This job can be a trip down memory lane and last week it had a Stanley Cup flavour to it.
I can remember exactly where I was when I got to see Jim “Bearcat” Murray and his son Allan celebrate winning the Stanley Cup when the Flames downed the Habs on May 25, 1989.
I spent the first period taking an adult typing class–on an actual typewriter–because it was deemed my skills weren’t good enough to get into Mount Royal College’s journalism program in the fall.
Yep, while Gilmour, McDonald, Otto and Peplinski were trying to win the Cup, I was banging away on a contraption that I never used – even by ’89 computers were being used by the time I got to J-school.
I missed the first period, but got to celebrate in a downtown Calgary bar – my goal of meeting with friends forgotten as our pre-arranged watering hole filled up while I typed out “the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog and one day will be on the front page of the Western Wheel.”
Thirty years later, I got to type out a story about the evening with a pair of well-known Okotoks citizens.
I had no idea of Bearcat’s role in getting the wily veteran Lanny McDonald on the ice or Allan kick-starting a Cup celebration on a plane.
Full disclosure, I had run into the Murrays about 45 years ago. The Lord Beaverbrook gym was abuzz when Bearcat was in the gym back in 1975 or so – even before the Flames he was well known – to watch Allan wrestle.
One of Allan’s first opponents was a loud-mouthed, long-haired Zeppelin fan who should have paid more attention in his high school typing class.
I don’t remember much of that quick match other than, while being thrown to the mat, thinking ‘At least there’s a world-class trainer in the house to take care of me.’
So when Allan told me he somehow was able to wrestle the Stanley Cup out of a crate, it brought back memories–and a slight twinge in my back.
