Perhaps the best part of life on the "compound" is we get to share our lives with family (our daughter and her family) who live out back. That was driven home in a big way recently thanks to a heartful homeschool assignment by our granddaughter Lyla.
The Route of the Hiawatha is one of those places. Once you've been there, you'll always remember it. And why not! It's scenic beauty is amazing. And the engineering to pull it off is mind-boggling. Covering 15 miles, almost all of it slightly downhill, the rail-to-trail features nine tunnels, the longest of which is nearly 1.7 miles, and seven towering trestles. I've biked it a handful of times and even aired a report about it back in my TV anchor/reporter days. And once you learn about the Hiawatha's history, it's just that much more special.
In the early 1900s, the Milwaukee Road sought to expand its offerings from the upper Midwest to the West Coast. But to get there, it had to scout, develop and build a railroad track. After three years, a decision was made and construction began through the rugged Bitterroot Mountains along the Idaho-Montana border in the Northern Rockies. According to the Route of the Hiawatha's website, the estimated cost of the bold endeavor was $45 million. However, the final price tag turned out to greater than $234 million, plus another $23 million later on to convert it for electric locomotives.
Cross-country service began on July 4, 1909. The following year in 1910, the Big Burn as they called it, scorched some three million acres of forestland. Among its devastation, the wildfire roared across the rail line and destroyed several small mountain towns. One of them, a riotous railroad town along the line was Taft, mockingly named after President Howard Taft. Known for its saloons and brothels, vulgar living and high murder rate, one reporter at the time called it the wickedest city in America. As the flames approached, its residents ignored pleas to evacuate. In the end, the fire killed everyone as it burned the town burned to the ground, never to be replaced. Today, there's only a highway exit sign along Interstate-90.
On the bright side, there were stories of railroad engineers who drove trains loaded with passengers into long tunnels along the Hiawatha, reportedly saving the lives of more than 600 people.
After the fire, Milwaukee made the decision to electrify its lines so workers erected miles and miles of wooden poles parallel to the track to carry nine electric lines. To make a long story short, the Olympic Hiawatha became the last passenger train to roll through the Bitterroots in 1961. Diesel engines later replaced electric trains. The railway company filed for bankruptcy in 1977 and a train crossed its tracks for the final time in 1980, the year I graduated from high school.
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Fast forward to 2021. I'd worked at the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation for nearly a decade, writing about its volunteer army and lauding efforts in advancing the mission to ensure the future of elk, other wildlife, their habitat and our hunting heritage. But now it was my turn to be an RMEF volunteer and I couldn't wait.
That same year, we distributed a short film called "The Letter." It chronicles the story of two RMEF members who were hunting elk high in the mountains near the Hiawatha Trail. They came across scattered bones and discovered the skull of a bull elk with electric wire tightly wrapped around its antlers and attached to surrounding trees and vegetation. It was evident the poor animal became entangled, couldn't move and eventually died because of starvation and/or a predator attack.
One of the hunters wrote to RMEF headquarters, stating if there ever was a volunteer project that needed to happen, it was along the Hiawatha. Removing that fallen wiring from trees, bushes and the ground would make it easier, let alone less deadly, for elk, deer and other wildlife to move across the landscape. Action soon followed and volunteers hit the slopes above the Hiawatha Trail in 2020, along with our film crews.
When we released the short film with an accompanying feature story in Bugle magazine, year-two of the volunteer garnered more than twice as many volunteers as the first go-round. It also expanded to two days. And I was excited to be there along with my grandson, Kyler.
After meeting at the Taft exit, we drove a couple of coworkers up the mountain to the work site where we received instruction from U.S. Forest Service and RMEF personnel, divided up into work parties and got to work.
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| Kyler looking down into a deep draw |
The terrain was extremely steep and the vegetation thicker than thick. In short, it was hard, hard work but extremely satisfying as we knew we were making a difference. Kyler met a couple of daughters of a coworker and the three of them spent the day together up in the woods, but always within my sight. With my bolt cutters in hand, we hiked, found wire and started pulling and cutting. As the day wore on, I was glad the trees and bushes were thick since that protected us from the sunshine above.
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| A handful of old wires |
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| Photo source: John Hafner |
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| Downed electric pole |
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| Kyler with an old insulator |
As we worked, an RMEF film crew and another from Danner Boots, an RMEF partner, captured photos, video footage and did some interviews. One of the crews grabbed Kyler and me to chat, which became part of a short film called "The Affect." After lunch and a couple more hours of work, we headed for home so Kyler could get back for golf practice.
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| Accumulated wire & the elk skull |
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| Screen shot from "The Affect" |
One month later, I again made plans to attend the Hiawatha wire pull. Kyler was unavailable so I invited a friend (Dennis Normand). We had a good time together. Once again, it was steep, the vegetation was thick and there was more than enough work to do. At one point, I saw some wires still attached to posts high above the ground. I used some tall branches to pull down several of the wires. I got ahold of another wire and it held me as I bounced in the air but we just couldn't reach others that were still taut. That's bad news because they'll eventually fall and become a danger for animals below.
Unlike the year before, our 2022 work crew made its own interesting discovery. We found out about it at lunch and hiked there afterwards. That's where one of our RMEF volunteer teams came across another scattering of bones with a bull elk skull's antlers entangled in wire. It looked like it died tethered to a small tree and surrounding vegetation. I took a series of photos, one of which appeared in Bugle magazine.
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| Another pickup bed full of wire removed off the landscape |
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| Photo source: John Hafner |
I was recently flipping through the TV channels when I noticed a National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) event was being broadcast. I stopped and was glad to see that week's stop was at Heartland Park Motorsports (or Heartland Park Topeka as it used to be called). But the more I watched, the announcers and drivers they interviewed kept alluding to "Heartland's history," "the final time" and similar terms or phrases. I went online and read that a property tax dispute is putting the track out of business. Heavy sigh!
Heartland Park Topeka opened in 1989 as the first major racing facility to be built anywhere in the U.S. over the previous two decades. It has multiple configurations ranging from a 2.5-mile road course to a quarter-mile drag strip. I arrived in Topeka in the fall of 1988 as a young sportscaster out of college covering mainstream sports like football, basketball, baseball and the outdoors. But auto racing? That was something I just wasn't that familiar with.
That changed in a big way over the next decade as all sorts of racing series with a bunch of different racing acronyms rolled into town: SCAA (Sports Car Club of America), AMA (American Motorcyclist Association), ARCA (Automobile Racing Club of America), ASA (American Speed Association), IMSA (International Motor Sports Association) and several NASCAR (National Association of Stock Car Auto Racing) regional series including the NASCAR Truck Series, bracket races by local groups and, of course, the NHRA.
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| Covering an IMSA race (1989) |
Though I didn't ever get it confirmed, there was also scuttlebutt that Paul Newman also rented out the track. I'm sure there were other well-known folks, too, that none of us even in the media knew about.
And then there's Dale Earnhardt. I had a memorable encounter with him on a race weekend at Heartland Park. It was so cool to meet him in his prime. And especially cool to have an exclusive post-crash, one-on-one with him as the rest of the local, regional and national media members ran toward us. I got the scoop because as soon as we were done talking, the Intimidator hopped in a car, drove right to the airport and flew out of town. Details here.
Other NASCAR names I covered included the Waltrip brothers, the Labonte brothers, team owner Rick Hendrick and a bunch of others I don't remember that probably went on to hit it big. One living legend I more than remember is Kenny Schrader. Shoot, at age 68 he recently won a race in Canada so he's still getting after it. Anyway, I can't remember how it happened but he showed up at Heartland Park with a two-seater and I ended up sitting next to him. It was a couple of days before the actual race but he gave me a joy ride I won't soon forget. We screamed around Heartland Park's road course with some impressive G-forces. Since there were so many turns in the course, it seemed he drove most of it with only two tires on the pavement. When we got done and pulled off our helmets, I asked him what percentage of effort he gave for our loop compared to race day. "About 65 percent," he said. Man, we were flying. I can only imagine what going full speed on race day would be like.
I remembered filming several sports challenges there. (The Pepsi Sports Challenge was a weekly segment where viewers would call, email or write a letter challenging me or our sports staff to a particular challenge.) We did a mini drag racing challenge there and maybe a couple of others. My weekend sports anchor, Tom Thompson, and I also shot a commercial spot for the sports challenge at Heartland Park. After shooting video on the drag strip, we asked if we could drive our Ford Rangers around the track. They didn't care so we did a loop around the road course. Very, very cool!Back to the NHRA, and just so many memories covering those races. Early in Heartland Park's history, I remember shooting video with an intern (Brian Green). I was behind the camera sitting on the ground and he sat immediately to my left. We were maybe 65 yards up the track from the starting line behind those three-foot-tall cement dividers you often see between the lanes on a highway. Anyway, as the car in the nearest lane was passing us, about 15 feet from us, the engine blew. Yeah, it suddenly got really warm from the explosion. After the car came to a stop and I quit shooting video, I turned to look at Brian. Oh man, he had oil spewed on him and his eyebrows were singed. But we were both laughing. Shortly thereafter, cameras were no longer allowed to shoot so close to the track.
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| Crew members walking the starting area during a rain delay |
I anchored scores of sportscasts and did a bunch of live shots from Heartland Park. Over that time, I met and talked with so many legendary NHRA drivers. Among them were John Force, Shirley Muldowney, Don the Snake Prudhomme, Warren Johnson, Scott Kalitta (I also golfed with him. He later died in a 2008 crash.), Kenny Bernstein, Joe Amato, Bob Glidden, Tom the mongoose McEwen, Eddie Hill, Pat Austin, Dick LaHaie, Ed the Ace McCulloch, Gary Ormsby and on and on.
In 1989, Ormsby won the Top Fuel championship. In 1990 at Heartland Park, he became the first driver in NHRA history to break the 4.9-second and 295 mile-per-hour barriers. I still remember it. He died from cancer on August of 1991. In the final match race before he died, he defeated Lori Johns at Heartland Park. |
| Chatting with Lori Johns in the NHRA pits (1989) |
Fans supported the Heartland Park races so well that the track had a run where it hosted two national events a year. In 1996, the Western Auto Nationals roared into town. As part of the pre-race publicity, the NHRA reached out to a local car dealership which made a bunch of its cars available for the media to hold its own drag racing event. Several of the NHRA drivers were there to give us tips on getting off the line, among other things. A bracket competition was set up and we started racing head-to-head. When it got down to the final, it was me against a guy I don't remember where he worked but he would always show up at the track wearing some sort of colorful racing outfit and was decked out right down to his racing shoes. Okay, so imagine if I showed up to cover a football game as a member of the media wearing shoulder pads, a helmet and cleats. Or imagine being a media member showing up to cover a basketball game wearing a tank top, shorts and high-top shoes. That's how this guy was. And boy, did he talk the talk - all racing lingo, all the time.
I remember after I got into my car that I received some last-minute advice from my NHRA driver before the final run. I was told to "please, please beat that guy" because he annoyed the drivers as much as he annoyed some of the rest of us. When the lights went green, we both stomped on the gas. I think he was a hair ahead of me off the start but as we gained speed, I caught and eventually blew by him. I was yelling for joy as we crossed the finish line. And so, I was later told, were all the media folks back at the starting line.
As we drove our cars back to the drag tower, an unexpected trophy presentation took place. They actually had a trophy for the press race champion, something they'd never previously done at Heartland Park. First, they gave me a nice wooden plaque with the title of the race and the date, July 3, 1986. But then presented me with a Wally. Wait! WHAT!?! A WALLY? The NHRA started presented its event winners with Wally trophies in 1969. They are a brass-plated metal trophy measuring 18 inches tall and weighing 12 pounds, mounted on a solid walnut base named after NHRA founder Wally Parks.
Now, the Wally presented to me wasn't the same size, measuring a foot in height and weighing eight pounds, but it was an exactly replica. Man oh man, when the runner-up saw that I received a Wally he was B-I-T-T-E-R! As for my Wally, to this day it sits in a very public place in my home.
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| My champion's plaque |
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| My "Wally" |
Oh the memories! As I watched that final NHRA Heartland Park telecast near a conclusion, it came down to Justin Ashley and Whitney Force in the top fuel final. I really, really wanted Force to win it. She's the daughter of John Force, the king of the burnout and 16-time NHRA funny car champion who also won many times at Heartland Park and a guy I got to know on a first-hand basis from interviewing him so many times. In the end, Ashley edged Force by .005 of a second to take the title. So much for a full-circle moment.
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| Justin Ashley with his "Wally" |
So now the curtain closes on Heartland Park. Am I nostalgic? Yes. Am I sad? Yes. I'm so sad that such an awesome state-of-the-art, record-breaking racing facility has to fall silent. And I'm especially sad that race fans are losing what they enjoyed and supported for nearly three and a half decades. Oh wait, I'm one of them!
To be honest, I expected our trip to Italy to be similar to others (Hawaii, Canada, Alaska, etc.) in that I would go, it would be enjoyable, I would make some memories and, in the end, I’d call it good and then go on with life. But it was oh so much, much more than that! When our 16-day trek came to an end, I’d developed some definite takeaways.
I Never Realized I Didn’t Know I Had Been Missing
Something So Much
Have you ever done something you haven’t done for a long,
long time, but once you do it, you then realize how much you missed it? That’s
happened several times over my life. For example, I rode a unicycle as a kid
and into college but then it went into storage when we had kids. But when they
got older, I bought a new unicycle and two of my kids learned to ride it, which
rekindled
my desire.
There’s also hockey.
I’d played a lot of street hockey when I
was a kid in Canada and then some inline hockey in my twenties. Just a couple
of weeks before my 40th birthday, I took up men’s rec league ice
hockey, which kicked off a great eight-year run. It was so great to play again.
Hockey is unlike any other sport.
Softball
was similar. I started playing men’s city league when I was 14 and continued
into my college years. Like the unicycle and playing hockey, softball went on
the back burner because of work and family responsibilities. However, 20 years
ago, a friend recruited me and I’ve been playing ever since, even into my 60s.
And then there’s Italy. This was not just an activity like
the aforementioned. It was an 18-month chunk of my life. I was called as a
missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to serve in the boot
and Sicily in 1982-83. Over that time, I learned a lot about God and Jesus
Christ, Their church, a different culture, its people, its food and made many
friends. And along the way, I learned a lot about myself. A lot!
Returning to Italy, I simply was not prepared for the strong
feelings that would resonate within me. Being there stirred a ton of emotions –
anticipation, nostalgia, excitement, happiness, joy and many memories. It just
felt so right to return to a country that had changed in some ways but remained
the same in so many others. I reveled to be there. What I didn’t realize is
that Italy was still a part of me and I will always be a part of it.
Love for the Italian People
Simply put, Italians have a love of life. They live their
day-to-day lives with enthusiasm, vigor and passion. You see it in how they
speak, how they treat others, how they prepare and eat meals, and even in the
crazy way they drive. They are all in! On this trip, I met so many
genuine people who were interested in us and treated us like friends, if not
family. I admire them for that and will try to adopt some of those character
traits. The bottom line is I love the Italian people!
Love of the Language
I was never an class-A linguist as a missionary. I mean, I
could speak it. I could understand it. And there certainly is something special
about learning to speak the language of another country while being there. I
admit that I did not prepare nearly as well as I should’ve for this trip. I did
listen to Italian in the weeks leading up to it but I could’ve done much more.
But what happened in Italy, to be honest, was amazing. I was
shocked at the transition that took place. At the beginning, I would hear a
word or phrase, try to translate that into English in my brain so I could
understand, and then I’d struggle to conjure up the appropriate Italian words
and/or vocabulary to formulate a coherent response. I felt, and probably
sounded, like a third grader. Yet as time passed, something unexpected
happened. My brain would hear a word or phrase and then automatically
understand what was being said. And just that quickly, practically automatically,
I responded. I mean I actually became mostly fluent again. It was so cool. No,
it was more than that. It was joyful and fulfilling! And to communicate with
this Italian people that I love in their language on their home turf,
especially when they continually expressed surprise and admiration again and
again at such an ability for a couple of Americans, was a blessing. I’m sure
that Ron would agree, especially since he prepared much more diligently and
spoke and understood a heck of a lot better than I did.
Love for the Food
Now this, I knew was coming! I grew up very much a meat and potatoes, casserole, bread and milk kind of kid. While planning this trip, I had in my mind the many Italian foods I wanted to eat and set out on a quest to check each box, which I did. And the flavors? Well, Italian food just can’t be beat. Perhaps it’s the freshness or the spices or the cheeses. All I know is each bite was a treat. Though difficult to differentiate and quantify, below are a list of my “bests” of the trip.*
(*I'm totally open to debate and am easily persuadable.)
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| Best breakfast treat - cream-filled pastry in Siracusa |
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| Best pasta (part I) - paccheri with crispy bacon, cherry tomatoes & pecorino cheese - Catania |
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| Best pasta (part II) - cacio e pepe - Roma |
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| Best pizza - five cheese (mozzarella, Vastedda del Belice, gongonzola, parigiano Reggiano & Ragusano) - Agrigento |
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| Best side dish - bruschetta & pickled zucchini - Peschici |
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| Best on-the-go treat (part I) - arancino in Catania |
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| Best on-the-go treat (part II) - fresh-squeezed orange juice - Catania |
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| Best drink - aranciata - available everywhere |
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| Best gelato - pineapple & cannolo in a brioche - Monreale (although the milk chocolate-peanut butter combo & the many, many lemon gelati I pounded down are right there too) |
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| Gelato photo placed here just to make you drool |
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| Best granita - lemon granita from La Vera Liome Granita - Agrigento |
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| Best sandwich - flatbread with mozzarella and prosciutto - Rome |
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| Best on-the-go meal - Panzarotti, arancini & aranciata - Bari (because I ate it a million times as a missionary and I still love it) |
Sharing Italy with Lori
Well, I loved showing her where I lived in Italy, the sites
I saw, the type of people I interacted with and yes, the heavenly and succulent
foods we ate. She also enjoyed being with the Italians on the
streets, in businesses and worshipping with them on Sundays.
I love how she embraced it. Among other things, she created and
checked each box in a personal Italian bucket list by sticking (at least) a toe in the three bodies
of water that surround southern Italy – the Adriatic, Tyrrhenian and Ionian
Seas. Shoot, given past studies in Spanish, she even picked up a bit of the Italian language while we were there.
Lori, the Warrior
The only downer, and it was a big one, was
the Vespa incident on Lipari that left Lori with an injured left foot and on
crutches. What we didn’t find out until after we got home was it resulted in
two fractures in her left foot, plus two months on crutches. Still, during our
trip, she soldiered on, made her way up and down Italy’s streets and didn’t let
take away from where we went, what we saw, what we did or what we ate. And she
did all this with a smile on her face. She was and is the perfect example of
toughness, endurance, kindness and fun.
Sundays are the Best Days
I enjoyed each and every day we spent in Italy but I especially cherished Sundays. Of course, that’s really no surprise since I’m religious and I served as a missionary there. However, to gather with members of our church was exceedingly special. These good Italian folks live and practice what they believe, day-in and day-out, and do so despite living in a country dominated by another religion. Some of them were ostracized for doing so, yet they carry on faithfully, diligently and full of joy. Being able to sit with them, worship with them, sing hymns with them and feel their heartfelt testimonies was both moving and inspiring. I would love to visit all the congregations across the Puglia and Sicily!
Ron & April Smith = the Perfect Travel Companions
Like I stated earlier, It’s great to experience something
yourself, but it’s better when you can share it with others. Sharing this trip
with Ron and April Smith made it just so much more meaningful and memorable. And they fully welcomed us even though we kind of crashed their plans.
Of course, Ron and I go way back. In April of 1983, I had been in Italy about nine months when I became a senior companion and was transferred from Siracusa to Catania where Ron arrived as a wide-eyed “greenie” fresh from the United States. He probably didn’t know how much I needed him at that time. I needed a good example and a good fellow missionary to work with. Over my first nine months, I had a difficult missionary companion and some challenging circumstances that made transitioning from the U.S. to Italy, including trying to learn a new language, that much more difficult. Ron and I hit it off almost immediately. Those three or four months together with him were the best of my mission. We worked hard, laughed much and became good friends. We were (and are) a lot alike in a lot of ways.
We stayed in contact and decided to become roommates in the
fall of 1984 at BYU. We even took an Italian class together. We were only
together for one semester before he left me for April and marriage, a valid excuse, but again
we had a good time.
After we got home and our friends asked about our trip to
Italy, we’d say, “We had a great time with our friends.”
“Friends? What friends?”
When I said we made the trip back with one of my former
missionary companions and his wife, people said that must’ve made it that much
more special. Yep, sure did. And that’s even though since college, Lori and I
had only seen Ron and April once, and that was about four to five years ago,
and then it was only for a few hours.
As missionaries back in the day, I was the senior companion.
However on this trip, I felt much like Ron’s junior companion. And I liked it.
He had better grasp on the language and his days of being wide-eyed were long
gone. I also learned a couple of things about him I didn’t know before. Somehow
Glendale, Utah, a small dot on the map in the southern part of the state, came up
in conversation.
“Glendale? My family helped homestead that town,” he said.
“Wait! What? Really? So did mine,” I responded.
How did this never come up before? Sure enough, the old
Smith Hotel, founded in 1927, with its front entryway right on the doorstep of Highway
89, smack dab in the heart of Glendale, was founded by his ancestors. I, too,
have family that lived in Glendale for generations, just down the road from the
Smith Hotel and throughout town. In fact, I still have relatives there today.
Secondly, his grandparents are from Helena, Montana, which
is about 90 minutes from my house. Man, you think you know someone and then you
learn even more.
What I do know is Ron is somebody I’ve already looked
up to. I did as a young missionary. I did during our throwback trip. And I do
today. Thanks Ron!
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| April 1983 |
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| April 2023 |
A couple other things about April. She is the czar of travel. When bad weather, earthquakes and/or public transportation strikes popped up and altered our travel plans, we didn’t miss a beat because of April. She pulled up her phone, offered alternatives, purchased new tickets and we were on our way again, without missing a beat.
Then, there’s her laughter. Ron told us how their kids get the biggest kick out of April when she gets on a roll. We experienced that during a torrential downpour in Vieste. There we stood, the four of us, huddled under a balcony, watching a small river of rain water cascade down old stone steps, over our toes and downhill to Old Vieste below us. April lost it. She couldn’t stop laughing. And we couldn’t either.
Lastly, and most importantly in my book, is April’s big heart. You can feel it as she talked about friends, kids, grandkids and others. I also saw it in her actions, especially after the Vespa incident. She looked after Lori as she did one of her own children. Thanks April!
I Never Realized I Didn’t Know I Had Been Missing Something So Much (Part II)
Since we’ve been back home, I’ve eaten some “Italian” food, swapped Italy-related texts with Ron, April and Lori, purchased some of the same Fanta aranciata we drank in Italy, sang some hymns in Italian at church while everyone else sang in English, and I even listened to 90 straight minutes of Italian pop music the other day. Unlike other trips in my past to Hawaii, Canada, Alaska or wherever else, this one remains on my mind. Why? Because I am a part of Italy and Italy is a part of me.
Lori tells our friends, “Mark would go back to Italy in a heartbeat.” Yes, she knows me all too well. You better believe I would. ANDIAMO! (Let’s go!)
