The 1996 BGHS national quiz bowl team, standing by a dock in Gulfport, Mississippi.
The 1996 BGHS national quiz bowl team, standing by a dock in Gulfport, Mississippi.
New Orleans, 1996
Last summer I travelled to Dallas with Father Feierfeil and seven Bishop Garrigan quiz bowl students. For the first time in our school's history, that team had qualified for the National Academic Championships. We had a lot of fun in Dallas, and we also ended up doing quite well--finishing seventeenth overall among the teams competing there.
While our success in Dallas was truly a team effort, our team's "equal" members were in fact about as equal as the barnyard critters in Animal Farm. Aaron Twait was the "pig" of our team, the animal who was more equal than the others. Aaron, more than anyone else was the reason we qualified for nationals in 1995, and without him we would not have done nearly so well in Dallas.
I mention that because Aaron graduated in 1995, as did several other of our best quiz bowl players. 1995-96 was, as my colleagues who get invited to speak on "Coaches' Corner" like to say, "a rebuilding year". ...
Most of the season went exactly according to my expectations. Then, one day in late winter, both the team and I were pleasantly surprised. After barely qualifying for the play-offs, Bishop Garrigan managed to beat three of the top-seeded teams to win the championship at the Algona PTO Invitational Tournament. Everything just came together and went our way, and we took home the trophy.
By winning a major tournament, we also managed to qualify once more for the National Academic Championships. It didn't take a lot of discussion to decide that we would intend to go again. While finances were an issue, Student Council again came up with some money to help us on our way. So, when the end of the year drew near, it was time for us to take off for New Orleans.
* * * * *
FRIDAY, MAY 31
Algona, Iowa to Marston, Missouri
(appx. 725 miles)
The week leading up to our departure had been hectic and hurried for me. Snow days extended the school year longer than normal, and I had to have my semester tests ready to be given in my absence today. I was also teaching two night classes at Iowa Lakes Community College. They started this week, and in addition to getting the classes going, I had to come up with things that those students could do while I was gone. Somehow everything did come together, though, and this morning at 7:30am, it was time for us to be on our way. The weather was cold and cloudy, and rain was in the forecast. That was certainly not unusual, since we had been having an unusually cold, damp spring.
This year's delegation of eleven included three adults. Because we had both boys and girls in the group this year, I wanted to have an adult female along. Spanish teacher Muriel Singer graciously agreed to accompany us. Then, not long before we left, last year's captain Aaron Twait volunteered to go along as an extra driver. Like last year we drove the two school suburbans. For most of the trip I drove the blue suburban and Muriel drove the white one. Aaron alternated between he two, spelling each of us in succession.
Most of the team joined us in Algona, and we picked up the final two in the Wesley area. It seemed that no one packed light this year. In fact, I wasn't entirely sure we would manage to fit all the luggage in. Somehow we made room for everything (including an enormous cooler ...), and we were truly on our way.
Our team this year included three seniors, three juniors, and two sophomores. Senior Jean Lappe was our captain. Jean is our yearbook and school newspaper editor, and we've always considered her our literature "expert" in quiz bowl. Matt Erpelding, another senior, was the only player that returned from last year's national tournament team. Matt was one of the charter members of our gifted and talented program, where he's completed such projects as composing the music for a full-length mass. The other senior was Nick Reinhart, who I'd been tutoring in calculus all year. Nick is an unusual program, the only guy I've ever met who had his senior pictures taken together with bowling trophies. Nick is also proud of his membership in the National Guard. Junior Scott Reising is also a guard member. All of the teachers were surprised I let Scott go along on the trip. He has a reputation for getting ino trouble, but I really didn't expect him to do anything seriously wrong (and, at least as far as I know, he didn't). Junior Jen Lighter almost didn't go along with us because ... of some difficulties. ... In the end, ... she was quite valuable to the team. The other junior, Brian Barth, was probably the hardest for me to read in the bunch. Brian is by far the most well-travelled of the group, thanks to visiting his father who has worked in embassies around the world. Brian had recently returned from Zaire, so a trip to New Orleans was probably small potatos by comparison. ... Our sophomores included Jeff Geving, who is best known as a JV football player, and Tim Mosbach, a computer nerd who apparently had never been away from his family before in his life. [After this point, for the sake of confidentiality, none of the players will be referred to by name.]
* * * * *
It was clear from the sart that this was a very different mix of people than last year's group, and I'll make no secret of it--I liked the first group better. My feelings were mainly shaped by four kids who were always in my suburban. They quickly formed their own little clique, and it seemed as if the rest of us were no welcome to join it. I told Mrs. Singer at one point that it was like being at a party I hadn't been invited to. The kids talked and talked and laughed and laughed. Unfortunately, I was almost never included in their conversation, and most of the time I felt rather consciously excluded. They also complained when I turned on the radio, which was very different from last year, when we had a country music serenade all the way south.
* * * * *
... We set off at 7:30, taking highway 18 east to Garner and highway 69 south to Belmond. We followed highway 3 east to Allison, and highway 14 south to Parkersburg. We stopped at a convenience store for a quick snack and toilet break and then continued east on highway 20 to Waterloo, where we joined the first in an endless wave of interstates.
Eventually the Avenue of the Saints will run directly from Mason City (just east of Algona) south to St. Louis, which would make a direct interstate connection all the way to New Orleans. Unfortunately, the Avenue of the Saints is nowhere near completion. Today the most direct routes to St. Louis are bad two-lanes, and they require driving through the city to get to the southbound interstate. I knew from experience that the quickest way from here to there was to go far east in Illinois and then angle back toward southern Missouri. That was a mostly interstate route, and it avoided the problem of driving in any major cities. So, from Waterloo we headed south on I-380 to Iowa City, where we picked up I-80 eastward to Davenport.
Our route southward this morning was almost the exact reverse of the route followed by the Olympic Torch as it made its journey north from Cedar Rapids to Minnesota. We probably passed somewhere around Urbana. I certainly didn't see anything (and the torch obviously took side roads, not the interstate), but it was interesting to think of crossing paths with history as we began our journey. (It's even more interesting to think about since the Olympics are on in Atlanta as I write this.)
* * * * *
Much of the morning I visited with Aaron Twait as we drove. Aaron is only the second person I've ever known to compete in college bowl. ... As a freshman Aaron is playing together with graduate students on the University of Iowa's college bowl team. He told me about the various trips they had taken, including one to a major regional tournament in Knoxville, Tennessee.
* * * * *
I'm really proud of Aaron--no that I had much to do with his success, other than providing opportunities in high school. The school makes a really big deal of the athletes among our alumni. We seem to always be hearing about one kid who does little other than walk the sidelines at UNI football games. Most of our other athletes end up playing JV sports at unimportant colleges. Probably the most successful is a basketball player who worked his way up to a starting position on the varsity team at Briar Cliff. I certainly don't fault him that accomplishment, but then Aaron is starting varsity in his activity at a Division I school--as a freshman. Yet somehow that's not something the local newspaper sees fit to write about.
Near the Quad Cities we started seeing signs at most of the exits saying "Emergency Detour" for the interstate. The signs didn't say what kind of emergency would provoke the detour, ... but I do know there had been flooding in the area shortly before we were there. ...
We took I-280 around the Quad Cities. I made up a tentative itinerary before we left, and on it I suggested we have lunch in Milan, Illinois. While most of the stops I suggested were based on personal experience, this one was not. I had just looked at the city map and tried to predict where a fast food strip was likely to be. I'm usually very good at that, but this was definitely the exception. Acording to the sign at the exit, Milan had a Hardees and a Maid-Rite. We saw both of them, but that didn't help. The Maid-Rite looked disgusting, and the Hardees was awkward to get into. I had also hoped to find a place where the kids would have a choice from among a variety of foods, especially since one of the girls in our group was a vegetarian.
We kept on driving, crossing the Rock River on a funny old bridge into the city of Rock Island. I checked the map again and suggested we turn on Black Hawk Road, a four-lane highway that looked like it ought to be a shopping strip. It was, but for mile after mile it appeared to be the only strip in America without fast food. We saw discount stores, lube centers, gas stations, theaters, and supermarkets--everything except places to eat. We kept driving and driving on Black Hawk Road. Eventually we made it to Moline and Southpark Mall, right at the edge of the Quad Cities. After that long barren stretch, here at the perimeter of the mall was every kind of fast food we could possibly want. We parked by a Subway, and the kids split up for various destinations. ...
It already seemed as if we had driven forever (and we had, in fact, gone about 300 miles), but the day was nowhere close to over. From Moline we set out southward on a road whose signs read I-74 east. The first destination was Galesburg, a place I remember from childhood as the only place that mattered between Burlington and Chicago. At Galesburg the highway turned truly east to head toward Peoria. The countryside around here is quite pretty, one of the most pleasant areas of Illinois. The hills are gently rolling, and there are lovely forested areas throughout. Unfortunately, the interstate isn't much to brag about. People who have read my other travel letters will probably recall me complaining about Illinois roads before. A serious problem is that huge sums of money go to improving tollways, while the free highway go to pot. That wouldn't be a problem if there were a tollway here we could follow. Unfortunately all of them are concentrated where the people are, with the most southerly one leading from Chicago to the Quad Cities. So we curved and bumped and jostled and bounced all the way to Peoria.
If I were smart I would have followed the same route I used when I was in a hurry to get down to college a few years back. That is, I would have followed I-74 all the way to Champaign and picked up I-57 south to Cairo. Unfortunately I had to look for a "shortcut" in the interest of saving time and mileage. Mileage I probably did save, but time is definitely doubtful.
Our actual route turned south at Peoria on the "brand new" Interstate 155. I use those quotation marks, because there's nothing new about the road other than its red, white, and blue interstate signs. They just changed the name of a road that had existed for years, and whose condition shows it. While the surface was bad, though, at least traffic was light, and the road ran straight as an arrow for 32 miles from Peoria to Lincoln.
At Lincoln we joined Interstate 55, which here is a six-lane gash across the landscape that definitely dwarfs old Route 66, the access road just to the side. We stopped for gas just south of Lincoln, near the town of Elkhart, where the price was $1.359 per gallon. I was thankful it was the school's credit card, not mine, that absorbed the $72 bill for refueling.
Before long we came to Springfield. This being Illinois, the beautiful six-lane we had in the middle of nowhere dwindled to four lanes as we reached the state capital. (Doesn't that give you some idea of where power isn't in this state?) Before long we hit construction, and in places there was only one lane available in each direction. Traffic was heavy and extremely fast-moving. I hate most city driving, and while Springfield isn't a large city, it has everything I hate. I nearly hit a pick-up trying to change lanes, which left me petrified for most of the rest of the day.
When Springfield ended traffic seemed to pick up even more. I-55 is the main route from Chicago to St. Louis, and in turn to such destinations as Denver, Dallas, Houston, Phoenix, and Los Angeles. Truck traffic was especially heavy, and no one seemed to be driving at a consistent speed. The freeway really annoyed me, and I was only too happy that the itinerary called for us to exit at the town of Litchfield.
While we left the freeway, I'm not entirely sure the alternative was a whole lot better. Traffic was definitely lighter, but the route we took was--well--let's just say "scenic". We made our way on a very narrow, winding road through Hillsboro and Coffeen, and eventually into Vandalia. There we picked up U.S. 51--a major artery that in Illinois is just another narrow, winding road--and followed that highway southward to the little village of Sandoval. There we turned eastward on U.S. 50 toward Salem, where we finally joined I-57. This would have been a lovely drive if we weren't in any hurry, but with many more miles ahead of us, it seemed to take forever.
By this time it was getting quite late. The "official" schedule called for dinner in Cairo, but it was clear we would all be happier if we ate before then. We talked back and forth on the CB radio and eventually decided to stop in Mt. Vernon, Illinois. When we got out of the car, the kids commented on how warm it was. It was certainly not hot, but neither was it the downright cold weather we had left behind in Algona. We were at the same latitude as Kentucky and Virginia, so I told the kids welcome to the South. We got another welcome to the South at the McDonalds where we ate. The service was at a pace you only see in Dixie, and no one (except we Yankee customers) cared about speeding it up.
I was glad to stop at a McDonalds. I had clipped several coupons from magazines for free Arch Deluxe sandwiches, and I was hopping to use them to cut down my food costs on the trip. In Mt. Vernon I had my first Arch Deluxe, a sandwich I was happy to pay nothing for, but one I'd never order if it actually cost real money. There are two things I don't like about the Arch Deluxe. First, they seem to glob a whole bottle of mayonaisse on each sandwich; it literally drips with white sauce. What's more, the bun is soggy and has an odd taste. The information pamphlet I got with it says it's made with "potato flour", which I'm sure is supposed to be nutritious, but I'll take good old wheat--thank-you very much.
* * * * *
It was still light when we left Mt. Vernon, but we turned the lights on and before long they were useful. One of the most interesting sights we passed on I-57 was the prison at Marion. I found out later this is the federal government's top maximum security facility; a documentary ... described it as "the new Alcatraz". It's hard to compare the Rock with a modern brick building with a basketball court outside and nothing but shredded glass fences between it and the freeway. It's probably better I didn't know at the time what kind of prisoner they held there.
Marion was one of many prisons we saw just off the roadside in Illinois. It almost seemed as if every little town had their own state correctional facility. Some Illinois politician has obviously tried to make good on a promise to cut crime by building prisons. Margaret and I will be goin to Chicago next month; I can only hope for our sake it worked.
After a while we made it to Cairo, the southernmost town in Illinois. We exited here to make a little side-trip to Kentucky, so the kids could say they had been there. First, though, we had to drive straight through Illinois' poorest city, which was one of those things that can only be described as "an experience". I've driven through Cairo twice before, but both times were in daylight. I'm not sure I've knowingly driven through any real slum at night before. Cairo may not be much more than a small town, but it looks and feels like an urban slum. Adding to the experience, the only people we saw were teenaged black boys. The kids absorbed every seedy sight in town, mostly bars and motels with hourly rates. ...
Eventually we made it to the end of Cairo, where the road makes a "Y" and twin bridges span the Mississippi and the Ohio. ... We crossed the Ohio into Kentucky, and drove for about a mile into the Bluegrass State. ... We returned and drove right on out of Illinois on the other twin bridge, a narrow monstrosity that reminded me of the old Mississippi bridge at Burlington. We would along old highway 62 to Charleston, where we passed Boomland, an enormous fireworks emporium that gave us a fitting welcome to Missouri. After returning home I found a book at B. Dalton's on tacky roadside attractions. I was amused to see that Boomland was right up there near the top. By the way, we didn't stop--it just wasn't tacky enough for us.
* * * * *
At Sikeston we turned south on I-55. ... We drove south about 25 more miles past New Madrid and onto Marston (which is basically the new part of New Madrid), our first night's stop. We pulled into a truck stop that housed a gas station, an Arby's, and a Super 8 motel. Fortunately the motel had our reservations in order, and before long we got settled in for the evening. This seemed like an endless day, and I was really glad to stop.
SATURDAY, JUNE 1
Marston, Missouri to New Orleans, Louisiana
(appx. 500 miles)
I was up quite early this morning ... and made my way to Arby's, which was part of the truck stop itself, right in the gas station. Arby's is open twenty-four hours, though they didn't seem to have a whole lot of business for the early breakfast shift. ... I made my way to a dining room where the walls were lined with telephones. The truckers could slide a credit card into the phones and get in touch with the outside world. They also had vending machines where they sold prepaid phone cards with values from $20 to $100 (can you imagine putting that much money into a vending machine?). The phone cards advertised what an outstanding value they were, but the rates varied from 30 to 50 cents per minute. That hardly struck me as a bargain.
* * * * *
This was ... probably my favorite of the driving days on the trip. From New Madrid it's just a short hop across the plains of the bootheel to the end of Missouri, and before long a sign welcomed us to "the Home of Bill Clinton". I'd driven through this stretch of Arkansas before, and the road certainly looked familiar. They didn't waste any money building I-55 through Arkansas. They just tacked down ribbons of straight, flat highway next to an already existing access road. The exits are little more than a hole in the barrier, so you can get over to the access road. There are some interstates that make me marvel at what a feat of engineering they area. This is most decidedly not one of them.
Aaron set the mood for travel this morning by introducing us to a game he had played when travelling with the college bowl team at Iowa. The game is called Bottacelli, but fortunately it doesn't have anything in particular to do with Renaissance Italy. It's like a combination of "20 Questions" and the sort of Victorian alphabet game they played in Dickens books, and I have no doubt that playing it helped the Hawkeyes prepare for competition. Under the rules, he person who is "it" selects a famous person (or at least one that most people are likely to have heard of), and announces the letter of the alphabet with which the person's surname begins. (For example, if my person were Bill Clinton, I would announce the letter "C".) Each person in the group then thinks up a question whose answer begins with the same letter (like "Who was President Carter's Secretary of Health and Human Services?--Califano--and ideally the answers should be at least as obscure as that). They present these questions in turn to the person who is "it", who must try to answer them. If the "it" person misses a question, the person who asked it may then ask a yes/no question about the original person (Is it a woman? Is it an entertainer?). After hearing the yes/no answer, the asker has the opportunity to guess the identity of the mystery person. If they guess wrong, play continues around the group. Believe it or not, that's the condensed version of the rules.
I really liked the game. It's both interesting and challenging, and it certainly helped the miles to roll past. I found that with the group in our suburban, I was almos always able to get the opportunity to ask the yes/no questions by stumping people with sports questions. ... That most of the group had no clue who I was talking about was just another indicator that this year's group was different from last year's.
Before long we re-crossed the Mississippi into Tennessee. ... We made our way through Memphis and then switched states again, arriving in the Magnolia State, Mississippi.
It was really almost like a Homecoming to return to Mississippi. It was amazing how familiar everything seemed, right down to little details like the design or wording of certain signs ... North of Memphis we were in farmland; here in the deep South the roadside was all forest, and the pines and oaks and ferns and kudzu all looked most familiar.
We stopped for gas at Hernando, just south of Memphis. This was another episode of deja vu, as I had stopped at this exact same gas station before. It was interesting to see the same brands of milk and pizza I remembered from before, and to see the Jackson Clarion-Ledger in the vending machines outside. The kids were amused by the southern accents of the store employees, but those again were just familiar to me. ...
I had told Aaron and Muriel that the poorest state in the nation would have the best roads. That was mostly correct, although while we were there, Mississippi seemed to have construction almost everywhere on I-55. It's not as if that slowed anyone down much, though. The legal speed limit in Mississippi is now 70mph, and everyone sailed down the road at that speed, construction or not.
* * * * *
We stopped for lunch about halfway between Memphis and Jackson, at Grenada, Mississippi. Grenada has always amused me. It's a nothing town (around 11,000 people) that thrives on being the only thing of importance along the road. In fact, Grenada is the destination on road signs throughout northern Mississippi. We could have chosen any kind of fast food we wanted in Grenada (we settled on Wendy's), not to mention any kind of gas and any kind of discount store. The whole town comes across as little more than "the exit from hell", and it's all just carved out of the forest in he middle of nowhere.
After lunch we drove on down to Jackson, where we took the beltway around the city. Almost everything was most familiar again. The street names (Hanging Moss Road, Medgar Evers Boulevard) are unique to that city alone, and destinations like Yazoo City and Vicksburg can only be in Mississippi. Jackson is growing and changing, though. There's a new industrial park and a lot of housing tracts on the northwest side of the city, near the exit for Yazoo City. When I was there before the main feature of that area was an enormous public housing project right beside the interstate. Those apartments are still there (complete with the boys who play basketball in the courtyard seemingly twenty-four hours a day), but they're just part of a much larger neighborhood today.
CONTINUED IN PART TWO
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