Marvin Hall
January 18th, 2012 at 5:41 am
Hoop Dreams
January 17th, 2012 at 11:19 am
Today’s Flyover People column as seen in The Emporia Gazette:
HOOP DREAMS
When I was in junior high, I had my mind set on becoming a Harlem Globetrotter.
Kids have Beginner’s Mind. As youngsters, we don’t know yet that there are obstacles in the world; our dreams are pure.
I had watched the Globetrotters perform on TV and, by golly, with practice, I knew I could become one. It didn’t occur to me at the time that being a short white girl from Kansas might be a hindrance.
So in the early ‘70s, I played basketball in the backyard with my older brother, Leon, who taught me how not to double dribble, travel, or palm the ball. He and I played countless games of one-on-one and horse. We’d often play until the sun set behind us or until Mom tapped on the kitchen window, which meant one of two things – either supper was ready, or we should quit fighting.
Recently, I’ve spent a lot of time on the walking track at the Emporia Rec Center. The track circles the top of the gymnasium and as I watch the pick-up games on the court below, I think about those basketball-playing days with my brother.
Since basketball season coincides with the cold months, Leon and I were out there on any decent day that happened upon us. Last week I asked Leon about his memories. One of his recollections was “dribbling a half-size basketball so cold it would barely bounce, but being so determined to play that I’d wear cotton gloves.”
Our equipment was second-hand and lacking, but I don’t think we complained. We were happy to have anything that resembled a goal and a ball, even if the ball wouldn’t inflate completely.
We had a square of plywood for a backboard, with a green hoop attached. One problem was that it was mounted on the side of our steel swing set. And that meant no lay-ups. The swing set legs kept us from being able to run underneath and behind the goal, but we tried anyway, bruising our shins, so strong was the desire to do lay-ups.
The court was small, not much bigger than the key on a regulation court. To the right were shrubs and ivy and rocks. To the left was a pile of Dad’s rusted scrap iron. We played on packed dirt which had, as Leon describes, “clusters of grass that turned ‘dribbling’ into ‘scrambling.’”
And “shooting from behind the ivy meant pushing it through the branches of an elm,” Leon recalled.
More than anything, I wanted to play team basketball, but in Pawnee Rock, we didn’t have girls’ junior high or high school teams.
Title IX, which opened the door for females to have equal opportunities in sports, became law in June 1972, the summer after my seventh grade year. In eighth grade, we still didn’t have a team, which actually turned out in my favor because that November I broke my arm (a story for another column) and wouldn’t have been able to play anyway.
When I was in ninth grade, the seventh and eighth grade girls did have a team. And we ninth graders begged the coach for a team as well. Coach Bean managed to get us two games with Mullinville. We borrowed uniforms from the junior high girls.
It felt magical to play in a real game even though we lost both of them (25-14 and 19-14). I was a point guard and when dribbling down the court one time, I launched a shot from near center court. In my defense, I was open.
When I took the shot, I wasn’t too far from the bench and while the ball was in the air, I heard Coach Bean groan, “No, Cheryl.” But the ball swished through the net. Pure luck.
My Harlem Globetrotter dream faded, but I am pleased that the first woman on their team was from Kansas. Lynette Woodard, of Wichita, had what I didn’t have, namely talent, and she joined the Globetrotters in 1985.
Dreams don’t always come to fruition, but they get us excited and give us something to work toward. And I have great memories of playing backyard basketball with my brother.
Leon said, “I remember thinking it was the greatest thing in the world to have our own basketball court.”
It was indeed.
Copyright 2012 ~ Cheryl Unruh
The University of Kansas
January 17th, 2012 at 5:39 am
Chicago & North Western
January 16th, 2012 at 5:35 am
Flavorlicious
January 14th, 2012 at 11:45 am
Nate and Tonya Jobe sell their baked goods at the Emporia Winter Farmers’ Market
Today’s Gazette has a story about this new business in town: Flavorlicious Bridges Food Allergies.
Meatloaf
January 11th, 2012 at 6:24 pm
It’s Never Too Late to Begin
January 10th, 2012 at 12:27 pm
Today’s Flyover People column as seen in The Emporia Gazette:
IT’S NEVER TOO LATE TO BEGIN
At age 65, Kansan Waldo McBurney began running. When he was 88, he started running competitively.
In 2003 at age 100, McBurney won four gold medals in the World Masters Athletic Championships in Puerto Rico. He not only won medals, he broke the world record for his age group in the 100 meters and in the shot put. He broke a U.S. record in the 5,000 meter race-walk.
Waldo McBurney, who lived in Quinter, must have been quite a guy. I would’ve liked to have met him. He was born in 1902 and he passed away in 2009.
I learned about this man recently when Terry Lessig sent me the audio version of McBurney’s autobiography, “My First 100 Years: A Look Back from the Finish Line.”
Lessig, of Phoenix, heard about McBurney in a 2006 CBS news story about the (then) 104-year-old Kansan who had just been named the oldest American worker. McBurney was a beekeeper at the time, having let go of some of his other labor-intensive jobs.
In 2007, Lessig traveled to Quinter and recorded the author reading his book.
McBurney and his siblings were raised on a farm near Quinter. He tells about farm and household chores, about going to school and to church, and about family life.
“When I thought my older brother, Edwin, was unfair with me I had a quick way of setting him straight,” McBurney said. “That was by sinking my teeth into his shoulder. That controlled him. But my mother interfered. She gave me a knife and sent me out to the peach trees to get a switch to use on me. I felt punished all the way out there and all the way back, especially when I got back. My mother’s method of punishment must have worked. I haven’t bitten anyone for over 90 years.”
When he was a teenager, his father had a stroke. His dad recovered fairly well, but to ease the workload the family moved to a smaller farm near Sterling.
McBurney’s uncle was a medical doctor and chiropractor in California and so his father spent some time there recovering from the stroke. When his father returned, he brought with him a 1912 book by Alfred W. McCann called “Starving America.”
“Starving America” was about nutrition and malnutrition. McBurney’s mother read the book aloud to the family.
Because of his father’s stroke and with the encouragement found in McCann’s book, McBurney gained a strong interest in nutrition. Like many farm families in the early 1900s, they raised most of their own food, and McBurney loved gardening.
He graduated from what is now Kansas State University with a degree in horticulture. Over the years he kept studying nutrition and he centered his meals around fruits and vegetables, whole grains and beans. McBurney said he had abstained from tobacco and alcohol his entire life.
In addition to running and nutrition, McBurney discusses other factors that may have led to his longevity. He cited faith in God, hard work, rest, stress management, family, marriage and a positive attitude.
McBurney believed in keeping the Sabbath. In Kansas, qualifications for the National Senior Olympics were held on Sunday, so one year he traveled to Tulsa where he could qualify on a Saturday. Another year he went to Pierre, South Dakota to qualify.
In his races, McBurney was disappointed that there weren’t more people to run against. “It is easy to win gold medals when one has no competition in one’s age group,” he said.
“I ran for fitness and because I enjoyed running,” McBurney said. “Entering races turned my fitness into sport and that gave me extra incentive to keep up the program, and I needed that when it was easier to lie in bed than to face a cold wind.”
McBurney was an ordinary guy, a hard-working Kansan, who achieved great things because he took care of his health and didn’t see age as a limitation. He put on running shoes when he was 65. He hit the road and he kept on going.
“My First 100 Years: A Look Back from the Finish Line,” the audio book by Waldo McBurney is available at www.audiobookman.com.
***
Copyright 2012 ~ Cheryl Unruh
Almost Spring
January 9th, 2012 at 11:40 am
It’s only 37 degrees outside, but in the warmth of the sun and wearing two long-sleeved shirts (me) and a fur coat (Zorro), we are delighting in this beautiful morning. The air is as still as a moment of silence and we feel like we’ve made it to spring without the reality of winter.
But, as my favorite weatherman (Mark Bogner of KSN in Wichita) said this morning: “A ‘January Sandwich’ this week with cold-cuts in the middle and mild ‘bread’ on each end! 
Really only 1 cold day on Thursday, so the distinct lack of winter continues.”
Pre-crocus green stuff.
Zorro rolls in the sun-warmed dead grass.
