By Alan Sorensen
This weekend promises to be harder on this old body than any day I ever spent on the garbage truck or beer route. Maybe even more taxing than writing stories for the paper.
Im going to try to participate in as many Havre High Homecoming, MSU-Northern football, and Havre Festival Days activities as time allows.
I dont know who came up with the idea that weekends should be more hectic than workdays, but they outdid themselves when preparing this one.
I had considered taking the Red Cross 15-hour course in disaster management, but that would have been two hours Thursday night, six hours Friday night and seven hours Saturday.
Presenting the biggest problem Friday through Sunday will be the various charitable menus:
Feed My Sheep chili feed at Van Orsdel United Methodist Church at 4:30 p.m. today;
Hot dogs, candy, coffee, and pop at Blue Pony Stadium tonight;
Kiwanis pancakes, sausages, coffee, milk and juice at 7 a.m. Saturday;
Candy that I can pry from the kids along the parade;
Hill County Tavern Association bratwurst (Rocky Mountain Hot Beer Sausages) and hot dogs at tailgate party behind the MSU-Northern gym from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Saturday;
Hot dogs, candy, coffee, and pop at Blue Pony Stadium Saturday afternoon;
Fair-type offerings from club booths at Demolition Derby Saturday afternoon and evening;
Barbecued hamburger feed at the MSU-Northern SUB lawn after the 5K race Sunday morning.
I run because I have a lot to lose. But Id have even more to lose if I didnt run, especially after Festival Days weekend.)
I hope to see everyone else in town and along the Hi-Line punishing themselves, too, with the various delectable goodies over the weekend.
Next Tuesday I get to make a fool of myself in a fieldhouse full of 600 to 1,000 women. I just hope I dont compound it by adding several inches to the measurements that Doug at Cavaliers took two weeks ago to outfit me for a tux. He suspected, at the time, that the tux would land me some ladies.
To compound the problem, I get to stand by trying to look thin for 2 hours while a gorgeous chef fills the air with the fattening aromas from some pretty amazing dishes.
The whole thing, cohosted by The Daily News and MSU-Northern Athletic Department and including several giveaways, is happening in the MSU-Northern gym with the kind assistance of Dr. Ted Spatkowski, the schools athletic director.
Were into the final month before the first anniversary of my most popular column to date. The anniversary of my last drag on a cigarette and last pinch of tobacco falls at nearly the same time.
Before I publish the expanded and revised list of east-enders, I want to mention two families in awe of whom I was raised.
My parents, who had nothing but good things to say about people, held these two families up to me (I dont know if they did the same for my brother and sister) as examples of what families can be.
I learned early on that most other east-enders felt the same about these families and many still do. (I discovered that was still true when, thinking that Id already mentioned them because they have always been so important in my life, I omitted them from my first list last year.)
Those families are the Katos and Kukas. In my family, the Katos and Kukas were held in nearly equal esteem, with the Katos taking a slight lead because my parents had lived next to and learned much from Grandma Kato.
The one family consisted of several very tall men and the other of many relatively short men. What they all had in common were their desires to compete, to win, and to share. They also had great gardens.
Ambiguity can be fun. But in the hands of news reporters and broadcasters, ambiguity can be downright humorous.
What did the broadcaster mean when he said that one million and a quarter cars were imported from Japan during a particular year? Was he referring to FTE cars, the total number of cars that could be built from trillions of spare parts? Or had he intended to say one and a quarter million (1,250,00) cars?
