<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I was recently asked, \u00a0\u201cWhere do you get all your story ideas from?\u201d \u00a0Knowing that the standard \u201cI don\u2019t know\u201d wasn\u2019t going to cut it, I fell back on the old, \u201cOh, I read about things or see something in passing and an idea will pop into my head.\u201d \u00a0A perfect example of this very thing happened the other day when I heard a voice from the past in an e-mail. \u00a0I do not know if anyone else hears \u201cvoices\u201d in e-mails, but when I read them, I tend to hear the voice of the person sending the e-mail in my head. \u00a0If it is someone I haven\u2019t spoken to before, then they get assigned the generic e-mail voice I use for people from different walks of life. \u00a0I had no idea what the Rev. Shawn Amos sounded like, but the image on his CD reminded me a little of Leon Redbone so that his what he sounded like in my head (Leon has a deep, gravelly voice reminiscent of a bucket of stones in a cement mixer and, incidentally, Amos is reportedly the son of chocolate cookie magnet Famous Amos). \u00a0When he sent me the station bumper he recorded for WOAS-FM, he sounded like a normal blues guy with no resemblance to Leon what-so-ever. \u00a0It seems my generic default voices aren\u2019t always accurate. \u00a0How about a voice for someone I haven\u2019t talked to in over thirty years? \u00a0Surprisingly, I can still hear their voice, or at least the voice they had back then.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I was reminded of this little mind trick when I got an e-mail from Willie Peterson. \u00a0He said simply enough, \u201cKen, I like reading your stories in the Ontonagon Herald.\u201d \u00a0I noted that the e-mail address was from The Munising News. \u00a0I wrote back something along the lines of, \u201cThank you. \u00a0Are you the original Willie Peterson from the Whitman School Days?\u201d \u00a0\u00a0I asked because the last time I talked to \u201cthe original Willie Peterson\u201d, he was working at the Marquette Mining Journal. \u00a0That was sometime in 1979 when my wife and I were first married and living in Marquette while I was finishing my Master\u2019s Degree at NMU. \u00a0We had some question about our MJ subscription and it was Willie who took care of things for us. \u00a0The response to my e-mail came back loud and clear in the \u201coriginal Willie Peterson\u201d voice: \u00a0\u201c<\/span>Great to hear back from you. \u00a0Yes, I am the original Willie from the Whitman days, the old ski-doo rides and all. \u00a0After working at The Mining Journal for just over 27 years, my wife Nancy and I bought The Munising News and have been doing this for the last 18 years.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0It always amazes me what a flood of memories a contact like this can unleash even after several decades have passed. \u00a0For me, this is one useful element the internet provides that far outweighs the annoyance generated by all the spammers out there. \u00a0Willie and I go back to our days at Whitman Elementary School (now Whitman Hall at NMU) which was (and still is) located on Norway Avenue, \u00a0a short block east of Marquette Senior High School. \u00a0As a neighborhood school, it was populated for the most part by kids from northwest Marquette and the closest outlying township, Trowbridge Park. \u00a0I only lived a block north of the school and Willie was a little further west, across the tracks on Gray Street. \u00a0\u201cAcross the tracks\u201d isn\u2019t used here as a social geography term like, \u201cthey came from the wrong side of tracks.\u201d \u00a0The Marquette Bike Path now occupies this old railroad bed, but back in the day, it was a working rail line that transported iron ore pellets to the Presque Isle pocket ore dock. \u00a0To get to Willie\u2019s house, it was a three or four block trek up Center Street, then a two rut dirt road that ended at the railroad tracks. \u00a0From there, it was a twisting foot path that crossed a small creek before you ended up in Willie\u2019s back yard. \u00a0The three best parts of making this trip were A) unlimited slingshot ammunition for the taking along the track bed, B) the opportunity to ride our bikes through a creek, and C) if we timed it right, pennies could be deposited on the tracks for later retrieval once the passing train had squashed and stretched them into long, oval shapes. \u00a0\u00a0For all the coins we deformed over the years, \u00a0I don\u2019t have any of them tucked away in my various boxes of old stuff. \u00a0\u00a0It is probably just as well. \u00a0The railroad frowned on such activity and the standard parental advice was, \u201cStay away from the trains so you don\u2019t get killed.\u201d \u00a0\u00a0I will assume that the statute of limitations lapsed when they tore up the tracks but I still wish I had saved a couple of those souvenirs. <\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Willie and I also shared the experience of band lessons in elementary school. \u00a0He was a trumpet player and I was a drummer. \u00a0When we were in fifth or sixth grade, (sorry, I\u2019m a little fuzzy on the details here) students had to demonstrate some talent for the class. \u00a0\u00a0Willie and I did a trumpet and drum duet of <\/span>America the \u00a0Beautiful.<\/span><\/i> \u00a0Willie had it in his practice book but my drummer\u2019s workbook only had drum lines and no songs. \u00a0My mother suggested that I just follow Willie\u2019s score and play anything longer than a quarter or eighth note as a roll. \u00a0I had a plastic, red sparkle snare drum so I was able to use that instead of accompanying Willie on a tabletop like we used for our drum lessons. \u00a0I was too nervous to remember if Willie was nervous, but we hacked our way through it. \u00a0In Junior High band, the director, Mr. Smeberg, eventually talked Willie into switching over to tuba and that is the last clear memory I have of us playing in band together.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0We also have a shared history playing flag football. \u00a0Every fall, there was an after school flag football program held on the side lawn south of the school with two sidewalks serving as the end zones. \u00a0\u00a0They built a new wing on Whitman that opened in 1964-65 and it altered the direction of play for my sixth grade year. \u00a0I think the cement end zones turned into the sidelines that year (or vice versa). \u00a0\u00a0I always liked kicking a ball off a tee so when I got to kick off, kicking it to the sidewalk end zone was always considered a great kick. \u00a0With the field running the other direction, it was slightly uphill one way and downhill the other direction so it was always preferable to kick off downhill. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When I wasn\u2019t pretending to be Packer great Don Chandler, I was a center on offense or lineman on defense with Willie usually playing on the opposite side of the line as we weren\u2019t on the same team. \u00a0\u00a0We played \u201cfootball with flags on\u201d which pretty much meant \u201cfootball with no protective equipment\u201d and just about as much body contact as regular football save the tackling part. \u00a0If someone fumbled the ball, we all piled on top of it and each other. \u00a0Many flag leagues deal with this problem now by making any fumble a dead ball at that spot, but not in those days.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0One of the plays I remember from back then used to pop in my head during the 27 years I ran the Ontonagon JH Flag Football program. \u00a0It was something I always called \u201ca Willie Peterson\u201d. \u00a0It seems Willie and I were running side by side chasing one of my teammates who had made an interception. \u00a0Now that we had the ball, it made sense for me to knock Willie off the play so I gave him a little nudge (okay, maybe it was a big nudge) which caught him by surprise and sent him tumbling. \u00a0This is not what I called a \u201cWillie Peterson\u201d, \u00a0however. \u00a0We scored so when I lined up to snap the ball for the extra point, I looked up to see a red faced, very angry Willie digging in inches from my face. \u00a0Needless to say, I snapped the ball and Willie proceeded to drive me backward and into the ground like a bulldozer running over a Volkswagon bug. \u00a0Cliff Guilbault and I would officiate the flag football games in Ontonagon and anytime I would see one of my players drive an opponent back and pancake them, I would think \u201cwell, he just got a Willie Peterson\u201d. \u00a0I am sure we were both mad each other for a little while after this, but pay back was part of growing up and we never took it personally. \u00a0If you dished it out, you got it back and the next day were buddies again.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0There are more stories to tell about those days. \u00a0There were the two years we rode the same bus to the Graveraet School for junior high. \u00a0There is the tale Willie trying to teach me how to ride his mo-ped without killing myself. \u00a0We spent a lot of time snowmobiling all over the fields and woods that were abundant on our side of town. \u00a0These fields and woods are now occupied by a good chunk of Northern\u2019s western campus and the housing subdivisions that have filled in the areas between our old family homes. \u00a0I think maybe I will pick Willie\u2019s brain and see if we remember the same things. \u00a0If we do, then I can conclude that I haven\u2019t stumbled into some memory implanting program ala <\/span>Total Recall. \u00a0<\/span><\/i>If we don\u2019t, I guess I will have to let him tell me his version and see if I get another flood of memories to work with. \u00a0Either way, it was great to hear Willie\u2019s \u201cvoice\u201d again.<\/span><\/p>\n Top Piece video – having invoked the name of the Rev. Shawn Amos, I figured I owed him a video spot!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>