I continued to help out on the Cubs games during my time on the overnight, but it was a lot tougher on my system, going to the game in the afternoon, taking a nap before dinner and then heading off to work till after dawn.

My time on the overnight finally came to an end in August, 1969 and I was happily put back on nights, 4 p.m. to midnight, a schedule much easier on me and on Judy, and much easier on my baseball days.

The Cubs, known to many as the "Loveable Losers," were having an extraordinary season under fiery manager Leo Durocher. In the first season with the leagues split into two divisions, the Cubs had a 9-game lead over the New York Mets  in the National League East on Aug. 15.

I talked with Durocher before a game in early August and asked him what was different about this Cubs team from previous years. He smiled and said, "These guys know how to win."

The North Siders were in first place for 155 days, until mid-September. That's when they ran out of gas, lost 17 out of  their last 25 games and finished 8 games behind the "Miracle Mets." And I blamed myself, at least partially, for their collapse.

I was exhausted after four months on the overnight and, even though we didn't have a lot of extra cash, Judy and I decided it was time for a short vacation. I saw an ad in the Chicago Tribune for a three-day, two-night trip to Las Vegas that included airfare, hotel, a buffet and tickets to a show for $199 per person.

We asked Raleigh and Barry Sweet to join us on the trip. They flew in from Seattle, where lifelong friend Barry was the AP staff photographer and a catalyst for me getting my dream job. We saw a dinner show at the still-new Caesars Palace _ prime rib, Harry Belafonte and Lena Horne for $20 apiece _ and we caught Buddy Hackett at the Sahara, did some gambling and a lot of walking.

Las Vegas Boulevard still had empty lots between some of the big hotels in those days.

It was a great time.

The downside, though, was that the Cubs' free fall began during that trip. By the time we got home, the Mets were red hot and the Cubs, overworked by Durocher, who didn't believe in platooning, were fading fast.

It made no sense, but I really had a feeling the Cubs might have continued winning if I hadn't left Chicago at a crucial moment.

Going into the Cubs' clubhouse on their last homestand that year was like spending time in a morgue. Even the ever-bubbly Ernie Banks was scowling.

But something good did happen for me shortly after the Vegas trip. I got my first AP Newsfeatures byline.

I saw a story in one of the Chicago papers about Cook County Sheriff Roy Woods leading a drug raid and the more I heard about Woods the more interesting he became. In the picture that accompanied the story, he was wearing a tuxedo, which I later found out was a hand-me-down from Richard Nixon, thanks to Rosemary Woods, Roy's sister and Nixon's private secretary.

The sheriff carried a pearl-handled pistol and once tried _ and failed _ to form his own 1,000-man posse to back up his police force. The man was flamboyant and my interest was piqued.

I asked permission to do a feature on the sheriff and called his office. Surprisingly, I was given a time for an interview the next afternoon.

His office was high up in one of the glass and steel skyscrapers in the Loop, with floor-to-ceiling windows offering an incredible view of the city. Woods was a big, dapper man with a booming voice and very friendly. The interview lasted about an hour and I had so many notes that I didn't know how I was going boil it down to 1,200 words _ what I was told was my limit for the story.

 The writing went easily and the story was sent to the Newsfeatures desk at AP headquarters in New York City.

City Editor Carroll Arimond said, "You did a good job, but don't be surprised if you don't recognize the story when they file it on the wire. The editors in New York tend to put their own spin on things."

The story was finally sent on the wire for weekend editions on Saturday and Sunday, Aug. 21-22. It was picked up by newspapers from coast to coast and, much to my surprise and delight, I couldn't find a single word that had been changed. That feature story was a highlight of my 15 months in the Chicago Bureau.

Another highlight from around the same time was a much less official event.

I was working a night shift on a Friday when Joe Mooshil walked over from the sports desk and asked when I was going to dinner. Moosh had never shown any interest in my joining him for a meal, so I was surprised and a little excited.

"When you get off, meet me in the bar downstairs,'' he said. "I have a surprise for you."

I finally got my work done about 7 p.m. and took the elevator down to the main floor, where there was a cozy little bar, whose name I forget. I walked in and spotted Mooshil at a table with three other men near the back.

He introduced me to them: Steve Jacobsen of Long Island Newsday, Phil Pepe of the New York Daily News and Walter "Red" Smith, longtime sports columnist for the New York Herald Tribune and later a two-time Pulitzer winner while writing columns for the New York Times.

The Herald Tribune had folded in 1966 and Smith was working as a freelance writer at the time I was introduced to him. But he was already one of my biggest writing heroes, along with Grantland Rice, Ring Lardner and Paul Gallico _ all sports writers from the old school.

The New York writers were in town to follow a story with the Yankees, who were playing the White Sox. They were staying across the street at the Bismarck Hotel, a landmark in Chicago that has since been torn down. It turns out _ to my good fortune - this little bar was one of their favorite haunts in the Windy City.
 
I was allowed to sit there like a fly on the wall, listening to story after story about baseball's greats and no-so-greats. My lunch hour was over much too soon and I grudgingly said goodbye and thanked them for letting me join them.

Mr. Smith shook my hand and said, "We'll probably still be here when you get off. Come on back down."

The next four hours seemed like months to me, and I'm sure my work suffered since my mind was elsewhere. At the stroke of midnight, the end of my shift, I raced out of the office, jumped on the elevator and walked breathlessly into the bar. There they were, still sitting at the table as if no time had elapsed.

I was greeted warmly and Mr. Smith said, "We've kept your seat warm."

We all had to be shooed out when the bar closed at 2 a.m. For a lifelong baseball fan, and a huge fan of great sports writing, it was truly an evening for the ages. When I got home, I kept Judy up until nearly dawn trying to remember and tell her just about every story I heard that night.

After that, things became pretty routine for the fall and winter months. I was inundated with my duties on the news desk and had little time for pestering or hanging around the sports writers. More than once, the thought popped into my head that perhaps my sports writing days were over and I'd have to adjust my dreams.

But life is full of surprises, and I got a big one at the beginning of May, 1970. I was called to Bureau Chief Al Orton's office when I arrived for my evening shift.

As I walked in, he stood, walked around the desk and shook my hand.

"Mr. Harris, I'm taking a big chance on you,'' Mr. Orton said. "We're sending you to Indianapolis to help out on the Indy 500. It's kind of a sports tryout for you and everybody in New York Sports will be paying attention.

"I went out on the limb to get you this chance. Don't mess it up."

When I left his office, my heart was pounding and my mind was racing. And then it occurred to me: "You know absolutely nothing about auto racing or the Indy 500, This is going to be an interesting adventure."

I had no idea how big an adventure it was going to be.

Living in Chicago with my new bride and working for The Associated Press in 1969 felt like some kind of dream.

Judy was soon volunteering at the Lincoln Park Zoo animal nursery _  Zoos weren't yet hiring woman as keepers _ and I was going into Chicago's Loop to work at a job that I still had trouble believing was mine.

For a while, I was working 4 p.m. to midnight and Judy would sometimes drive into the city to pick me up at the end of my shift. There was an all-night movie near the office that showed classic films and we took full advantage. We also made occasional forays to Rush Street to take in a jazz club or two.

On the way home, we often stopped at Dewey's, near our apartment on the far North Side, for Chili - at 2 a.m. That would kill me today. But, back then, it was a delight.

And my work was amazing. I was learning more about writing and editing and being a reporter and editor every day. It wasn't always fun, though.

This was the height of the war in Vietnam and one of my assignments was to get a list of the military casualties from Illinois and call their families for comments and a picture. We published a list once a week. It was a grim job, although some of the family members that I spoke with were very happy to talk about their son,daughter, husband or wife.

The first time I had to make those calls it was all I could do to dial the phone. I really didn't know what to say. But most of the people I called were uncommonly friendly and understanding.

I was still helping out Joe Mooshil or Jerry Liska at the Cubs games and, any time I wasn't busy with news work, I was hanging around the sports desk asking if I could help them. The two sports writers were often away, covering games, and I became the designated fill-in, taking calls, writing up handouts and taking dictation whenever I could shake free of the news desk.

I was itching to write a sports story, hoping to impress whoever would notice. I had lots of time on my hands one quiet Saturday night and was hoping the sports phone would ring. It didn't.

Around 9 p.m., I was working my way through Jerry Liska's roladex (remember those?) on his desk and saw a home number for Bobby Hull, the Chicago Black Hawks' star. I knew he lived somewhere in western Canada, three hours earlier, and, for some unknown reason, I decided to call him and see if I could do a feature on his season that had just ended.

He answered the phone. I introduced myself and told him why I had called and he said, "That's great. I'm bored as hell tonight. Let's talk."

Before I left that night, I wrote up a feature on the interview and left it on Jerry's desk. It went on the wire on Monday before my shift started. It was my first sports byline for AP and not a word had been changed by the editors.

Not much was said about the story, but I got very few complaints after that about hanging around the sports desk. And, just days later, I got called into the bureau chief's office when I arrived for my 4 p.m. start.

"Mr. Harris, we like what you're doing,'' Al Orton said. "We're taking you off probation a couple of months early and we're bumping you up to the next pay level immediately. Keep up the good work."

Ironically, that was the first I knew that I had actually been on a six-month probation. Nobody had bothered to mention it when I was hired. Glad I didn't know.

Shortly after that, I was moved to the overnight shift, midnight to 8 a.m. That was considered a right of passage at the Chicago bureau. All the rookies eventually wound up on the overnight for anywhere from four to six months.
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I'm a natural night owl, but staying up and staying alert all night five days a week took a little adjustment., especially when I worked the shift that began at midnight on Saturday. After the last night editor left around 1 a.m., I was alone until the morning guy arrived at 6 a.m.

It was one of the most boring times I have had in my life. The phone didn't ring, there was no one to talk to and you had to stay awake in case something did happen.The only time in all the Sunday mornings I worked that anything happened, it was a crank call.

I answered the phone about 2 a.m. and the voice on the other end said, "I'm going to shoot the president."

My hesitant reply was, "Why would you do something like that?"

He said, "I hate Lyndon Johnson and I'm going to kill him."

I tried to think about the best way to handle this and said, "What's your name?" Amazingly, this dingbat told me he was Russell Johnson.

I hung up the phone and found the number of the FBI in the supervisor's roladex. I called and told the agent who answered about Mr. Johnson's threat. He said, "Yeah, he's calling all the newspapers and wire services. We'll take care of it. But thanks for calling."

That's the last I heard about it. It did break up the morning, though.

The one job that did keep my attention for at least part of the night each week was editing what we called the Interbureau Wire. AP, an association owned and operated by newspapers and TV and radio stations, sold a variety of products to those members.

The bigger papers took the AAA Wire, which had all the major and minor news of the day and cost them a lot of money. There were other options as well, including the Interbureau, which was an affordable wire meant for smaller media outlets.

My main job on the overnight was to pick out the biggest news stories and features from the AAA Wire and edit them down to just the necessary details for the Interbureau.

One of the features that moved every Sunday morning on the IB Wire was that week's list of the top-selling songs and albums of the week. One song that popped up for weeks was a hit record by Sly and the Family Stone. Every week for more than a month, it came across as Thank You For Letting Me Be Mice Elf Again. And every week for more than a month I edited it to read Thank You For Letting Me Be Myself Again.

Finally, one of the day editors noticed it and left me a curt and rather rude memo correcting my correction.

I was desperately looking for something to do on another extremely quiet Sunday morning when I noticed a stack of unopened mail on the supervisor's desk. It was all what we would now call spam, announcements of events, promotions and ads.

Looking through the stack I spotted a return address from the Playboy Club in Chicago. Inside was an invitation to cover a celebration of the Bunny of the Year at the Playboy Mansion.

I folded it up and put it in my pocket. On Monday morning, I called the office and asked the news editor, Carroll Arimond, if he had any objection to my covering the event and writing a feature about it?

The usually gruff Mr. Arimond laughed and said, "Have fun and keep the story tight."

Then I did something that may seem a little improbable to some of you. I called the PR lady listed on the invitation to tell her I was going to cover the event - and I asked her if I could bring a plus-one.
She was very happy that I was coming and said, "Sure. You want to bring a photographer?

"No. I want to bring my wife."

There was a long pause and I said, "We're newlyweds and, if I came to the Playboy Mansion without her, our marriage might be over almost before it starts."

She laughed and said, "No problem. I'm sure you'll have a good time."

We showed up at the Mansion on the appointed night and were greeted like VIP guests, ushered into a huge, beautifully furnished living room with lots of expensive-looking art. There was a bar, of course, and a table laden with very fancy and delicious hors d'oeuvres.

And, not surprising, there were lots of beautiful women walking around the room saying hello and introducing themselves as Bunny of the Year contestants.

Eventually, Hugh Hefner walked in, wearing his signature silk robe and scarf and slippers and smoking a pipe. He looked like a caricature of himself.

As Hefner made his way around the room, Judy leaned in and whispered, "I really don't want to meet him. I'll just stay behind you."

Judy is the opposite of star-struck. To illustrate her aversion to celebrity, we were once in a Chinese restaurant in New York's Times Square and I spotted Woody Allen at a nearby table. I whispered to Judy, "Hey, look over there. It's Woody Allen."

She didn't even look up from the menu, saying, "Everybody's got to be somewhere."

It took a while for Hefner to get to us as he chatted up people around the room. Judy was trying not to make eye contact. But there was a burst of laughter from across the room and she turned just in time to bump into Hefner's chest and spill her club soda all over his robe.

She was totally flustered and embarrassed and Hefner could not have been more gracious about the incident, joking that he usually used club soda to get rid of wine spills. After an introduction, Hefner asked Judy what she did and, when she said she was volunteering at Lincoln Park Zoo, he lit up.

"I'm a patron of the zoo and I really love that place,'' he said. For the next few minutes, Judy and Hef, as he insisted she call him, talked zoos and animals. He wound up spending more time with us than with anybody else in the room, even letting me ask him a few questions for my story.

As he walked away, Hefner said, "Don't forget to go down to the game room later. There's going to be lots going on."

After the Bunny of the Year announcement, we took his advice and asked how to get to the game room.

"His PR lady, the one who I talked to about bringing Judy (who was as beautiful as any of the contestants), told us there were two ways to get there: The stairs or the fire pole. We took the fire pole. It was pretty cool.

The game room was loaded with beautiful people, huge couches and the best electronic games available in 1969. There was also an Olympic-size pool in the next room with a bunch of mostly undressed people swimming and diving and splashing around. We later found out most of them were the cast of the musical "Hair," which was playing in Chicago but was dark on Monday nights.

We left before things got too wild. But it really was a great evening and we wouldn't have gotten to enjoy it if I hadn't been bored stiff on the overnight shift.

It would be hard to exaggerate how excited - and nervous - I was as my first day working in the Chicago bureau of The Associated Press approached.

Only two weeks before the big day, I was writing features and working the desk at the Rockford newspapers, still trying hard to learn my craft. Now I was about to become part of the largest news gathering organization in the world, and one of the most respected.

It was still hard for me to believe that I was ready to move up to a job like that.

Of course, I was out of sports again. My new job was listed as "newsman," and I wasn't even sure what that meant.

On Sunday, Feb. 16, 1969, I was at my in-laws' house in Skokie and getting ready to sit down for an early dinner when the phone rang. Judy's mom said the call was for me. I answered and an unfamiliar and not very pleasant voice on the other end said, "Where the hell are you?"

I chuckled and said, "At my in-laws' house, why? Who is this?"

"This is Carroll Arimond at Chicago AP and you're supposed to be here,'' he said, still with a nasty inflection. "You were supposed to be here at 4 o'clock."

It took a minute or so to get it straight, but the upshot was that Rockford's work week was Monday to Sunday and the AP's was Sunday to Saturday. I almost missed my first day of work at my new job.

Being Sunday, there was little traffic and I probably broke a few speed laws on my way into Chicago. Fortunately, Sunday also meant free street parking. I walked into the office less than an hour after that shocking phone call.

I approached the supervisor's desk and saw an older man with a green eye shade, looking like a character straight out of the movie "Front Page." That was Carroll Arimond, AP's longtime Chicago news editor and a legendary figure in the business.

I introduced myself and he grunted, handing me a piece of paper with a phone number on it.

"That's the Joliet Fire Department. Call them and get the details on the big downtown fire. Then write it up for me," he growled. "And make it quick. This ain't no weekly."

I walked to the nearest empty desk that had a typewriter and sat down.

Carroll looked up and said, "Not there. That's Dick Ciccone's desk," he added, referring to one of Chicago AP's star writers.

I found a different desk, called the fire department, got the details and hastily wrote the story, which included two deaths and several other serious injuries. When I handed it to Carroll, he hardly looked at it before throwing it back at me,

"Not enough detail at the top. Do it again,'' he said.

My third effort was apparently good enough for him - just. In that pre-computer era, he then handed the copy to the teletype operator, who punched it onto tape and sent my first AP story onto the wire at 66 words a minute, state of the art in 1969. Even with the false start and less-than-friendly greeting, it was a golden moment for me.

They kept me working day shifts for the first few weeks. It was mostly writing up handouts, answering the phone and taking dictation from other writers. But it still felt like I was in the Big Leagues, and I wasn't sure at this point if I belonged there.

Of course, sports was still on my mind and, in my first meeting as an employee with Bureau Chief Al Orton, I told him my goal was to get back into sports as soon as possible.

I grew up reading the Wisconsin State Journal in Madison and the byline I saw almost every day was Jerry Liska, the Midwest Sports Editor for AP. I met him and his No. 2, cigar-chomping Joe Mooshil, that first Monday, telling them I would love to help them out any time I could. They had no idea what a pest I would become.

The baseball season was about to start and Mooshil asked me if I would like to help him out at some Cubs home games. I said yes before he finished the sentence. My job was to go to the Cubs' clubhouse and get him some pregame quotes from Manager Leo Durocher or from a player or two that Mooshil designated.

As the Cubs began their first home stand of the year in April, I was put on night shifts, 4 p.m. to midnight. That allowed me time to take the El to Wrigley Field about 11 a.m., get the quotes and meet with Mooshil in the room where lunch was served to the media, team officials and VIPs. Then I would watch the first few innings from the press box and jump on the El in time to get to the office for the start of my shift.

Mooshil got me a season press pass and, for a lifelong baseball fan, it was heaven. By this time, Judy was volunteering during the day at Lincoln Park Zoo, so I also showed up at Wrigley on my days off from AP, meaning I got to stick around to the end of the game and run some more quotes for Mooshil.

My first big news assignment came as a surprise when I walked into the office on April 14 after watching the first six innings of a Cubs game. When I got to the office, I immediately walked over to the sports area and turned on a radio to see how the game was going. But Carroll beckoned me over and said, "There's been a shooting on the South side. A couple of cops have been shot and we need somebody down there to see what's going on. Get on the El or take a cab and call in updates when you can.

He gave me an address on South Exchange Street and sent me on my way. I had no idea where that address was, so I caught a cab. It took a while to get there and I asked the cabbie to drop me off when I saw a couple of Chicago cops redirecting traffic near my destination.

They weren't too happy to talk to me, but one of them did tell me what was happening. A former marine, Frank Kulak, was a suspect in a bombing death at a southside Goldblatt's Department Store. He had apparently left a black powder bomb in a paper bag near some war toys in the toy department. The Chicago papers dubbed him "The Mad Bomber".

Working from a tip, two policemen had gone to his home on the second floor of an apartment building to question him and he had shot them through the front door, killing both.

Kulak was barricaded in his apartment and apparently had an arsenal of weapons, including rifles, pistols, hand grenades and black pipe bombs like the one used at Goldblatt's. The apartment building backed up on a funeral home, which was being used as the police command post.

To get to the command post from where the cab dropped me, I would have to take a long, circuitous walk to avoid the police blockade or convince the cops to let me go straight down the street behind the funeral home and its wide-open parking lot, in view of Kulak's back windows. One of the policemen said, "I have to go over to the command post myself. If you want to go with me, we just have to duck down behind this line of parked cars and get over there in a hurry."

He said, "Stay low and we took off, bent over and moving fast. As we ran, I heard a double thump, like the sound of a grenade launcher that I had heard in basic training. A dark object flew about 10 feet over our heads and clanked off a brick wall on the opposite side of the street.

The roar of the explosion deafened me for a few seconds and, as I lay in a heap, tangled up with the policeman, metal shrapnel flew over our heads and pinged off the street and sidewalk. We got up and ran the rest of the way before checking ourselves to make sure we were okay. Neither one of us had been hit.

Shakily, I walked into the command post and found a communications officer, who gave me an update on the situation. A negotiator was on the scene, but Kulak wasn't talking and nobody else had tried to approach his apartment.

I asked to use a phone and was told they were for official police use only. I walked outside, looked around and saw that across the main street was a residential neighborhood. I walked down one of the streets and saw two older ladies sitting on their front porch.

When I approached, they smiled and asked if I knew what all the red lights and noise were about. I told them I would trade the information for the use of their phone and they gladly accepted the deal.

In the end, assistant police superintendent James Rochford found Kulak's sister and the two of them talked their way into his apartment, stepping over the bodies on the stoop, and got him to give up without further violence. I forged a path between the funeral home and the home of those nice ladies, dictating several leads and updates before cabbing back to the office.

My first by-lined story at AP got me my first written commendation from the bosses. And it turned out to be the only time in my career - and my life - that I was shot at.

But there was a lot more to come.

I'm a life-long optimist and have spent most of that life in anticipation, waiting for the next exciting thing to come along. But the next big moment of my life in Rockford was totally unanticipated and more than a little scary for a neophyte journalist and new husband.

It was the first week of January in 1969 and I was in a nice groove, handling a variety of assignments inside and outside the office. I had just come back from interviewing future Olympic skater Janet Lynn, a local girl.

When I was given the assignment to interview the teenage phenom there was also some talk about me going to Denver and then to Tokyo to cover the nationals and world championships the next year. That talk started me dreaming about covering other major events like the Olympics, Super Bowls and the World Series.

As I walked into the sports department, sports editor Rick Talley beckoned me into his office.

When he got up and closed the door behind me, my mind began to race. What had I screwed up? I couldn't think of anything, but I still had a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach.

Rick sat down at his desk and looked at me without saying anything for what seemed like an eternity.

Finally, he began.

"I'm leaving to become the sports editor of a Chicago paper, the Chicago American," he said quietly, making sure his voice didn't carry past the glass door. "It's an afternoon paper and it's going to be renamed Chicago Today."

I thought for a moment he was going to offer to take me with him, Instead, he said, "I'm telling you first because I want you to get a head start on finding a new job."

Talk about stunning news. I was so shocked I almost didn't take in his next few sentences.

"I think you're the most talented writer on this staff and my plan was to bring you along and make you into a national writer,'' Rick explained. "But, now that I'm leaving, I'm afraid you'll just get stuck here. So, I think you should leave, too."

"Where would I go?" I blurted.

Rick smiled and said, "I worked at UPI for a short time, and that was a great learning experience. I got to cover Kruschev's visit to the U.S. and a lot of other important stories and it was a great resume builder.

"A little time at a wire service could really help move you along," he added.

I walked out of his office with a million thoughts swirling in my brain. What do I do now? Where would I go next? Despite what Rick said, maybe I should just stay put and see what happens.

It was all very confusing.

The Rockford papers were subscribers to both United Press International and The Associated Press. I read both of the wires every day that I was in the office. I couldn't see much difference between them at that point. I really knew very little about the two companies and which one might be a better fit for me - that is, if either one would even consider hiring a writer who had been in the business for just over 16 months.

Barry Sweet, one of my best friends growing up in Madison, was a staff photographer for AP in Seattle. I decided to call him and see if he had any advice.

"Don't even think about going to UPI," he said. "They're in financial trouble. Besides, AP is by far the better place to be."

Okay. Now what?

Judy, staying cool and thinking things through, as usual, suggested I call the AP's headquarters in New York City and talk to someone in the personnel department (now human resources). I talked with a very nice man named Bruce Richardson, who later became a friend.

He told me the way to apply for a job as a newsman was to contact a bureau chief and set up an appointment for an interview and to take a written test.

"Since you're in Rockford, If you want to stay in that area, you can talk with Dion Henderson in Milwaukee or Al Orton in Chicago,'' Bruce said. "You're kind of halfway between them."

Judy's parents lived in Skokie, a northern suburb of Chicago, so it made sense to call there first. I got Mr. Orton on the line, told him who I was and why I was calling and he said, "When can you come into the office? You'll need about three hours to go through everything."

We set up an appointment for my next day off, Wednesday, Jan. 8. That was only five days after my sit-down with Rick Talley. Things were moving awfully fast and it was more than a little mind-boggling.

Judy and I drove to her parents' home that Tuesday and, the next morning, she dropped me off at the Skokie Swift, the train that connects Skokie to the Howard Street El, a mainline train to Chicago's Loop, where the AP bureau was located.

I bought a Sun-Times newspaper before boarding the train and couldn't believe my eyes when I glanced at the front page.

Near the bottom, surrounded by a thick black border, was the headline: "AP Hit By First Strike In Its History."

It was only two paragraphs, noting that the union representing AP employees began the strike at midnight and was seeking a multiyear contract with considerable improvement in pay and other benefits.

I didn't know what to do. I thought about trying to call Mr. Orton and rescheduling my visit. But I was already on the train. It made more sense to me to go in and see what the situation actually was.
The AP  bureau was located in a high-rise office building at the corner of Randolph and LaSalle, right in the heart of Chicago's famed downtown Loop.

As I neared the building, I saw a group of people walking a picket line outside the front door, holding signs with slogans like "You can't spell Cheap without AP." I was already a member of the Newspaper Guild and hated the idea of crossing a picket line.

But people were walking in and out of the building and I realized there were a lot of other tenants besides AP, which I found out was located on the fourth floor. I decided I needed to go in and find Mr. Orton.

I  walked in the door of the AP bureau and it was like entering a madhouse. It seemed like most people were talking, either to each other or on phones, and others were dashing here and there, clutching papers and notebooks in their hands or typing frantically.

I stood by the door until someone finally asked me what I was doing there. "I'd like to talk to Mr. Orton,'' I said.

Moments later, he walked up, looking embarrassed. He introduced himself and shook my hand, saying, "I'm so sorry, I forgot you were coming in today. We're a little busy. Maybe we should reschedule."

But, before I could reply, he said, "No, you came all the way from Rockford. If you want, I'll just give you the material and you can grab an empty desk and take the test. When you're done, you can leave it on my desk and I'll call you when this strike is over."

I ignored what was going on around me and spent most of the day doing the various sections of the writing test _ writing a short story on a car crash and another on fire, taking a vocabulary test and putting down a short autobiography. I totally ignored the time limits and did a number of rewrites to polish my efforts.

Finally, I put the paperwork on Mr. Orton's desk, caught his eye, waved and left.

Back in Rockford, things went back to routine, although I thought about my options a lot. I told Judy that it was unlikely, even without the strike interfering, that AP would hire a novice like me.

The only strike in AP's history, dating to 1846,  ended after eight days with the union getting a precedent-setting three-year contract.

The day after the strike ended, as I was getting ready to leave for the start of my 5 p.m. shift, the phone rang. I said, "Hello." Without identifying himself, the voice on the other end of the line replied, "How soon can you come to work?"

It. was Mr. Orton, of course, and I breathlessly told him I had to give Rockford two weeks notice. He said, "Welcome aboard! We're looking forward to having you here."

It was the start of my next great adventure.

 

 

Those of you who have been reading my blog posts have seen a lot of stories about my dad, who truly gave me my love of sports. But, with Mother's Day last week, I've been thinking a lot about my mom and I think she deserves at least equal time, so I hope you don't mind me digressing from writing about my career and my life this time.

Beatrice Bessie Krieger met my dad, William Isadore Harris, around 1935. I believe she was 18 and my dad was either 16 or 17. He was working at a mom and pop grocery store on the east side of Cleveland and was out front sweeping off the sidewalk when Bea came along, pushing her baby sister, Gail, in a carriage. Bill chatted her up, made a date and the rest is kind of history - at least the history of the five Harris children.

Mom and Dad in good times

Mom was one of the sweetest and kindest people in the world. She wanted to help everybody and often did help those who needed it. But five kids in 10 years was often overwhelming, and it didn't help that dad was a traveling salesman, who was often gone for five days a week - and sometimes more.

My mom never got her driver's license, although she did take driving lessons several times. I remember the last time she tried it. The lessons included the instructor having her drive several times around Madison's Capital Square, a very intimidating place for a novice driver. But she was proud to get her "graduation certificate" from the driving school.

My dad, who I believe, for some reason, never wanted mom to drive, took her out and totally freaked her out. So much so, that she wound up with his Cadillac crossways on our driveway. That was the end of mom driving.

When I turned 16 and got my license, I became the de facto house taxi and shopper, which has certainly stood me in good stead over the years.

Since I was the oldest, I also had a lot of responsibility for my brothers and sisters. Bob, the youngest has often said in jest that, until he was about 10, he thought I was his dad. But I was in charge a lot as mom needed to occasionally decompress.

Sometimes, she would take to her bed for a week or 10 days, just saying she was not feeling very well. When I first brought Judy home I took her up to mom's bedroom to meet her. As we walked back down the stairs, Judy leaned in and whispered, "Is she going to be okay?"  I laughed and explained the situation.

The next time Judy came over, a week or so later, mom was in the kitchen, smiling, laughing and  cooking dinner for eight people, including my dad, who had just gotten home. In fact, it was uncommon to have just family at our dinner table. We kids brought friends home all the time and mom never failed to greet them happily and cook for everyone. I'm sure it was exhausting.

Unfortunately, after many years of marriage - most of them seemingly very good - my dad had a true mid-life crisis and walked out, not only on my mom but on the whole family. We were all adults by then and we were estranged from him for the last 20 years of his life, which was sad for all of us.

They had been living in Cincinnati for a couple of years when dad left and we were all worried about how mom would survive on her own. After all, she was mostly a housewife and mother throughout her life, although she did hold office in groups like B'nai Brith and the temple Sisterhood in Madison.

Another thing I should mention is that she was very bright, an avid reader and had loads of friends. Before my brothers and sisters and I could come up with a plan to help her out, financially or otherwise, mom had found a job as a supervisor in a retirement home. She was able to work there until she retired, often telling us stories about how she dealt with the "old people,'' many of whom were younger than her.

She had a one-bedroom apartment in Cincinnati and, after our kids were born, we would sometimes visit and stay over. Mom would sleep on the couch, giving Judy and me her bed, and she would make up what she called a "nest" for the kids - meaning she threw piles of blankets and pillows on the floor for them to sleep on. They loved it.

Another passion for mom, besides her grand kids and her "old people," was slot machines. She had gone to Las Vegas a couple of times with dad and fell in love with the one-armed bandits. When I began traveling the auto racing circuit for the AP, Judy and I would sometimes ask mom to come to New Jersey (we lived in Westfield at the time) to stay with the kids so Judy could travel with me.

I would send her a plane ticket and, after we got home, her "pay" was some cash and a bus trip from a Howard Johnson Motel in neighboring Clark, NJ, to a casino in Atlantic City. It was a $25 round trip and she would get a $5 coupon for a casino buffet and a $10 coupon for quarters for the slots. The bus left around eight in the morning for the two-hour ride and was back by dinner time.

Whenever you'd ask mom how she did, she would say, "I won a lot."  What that meant was that every time the slot machine paid back anything, she considered it a win.

She would call when the bus arrived back at the motel and I would drive over to get her. One evening, I picked her up and she asked me to come inside. I was afraid something had happened to her, but it was just that she had hit a jackpot moments before the bus left for home. Not enough time to cash in, so her purse was loaded with quarters and she was too tired to carry it.

At home that night, she sat at the kitchen table and divided the riches up with the grand kids. She poured the quarters out on the table and had the kids help her put them into stacks of four. She then proceeded to divide them up: "One for you, Tory. One for you, Lanni. And two for me."

Another time, she called from Atlantic City to say she was having so much fun she wanted to stay over. I offered to get her a room at the casino hotel, but she said, "That's okay. I'll probably just stay up late and take a nap in the lobby."

I told her that the security people likely wouldn't allow that, but she said not to worry, she'd be fine.

She arrived home the next afternoon worn out but smiling.

"I slept in a chair in the lobby of Harrah's and a nice security man kept an eye on me and my purse," she said. "The assistant manager of the hotel came in the morning to make sure I was all right and let me use the bathroom in one of the hotel rooms to clean up and brush my teeth."

That was mom.

After she retired, mom would sometimes travel in the summer with Judy and me and kids to racing venues.

I invited her to join us at a resort in the Poconos one year and she said she would take the bus to meet us in Pennsylvania. What I didn't realize until it was too late was that the bus stop we were supposed to pick her up from was in the middle of the Pennsylvania Turnpike, nowhere near any town. It was actually a transit point for buses to switch passengers.

I tried to call her and tell her to meet us closer to where we were going to be staying, but it was too late. She was already on the bus.

We were all concerned for her safety and I definitely broke the speed limit on the way to meet her. But when we arrived at the bus stop - an uncovered bench in the middle of nowhere - no mom.

Just as I was about to try calling the state police to help us track her down, the bus arrived, and there she was, not the least worried about us finding her.

"I would have waited,'' she said, smiling.

On that same trip, we went to one of our favorite restaurants in the Poconos, along with a large, friendly group of racing people, who were happy to have mom join us. This particular restaurant was known for its dessert table, which stretched the length of one of the side rooms and was included with dinner.

As we walked in, mom spotted the dessert table and her eyes got wide. After we sat down and got our menus, she beckoned for me to come over to her. She leaned in and whispered in my ear, "Do I have to order from the menu or can I just eat dessert?"

I've never seen anybody happier as she tried just about every dish on that long, sweets-filled table.

She's been gone since 1984 and I still think about her and miss her almost every day.

There were plenty of routine assignments and also plenty of fun ones, but some were really more interesting or more difficult on a newspaper neophyte. Here's a few of them:

In December of 1967, I was sent to Chicago's Wrigley Field on a frigid afternoon to cover the Bears game against the Minnesota Vikings. Neither team was that special, but I was excited to work a game in the historic Chicago north side venue.

Having covered games at Wisconsin and Northwestern by that time, my assumption was that I would be sitting in an indoor, well-heated press box. I wore a trench coat with a scarf and no head covering or gloves.

I presented my credential at the press gate and was sent off to the farthest corner of the grandstand, where I found my seat was in an open-air auxiliary press box reserved for news media that didn't cover the Bears on a regular basis.

The game turned out to be a 10-10 tie on a sloppy field and, by the time it was over, I was a living ice cube. My fingers were too frozen to type and my pen kept freezing up so I couldn't take notes. Lesson for future: Always bring a pencil as a backup.

I stood in the heated men's bathroom under the grandstand at halftime and partially thawed out. But then I had to head back to my seat.

Finally, the game ended and I gratefully headed to the heated Bears dressing room. When I walked into that overheated environment, my glasses became opaque. I took them off and stuck them in my pocket, but that made it hard for me to tell who it was I was talking to. And I had to wait for my pen to thaw out to take notes.

I found the Bears PR guy, introduced myself and asked him to take pity on me and find me a warm place to write my story. He laughed and led me through a maze of corridors to a small room near the visitors' dressing room. It had a small desk and a dim overhead light with a pull chain, but it felt like heaven to me as I waited for my fingers to thaw out enough to type.

By the time I handed my story to the Western Union rep to send to the paper, I was almost thawed out, although my fingers hurt for the next week.

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The next story took several decades to resolve.

In August of 1968, I drove to Chicago again, this time to cover the New York Yankees and Chicago White Sox at what was then Comiskey Park. The game wasn't really important, but I was told to write a story about Yankees great Mickey Mantle, who was nearing the end of his historic career.

The Yankees won the game 7-2 and Mantle failed to get a hit in four at-bats. But he did walk and score a run.

When the media was allowed into the Yankees' dressing room, I walked up to Mantle, who was sitting on a bench near his locker, unwinding yards of athletic tape from his gimpy legs. He didn't look up as I approached and I finally said something like, ``Hi, Mr. Mantle. I'm Mike Harris from the Rockford newspapers and I'd like to ask you a few questions.''

Again, without look up, he said simply: "F..k off, kid. I ain't talking today."

I did manage to talk to other members of the Yankees and somehow wrote a feature without quotes from Mantle. But the rebuke stung.

About Twenty years later, I was working the noon to eight shift in AP's New York Sports office. It was about two weeks before Christmas and I often worked in the office in Rockefeller Center around the holidays, when there was no auto racing to keep me busy.

I was usually the extra man in the office, meaning I got assigned to write NBA or NHL roundups, take phone calls or handle the occasional news conferences that came up around New York City.

This particular day, as I walked into the office, the supervisor said, "Hey, Mike. Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford are coming by about 2 o'clock to plug a series of instructional videos they're doing for kids. Take them into the conference room and get what you need for a short story."

When the two walked in, all smiles, I strolled up, introduced myself and shook Whitey's hand. I then turned my back on Mantle, ignoring his outstretched hand, and said over my shoulder, "Let's go into the conference room."

They followed me in, Whitey laughing and shaking his head and Mantle looking uncomfortable. As we walked into the room, Mantle said quietly, "Okay, what awful thing did I do to you?"

I told them the story and Mantle, to his credit, got a little red in the face. "Would it help if I apologized now?" he asked.

I said, ``Yes, it would."

Mantle said, "I'm very sorry I did that to you. I was a real a-hole sometimes in those days."

I reached over and shook his hand and the interview went well. As they left, Mantle again shook my hand and said, "I really am sorry."

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There was another thing, besides the games themselves, that made college football season exciting in the Rockford sports department. The papers were owned by the Todd family and Bill Todd, the chairman of the board, was an avid sports fan. He also owned a two-engine, eight-seat airplane that had a plush wood-paneled cabin that included several desks. And, better, he was willing to loan his plane and pilot to the sports department on football weekends.

On any given Saturday, four or five sports writers would board the aircraft in Rockford and the pilot would make the rounds, dropping each of us off at a different airport. On one particular Saturday, the plane dropped off writers in South Bend, IN (me at Notre Dame), Evanston, Il (Northwestern), Champagne, IL (Illinois) and West Lafayette, IN (Purdue).

We then took cabs to the stadium, covered the game, cabbed back to the airport to wait for the plane to return and wrote our stories on the way back to Rockford. We would draw lots to see who had to take the finished copy back to the paper after we landed.

Shortly before my tenure in Rockford ended in February of 1969, the papers were sold by the Todd family to Gannett. That ended the Saturday football plane trips.

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One of my most embarrassing moments came during the 1968-69 basketball season when I was sent to cover a high school playoff game in Freeport, Il, about 30 miles from Rockford.

It was another cold winter day but, this time, I was covering an indoor event.

I stopped in the home team's dressing room before the game to talk with the coach and he kindly told me I could leave my coat in one of the empty lockers. I then walked behind him and the team down the hall and into the gym, where I sat courtside to cover the game.

When it ended, I wanted to quickly get to the locker room to talk with the winning coach, get my coat and head back to Rockford to write my story before deadline. But, somehow, I took the wrong hallway out of the gym and walked through a steel door that I thought was leading to the locker room.

Instead, it led into a small outdoor courtyard. The door swung shut behind me and locked. I looked around and saw I was in the center of the huge school building, with four doors - one on each side - all of them locked from the inside. And it was cold and windy with snow flakes swirling around me.

That was long before cell phones, so I couldn't call anybody. I banged on a couple of the doors and shouted loudly for someone to open up. But I heard nothing except some faint strains of music from the gym, where a school dance was beginning.

I was a bit panicky, thinking I might not be able to get anyone's attention until the school opened again on Monday. The only items in the courtyard besides me were some huge rain barrels. I thought briefly about trying to climb up on one of them and throw a second one through a window. But I don't think that would have worked.

Just then, I heard a voice from on high. Some strange thoughts crossed my mind before I realized it was a custodian leaning out an upstairs window asking me what the hell I was doing out there.

I explained the situation and, after a few shakes of his head, he came down, opened a door for me and pointed out where the locker room was. I was embarrassed but more than a little relieved. And I never told my colleagues in Rockford's sports department the story - until now.



.

The summer of 1968 was highlighted in July by a wedding _ mine.

My job was going smoothly and I was learning new things about the newspaper business almost every day. But, even as I worked diligently in Rockford, my mind was often about 60 miles away in Madison, where my fiance', Judy Rosée, was finishing her degree in education.

We had been engaged for more than two years. The joke was that we waited because her father told me that if we got married before she graduated from the UW, I'd have to pay her out-of-state tuition. The truth was that we wanted to wait until I was able to make a living for us and until she could join me in Rockford.

Finally, the big day came and we said our vows in a temple near her parents' home in Skokie, IL on July 3, 1968. Judy was beautiful as she walked  down the aisle and I was apparently looking too serious.

She said it looked like I had changed my mind. Now I wish I had smiled more to show her how happy I really was at that moment to finally become her husband.

The next day we took off on a two-week road trip for our honeymoon. I still don't know what possessed me to decide to drive all the way to New Orleans or why I even decided to take us to Louisiana in July. But there we were in the car, heading out on our new life together.

It was very quiet for a while and, at one point, Judy looked over at me as I glanced toward her and we both said, ``Forever?'' There was a long pause and then we both started laughing. This was going to be fun.

One reason for the driving trip was that I got the bright idea to make that year's baseball all-star game in Houston, at the then-new Astrodome, part of our trip. I got Rick Talley to credential me and get a ticket for Judy and I mapped out the logistics of the trip to make it happen.

Once we got on the road, though, working a baseball game - even an all-star game - didn't seem like a very good idea. I called Rick and told him that I was going to pass up the game. I have to say he wasn't very surprised, and he wound up writing a column headlined "Young Love Gave Tipoff On Dull Game."

We had booked a room at the Royal Orleans, then the grand dame of New Orleans hotels and within easy walking distance of the French Quarter and most of the great NOLA restaurants.

What we didn't know was that my dad had called the hotel and upgraded us to a honeymoon suite, complete with wine and a fruit basket. Unfortunately, we arrived a day late for our original reservation.

Even though I called from the road to change our arrival date, they had changed our reservation to an ordinary room. It was huge and very nicely decorated with floor to ceiling curtains covering one entire wall.

Excitedly, we went to open the curtains to see the view. Behind the curtains was nothing but a wall - not even a window.

And no wine or fruit, either.

When I called home, dad was really upset that we hadn't gotten what he had asked for. But I assured him that Judy and I were just happy to be there.

That night, we went to Antoine's, one of the finest restaurants in New Orleans. The waiter was an older man and very stiff and correct in his manner. But Judy, as she usually does, chatted him up and began to cut through his cool exterior.

She had never been a drinker, but I ordered her a fancy drink. She sipped at it and proceeded to get a bit giddy. When the waiter brought our dessert, Judy stood up, gave him a hug and kissed him on the cheek. He turned beet red, got a huge smile on his face and offered us a personal tour of the restaurant's famed wine attic.

That was just a sign of what was to happen so often in our more than 50 years of marriage - Judy opening doors, reaching people and taking us on wonderful, unexpected adventures.

I decided that we would head over to Texas to visit an army buddy who was stationed at Fort Hood, about 60 miles from Austin. We wound up getting kicked out of a motel for the one and only time in our lives.

My friend, Michael Bunnell, who was my bunk mate in basic training, had hurt his back and neck in a fall. Judy offered to give him a massage. With the window and door wide open and me sitting in a chair next to the bed, Michael, with his shirt off, laid on his chest on the bed and Judy, fully dressed, sat on his butt and began massaging his back and shoulders.

We were having a nice conversation when the phone rang. "Mr. Harris, please come to the office  at once,"

When I got there, the lady behind the desk sternly told me, "We don't do things like that in Texas," and told me we had to leave.

We moved to another motel down the road and spent a good deal of the evening with Michael talking about our "debauched lifestyle" and laughing.

When we got back to Rockford, we had to figure out how to live like married people. We had found a one-bedroom apartment, half of a neat little fourplex _ two apartments downstairs and two upstairs _ not far from my office. We had little furniture, and what we did have, most of it we had gotten from my parents.

That included two twin beds. We pushed them together, but they kept sliding apart. So we wound up with both of us sleeping in one twin until we could finally afford a full-size bed about three months into our marriage. Being newlyweds, we never considered that a problem.

What was a problem: Judy had never cooked and we couldn't afford to simply eat out all the time.

Rick had me working days for the first week I was back and Judy asked me what I wanted for dinner that first night. Trying to make it easy on her, I said, "How about meatloaf? That's easy."

Judy dropped me off at work and went on to the grocery store, where she looked in vain for meatloaf in the meat department. Finally, she asked the butcher and he said, "Honey, you have to make meatloaf using ground beef."

She then bought a package of ground beef - frozen. But she had no idea how to thaw it.

The back door was open and our upstairs neighbor, a nice young lady, came past and saw Judy in our kitchen pounding with a hammer on the frozen package. She asked what Judy was doing and was told that she remembered her mother pounding on meat.

The woman explained that her mother was probably tenderizing meat that wasn't frozen. She helped her defrost the ground beef under cold water and also helped her cook it. Unfortunately, she also messed up while trying to put a small amount of oregano into the mix and spilled the bottle into it.

When we ate dinner that night, I was startled by the taste that put me off oregano for years. But, as a dutiful new husband, I ate that meatloaf with a smile on my face.

Fortunately, Judy was determined to learn how to cook, and she did.

Growing up, her family always ate at 6:30 after her father got home from work. Once, I started working nights again, she felt she still had to feed me at 6:30.

The first few workdays, she showed up at the office with a pot or pan of hot food, dishes and silverware and fed me on the big table in the conference room. My workmates gave me quite the roasting over that - I'm sure they were jealous. But I finally told Judy it was okay to just send me with a sack lunch of some kind.

Judy decided it was time to use her degree and began to teach home-bound students and I got back into the rhythm of the job. We had no money, but it was a wonderful time in our lives, learning how to live as a couple.

The first edition of the Rockford morning paper was distributed mostly in southern Wisconsin and I quickly became "The Wisconsin Guy" on the staff.

Growing up in Madison and attending the University of Wisconsin gave me ``local knowledge,'' as far as my sports editor, Rick Talley, was concerned.

The first college football game that I covered in the fall of 1967 was in Beloit, WI, just 18 miles north of Rockford. Beloit College beat St. Olaf 14-13 in a defensive struggle that featured two goal-line stands. But I wasn't really concerned with the action on the field - although I took copious notes and kept a play-by-play.

It was a beautiful fall day, I was sitting in the press box and somebody was paying me to be there. That was the first of many college football games I covered, but it was a glorious moment in my budding career and I almost couldn't believe my good fortune.

The next week was even more exciting. I was being sent to Madison to cover my Badgers playing against Michigan's powerful Wolverines. Never mind that the Wisconsin football team was awful - on the way to a winless season, with one tie, and in the midst of a 23-game winless streak. I was pumped to go "home," and be seen in my new role.

I had to work the desk on Friday night, so I didn't leave for Madison until around 10 a.m. on Saturday. When I arrived at Camp Randall Stadium around 11 o'clock, I reached into my briefcase for my parking pass. That's when it hit me: In the excitement of the day, I had left the envelope with my parking pass and game credential on the kitchen table in my apartment in Rockford.

I got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach and nearly burst into tears. What to do?

Fortunately, that "local knowledge'' came into play. I had spent countless hours roaming the halls of Camp Randall's athletics building and being a pest to Jim Mott, UW's longtime sports information director, during my time as a football manager.

I parked my car on the street, a few blocks from the stadium - right where dad always parked when we went to the games. Then I made my way to Mott's office. He appeared happy to see me, standing to shake my hand.

``Hey, the new Rockford guy. You just saying hi?'' he asked. I was so embarrassed, I had trouble speaking. But I eventually got it out that I had somehow managed to forget my credentials at home.

``So what do you want me to do about it?'' Mott asked with a grimace. My heart sank.

Then he smiled puckishly and said, ``I think we can find a duplicate around here somewhere. You're not the first guy to forget a credential. But don't let it happen again.''

The Badgers lost to Michigan that day, but I got to sit in the press box and visit the dressing rooms as a professional writer. It was all very gratifying. And, in a sports writing career that went on for more than 40 years, I never again showed up at an event without my credentials.

My next trip to Madison for an assignment didn't come until the spring. I was sent to cover the state high school basketball tournament, an event I attended numerous times as a spectator over the years.

It was held in the cavernous and drafty UW Fieldhouse, adjacent to the football stadium and only blocks from my high school, Madison West. The last time I had been in the fieldhouse was in January 1967 when I took part in my UW graduation ceremony.

My time in Madison was recent enough that I still knew a lot about the schools that were playing in the tournament _ some of their top players, team records and history. And I got to spend five days at home, seeing Judy, my parents and my brothers and sisters.

Beloit made it to the tournament, so I even had a "local" team to write about. It wasn't quite a Cinderella story since unbeaten Manitowoc beat Beloit in the championship game, but it was definitely a worthwhile and fun few days.

I turned in my expense account on my first day back at work in Rockford. It included a couple of 50-cent tolls from the short roundtrip on Interstate 90, one tank of gas (probably about $4) and another $5 or so for hot dogs and peanuts at the games.

The next evening, as I arrived for work, Talley called me into his office. He literally threw my expense report at me across his desk and said, "This is unacceptable. If I send somebody else to Madison next year and they turn in an actual expense report, the bean counters will go crazy.

"I want you to redo this with four nights of hotel, three meals a day, laundry, tips and whatever else you can think of that you might have spent."

"But what about receipts?" I asked. "You let me handle that," Rick replied.

I wound up turning in an expense report for $235 dollars. My salary at that time was $140 a week. Talk about found money.

In between those Madison visits, I got an even more intriguing Wisconsin assignment - the Green Bay Packers hosting the Cleveland Browns at Milwaukee County Stadium in November of 1967.

I grew up a Packer fan, but I had never attended a game in Green Bay or in Milwaukee, where they played three or four "home" games a year in those days.

The Packers, under the direction of Vince Lombardi, in his last season as the team's coach, were on their way to another Super Bowl win _their third straight NFL championship _ and they easily handled a good Browns team that day, winning 55-7.

As I sat in the Mezzanine Level press box, I was struck by the fact that I was not only covering the team I grew up following from the best seat in the house, but I was being paid time and a half because it was Sunday and that was considered a holiday.

Since the Star didn't publish on Monday mornings, I had all the time in the world to get material for Monday afternoon's paper.

I went to the Browns dressing room and got a quick quote from the coach, Blanton Collier. Then I walked over to the Packers dressing room, where I got into a conversation with an old UW friend, center Ken Bowman.

By the time I headed for the coaches' dressing room to try to get a quote from Coach Lombardi, the whole place was clearing out and the door was closed.

I knocked and, after a short pause, I heard a deep gravelly voice say, "Yes?"

I opened the door and there was Coach Lombardi, half dressed, buttoning his shirt.

It was an awkward moment and I finally said, ``Coach, I'm really sorry to be so late coming in here, but I would appreciate it if you would let me ask you a question or two about the game.''

``Where were you when everybody else was in here?'' he grumbled, glaring at me. ``Well, it's my first football game here and it took me a while to figure out where everything was. And then I got into a conversation with Ken Bowman. We were at Wisconsin together.''

Coach Lombardi shrugged and smiled, ``What do you want to know?''

I asked a couple of obvious questions about the game and, after giving me typical answers, Coach Lombardi said, ``Where did you say you work?''

I told him the Rockford newspapers and that I had only been there a few months. By this time, he was dressed and ready to leave. He reached in his pocket and pulled out a business card and a pen. He wrote something on the card and handed it to me.

``If you ever need to talk to me, call this number and tell my secretary I said to put you through,'' Coach Lombardi said as he walked away.

I put that card in my wallet as a cherished souvenir.

A few weeks later, Lombardi announced he was stepping down as the Packers coach to become the full time general manager. I was in the office in Rockford and thought about that card he had given me.

I fished it out and nervously called the number. ``Coach Lombardi's office,'' said the female voice on the other end. I said, ``Hi, my name is Mike Harris and I work for the Rockford newspapers. Coach Lombardi gave me this number and said to tell you to put me right through to him when I call.''

I honestly expected her to hang up on me. Instead, she said, "Hang on."

The next voice I heard was Coach Lombardi's.

"Hi young man. What can I do for you?"

I got some quotes about his reasons for deciding to step down as coach. We talked about his health and time with his family. Then I thanked him for talking with me and, a bit breathlessly, hung up.

When I turned in the story, the desk supervisor asked me, "Are you sure it was really Vince Lombardi you were talking to?"

I laughed and said, "Oh yeah, it was definitely the coach.''

My quotes got picked up by the wire services and that was the first big scoop of my career.