During our long summer trips as a family, there were occasional weekends without a major event to cover. I wanted to justify my existence somehow on those weekends without using precious vacation time, so I found events to cover whenever possible.

One of those was a Trans-Am race in Brainerd, MN, in the summer of 1982. We left the kids with Judy's mom in Chicago and drove up to Brainerd, 125 miles north of Minneapolis, where we stayed in a quaint but comfortable motel called the Thrifty Scot.

It was the first time we had stayed in a place where there were all kinds of magazines and hot chocolate and coffee for guests in the lobby and a continental breakfast (doughnuts and coffee) each morning. Judy loved lounging in that lobby and quickly befriended the maids, who wound up taking her out to the field out back to pick wild gooseberries during their lunch breaks.

I was hoping the powers that be in New York Sports would not give me a hard time about spending money to cover a stand-alone Trans-Am event. My ace in the hole was that actor Paul Newman was entered in the race.

Newman rarely gave interviews, but I was hoping that I could convince him to talk with me. My efforts prior to the race were in vain. He refused to grant an interview and ducked me when I tried to "accidentally" bump into him in the pits and the garage area.

The race was run on a cool, dreary afternoon and the drivers took the green flag in a steady drizzle. Newman, who had made a name for himself in amateur racing, started third in only his second professional race.

To everyone's astonishment, Newman drove his Datsun 280zx to the lead by the first corner and never trailed on the way to his first professional racing victory.

My first thought as I saw Newman take the checkered flag was "Nobody in NY Sports is going to give me trouble about this decision."

The only reporters at the rural track were me and Charley Hallman from the St. Paul Pioneer-Press. When Newman walked into the media center after celebrating his win in Victory Circle, he was carrying a bottle of champagne and a wearing a huge smile.

As he stepped into the room and noticed Charley and I were the only people in the three rows of chairs set aside for media, he asked, "Where is everybody?"

Charley, bless him, said, "Don't worry Paul, Mike Harris here is with AP and that means you'll be in all the papers tomorrow."

It was the first and only time that I can remember that the winner of a race walked over to me and shook my hand before grabbing the microphone and sitting down at the table in front of the room. What ensued was less of an interview and more of a conversation, which was great.

Newman was bubbling with excitement over his win and more talkative than usual. But he still didn't want to talk about anything but racing. That was fine. It gave me more than enough for a story that appeared all over the country the next day and began a long aquaintanceship that sometimes over the years bordered on friendship.

Another of those "extra" weekends wound up changing my by-line.

As I worked on my 1987 schedule, I realized that there was a weekend in July on which there wasn't a single professional auto racing event anywhere in North America. That was truly a rarity. I told Judy we would have to find some place to stay and use one of my three weeks of vacation, which we preferred to save for after the racing season ended. 

Then I noticed that the Thunderboats were racing in Detroit that weekend. I hadn't covered an unlimited hydroplane race since my days in Indiana. But I figured why not? It should produce some good features and we could also visit family and friends in Detroit.

One of the things I liked most about my beat was the autonomy. I had to run my schedule by the bosses in New York, but they rarely made any changes. The thing is, I had not included the Detroit Hydroplane Regatta in my original schedule and I didn't tell anyone in New York that I was going to cover the Regatta.

It was a blistering hot weekend in Michigan and spending time on the shores of the Detroit River, where there was a nice breeze off the water, was actually pretty pleasant. The racing was fun and interesting and I felt like I had gotten some pretty good human interest stories along the way.

On Monday morning, I got a call from Darrell Christian, the AP General Sports Editor at the time.

"What the hell were you doing covering boat racing in Detroit?" he demanded.

"Well, it's a motor sport and I'm the AP Motorsports Writer. I replied.

Darrell was not impressed. He said, "No more boat races. Stick with race cars."

At the end of the summer I got a copy of a letter stating that, as of the next racing season, my title would change from Motorsports Writer to Auto Racing Writer.

Another non-auto racing event I got to cover was the U.S. Sports Festival in Syracuse, NY in August of 1981.

Since it was during one our first summer tours as a family, I got permission to bring Judy and kids. It was a strange week right from the start.

I parked in front of the Hotel Syracuse and left Judy and kids in the car while I checked us in. When I came out, the kids were bouncing around the back seat in excitement and Judy had an odd look on her face.

"What's going on?" I asked.

Judy told me in hushed tones that she and the kids had witnessed a knife fight just down the block from the hotel entrance. Thankfully, someone broke it up before either participant was badly hurt. But there was blood shed and lots of cursing.

The kids, eight and seven at the time, thought it was cool. Judy thought it was horrifying.

The hotel was a dowager that had been remodeled numerous times. We wound up getting a "renovated" room that obviously had once been two small hotel rooms. It was elongated with the bathroom in the middle and beds at both ends. And the bathroom had only a shower, no bathtub, a problem since the kids didn't shower.

For some reason, the hotel people couldn't (or wouldn't) move us to a room with a bathtub. But, as usual, Judy found a solution. She befriended the maids and they wound up letting her bathe the kids during our stay in an unoccupied room on the same floor.

I handled rewrite and editing and covered wrestling at the Festival, which was the prelude to my assignment at two Olympics during the 1980's.