Freezing in Minnesota

 

Too Cold For Me

The current cold snap reminded me that a cold snap in East Tennessee can’t compare to a Minnesota winter, which I experienced five years back while visiting kids and grandkids in Minneapolis.

I wrote a column about that experience but never got around to publishing it in the Times-News.

Here it is, finally making its public debut:

 

David Miller called at exactly the wrong time. I had just finished filling up the rental car at a Minneapolis gas station and I was frozen to the bone.

In Minnesota there is nothing to cut the wind, no mountains, no hills, not even any molehills, and the wind just whips down from Canada and goes right through you. I even had a new winter coat that I bought just for the trip and still I froze.

One problem I had at the filling station was that I didn’t know how to unlatch the gas tank lid on the rental car. So while I fumbled with latches and buttons – opening the hood three times and the trunk twice - I was freezing.

I would have paid someone to fill up the car.

So when David called, I told him my tales of woe and ice. And especially my ire at the rental car.

I was already mad at the car before the gas tank lid imbroglio. Our first morning in Minneapolis I went out and started the car to let it warm up. I came back inside and about five minutes later I braved the cold again, confident that the inside of the Chevy Cruze was toasty warm.

Here’s a tip for anyone renting a Chevy Cruze in a cold climate: if you go out to warm up the car, stay inside it. The car locks its own doors after a brief interval, apparently less than five minutes.

So we called the rental car company to get them to come out and unlock the car. Because we hadn’t purchased their $14 a day insurance, they were uninterested in coming out to unlock the car. Or even in giving us any hints on how we might unlock the car.

Tough cookies, they said, essentially.

I can’t print what I said.

Fortunately we are AAA members and the AAA guy was there in ten minutes.

I learned a couple of things from him.

I assumed he had one of those bars that you slip down the window and pull up. He didn’t. He used two small airbags and a coat hanger. A glorified coat hanger. He slipped the airbags into the door jam, inflated them, and wiggled his coat hanger through the gap and unlocked the car.

I hadn’t seen anyone unlock a car with a coat hanger since I was at D-B and Coach Brixey wandered out from the coaches’ office and wiggled a coat hanger through the window of my ’55 Chevy and pulled up the lock button. He made it look easy.

The other thing the AAA guy told me was not to use the emergency brake in Minnesota, that it would eventually rust the brake out.

Since I was already angry with the rental car company, I put on the emergency brake every time we parked.

 

 

D-B FOOTBALL ON THE RADIO

In the forties WKPT broadcast D-B’s home football games live with program director Bob Poole calling the action. Later announcer Lannie Lancaster took over broadcasting games. Eventually Martin Karant would replace Lancaster.

But there was one D-B game called by WKPT morning announcer, the late, beloved Charlie Deming, normally host of the “Gloom Chaser” show. George DeVault, long-time general manager of WKPT and a station veteran, told me, “An old story around here is that Charlie Deming, who knew very little about sports, was called upon to stand in and do play-by-play on a game when the regular play-by-play guy was sick. Supposedly he said, ‘There he goes. He’s to the 30-yard line, the 40, the 50, the 60, the 70, the 80…..’”

 

 

BIGGER AND BIGGER FOOTBALL PLAYERS

In the September 18, 1930 Kingsport Times preview of the 1930 D-B football team was this:

“The forward wall, called the best since he began coaching in Kingsport by Sprankle, has weight and speed. The eleven-line yesterday was heavy. Grabby Light, stocky end, was the lightest man on the front wall and he tips the beams at around 150. P. Bellamy, Watkins, Cifers, Dobyns, Bevins and Collins are all well on the north side of the 160 mark with the exception of Bevins, who tips the beams around 155.”

 

After I wrote about the smaller football players of the 1930s in 2006, I heard from H.W. “Huck” Haynes of Rogersville. “About your story on the 1934 football game D-B against Rogersville, I am still sore from playing in that game. I well remember the Cifers boys. They may have been small but you should have seen the size of the Rogersville Warriors in their taped-up uniforms. When we played, you were allowed to kill the punters and passer. Guess who the punter and passer was? It was me. I was a 150 pounder. They beat us 75 to 0.”

Mr. Haynes said he recently moved back to Rogersville after 65 years away. He told me he also played in the Appalachian League when it first started. “The pay was $50 per month!”

 

KINGSPORT HIGH’S FIRST OFFICIAL BASKETBALL COACH

According to Dobyns-Bennett’s official basketball records, the first coach was A.R. Miller, who coached the 1918-1919 team. That was also the first year the Kingsport High basketball team played indoors according to John. I. Cox, who was on the team and submitted a team photo to the Times News’ Out of the Attic feature in 1988. Cox supplied the team identifications including that of coach “A.P. Miller.”

I searched for years for any information about A.P. or A.R. Miller. Finally I chanced upon the answer.

The problem I had finding out about him was that his name was actually E.P. Miller, Emulus Parrott Miller, nicknamed “Boots.”

He would have been 18 when that first season started, barely older than his players.

E.P. first appeared in the Kingsport Times in 1918 when he lost his pocket book with “between $25 and $35” in it. His classified ad noted he had lost it somewhere between the Shale Plant and Kingsport Motor. He offered an unspecified reward.

When he registered for the draft that year, he listed his occupation as “mail carrier and farmer.” Nothing about basketball coach. So Kingsport High’s first official basketball coach was moonlighting from his day job carrying the mail.

He coached just that one year, his team finishing with a 5-6 record.

In the 1920 census he listed his occupation as a merchant and his residence as Indian Springs. The first newspaper mention of his merchant career was in 1924. J.W. Harrison founded Shelby Street Garage and E.P. “Boots” Miller was named assistant manager and co-owner.

In 1936 Boots, now 36, married 22-year-old Maxie Mae Cleek. Later that year the two were seriously injured when a train smashed into their car near Richmond, Virginia. They were in the hospital for months.

In 1940 Boots and his two brothers, Henry and J. Perry, acquired the DeSoto and Plymouth dealership in Kingsport.

E.P. “Boots” Miller died in 1951.

His obituary was featured on the front page of the Kingsport Times. There was no mention of his stint as a coach of Kingsport High’s basketball team.

 

KINGSPORT HIGH BASKETBALL TEAM LIES DOWN ON THE JOB…

From the Johnson City Staff, March 4, 1919:

GREENEVİLE HIGH SCHOL WINS 2 TO O

The basket ball boys of G. H. S. were very sorry to disappoint the basket ball fans of Greeneville on the 28th when Kingsport in the last minute laid down on the G. H. S. boys.

Kingsport was on the floor but because an understanding could not be reached as to the rules regarding out of bounds they decided to forfeit the game giving the victory to Greeneville 2 to 0 but the general opinion was that they had cold feet.

 

Boots Miller was the coach of this team and perhaps he was the one who instructed his team to sit down on the court.

(We don’t know if the KHS boys literally lay down on the floor. No other local newspaper wrote about the game.)

 

 

BEST UPPER EAST TENNESSEE BASKETBALL PLAYERS FROM 1947 TO 1977 ACCORDING TO ONE WHO WOULD KNOW

From the Kingsport Times-News of Feb. 27, 1977:

Carl Matherly, principal at Lynn View who was head coach of the Lynxes for 16 years, has kept his silence until now:

“I've been around here 30 years and I would have to place Lynn View’s Rodney Arnold with the likes of Holston Valley's Billy Smith, Dobyns-Bennett's Skip Brown and Charlie Leonard and Surgoinsville's Bill Kirkpatrick. Nobody else I've seen could do all the things that I've seen Rodney do.”

Arnold doesn't appear to have a chance to overtake Perry County's Mike Rhodes for the state scoring championship. The Lynn View ace has a 36-point average and trails Mr. Rhodes by about four points, which is a lot at this stage of the ballgame. Rhodes has had two 60-plus performances to pad his average. Arnold's best was 54 against Gate City.

 

BEST KINGSPORT BASKETBALL PLAYERS PRE-1940

From Kingsport Times-News of Feb. 27, 1977:

Who was the best Kingsport basketball player of the pre-1940 era? (And we have to confine it to pre-1940 because basketball is a much different game today.)

LeRoy Sprankle told this newspaper in 1938 that he couldn’t pick just one. He named his best eight:

“Guards, George Grills, Claude Wright and Robert Dodd; centers, Nat Reasor and Fred Saylor; forwards, Nat Lunn, Mansfield Jackson and Luke Bellamy.”

While he was at it Sprankle picked a second “Eight:” “Guards, William Snow, Milton DeVault and Fred Clyce; centers, Paul Hug, Usif Haney and Lee Meredith; forwards, Paul Bellamy, Ed Cifers and Paul Wilson.

Sprankle wouldn’t pick a “best” but the newspaper did. “George ‘Blackie’ Grills has been called by critics the best ‘all-time player of Dobyns-Benett.’ Grills played for five years at Dobyns-Bennett [1929-1934] and his spectacular shots and ability at handling rebounds amazed the crowds as did his magnificent guarding. Grills played last year [1937] with the Kingsport Drug Independents and is now playing on the Augusta Military Academy five.”