City removes hard surface at East Side Park

A mark of progress in Morris (photo by Del Sarlette)

Looks like the City of Morris is not idle during this time of prevailing idleness. I have heard for some time that the cement or asphalt is coming out at East Side Park. The general talk has been translated into action. Driving past our park last week, I saw the work being done. Shall we assume that nice green grass is going to be planted there now?
The hard surface has not always been worthless. When I was in high school, a time receding ever further into the past, some spirited basketball took place there. Maybe outdoor basketball is no longer as popular. Remember the movie "White Men Can't Jump" with Woody Harrelson? It just brimmed with joy about the pastime. Wouldn't Woody be the perfect actor to play the late Bill Musselman in a biopic?
Musselman might also be fading into the cobwebs of history. Name ring familiar? If yes, maybe it's because he was the first-ever coach of the Timberwolves. He was at the helm for two years, the first of which had the team playing at the Metrodome.
Man, the Dome too is receding into the past. Remember how it was sold as a godsend for baseball? Man, no more worry about the vagaries of Minnesota weather. What could be better? We seemed persuaded by that argument for a very long time. Then what happened? Collective amnesia? Did we forget about how "obvious" the solution was, to Minnesota sports outdoors?
Well, beware of the marketing forces behind the behemoth sports enterprises. They'll say that a new stadium is part of the natural development of any sports team, just like anyone in the restaurant business will tell you that re-decorating is a periodic must. Cosmetic, yes. But necessary. Much of professional entertainment has to do with satisfying people's needs to overcome boredom. The same surroundings all the time get boring.
Despite the, ahem, orgasmic success of the Twins in the Dome over a long time, well, we started hearing this clarion call for how "baseball should be played outdoors." I remember Bert Blyleven eventually saying of the Dome: "That's not baseball." Would have been an interesting comment to hear back in 1980.
The Dome was sold to us as a "one-stop shop" for our big-time sports, remember? We heard that recruiting for the University of Minnesota football team would be so much better, as athletes wouldn't have to worry about freezing their butts off. The Vikings would go from their "frozen tundra" image - remember Steve Cannon? - to making their home where weather would be 100 percent consistent. For baseball, the Baltimore Orioles might have to worry about rain through the whole early spring, while our Twins wouldn't have to worry about a postponed game all season! What could be better? We might have to pinch ourselves to see if we we're dreaming, right?
Ah, the vagaries of human nature or human inclinations, or more to the point, the vagaries of big-time sports marketing. Who could have predicted that the day would come when every single major or even quasi-major team in the Twin Cities would have its very own stadium? Ah, welcome to 2020 which must surely be a superior world, right?
I personally attended several Minnesota Timberwolves games in their first two years. Musselman held forth. How is Minnesota history commemorating Mr. Musselman? As coach of the Wolves? That would be fine, but people my age embrace a different chapter of this mercurial man's career. He is distinct in Minnesota history as a firebrand. A loose cannon. A man who packaged quite the sports product at our U of M and Williams Arena.
NCAA Division I basketball plugs away in quite the predictable fashion today. Let's say under normal circumstances, sans pandemic. In the '70s the men's hoops program had a heyday of fascinating us, complete with a pregame routine that had a Globetrotter flourish. Musselman was obsessed seeking success and selling his program. And, what a cast of talent and personalities he had under him! It is never to be matched, period and end of thought.
The '70s may be getting lost a little in the fog of time. Like disco? Like Smokey and the Bandit movies? Like Jimmy Carter? Like the Gong Show? Like Euell Gibbons? A local attorney acquaintance of mine says Gibbons should be presented as the No. 1 symbol of the decade, which should tell you something about the nature of that time.
Focusing on Minnesota, Musselman's Gophers men's basketball team was "showtime" to the max. You'll remember how the decline happened or at least started: all the intensity turned into a sort of powder keg as there was a brawl. A knee to the groin? Corky Taylor vs. Luke Witte of Ohio State? In later years the two would become friends. Maybe they learned to regret the intense competition cauldron they had been placed in, when in college.
I have always personally wondered whether most former student-athletes regret the intensity of their past competition and rivalries. I have observed sports parents getting maniacally invested in all that stuff. I observed it for years and frankly I always wanted to grumble about it. I learned it does no good to do that. You'll actually invite resentment. School sports entertainment is a big unstoppable gravy train, accept it.
The pandemic has shuttered all that now. A blessing? I smile as I ponder that.
The '70s movie "One on One" with Robby Benson ended with the hero, having rejected the pressures of college basketball, informally playing hoops with his girlfriend at an outdoor playground court. Just like we once had here in Morris at East Side Park. Basketball "shirts and skins" style.
I cringe as I remember one day when I couldn't quite control a little flatulence I had. Math teacher Jerry Miller was with us that evening. I remember he laughed at me. Woody Harrelson wouldn't be caught doing that. Seriously my memories are warm, just as they are warm about when we had the glorious Prairie Pioneer Days at the park. I am stupefied by the near-total disappearance of that event now.
I also expect we will have no Morris Sesquicentennial next summer (2021). If you went back in a time machine to 1971 and told the Morris folks we'd have zero or almost-zero recognition of the Sesquicentennial, their jaws would drop. Our whole society just seemed to celebrate "people" more back then. I played in the wandering German band for the '71 event. I'm proud to share that. No recollection of flatulence.
 
Addendum: Every time I refer to "Smokey and the Bandit" I have to do a quick check to see if it's "Smokey" or "Smoky." Also, whenever I write "Charlton Heston" I have to check to see if it's one "s" or two. Every time. And of course, it's necessary always to double-check with "Euell Gibbons," the guy from the 1970s Grape Nuts Cereal commercials who liked to talk about eating things in the wild, e.g. "wild hickory nuts." Legend has it those commercials had to end because kids were going out in the yard looking for things to eat.
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com
  

Goodbye to hard (and hot) surface at Morris' East Side park