Wisch List

I figure I know 1950s Rock ‘n’ Roll about as well as any guy my age.

After all, it’s the music that I grew up with.

From The King (Elvis Presley) to The Killer (Jerry Lee Lewis) to every Carl Perkins, Chuck Berry and Little Richard tunes in between, those were the songs that my dad — who still has an old vinyl record holder with “Go Cat Go” scrawled on the side — blasted at home every evening during my youth.

Because of his love for the music of that era, I can tell you that it was Cleveland disc jockey Alan Freed who coined the term “Rock ‘n’ Roll” in 1951, that Philadelphia DJ Joe Niagara was all the rage in 1957 spinning records at WIBG (pronounced Wibbage) and that Jerry Lee Lewis’ cousins are Mickey Gilley and Jimmy Swaggart.

I could probably even do the “Duck Walk” if you really wanted me to.

My father, now in his 60s, still claims on a regular basis that he’s living in the ’50s. And that was why five years ago this week, when I was features editor at The Daily Times in Ottawa, Ill., it was such a treat when my colleague, reporter Dan Churney, dug up a golden nugget of Rock ‘n’ Roll history in tiny Spring Valley (105 miles southwest of Chicago) that we were able to share with our readers.

As you may have already heard, 50 years ago today — Feb. 3, 1959 — was “The Day The Music Died,” when Rock ‘n’ Roll legends Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson perished in a plane crash in an Iowa cornfield. Many people know that at the time of the fatal accident the trio was en route to its next gig in Moorhead, Minn.

But not many know that after that, they were scheduled to visit Spring Valley.

And it’s there where, as you can read here, memories — and a faded newspaper advertisement — of the doomed trio still live on.

It’s Super Bowl weekend, and time to once again dust the cobwebs off an old Wisch List column from my book that’s just perfect for the occasion.

So, take a few minutes and dive into what I guarantee like Joe Namath is the best — and quirkiest — Illinois football story that you’ve never heard of …

How to win with frequency
The WISCH LIST
Jan. 21, 2003

When the coaches for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Oakland Raiders are busy barking plays into their quarterbacks’ helmets via high-tech headsets this Super Bowl Sunday in San Diego, wouldn’t it be nice if they stopped, just for a moment, and reflected a bit about those who blazed the trail of technology before them?

Like, you know, the Ottawa Pirates.

“We were ahead of our time,” former Ottawa Township High School assistant football coach Dean Riley said this past weekend, recalling Ottawa’s Golden Age of Radio.

Yes, it turns out that the town where Lincoln walked is also the place where the Pirates talked.

On a radio-equipped football helmet.

In the 1960s.

And ended up getting the dang thing outlawed by the Illinois High School Association.

“Yeah, a Chicago police deputy came down and served me and (legendary Pirates football coach) Bill (Novak) before the game with a restraining order,” former OTHS electronics teacher and pigskin pioneer Bob Poggi said about the 1966 season opener at Ottawa’s King Field against bitter rival La Salle-Peru.

“So, we shut down the helmet,” Poggi continued. “… And in (Illinois) high school today, you still can’t use electronic communication.”

That’s the end of this tasty tale, though. The beginning came four seasons earlier in 1961 when the Pirates had just wrapped up a perfect 9-0 campaign and had already set their sights on the next year.

“The quarterback situation wasn’t clear for 1962,” explained Riley, the team’s offensive coordinator. “Our (upcoming) senior quarterback was hurt and we didn’t have a quarterback in the junior class for some reason.

“So, Danny Battles had been the freshman QB, and we were going to bring him up to the varsity (the next year) even though he had never even played in a sophomore game.”

Understandably, the Pirates’ football brain trust was a bit jittery about having such an inexperienced QB leading what was expected to be another loaded team in ’62. So, the brainiest of them all – Poggi, the school’s electronics teacher – came up with a solution.

Sort of.

“I said to Novak, kind of kiddingly,” Poggi recalled, “that I could probably put a radio in Battles’ helmet.

“And that was all it took.”

With Novak’s less-than-subtle nudge, Poggi – a 1950 OTHS grad who had earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois – immediately went to work. He ended up developing an innovative design in which he laid out radio wiring in a mesh form and glued it to the top of a football helmet before replacing the helmet’s foam lining.

Then, in the top of the helmet, he drilled a small hole for the radio’s coil and topped it off by installing a transmit-receive speaker in the earflap.

Voila, you had a prequel to Nextel.

“You could press the ear pad and talk just like you can on your cell phone,” Poggi said. “I thought (the radio helmet) was a good idea. It stopped people from running in and out (to get the plays from the sideline).”

It also helped the Pirates stop their opponents. As a sophomore, Battles – with valuable guidance pumped into his helmet from the sideline – led Ottawa to another 9-0 mark in ’62, and the Pirates racked up a record of 21-3-3 over the following three seasons.

In fact, so successful w as Poggi’s radio helmet – a cruder form of which the NFL had banned in 1956 (its use was reinstated in 1994), but the IHSA and NCAA had no rules against – that word about it even leaked out to colleges such as Iowa, Purdue and Navy.

Of course, word eventually leaked out to Ottawa’s opponents, too.

“Once, we were laying in Mendota,” Riley recalled. “My brother-in-law taught there was in charge of security. During the game, a policeman came up to him and said he was picking up our play calls in his squad car.

“My brother-in-law said, ‘No, they wouldn’t be doing that.’ But then he got in the car and heard us.

“I had a hard time explaining that one.”

Cops, it turned out, weren’t the only ones tuning in the Pirates on the radio dial. Opposing fans figured out how to do it, too.

“People tried a lot of different things to screw up the reception,” said Jay Bernadoni, the Pirates’ QB in 1965. “I remember we were playing (Spring Valley) Hall at Hall and some kids had gotten our frequency and they were reading their geometry book back to me.

“After that game, I had my geometry done for the year.”

It wasn’t always opposing fans who were burning Bernadoni during games, though. Sometimes, it was even his own coach.

“(The helmet) was a tutorial for Coach Novak,” Bernadoni said with a laugh, explaining how the hard-nosed Novak would often grab the radio’s phone from Riley and yell into his QB’s ear – in mid-play.

“He would use it to expound on all his football knowledge,” Bernadoni continued. “… A few times (the radio) got broken because I also played linebacker. But a few times, it got broken because I pulled the wiring out.”

Eventually, the Pirates’ whole system broke down when it is believed that La Salle-Peru coach Ed Bender blew the whistle on Ottawa just before the ’66 opener and persuaded the IHSA to outlaw the radio helmet.

“Bill (Novak) was pretty upset,” recalled Poggi, who has now lost track of the old helmet. “But we quit using it.”

Didn’t matter much. The Pirates still beat L-P in ’66 and finished 9-0, piling up a remarkable 43-2 record – sans helmet – in Novak’s final six seasons.

Today, nearly 40 years after the fall of Ottawa’s Radio Revolution, Poggi’s contribution to Pirate football lore is still appreciated by the players and coaches from that era.

“A guy like Mr. Poggi was way ahead of his time with electronics,” Bernadoni said. “To devise something that was, not only compact enough, but durable enough to withstand the punishment it took, that was incredible.

“The coaches put it all together. And that’s pretty remarkable for a little town like this to have had something like that.”

After college, I spent seven years working and living in little Ottawa, Ill. I still love the place and its citizens. The Friendly City is like a second hometown to me. But, if people wonder why I didn’t date maybe a little more often when I lived there, well …

The Rams aren’t in the Super Bowl (although their old QB is). There’s no NBA basketball (not that there is in Chicago, either). And, really, who cares about St. Louis University hoops (besides Rick Majerus’ mom).

Yeah, sports-wise — besides the last-place Blues — there’s not a lot going on in St. Louis these this time of the year. Which leaves the citizens of the “Gateway City” with a lot of time on their hands.

And, apparently, their feet.

But, whatever the case, I’ve got to give it to them on this one. Because, very clever, Cardinals fans.

Very clever.

Speaking of Google Street View (see previous Wisch List post), an image captured by Google’s crew that started getting buzz this week has to be one of my favorites:

It’s as if Dwight Schrute took a trip from “The Office” in Scranton over to Pittsburgh to meet a friend.

Ah, the Internet. Gotta love it.

Sure, it took a clever video cut-and-paste job. But, finally — finally — Rod Blagojevich speaks the truth.

Ever wonder what happens when you spray hot water at –20°?

Well, thanks to this lady in frigid Minnesota, you’ll wonder no more.

Right now, it’s 40 degrees in Anchorage, Alaska.

And minus-5 in Chicago.

Yeah, that’s the kind of winter we’re having this year.

As I continue to get back in the swing of things with this blog, I thought I’d delve once again into the reservoir of my storytelling past and share with you a tale from my book that’s well-suited for this oh-so-frigid weather.

So, if you thought the New Year’s Day Blackhawks game at Wrigley Field was the most unique event involving an ice rink in Illinois that you’d ever heard of, well, you might want to think again. Because, six years ago when I was a newspaper columnist at The Daily Times in little Ottawa, Ill., I managed to dig up the following gem.

With a snow shovel, of course.

The Big Chill

The WISCH LIST

Feb. 18, 2003

When it came to the most jumpin’ joints around during the 1940s and ’50s, you’d have been hard-pressed to find – not just in La Salle County, but the entire state of Illinois –- any venue flashing more verve than Ottawa Township High School’s Kingman Gym.

Back in those days when the Home of Ottawa Pirates wasn’t playing host to an assortment of high school dances and functions – not to mention legendary coach Gil Love’s fabled OTHS basketball squads – it was busy serving as a showcase for a variety of national traveling acts.

The original Harlem Globetrotters, for one, once hit the Kingman hardwood during the 1946-47 school year. That same season, Ottawans also reveled in watching other black barnstorming basketball teams, such as the House of David, the Hawaiian – yes, Hawaiian – All-Stars and Kansas City All-Stars tangle at Kingman.. Quite interestingly, in December of ’46 – probably around the time that they traveled to Ottawa – the Kansas City Stars listed none other than Jesse Owens on their roster, meaning that the Olympic track and field legend might have shot hops in The River City that year.

Doing shooting of an entirely different sort in Kingman during the 1953-54 school year was the “Singing Cowboy” – old Gene Autry, himself – who galloped into the venerable gymnasium with his traveling rodeo for a live show.

As splendid as those spectacles were, though, there was not a one that left its mark quite like the time that Kingman Gym welcomed the unlikeliest guest of all.

“The Ice Capades in Kingman,” former Ottawa Township High School teacher and boys basketball coach Dean Riley recently said with a laugh. “No one has mentioned that in 30 years.”

Probably because the old gym is still trying to forget.

Sometime during the late 1950s – memories of exact dates have fuzzed in the decades since – a group of Ottawans conjured up the notion of bringing the “Greatest Show on Ice” to town. And, for many, the thought of the glamorous Ice Capades pirouetting its way into off-the-beaten path Ottawa was simply a dream come true.

“Oh, I was tickled,” 73-year-old Earl Fribbs, a longtime fan of the Ice Capades, said about hearing the show would make a local appearance. “I didn’t believe it, that’s for sure. They’d come to Joliet, Peoria, Chicago for shows.

“But never to Ottawa.”

Most likely because larger cities such as Chicago and Joliet had arenas with, you know, actual ice rinks in them. Ottawa, on the other hand, could offer only the floor of Kingman Gym.

The recently-renovated, gleaming hardwood floor of Kingman Gym.

Unswayed by that little technicality, OTHS – with assurance from the Ice Capades that all would go well – proceeded with organizing the vent. The proper safeguards were taken as special, waterproofed material was placed over the gym floor, and intermittent spraying and freezing continued until the spacious Kingman was fit for a penguin.

The crowds then cam, the skaters whirled, danced and leapt barricades, and everyone acclaimed the performance.

“They put on a good show,” Fribbs recalled.

Those handing out the accolades included even the skeptics, because when the floor’s protective barrier was removed following the production, Kingman’s surface was just as shiningly beautiful as before.

Yes, everything had gone as smooth as ice.

Or not.

A couple days after the event, disaster struck as Kingman’s floor began – and continued – to buckle and bend. When it finally ceased, more than half of the recently-finished hardwood had been warped to some degree.

“That show ruined the darn floor,” Riley said. “It buckled up so bad near the northwest corner of the gym by the cafeteria, that you couldn’t even open that door. The floor must have popped up a foot.”

For Riley, than an assistant basketball coach under Gil Love, the debacle proved particularly troublesome as the Ice Capades took place during the hoops season. Ultimately, though, the mishap proved even more vexing for the Pirates’ opponents.

“It was several years before we got a new floor after the damage,” Riley said. “And it just added to the Kingman mystique. One area on the east end of the floor, the coaches from other schools would hate it because the ball would bounce about halfway back up when you dribbled it. And we knew where those boards were.

“A lot of other teams hated playing in that gym.”

Luckily for the school’s taxpayers, they didn’t have to hate paying for the gym, as well. As it turned out, the Ice Capades’ insurance ended up footing the bill for the aftermath of the one event in Ottawa certain to never have an encore.

“I think there’d be a little resistance against something like that now,” Riley said with a laugh.

“Probably more than a little.”