Category: Indiana University Hoosier (I.U) Sports (Page 23 of 31)

I’ve always felt that Friday the 13th was a lucky day.  As far back as I can remember, it’s never been a bad day, although most of my life it’s been a work day. At least, it was the last day of the work week and that always made it good. There are no significant events, birthdays or anniversaries noted on my phone for the day, so there’s nothing to celebrate or regret. I am meeting an old classmate for lunch today after at least 50 years apart and there’s an I.U. Basketball game this evening. There is much to look forward to on this Friday the 13th, especially since the “Leadership Meetings” are no longer a Friday fixture. Lately, they’ve simply been friendly get-togethers to watch a scheduled game.  

As it turns out, my fellow Elkhart High School graduate has lived in Portland for at least the last forty years. I’ll find out more at lunch, but potentially he could be an addition to our “Leadership” group. Two of the other members are also from Elkhart, so it’s amazing we’ve all migrated to Portland. We’re all now retired with many memories of our home town back in Indiana. In our phone conversation yesterday to set-up lunch, I did find out that he doesn’t get back to the area, including our recent 50th High School reunion. It will be interesting to see who we still have in common and where life has taken us all these years. Reconnecting is one of the great joys of retirement. I probably wouldn’t have found him if it weren’t for the skills that I’ve developed in my genealogy hobby. This was the result of my recent successful efforts to find my birth parents, as detailed in Diary of an Adoptee, a category within this blog. 

My writing includes all of my interests, with the ultimate goal of writing a book. It’s carefully divided into categories, including Poetry, Sports, Adoption, Pets, Retirement, Running, and Travel. My daily topic varies within these categories to accommodate my mood or where I am in the world. We’ve moved into a downtown Portland apartment to eventually allow us to travel more and find a permanent retirement home hopefully near a warm beach. Portland was the end of both of our careers and not where we want to spend the rest of our lives. Despite the pleasant memories we’ve made here and the friends we’ll leave behind, it’s not our retirement nirvana. We’ll start taking the next steps in a week or so with a trip to Florida. Today, Friday the 13th, is also the start of the Twelve Days of Christmas. It’s an exciting time of the year! Hopefully, every day is a lucky Friday the 13th for the rest of our lives.

I got a call from Fed Ex yesterday about the address where I sent “The Jersey.” (See Post #1149). Former I.U. basketball center, Kent Benson, no longer lives there, but they did have his cell phone number and left a message that he had a package. I also went to my I.U. Alumni directory to see if there was any contact information provided, but he was not listed. I’m still hoping that his I.U. jersey eventually gets to him.

While searching through the directory, I stumbled upon a Jim “James” Fairchild that was my age and lives here in Portland. Thinking of the long-shot that he might have been a high school classmate, I did some on-line research and found evidence that he once lived in Elkhart, Indiana. With this confirmation, I immediately called the number that he included with his I.U. profile, but it was disconnected. My only option was to send snail-mail to the address that is probably also outdated. Finding both Kent and Jim are now in the hands of the postal service. 

I never had much contact with Kent, but I clearly remember going over to Jim’s house in Elkhart. He lived on East Jackson Blvd. that followed the St. Joe River. Homes situated on the river-side were some of the priciest in the city, while those on the other side were large but not as valuable. I guess you could say that he lived on the relatively wrong side of the street. His parents must have both worked because they were never there when I was at the house on afternoons after school. One thing that made Jim popular was that his mom allowed him to read Playboy magazine, material usually only found hidden in the woods or under the bed if you were lucky at that age. His mom would actually go through the publication and cut out all the pictures. The allure was to see if she had missed any. We would gather at his house on this mission. I would love to re-connect with Jim after 50 years to get “the rest of the story.”

During the course of my amateur detective work, my wife and I walked to the movies. The showing of “Dark Waters” gave me a lot more to think about than old acquaintances. It was kind of a shocking story, knowing that all this was going on without our knowledge. It portrayed lawyers as the “good guys,” going after the evil that industrial giant DuPont was spreading around the world through the use of Teflon. Most of the story took place in Parkersburg, West Virginia. It made me think of an attorney friend of mine in Austin that was once a client. She was from West Virginia like the real-life character Robert Bilott that actor Mark Ruffalo portrayed. I was anxious for her reaction to the movie, since most of our recent communication has simply been about Indiana and West Virginia basketball. Because she has not yet seen it, there’s no point in spoiling the plot for any readers.

On our mile-long walk back from the theater, my wife was lamenting about the Teflon pans that she used for cooking clean-up convenience, unaware that she was poisoning her family. It made us think about all the trust we place on manufacturers to provide us with safe products. It’s disturbing to discover the harm we do to our bodies through what we consume or breathe-in every day. It was even more alarming to see the effects of harmful chemicals in causing cancer and tragic birth defects in both humans and animals. It made me leery of what’s below the surface of dark water?