application I got a call from the reserve captain inquiring if i was still interested. Although I had forgotten all about it I told him sure. He arranged an interview and once that was done, I completed my processing,fingerprints,background check etc.. Then I was a provisional deputy. In the state of Iowa to become a fully qualified reserve deputy you have to finish the reserve officer academy in 18 months and attend and pass weapons training. Each individual sheriff then can designate how he wants the reserve deputies used in his county.

At this point I am one module from completing the reserve academy and I have completed the weapons training etc.. The sheriff in my county allows reserves to augment regular deputies for special events such as fairs, rodeos etc.. I have participated in several of these events. He also allows reserve deputies to operate independently once they are qualified and have a certain number of hours spent as a rider with a regular deputy. I currently am still conducting my ride time and may get on my own sometime this summer. Honestly I am not in too much of a hurry as I enjoy riding with the other deputies and  seeing how they operate.

As I mentioned the county I operate in is rural and it has the normal rural law enforcement issues. Animal versus car accidents,speeding,OWI,drugs etc.. There are only two towns in the county that have their own police forces, the rest of the small communities contract with the Sheriff's Office to patrol their towns and provide law enforcement support. So much of my time on duty consists of patrolling these towns or checking for speeders on one of the two highways that bisect the county. I try to work 2-3 times per month and so far I really enjoy it. Eventually I may try to get on as a reserve in a department a little closer to home but for now I like where I am at

Wrestling-What Men do during Boys Basketball Season

Where I come from the sport of Wrestling is as popular as any other with possibly the exception of Football. The average wrestling fan in the state of Iowa is probably one of the most knowledgeable of any "casual" fan you might meet. We live and breathe wrestling at all levels like those in Texas do Football. In my room at my parents house I had two posters on my wall. John Wayne in the movie "Green Berets" and the above picture of Dan Gable, multiple Iowa High School,NCAA,and Olympic Champion. One defeat in his High School and Collegiate Career. Unscored upon in the 1972 Olympics, and legendary coach of the University of Iowa Hawkeye Wrestling team.

As a high school wrestler honestly, I wasn't very good. I was unbeaten at the Junior Varsity level and about .500 at the Varsity level. However this didn't keep me from dreaming big. I would get up in the morning and run the 10 miles to school in a rubber suit (most of this stuff is frowned on, if not illegal for High School wrestlers now.) I would lift weights every day with the football players, I would run home. I would go days without eating trying to make weight. I would do things differently if I knew then what I know now but who wouldn't? But I was going to be like Gable. I knew that I was going to be an Olympic Champion. I believed it with my entire being. The year I failed to make the District tournament was one of the most devastating of my life.

But look what wrestling taught me. It taught me you had to be tough to realize your goals. It taught me everyone doesn't always get what they want. It taught me that you can push yourself farther than you think you can.It taught me to make a plan, to drive on to the objective and aggressively take what you want. All these things I used and still use.

During my 22 year career in Army Airborne  Infantry and Special Forces units I readily credited my wrestling experiences with giving me the edge to take on and pass the challenges of Ranger School,The Special Forces Qualification Course, Military Free Fall School and many other special operations courses.Wrestling gave me my first taste of what I was made of and what I was capable of doing.

When I retired from the military and moved back to Iowa, the epicenter of wrestling, I decided to give back to the sport. I knew I wouldn't have time to coach but I thought I could officiate, so I became a wrestling offcial and have been one for 7 years now.Officiating has its ups and downs, the fans in this state cut no slack when it comes to the sport. At any given high school meet in this area, 20 miles from the University of Iowa, you might see any number of former state champions, NCAA Collegiate Champions or even the odd World or Olympic team member acting as a coach or even just sitting in the stands as a parent. Everyone in this state has wrestled or knows someone that did. The pressure is intense even at the High School level and the Iowa State High School Wrestling Championships are televised statewide and have a rich tradition.

I enjoy everything about the sport and as the season starts for another year I have started officiating once again. When I am out on the mat seeing two young men and even a few young women these days, I am intensely watching as they grapple with each, trying to bend the other to their will and assert physical dominance. Sometimes I look at these athletes and wonder which one of them will be the next Olympic Champion, the next Ranger, the next Green Beret. Or which one of them will always remember when they were simply just a "wrestler."