Author Archives: rike52

On the coffee table of Tony’s beach house, where we’ve been staying in South Haven, is Richard Applegate’s very entertaining pictorial history of the area Photographic Memories Grand Rapids: Josten’s Printing and Publishing, 1996.  In the section on sports, of which SH has a proud tradition (they always beat our asses), is a picture ofContinue reading “football!”

What could be better on a rainy Saturday morning than buttermilk pancakes, slathered with butter and drowned with maple syrup?  Add some bacon on the side and a big glass of cold milk to wash it down with and you’ve got breakfast heaven.  My late Grandpa Slater – Grand Rapids fireman who liked to entertainContinue reading “Undaunted flapjacks”

Can there be anything better than a bowl of fresh strawberries in June, bright red flecked with their little seeds like freckles, sparkling in a glass bowl? And that smell!  Like taking in all the wonder of a pretty girl.  The only thing better than that wonder is imagining the pleasure that will be yoursContinue reading “it’s the berries”

Of 169 graduates of Vicksburg High School in 1970, 4 went to the University of Michigan, a haul that has yet to be surpassed.  We all experienced Ann Arbor differently, but we shared football, sitting in the yet-to-be-filled stadium and watching Bo’s early teams grind out boring football, but winning, winning, winning, going 9-1, 11-1Continue reading “more Bo”

This nonsense has to stop.  With the scalp of Fielding Yost not totally yanked off, they’re coming after Bo, starting with an affront led by his step son https://www.freep.com/story/sports/college/university-michigan/2021/06/09/michigan-football-matt-bo-schembechler-sexual-assault-1969/7627659002/.  Soon the whole Anderson affair, quashed successfully by some of Bo’s old boys during last football season when it should be by all rights have beenContinue reading “et tu, Bo?”

I’ve got a new book out.  This one’s a lot more fun than the first one I published https://wordpress.com/post/theviewfromharbal.com/1417.  It’s about another youthful obsession I haven’t been able to shake 50 years on, only this time I don’t want to.  That’s Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen and all the paths they’ve taken sinceContinue reading “another shameless plug”

Last week I posted about actions on the U of M campus that may lead to Fielding H. Yost’s name being removed from the first building he erected as athletic director in 1923, then Yost Field House (the first multipurpose athletic building of its kind), now Yost Ice Arena. I refer you to that blogContinue reading “more Fielding Yost”

This one woke me from my nap today as it rolled around on John Fogerty Spotify https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqYiHkx7ils.  For me, it dates to my University of Chicago years (’75-9), particularly the first.  I think it was the break up song for me and Mary Ann, a tall, buxom, sassy, social work student from New Hyde ParkContinue reading “late for the sky”

I had occasion to send something to my Dixie chick (South Carolina) friend Donna today. I’ve mentioned her before in a few posts. One has a nice picture of her https://wordpress.com/post/theviewfromharbal.com/1101. She was my old chief’s secretary (er, administrative assistant). We always got along and had fun at work, and have become very good friendsContinue reading “thoughts shared with Donna on Decoration Day”

The contagion of applying today’s morals to great men of the past and hanging them by it has come to Ann Arbor.  A committee of eight historians, one of them my friend and fellow U of C classmate Joel Howell, has examined the evidence and judged that Fielding H. Yost’s name should be removed fromContinue reading “deathless loyalty”