High Notes 03-10-2016 - More Austin Loop
I've mentioned Austin Loop, the 6'4" senior guard for the Marshall Thundering Herd, basketball team, and the news just keeps presenting a pretty nice picture of a talented young South Webster graduate. Austin made the front page of "The Huntington Herald Dispatch" newspaper on both Wednesday, January 6th, two-column full color picture, shooting his fabulous jump shot, with the headline "MU's Loop found his rhythm", and he made the front page again with a three- column full color picture of him with the headline..."Thrown for a 'Loop'" as he shot the winning goal in overtime. The story recounted how Austin's last second three-pointer against Mississippi State gave the Herd a No. 3 seed in the upcoming C-USA Men's Conference tournament to begin this Thursday, when they will play Florida International at 9:30 p.m. in Birmingham Alabama. According to The Dispatch, the game will be televised on American Sports Network. The story, written by Rick McCann of the Dispatch Sports Staff, began - "Austin Loop almost didn't shoot the basket, but when he did, it brought the house down".
Time was running out in overtime Saturday at the Cam Henderson Center in Huntington, when Loop caught a pass from Jon Elmore and was about to throw it back, but knew the clock was running out, so he fired in a jump shot as the final horn sounded, giving Marshall a 108-106 victory over Mississippi State. We love those "Local boy makes good" stories.
Recently I recounted how Val Minch, my long-time friend, from 19th Street, Portsmouth, and now of Hickory, North Carolina, blew me out of a tree with gunpowder, and I ended the story with the admonishment that I would get him back. Well, I think this "prank" I pulled on Val back on October 13, 1976, 40-years ago qualifies as a "Gotcha" event.
At the time Val was a young business man living in Marietta, Ohio, and I was three-years into publishing "The Scioto Voice". I had a neat picture of Val, taken when we were on a fishing trip to Lake Erie, and Val was sitting with his mouth open, sunglasses, and a bill-cap looking off into the sky from our boat. I got the idea to write a fanciful story, and even print it as if it was the lead front-page story in The Voice that week. But what he didn't know was that I made up a dummy front page with his picture and story, and substituted it for my real story after, I had already printed my regular edition. I only printed about twenty copies with the Val story, and sent it to Val at his Marietta, Croy Lumber Company office, which he was managing at the time.
Here is a partial telling of the story: Headlined, "Marietta Man, Val Minch, Discovers Oral Fly Catching Method"
"It all happened so accidentally!"s said Mr. Valentin Minch of Washington, Street, Marietta, OH.
"We were fishing at Lake Erie last summer, and I was cleaning our catch after a day's outing. The catch consisted of 4 ozs. of white bass, 48 lbs. of carp and 37 lbs. of catfish, and a few sheepshead.
"I must have gotten a little fish odor on my mustache, because the flies just wouldn't leave me alone...they kept zeroing in on the left side of my bristly auburn-hued brush. Finally I caught one carelessly close to my mouth, so I nonchalantly closed my mouth on the litter booger...sure enough, I'd caught my first one. From then on it was easy".
"I was blessed with an extremely long nose, and it adds a certain amount of appeal to flies because of the shade it provides. I always wear my Jaycee-of-the-year award cap with a bill while fly-catching. The flies seem to have a natural inclination to want to spot and speckle it for me, which is a form of camouflage, and, too, it adds shade for my oral fly trap.
"Sunglasses are standard uniform while I'm at work, because it cuts down the glare from approaching fly wings". he said
Mr. Minch set a record last summer, he claims, by catching 687 flies on his first season.
"Guiness is interested", Val said.
Well, I went on to tell the fanciful and fake story, strictly with the intention of getting Val!
It must have worked, because Cheryl, Val's wife, didn't consider my prank a bit funny. Val, ever the good sport, let me off the hook when I showed him my printing receipt for the small run, which I paid for, after the regular newspaper.was printed, and he explained to Cheryl the truth of the matter, and he was not held up to ridicule among his friends and co-workers.
After these many years Val has softened, and when I asked him to send me his copy of the bogus newspaper, he did so, and I told him about wanting to write about it, and he was o.k. with it. "Hell at our ages, who care", I said, and he agreed.
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