Notes From Neal

It doesn’t get much better than this. A bluegrass band performing West Virginia, written by Hazel Dickens. The band is called Grassahol, a bluegrass band from the Columbus, Ohio area.

Enjoy the music and the scenes from The Mountain State.

In spite of:

• The Mountaineers losing their national championship bid by losing to arch-rival Pitt in the regular season finale.
• The highly successful head coach breaking his promise to WVU and bolting to greener pastures soon after that loss.
• All the controversy, negativity and other brouhaha from this turn of events after a great fooball season.
• Being an underdog to #4 ranked Oklahoma.
• Losing their top running back, Steve Slaton, to injury early in the game.

In spite of it all…

The WVU Mountaineers rode the Sooners of Oklahoma back to the plains, beating them in the Fiesta Bowl 48-28. Under the leadership of West Virginian and interim coach Bill Stewart, the team pulled together, and played together so well.

As Coach Bill Stewart said, “It’s a great night to be a West Virginian!”

What a way to end a season full of ups and downs. What a ride!

On a chilly and damp December morning, a Monday at that, I received this electronic greeting from West Virginia University. I attended graduate school there, and the brief message was welcome this dreary day.

On fall Saturday afternoons in Wellsburg, West Virginia, the WVU Mountaineers were on the radio. I could go from place to place and hear Jack Fleming, the long time “Voice of the Mountaineers.” In my father’s men’s clothing store, around the corner in Bill’s Barber Shop, on the car radio, and even up at Cipoletti’s Esso station, people were listening. I imagine it was true throughout the state, folks taking a break on a Saturday afternoon to follow the West Virginia University Mountaineers.

From 1947 through 1996, with a few gaps in between, the radio voice that represented Mountaineer sports was Jack Fleming. For almost 50 years, he described the WVU great athletes along with the mediocre. Always with enthusiasm and pride. Those of us in Steeler Country got an extra bonus of hearing him again on Sunday, broadcasting our favorite Pittsburgh Steelers.

On the weekend of the 100th Pitt game, with the Mountaineers on the brink of playing for their first National Championship, I’m reminded of Jack Fleming, The Voice of the Mountaineers.

The first ten years of my life were spent growing up in West Virginia. My father went to WVU, my uncle went to WVU, my sister went to WVU. But I was the first to graduate from WVU.

I grew up a fan of West Virginia University. No matter how a football or basketball season went, the true outcome depended upon whether or not the Mountaineers beat Pitt.

On December 1, the #2 ranked Mountaineers take on their long time rival the University of Pittsburgh Panthers in Mountaineer Field for the 100th time. This is Pitt week!

The teams first met in 1895 in Wheeling, West Virginia. The Mountaineers beat the hell of Pitt then, when they were the Western University of Pennsylvania. The score was 8-0.

More than likely, I’ll post more as the week goes on, but I found this excellent article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on that rivalry. Beano Cook, 76, is a long-time football analyst and athletic directory at Pitt. Mickey Furfari, 84, has written of West Virginia sports for over 60 years. In the article and in this video, also from the Post-Gazette, they reminisce about those games.

Enjoy.

Oh yeah. Beat the Hell out of Pitt!

I couldn’t resist. The WVU Marching Band, The Pride of West Virginia, was in Cincinnati last weekend for the WVU vs. University of Cincinnati football game. Oh yeah, the score: WVU 28 UC 23.

This Saturday, November 24, the Mountaineers take on the University of Connecticut for the Big East title. And with LSU losing today to Arkansas, the Mountaineers stand a great chance of playing in the BCS Championship.

If you’re reading this post and know what it means, then you’ve read any link that I could provide.

Here’s another link to a video of The Pride of West Virginia.

Let’s Goooo Mountaineers!

A recent article in the Kansas City Star entitled “Even when times are tough, West Virginia has its football team” tells the story of hard times in West Virginia and the pride people feel for the Mountaineers of West Virginia University.

From the article…

WEIRTON, W.Va. | The green sheet mill shadows the stadium like a big brother, rising above it, running from end zone to end zone, separated only by the road that once hauled coils of steel from one factory to another, where the rumbling gravel and churning trucks drowned out the sound of the game.

Across West Virginia, the connection between the mill and the field — between the players and the workers — was always a matter of time. You started on the 50-yard line as a teenager. You ended up an old man in the factory.

Weirton Steel built this high school stadium on factory ground in 1935. Today, the ragged place is literally surrounded by the city’s rusting factories.

“Through the Depression, through World War II, through the good times and through the ’80s, the hard times that hit us, there was the mill,” says Bob Rossell, who’s announced Weir High games for 40 years. “And there was football.”

Weirton is just one dot on its map, but it’s as much West Virginia as Grant Town, Coal City or Dunbar, and it says as much about the link between the economic collapse of a state and the rise of its college football team. This is where John F. Kennedy came to talk about poverty when he ran for president, where the boys played football next to the mills and dreamed of being a Mountaineer before they’d become men and head off to work. The heart and soul of West Virginia football is 80 miles south, in Morgantown, but dozens of its players have come from here.

Steel and football, coal and football, they’re two parts of the same thing — the thing that shaped the lives of many of the young men who grew up in Appalachia.

At least it was until the mills and mines began to fail.

Click here to read the entire article (about 4-5 pages).  [Article no longer available from Kansas City Star.]

I grew up about 8 miles south of Weirton, WV in the small town of Wellsburg. At age 10, I moved across the river to Steubenville, Ohio. On football Saturdays, the Mountaineers were always on the radio in my father’s men’s store and throughout the town. On Friday evenings, much of the valley shut down to attend high school football games. My father, uncle, sister, and I all attended WVU, although I was the first in my family to graduate from there. I had uncles and cousins who lived in Morgantown, and we occasionally visited family there.

The mills are rusted and empty and the mines are closed. The once bustling downtowns are boarded up, the sidewalks empty. The money is long gone as are many of the small towns like Power, WV where my father grew up.

Ask anyone from West Virginia and you’ll discover most follow the Mountaineers, especially in football. WVU is a common thread among the people of our state, and we take pride in our Mountaineers and the marching band known as The Pride of West Virginia. And when they play Hail West Virginia as the Mountaineers take the field or court, we’ll often stop to smile and listen.

At least there are some good times…

It’s July 4, 2004 on the grounds of the State Capitol in Charleston, West Virginia.  President Bush is giving a speech on something or other.  In attendance are Nicole and Jeffrey Rank, registered Republicans from Corpus Christi, Texas.  Like others that day, they had obtained tickets prior to the event and were admitted to the capitol grounds without issue.

During the speech, the Ranks removed their outer shirts, revealing t-shirts sporting a red circle with a diagonal line through it.  Inside the circle was “Bush”, effectively symbolizing “No Bush”.  On the back of their shirts were the phrases “Regime Change Begins at Home” and “Love America, Hate Bush”.  According to the ACLU article,

“…the couple stood peacefully on the public grounds with the rest of the audience, two men believed to be working for the Secret Service or White House approached the Ranks and demanded that they remove or cover their t-shirts. When the couple refused, the officials instructed city police to arrest Jeff and Nicole, causing them to be removed from the Capitol grounds in handcuffs, jailed for one to two hours and charged with trespassing. Nicole Rank was also temporarily suspended from her work with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). “

Apparently they were escorted in handcuffs from the grounds while America The Beautiful was playing in the background.

Attorneys for the ACLU in both Charleston, WV and Pittsburgh, PA took the case and filed a lawsuit against the US Secret Service as well as against a White House department.

Fast forward to August 16, 2007.  Both parties settled the lawsuit against the US government for $80,000.  The government, of course, admitted no wrong-doing and the taxpayers got stuck with yet another bill.

Take this as a warning.  Our First Amendment rights of  free speech and assembly are gradually being eroded, often in the name of “national security.”

The number of deaths of American soldiers in Iraq as of today, August 9, 2007: 3684

These casualties are up from 3555 (up 129) since my last post on this topic, June 23, 2007.

The source is a database called Iraq Coalition Casualties, which categorizes and numerates all the deaths and casualties of Bush’s Iraq War.

According to the web page Iraq Body Count, between 69,045 and 75,495 Iraqi civilians have been killed by military intervention in their country.

To break it down further, for those who might be interested:

• The state of Ohio gave 156 (up 4) of its sons and daughters.
• West Virginia lost 19 of its fine young men and women.

Congress and the politicians keep on talking and talking, while Bush’s war grinds on and on and on.

It’s way too easy to just type down these statistics, forgetting that these numbers represent young men and women, children of parents, fathers and mothers of children waiting for them at home.

Does it ever make you angry?

I’m a horse racing fan. I’ve been attracted to “the ponies” since my first visit to Waterford Park (now Mountaineer Race Track) just outside of Chester, WV. I was 17 at the time. I still enjoy watching the races, the atmosphere of the track, and the challenge of picking winners; an occurrence that happens with little frequency.

Recently horse racing has fallen on hard times, much of it due to the lack of innovation in the industry, as well as its failure to keep up with its competition. That’s regrettable, because a day at the race track is a pleasant and refreshing experience.

Below are two videos that I’ve run across in the last couple days that reflect the atmosphere and current state of horse racing.

The first is by a Washington Post journalist done at Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore.

The Big A covers winter racing at Aqueduct Race Track outside of New York City. This little video captures the mood of the cold winter days at the track.

The third one, from The Boston Globe features a day at Suffolk Downs, near Boston.

Suffolk Downs: A Day at the Races