In praise of famous football teams

The 1957 Wickenburg Wranglers

By Tom Walker

witsendmagazine 

 

 Sometimes life sneaks up and hands you an honest-to-goodness surprise.

Not like the 7.1-magnitude earthquake that hit Mexico City or the series of hurricanes that have ravaged Houston, Florida and Puerto Rico. Those were nature showing us who’s really in charge here – not Donald Trump or the EPA – but good old tectonics and meteorology.

Or to put it another way, the disadvantage of building a huge city on an ancient lakebed that shakes like jello  when you give it a jiggle, or the trouble with pretending that man-caused climate change is just a hoax. Or, closer to home, the failure to install a patch that would have prevented the Equifax security breach.

We know all about those. We donate, we pray, we advocate for political change and we try to protect ourselves from the Equifax mess that let thieves steal personal information – including Social Security numbers – for  half the adults in the United States.

After all, what else can we do?

Well, thank you, Sandi Hartman, for giving me something else to do – a welcome break from all the natural, political and financial news that has kept me up late at night.

Sandi is a long-ago schoolmate at Wickenburg High School. After reading about my Equifax troubles last week on Facebook, she pointed me in a different direction. Did I know, she asked, that there was a photograph of me in the Sept. 20 edition of our hometown newspaper, The Wickenburg Sun?

 Well, no, I didn’t know that. In fact, I had forgotten there was a Wickenburg Sun, even though it had been around most of my life. I had seen it when we passed through town on our way to Las Vegas, and had even purchased an occasional copy.

But we hadn’t lived in Wickenburg for many years. I still knew a few people there, and luckily Sandi Hartman was one of them.

Me!

I tracked down the Sept. 20 issue of the Sun on its website. And there I was, with a big Number 51 plastered across my chest. It wasn’t only a picture of me, though; it was a picture of the high school football team that I used to play on.

The Wickenburg Wranglers. And what a mighty team we were that season. Under Coach Ralph Moran, we were the undefeated champions of the B-West football conference. I don’t remember how many games we won, but our only loss was to a much larger school: Class A Tucson Sunnyside.

There were some great players on that team: Bobby Rubash, Tony Kreider, Dan Doom (wow, what a name for a football player!), and Leonard Hershkowitz.

My name wasn’t among them. As a 145-pound guard, I played bench-warmer behind really skilled players like Hershkowitz and Doom, getting to play mainly when we were ahead by lopsided margins. Fortunately, we often were ahead by even more than that.

 Once, playing defensive guard against a desperately outclassed opponent, I broke through into the backfield and there was the quarterback, alone, unprotected, searching desperately for a receiver. It was a classic situation for the move Coach Moran had drilled into us: put your shoulder into the guy’s gut, wrap him up in your arms, tackle him down and complete the play by rolling over him.

Dramatic stuff, for sure.

But what I did was, I grabbed him by the shoulder pads, swung him around a few times and dragged him to the ground.

And I heard the announcer say over the loud speaker, “Looks like something from the rodeo.”

So that was it, the highlight of my football career. The following winter, we moved to another town that didn’t even have a football team. It did have a rodeo field, but it was too late to learn a new career. Sometimes life just doesn’t deal you a second hand. 

I became a newspaper reporter instead. 

  

Here We Are Again

At This Narrow Bridge Again

@Mary Walker Baron

Here we are again at this narrow bridge

Ready to begin our annual crossing --

Returned to this moment by ancient migratory

Patterns mapped in stone.

For a month we’ve wondered

What to bring – how best to pack and what to wear -- .

Difficult preparations even though

We try to make them every year.

I always over pack and now at this

Pre-crossing liminal moment I wonder –

Will I really need a flashlight?

If I haven’t yet read that issue of ‘Scientific American’

I bought on impulse last year at the Jet Blue

Terminal of JFK maybe I should admit

That I’ll never read it

And leave it behind.

I open my pack for a final inventory before

Stepping on to the bridge.  Does my Zip Lock

Bag of anger weigh too much?  Is my Nalgene

Bottle of tears absolutely necessary?  Did I pack

Enough hope and forgiveness?  Where is that

Stuff bag of patience I meant to take?  Is there

Time to repack before I cross to the other side?

Is anyone less prepared than I?

Rav Nachman -- our tour guide – said that

The important thing is to not be afraid.

I just heard a scream.  No wait.  We’ve heard

That sound before -- our shrieking

Hollow filled with awe horn

Reminding us to watch our steps.

This bridge between our sunsets is, indeed,

Narrow.  Each year we journey together we

Become better packers.  We learn to travel

Lightly.  The anger was too heavy.  Tears once

Shed are gone forever.  Maybe the flashlight is

Still a good idea.  We make these crossings

Together to steady and prepare for the moment

We must cross the bridge alone – comforted by

Our yearly migrations to sacred moments at this

Fearless time.

Paying the price for the Equifax breach

By Tom Walker

Special to the Arizona Daily Star

Whoever is planning a class action lawsuit against Equifax, I want to sign up. Please.

I am among the 143 million consumers affected by the Equifax security breach, in which names, birthdates, addresses, Social Security numbers, and, in some cases, driver’s license numbers were stolen.

Half the adults in this country were affected by this breach — including my wife and me.

Personal data like birthdates are bad enough. But Social Security numbers? If the passwords to our bank accounts were on file with Equifax, they probably would have let thieves make off with those, too.

Since learning about the breach, I have spent hours listening to telephone on-hold music and shelled out money trying to prevent a possible disaster to my identity and credit rating.

And make no mistake about it, Equifax is to blame — first for failing to install a security patch that would have prevented the breach, and second for delaying for two months letting consumers know while it worked out its own defense against the coming legal onslaught. And giving identity thieves plenty of time to work with the stolen data.

Equifax is offering a year’s worth of free identity-theft protection and credit monitoring. Well, sign me up for that! All I need is more of the same for the rest of my life and I’ll have it made. Except, no way, Equifax says: Longer than the free year, you gotta pay.

Anyway, I decided to call Equifax. The automated message promised that a call center was available “every day (including weekends) from 7 a.m. to 1 a.m. Eastern time.” So I called at about 5 p.m. Eastern. And got a message saying the call center was closed.

Next day, after still more hours of listening to on-hold messages, I got through to a Real Equifax Person who gave me a date when I could enroll in TrustedID Premier. Whoo!

To get this, I had to provide still more personal information, like probably the names of all our dogs and cats for the last 20 years.

But at this point, what difference did it make? I was told to expect an email telling me how to complete the process.

That was four days ago. I called Equifax Sunday to ask what had happened and was told the process could take up to five days, so look for it tomorrow.

Meanwhile, I had to put a freeze on our accounts with the other credit bureaus — Experian and TransUnion. Since Equifax’s screwup affected a big part of all adults in the United States, there were many others trying to do the same thing. Still more on-hold music.

These credit freezes aren’t free. In Arizona, it costs $5. And each time you want to take out a loan or new credit card, it costs to “thaw” your account too.

In the end, I joined a service that monitors for fraudulent use of Social Security numbers, name, address, or date of birth in applications for credit and services. It isn’t cheap — nearly $200 a year for the two of us — but I desperately hope it’s worth it.

Meanwhile, what about Equifax? Where does it stand on all of this? Just sitting pretty, as it turns out. Thanks to our lax coverage of consumer-protection laws, it doesn’t have to pay the cost of this kind of harm to impacted individuals and communities.

That’s why I’m counting on the courts to hold them liable. There’s plenty of damage out there, and this ain’t Hurricane Rita.

Just bring in the lawyers to clean it up.

Tom Walker is a retired journalist. He now writes novels and blogs.

If you aren't depressed, you aren't paying attention

By Tom Walker

witsendmagazine

At last week’s checkup, my pulmonary specialist asked me why I'm depressed (he’s a good doctor; he worries about my whole person as well as my lungs.) Well, let me count some ways.

#1. The curse of Osgood

  Packrat trap went off a couple nights ago with a great crash and commotion.

So our pest control guy went up in our crawl space to retrieve the body. He found that the trap definitely had been set off, but there was nothing in it.

So he re-baited and reset it.

And now we either have a rat that's wise to traps or one that's injured somewhere in our walls and dying. And we're waiting either for another crash of a trap or the stench of a dead rodent.

Linda, my wife, used to give the packrats that invaded our house cute little rat-sounding names, like Osgood. But after killing about a dozen Osgoods, the name has kind of lost its cuteness.

Now we just call our pest control tech and he comes and deals with the vermin. And so we wait to see what has become of our latest invader.

I'd call it the calm before the storm, but there are real storms out there that are much more important. My prayers are with those affected by them.

#2. Speaking of storms

First there was Harvey, swamping Houston. Now there’s Irma, howling up the west coast of the Florida peninsula, bringing 135 mph winds, tornadoes and storm surges.

Scientists say the higher temperature of the waters in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico are the brew that makes the monster hurricanes possible. It is undeniable that an apocalyptic array of named storms are leaving large sections of our nation blown apart and flooded.

And yet the heart-hardened pharaohs of our age refuse to acknowledge that we killing our planet with our pollution. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, responding to questions about Harvey, Irma and Jose, said this was not the time to talk about global warming.

When, exactly is the right time? When Moses stretches out his rod, turning all the water in our country to blood? When the skies turn black with locusts? Would any of these cause the climate naysayers to change their tune?

Until then, I find it hard to shake off my depression.

#3. Hacks, hacks and more hacks

The Internet that was supposed to be our best friend forever has turned into a hacker’s paradise.  Last week I discovered that I was among the 143 million consumers affected by the Equifax security breach.

Actually, “breach” is putting it mildly. Criminals made off with names, birthdates, addresses, Social Security numbers and in some cases, driver’s license numbers. The SSN, of course, is the crown jewel of this heist, since it can be used to open new accounts and gain access to other credit bureaus.

Equifax is on top of this problem, I was happy to see. The security breach occurred from mid-May through July 2017; we consumers finally learned about it in news stories last week. Why the delay? Equifax was working to fix the problem, they said.

The company is offering free identity theft protection and credit file monitoring to all U.S. consumers. So I tried to sign up for that. Unfortunately, I immediately ran into trouble. But there was a call center available “every day (including weekends) from 7:00 a.m. – 1:00 a.m. Eastern time.”

I called at about 5 p.m. Eastern time. And got a message saying the call center was closed.

And that’s just another reason I’m depressed

#4. And furthermore

Some other people, places and things that depress me: Trump, Trump, fully and finally, Trump.

The fact that my old friend, Facebook, was used by the Russians to spread real “fake news” about the 2016 election campaign.

The fact that Joe Arpaio, a convict, got a presidential pardon, while the 800,000 dreamers, who just worked hard, paid taxes and obeyed the law, are facing deportation.

The continued failure of the GOP-controlled Congress to force the release of Trump’s income tax returns. How can they do anything about tax reform without that information? Of course, what they’re really interested in is tax cuts, not tax reform. 

Stephen Miller, Kellyanne Conway, Omarosa Manigault, and all the other denizens of Trump’s White House who are pulling down hefty salaries for doing … what? And we might as well add Steve Bannon, formerly Trump’s senior strategic adviser and now CEO of Breitbart news, to the list, since he seems to still carry considerable weight.

These are some of the things that wake me up at 3:30 in the morning. You think you’ll go back to sleep then, but you never do.