THROWBACK THURSDAY

Back in the early 1970's, I was newly married to SWMBO and living in Indianapolis, Indiana.

One Sunday afternoon in March, about this time of month because I remember it was close to Easter, the phone rang.

It was my friend, Tom, calling from the radio station where we both worked.

He said there was a report of a tornado on the east side of Indy where we lived and asked me to look out the window and see if I could see it.

I did and I could.

As Tom put me on the air and I began describing what I was seeing, the twister seemed to be getting larger and darker and, more seriously, closer!

After a few minutes of live broadcasting I told Tom it looked like the tornado was headed in our direction and I was getting out of there.

We piled a few belongings and whatever family was home at the time into the car and drove away.

The tornado tore into a different apartment project about a mile from where we lived before it dissipated.

It didn't come any closer to us but it did a lot of damage where it did come down.

We eventually returned home, glad to be alive and safe.

Tornadoes are scary and while I had seen some small twisters as a kid in North Dakota this was the closest I had been to a big one in Tornado Alley.

Here's a picture of Judy and me outside the apartment house we were living in at the time.

You'll just have to forgive me for my clothing.

It was the Disco Era, you know.

INDY MEMORIES

Once upon a time, a long time ago, I worked for several years for a radio station in Indianapolis, Indiana.

My friend and colleague, Tom (he of the Light Breezes blog) was a young whippersnapper fresh out of college in those days.

Tom is at the upper left here, I'm at the lower right.

It's a newspaper picture taken when we each won awards for our coverage of schools.

The general manager of the radio station in those days was a fellow named Jim Hilliard.

Snappy dresser, eh?

Anyway there was a mini-reunion of a handful of those guys over at Tom's house in Cambria, California recently.

Jim is in the center of this group with Tom next to him in the dark shirt and glasses.

On the far left is Mike Griffin, who was a disc jockey at the FM station, and Bob Christy, who got into management. 

On the far right is George Johns, who was a sales guy who I never met. 

He came after I had moved on to Arizona.

The years have been better to some of the group than others.

But speaking of that, when I was in Indy, I met a college pal of Tom's with a weird sense of humor.

He was a weatherman at a local t.v. station in those days but he was looking for something different.

He wrote and recorded several pieces of his humor for our radio station.

He later parlayed that comedic talent into a pretty good career.

You probably recognize him as late night talk show host David Letterman.

Well, old Dave retired awhile back but a photographer caught up with him as he was out jogging recently on St. Bart's Island in the Caribbean.

As my wife said "I'd walk right by him on the street and never recognize him."

Time. 

Aging.

Hair loss.

Weight gain.

As has often been said "Old age isn't for sissies!"

TUESDAY TRAVELS

Back in the 1970's when I was a television news reporter in Phoenix most of my travels were related to my job.

In those days the man who became Baseball Steve was my photographer on many of those trips.

Here we are, "hard at work", high atop what I referred to as The Dread Mogollon Rim, known to the average person as just the Mogollon Rim, in Northern Arizona.

As you can see by our attire, it can get chilly even in sun-swathed Arizona.

I am standing very close to the edge of the rim, with a vertical drop of a couple of hundred feet straight down just behind me.

SWMBO says I always had to go right to the edge of places like that in my younger days. 

False courage, I suspect.

SPRING INTO THE KITCHEN

SWMBO prepared one of my favorite meals last night.

Chicken Piccata.

The sauce is butter, lemon, capers and white wine.

(We were out of white wine so she used a dash of vodka.)

Our entree is customarily served with Fettucini Alfredo.

My contribution was a couple of baguettes, baked earlier in the day.

It is a meal fit for a king.

I discovered it many years ago in a Georgetown, D.C. restaurant while visiting with an old pal, Frank.

It was actually veal in the restaurant.

But it was that sauce that attracted and eluded me for quite some time until we found a recipe in Bon Appetit magazine and discovered the secret ingredient to kick it up a notch were the capers.

Success!

And I'm happy to report there were enough leftovers last night for a repeat performance soon.

I've said it before.

I'm a lucky man.

IT'S SPRING!

When I went out to replenish the bird bath this morning I noticed, just above my head, the first of the Redbud tree's blooms had turned into a green leaf.

On the official first day of spring!

It won't be long before the entire tree will go from the showy purple blooms into a green foliage for the birds to hide in.

Spring is here!

SORRY - GOT TO BRAG

SWMBO and I have a new great-granddaughter.

Cadence Rose Milburn came into the world just after 8:30 last night in Tennessee.

7 pounds 11 pounds, 21 inches.

The proud parents are Russell and Kayla.

FAME (of a sort)

My old buddy, Baseball Steve, got his wish from this political season the other day.

He got a picture with Bernie Sanders.

Steve (on the right) and an audio guy had just shot an interview with Sanders by Rachel Maddow.

So the old shooter got a selfie out of it.

The two Phoenix guys look happy.

Sanders looks, typically, befuddled and as if the other two are holding him up.

Meantime, I had a little touch with fame myself recently.

The first week in March marked the 50th anniversary of the great blizzard of 1966 which slammed into North Dakota.

I was working as a radio-tv newsman in the state capitol, Bismarck, at the time and, after walking three miles to work through snowdrifts and white-out conditions, spent the next three days at the station, much of it on the air on radio and television.

A relative of mine who still lives in North Dakota saw that my old t.v. station would be doing special coverage of the storm and called to tell me about it.

I then emailed the station weather men and newscasters and asked if I could get a DVD of their coverage.

That resulted in them asking me if I would mind driving down to Phoenix and being interviewed for their coverage.

Since the station in Phoenix is also one I once worked at I was happy to oblige and the interview was done by a friend from my days there who is now their anchorman, Mark Curtis.

I since have received the DVD from Bismarck and after viewing it and seeing how battered my visage appears after all these years, I rather wish I hadn't agreed to the interview.

Fame.

It's a fleeting thing.