Way back when I was growing up, the summer season was generally
considered the period from Memorial Day through Labor Day. After all, that pretty much coincided with total
freedom from the bonds of school.
Now that school is back in for
the masses of today’s America, it’s heartening to look back on the first half
of summer 2019! For me, very few time
periods in my long life have exceeded the overall, nearly daily excitement of
this past Memorial Day through June!
Memorial Day actually started for me just prior to midnight. I drove past the Enterprise Center, and on
the far right of the building hung a long banner that announced the impending
Stanley Cup Finals between the St. Louis Blues and Boston Bruins. As the clock struck midnight, the series
start was to be in Beantown that very same night.
This year’s ice hockey classic was generally advertised as a Stanley Cup
Finals rematch. I still recall the
thrill my sisters and I experienced from the Standing Room Only rafters of the
old St. Louis Arena when Jimmy Roberts’ goal gave us our only series lead in a
6-1 loss. That was back in 1970.
Ironically, Roberts, who passed away less than four years ago, was also
known as the man who scored the Blues’ first ever playoff goal. It came on April 4, 1967. It was also our only goal in a 1-0 win over
Philadelphia!
A second later, just prior to midnight this past Memorial Day, I passed
the Enterprise Center’s statue of Blues colorful, goal-scoring phenom Brett
Hull. Not only was Hull the face of the
franchise from the late 1980’s through the late ‘90’s, but “The Golden Brett”
was again in the spotlight over the next few weeks of 2019--to the delight of
many and to the dismay of several others, as in the infamous “Drunk as Hull”
t-shirts.
But back to our regularly-scheduled story…
Why was I driving by 14th
and Clark at such a time? Well, at 12:15
a.m. that same Monday, I was picking up my son David and his wife Marleen from
the Greyhound station. They had just
arrived from a long bus ride from Chicago after short flights from their home
of Hamburg, Germany to Copenhagen, Denmark and Stockholm, Sweden, before an
extremely long flight to Chi-Town!
This was by far the most excited I had ever been to be at a bus
station! After all, I had not seen David
and Marleen since my girlfriend Pam and I flew to Hamburg for their incredible wedding,
the third weekend of April, 2018! It was highly memorable because it was for my
son, for the cabin or lodge venue, the creative travel-based wedding cake and decorations,
and for the very different activities.
On this occasion, I drove David and Marleen back to my house for them to unpack and we talked until 2 a.m. or so. We slept in late, did more groceries and they trimmed deep into my front bushes which my bad back had prevented me from reaching. From there, we went to Pam’s to eat pizza while preparing for Stanley Cup Finals game 1 on her big-screen TV.
We were all really excited as the Blues, a terrific road team through
most of the 2018-19 season, held a 2-0 lead early in the second period on goals
by Brayden Schenn and Vladimir Tarasenko.
Then they stopped playing, continued taking dumb penalties against the
team with the post-season’s best power play, and succumbed to the Bruins, 4-2.
I educated David, Marleen and Pam of the fact that the Blues were now
0-13 in Stanley Cup Finals games after being swept four straight in their first
three seasons of existence. Back then, it was required that one of the
expansion teams from the six-team Western Division had to play the survivor
from the established clubs of the six-team Eastern Division. It took the Blues 49 years just to return to
that series level.
Unfortunately, since the Stanley Cup Finals turned into a best-of-seven
series way back in 1939, the team that won the series opener went onto win a
lopsided 61 of 79 times. This was also
the Bruins’ eighth straight playoff win of 2019!
The following evening, after work, we had a big immediate family dinner
for David and Marleen at Pam’s house, complete with a wide variety of regular foods
and desserts, including a huge St. Louis Blues cookie cake!
About a month earlier, David mentioned that he and Marleen wanted to
take a road trip when they were in town.
He narrowed it down to three closer states of the dozen or so ones in
which he had never been: Louisiana,
Michigan or Minnesota. Since it’s one
very long day of driving just to get to New Orleans, and Pam and I had recently
spent four days in southeast Michigan, we would go to The Twin Cities.
By the time they had arrived in St. Louis, I had already planned a pretty
detailed six-day itinerary that included a good deal of both indoor and outdoor
activities. I spent a couple hours of after work time on May 29th,
narrowing down hotel possibilities in the southeast part of the Minneapolis-St.
Paul suburbs.
A couple hours later, it was time for Stanley Cup Finals game 2 in
Boston’s TD Center! When center Charlie Coyle scored a power play goal less
than five minutes into the game, the general consensus among Blues fans was, “Here
we go again!” But this Blues team was so
darn resilient from the point in the regular season when they made their move
up the ladder from dead last in points among 31 teams on January 3rd.
Both Robert Bortuzzo and Tarasenko scored first period goals as the two
teams were tied 2-2 after one period. Both
Bruins veteran Tuukka Rask and Blues rookie Jordan Binnington were red hot in
goal from that point on. The second
period was scoreless. The third period was
scoreless.
And then…great play-making by Oskar Sundqvist and Ryan O’Reilly, getting
the puck back to defenseman Carl Gunnarsson between the blue line and Stanley
Cup logo…Slap shot by “Boom Boom,” and the puck went over the pad of Rask, into
the net 3 minutes and 51 seconds into overtime!
The Blues evened the series at 1-1, winning their first Stanley Cup
Finals game in their 52-season history!
Friday night, Pam and I had our usual great night of dancing to
Crossfire with some 30 other friends in the house. It was about my 300th time dancing
to that band in the past 13 years! The venue
was Moolah Shrine Center in Maryland Heights.
We always joke around that we have been going there LONG before anyone
else on the dance floor! After all, it
was our very own Parkway North Junior High School some 50 years ago!
After the dance, dropped off Pam and joined David and Marleen at my
house the night before the start of our six-day trip…
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