{"id":2205,"date":"2010-10-13T08:00:32","date_gmt":"2010-10-13T12:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/?p=2205"},"modified":"2015-05-11T08:36:40","modified_gmt":"2015-05-11T12:36:40","slug":"wolverine-blues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/2010\/10\/13\/wolverine-blues\/","title":{"rendered":"WOLVERINE BLUES"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

1. RAH-RAH AND SO-SO<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

A simple fall pleasure is walking around Shaker Lakes listening to Michigan football on the radio.<\/p>\n

I came by this diversion fairly recently. \u00a0My older kids went to liberal arts colleges with no football teams. \u00a0I figured my youngest child would too.\u00a0 I took him to Oberlin on a college tour and said, “Can you see yourself here?”<\/p>\n

“In a word, Dad, no,” he said.\u00a0 “There’s not enough sports talk.”\u00a0 Jack<\/a>, the youngest, wanted rah-rah.<\/p>\n

He went to Michigan <\/strong><\/span>and got rah-rah.\u00a0 We rehashed the football games his freshman year.<\/p>\n

I monitored the university’s Web site like a helicopter parent.\u00a0 I told my son to audition for the pep band, the Hillel a cappella group, the school’s percussion group and anything else he could think of.\u00a0 I wanted him to find a niche at the Big U.<\/p>\n

And I wanted Michigan to win at football, because my son was so rah-rah.<\/p>\n

\"Jack<\/a>

Jack Stratton, 2008. Michigan Women’s Basketball Band<\/p><\/div>\n

I followed the<\/strong><\/span> football games on the Internet my son’s first year.\u00a0 I didn’t know about the games on Cleveland radio. \u00a0\u00a0That was stupefying — the Internet — like staring at a tickertape: Joe Blow . . . 3 yards . . .\u00a0 3rd and 5 . . . M 46 yard line<\/em>.”<\/p>\n

Then I serendipitously found Michigan football on Cleveland radio.\u00a0 No more squinting at the computer. \u00a0The announcer promoted Detroit pizza parlors and grocery stores.\u00a0 I felt like a ham operator picking up an exotic locale.\u00a0 “Gratiot at 8 Mile.” \u00a0CKLW radio — the border blaster — was sending out the Wolverine word from Windsor.<\/p>\n

Michigan football isn’t on CKLW this year.\u00a0 It’s on a weak FM station from Detroit. End of my fall bliss.<\/p>\n

The team used to be good, then suddenly stunk.\u00a0 The university hired a new coach.<\/p>\n

I asked my son <\/strong><\/span>what he thought of the new guy.<\/p>\n

He said, “Who is it?”<\/p>\n

He didn’t know about Rich Rod!\u00a0 (Rich Rodriquez, the new coach.)\u00a0 Jack had fallen under the sway of the football atheists at the Residential College and music school.<\/p>\n

I knew more Michigan football than my son.\u00a0 I was now rah-rah and he was so-so.\u00a0 Odd.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

2. SONNY, LISTEN<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

A PhD classical music student at the co-op house in Ann Arbor didn’t like my practicing. \u00a0He didn’t like jazz, period. And he didn’t like my girlfriend. \u00a0He called her a “hole,” which was black slang around 1970.\u00a0 \u00a0This guy, though, was a tall blond Texan.<\/p>\n

Tex would answer the house phone and announce to one and all: “Bertie, your hole is on the line.”\u00a0 (“Bertie” wasn’t too cool either.)<\/p>\n

I punched him.\u00a0 He was seated on the couch in the co-op living room.\u00a0 I hit him and his coffee went flying. \u00a0He stopped bugging people — at least me — after that.\u00a0 He thought I was nuts.<\/p>\n

I wasn’t nuts. \u00a0I haven’t attacked anybody since, except a teenager I punched when I taught at an ESL school. (Different story.)<\/p>\n

In 1970 Miles Davis <\/strong><\/span>had just released Bitches Brew<\/em>, the first big-time jazz-rock album. \u00a0I borrowed recordings of Hank Crawford, Lou Donaldson and Rufus Harley from black students.\u00a0 I went to Baker’s Keyboard Lounge in Detroit to see Gene Ammons, Sonny Stitt and Roland Kirk.<\/p>\n

Tex became an administrator in the Michigan music school.\u00a0 Mazel tov<\/em>.\u00a0 He stayed there forever.<\/p>\n

My youngest kid went to music school at Michigan.\u00a0 Mazel tov.<\/em> I occasionally went to see my son perform and kept an eye out for Tex. \u00a0I didn’t run into him.\u00a0 I was ready to apologize, unless he called me Bertie again.<\/p>\n

Bertie?<\/em>\u00a0 That numbskull, I swear . . .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

1. RAH-RAH AND SO-SO A simple fall pleasure is walking around Shaker Lakes listening to Michigan football on the radio. I came by this diversion fairly recently. \u00a0My older kids went to liberal arts colleges with no football teams. \u00a0I figured my youngest child would too.\u00a0 I took him to Oberlin on a college tour […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,16,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coming-of-age","category-kinder-the","category-sports-pages"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2205"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2205\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23172,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2205\/revisions\/23172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}