One Man Can Make a Difference

As the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan approached, the networks had their reporters there showing the preparation for the games, getting the ice rinks ready for the skating. Outside, the down hill and cross country skiing and the bobsled courses.

In each report, the reporters repeatedly referred this city of 380,000 as “NAHG - a - no” with emphasis on the first symbol. I was in the Far East on Okinawa in 1951 and 52 during the Korean War, and knew that the proper pronunciation was “Nah - GAH - no”, emphasis on the second syllable. On Okinawa, I used to listen to Armed Forces Radio where a Japanese woman gave lessons in how to speak phrases to Okinawan citizens, such as, Ohio meant Good Morning and Konnichiwa meant Good Afternoon along with asking questions, directions and other phrases.

This mispronunciation probably meant that everyone who spoke an Asian language were laughing at the Americans. At the time, there were approximately four billion people n the Asiatic countries and countless millions in other countries.

I decided to write a letter to the four TV networks to tell them about my theory.
I actually got a call from CBS about the letter. They asked how I knew this, I told them about the items mentioned above and told them to check it out with a Japanese speaking employee. He thanked me for bringing it to his attention.

A couple of days later, I was listening to the CBS Evening News and Dan Rather pronounced it properly. Most of the other reporters changed there way of saying Nagano.
So, I suppose, I helped maintain better relations for that international situation.

Live Oak Basketball - GO LIONS!

Live Oak High School Basketball
GO LIONS!

There many excellent remembrances of the good old days at Live Oak High School especially of the sports teams. We were playing six man football at the time. Tom Galbreath was all League. Bob Pierce placed at the Modesto state track meet. Jim McElroy always topped the pole vault.

One of the highlights of the basket ball team was a practice game with a team not in our league. It was Yuba City of the Sacramento Valley League playing against Sacramento High and Chico League. They were the team to win that year, 1947 as I remember. They had a league MVP, Jack Nordt, and Johnny Warren, a tough competitor. Jack Nordt later played for Yuba College and BYU.

It was a tighter came for Yuba City than expected, but amazingly, we beat them 41to 40 in two overtime periods. The team is pictured above from my annual.

In another game, we were playing Colusa High in the gym in Live Oak where you could either sit in the floor level bleachers or up stairs in the upper bleachers. It was a fairly close game at halftime. In the second period, as a Colusa player would come toward the basket, Bill Baggett and I would give him the “evil eye” which would consist of holding one eye open with the left finger and pointing with the right finger at the player as he came close to the basket.

This is the total truth. Colusa did not score a point in the second half at that basket and we won the game. Too bad they didn’t give letter sweaters for “evil eyeing”!

Finally, in one of the C Team games, Charlie Flowers was dribbling up for a try at a basket, his gym shorts fell down and tripped him before he got to the basket!