The Sauk Centre Herald

Thursday, August 11, 1938

Lights and Shadows-

Now at long last comes the long projected, quasi-promised lighted football field.

This week jovial superintendent of schools, Wes A. (for Arthur) Kohl tossed the first tangible evidence that a lighted football field would be a part of the school's athletic program this year. He announced a showing of lighting equipment for the new field to be given this month. In the dark of the night on August 16th various lighting concerns will bring their equipment to this city, flood the field with a host of arrangements of flood bulbs, stab the night scene with a blaze of white.

And that night members of the Board of Education will cast their orbs into the glare of thousands of watts of incandescent light, squinting, gaping, reading calculating, figuring angles.

Already the Board has purchased ten poles, 60 feet long, on which will perch the light batteries.

Two years ago when the lighting bug first hit this city a host of proposed sites for fields were tossed into the ring. Work was begun on a plot near the lakeshore under WPA, dirt was hauled, leveling was done. Then the bubble burst. The school never used the field, work stopped. The school continued its play on the Fair Grounds lot.

Other suggestions failed to get a glimmer of workable progress, the Fair Grounds still held.

Then last year when extensive renovations were made about the Fair Grounds, the school found itself without a field it could call its own, had none definitely marked out right up to the beginning of the season. As it developed play was held on a field near the golf course - a field shot full of holes.

Injuries that may or may not have their origin in that layout (but since injuries were almost entirely confined to feet and legs, it points in that direction) made necessary revamping the team several times.

Now a new field looms back at the old stand-the Fair Grounds.

This year with a new growth of turf rising on a newly landscaped sector at the Fair Grounds, a field, without holes, impediments, will be the grid-iron for the local boys. Clarence Dickison, now in charge of the turf-making (using a recipe of continuous watering and applications of fertilizer, with a dash of mowing each week) says the tract is coming along in fine shape.

There's a practical angle in this fine field in that coaches are pointing to it as eliminating much of the injury, and (2) that the existence of a field, neatly lighted, will probably act as incentive to boys wanting to play the game.

In the interim of those years after the lights were first discussed, others went out to work. Chatter flew about with a super-athletic field in mind with a combine unit comprising spaces for football, baseball, tennis and a flock of other lots. As it develops each sport following must provide its own. That's the way it is. Perhaps it's the best way.

So first in the field with a lighted athletic grounds is the tennis group, a loosely knit association of tennis players themselves. Three years ago weeds, a dilapidated backstop fence, courts deplete of clay faced out to comers and the Country Club. That first year the gang got one court in shape. And then in another year threw off all vestiges of ruin and disorder, lighted the court, built the second one, threw up new, attractive backstops.

Now in three years time a set-up worth many more dollars than it ever cost and representing as playable courts as this city has ever seen, the setup is worrying those who have the responsibility.

Now maintenance becomes a burdensome item, funds do not accumulate quickly, always there are those who play but don't want to pay. Work has all been done gratis on the courts, there has been no WPA help.

And let me say willingly here and now that the fine set-up at the Country Club Courts is due entirely to the work of one man, himself interested in seeing a setup like that go. To no one else can orchids go for the fine courts, the embellishments they flaunt. While he isn't seeking publicity from this corner, Tony Schoenhoff has credit due him for his fine work. And I'm going to give it to him.

Right now those interested are considering several methods of disposing handling the courts without precipitating their relapse into a semi-tropical vegetation, state of growth. One is that the courts may be turned over to WPA maintenance, if such arrangements can be made. In that event all fees will be dissolved, the courts will be made public. The second revolves around the contingency that mayhap the courts can be dressed with a tar mat surface when the tarring crew gets into town for the street job.

Well, those are possibilities. They might alleviate the difficulty. Position of the members now is they find themselves with the hot potato of maintenance on their hands. Hold it and it gets too hot; drop it and it squashes on the floor.

This is all leading up the fact that a doubles tennis tournament has been called for Sunday. It is to embrace an entry list of club members only without charge. Other doubles teams who wish to compete, that is non-members, will be cordially welcomed to do so but will have the added attraction of paying regular fees.

Registrations for the tourney can be made at this office or at the Tavern before Sunday. Pairing and charts will be prepared before the tournament.

Local boys, that is schooled in the ways of golf on this course, cut into the Alex Resorters tournament picture with a quirk. In the sixth flight were Pat DuBois, examiner with the state banking department, and Bob Schoenhoff, vacationist from the Federal Reserve bank. Not so unusual. Except that both Pat and Bob were eliminated in their first rounds and were competitors in the consolation round in which Bob dumped Pat.

And it's this same Pat who won the short stop tourney a few Sundays ago at the local club, and last Thursday was winner in the weekly series of blind bogey handicap events.

A summer setting is this. Down the street Monday noon went a string of fish with a freckled-faced, overall-clad, barefoot lad of a dozen years on the other end of the stringer.

Where'd ya get the fish, someone challenged. We fished 'em, was the lad's reply. Which after all is what happened. And I liked the modesty of the statement. You just ask any adult fishermen how he got his fish, and unless he is guarding some million dollar secret, he'll launch into an explanation that'll make you wish you'd never asked.

But not this lad. He just "fished 'em." The boy is 12-year-old Joseph Denzer, who seemed in command of a trio of brothers, just returning from a fishing excursion. Behind him trudged Loren, somewhat younger. He carried a bullhead proudly-his sole contribution to the catch and he was going to have it with him.

Then came the youngest, little, brown, five-year-old lad who was content to let his elder brothers carry the string.

But even he had caught two of the seven pickerel on the string.

Continued priming with questions wheedled from the triumvirate that their fishing had been done in the river below the dam. Their equipment: a cane pole, a daredevil. Their mode of approach; apparently something phenomenal. Said Joseph: "One dragged me into the river."

Dog days when the days are steaming hot and the nights muggy have moved in and Sauk Lake has turned the sickly green. Its waters are too warm to make swimming enjoyable, the green makes it repugnant.

Now there is no place to dunk a heat-toasted torso.

For those who live along the lake, with its cool looking expanse before them, it must be pretty tough-like wanting a drink on the desert with a mirage before your eyes.

And so both Dr. and Mrs. M. G. Franta went to the Resorters tourney at Alex.

And quoth the Doc, about his exhibition in the 19th flight: "Worst round I ever shot."