Red Wings win Game One

One added benefit to being stuck in a hotel room for the next three weeks is that I get to watch the entire Stanley Cup finals. Game One was tonight, with the Detroit Red Wings humiliating the Pittsburgh Penguins 4-0.

I grew up in central Florida, so didn't know anything at all about hockey. I watched the American hockey club smash the vaunted Red Army team in the '80 Olympics, but didn't have a clue what was going on; all I knew was that we'd whipped them dang Rooskies at sumpin', and caught myself all het up with "U-S-A" fervor.

It was a bit of an embarrassment, especially since I didn't know a defenseman from a linesman, and couldn't for the life of me figure out what "offside" was.

Fast-forward a bit over a decade, and there I am getting crazy with ten thousand other Southern folk at a hockey game - in North Charleston, South Carolina. Bunches of 'em, matter of fact, as we managed to hold on for six whole seasons as season ticket holders for the South Carolina Stingrays, of the East Coast Hockey League. We'd gotten the bug at a few exhibition games, and were nuts about it after. I watched every game I could lay eyeballs on, and followed a few teams pretty closely - cheered the Rangers to their championship in '94, rooted hard for the Red Wings (especially against the Avalanche and the hated Claude Lemieux), and just loved the game in general.

Oh, yeah...

Everytown, USA

So, I'm stuck in Clarksville, Tennessee for another three weeks, and my primary observation to this point is that this burg - from this particular vantage, anyway - looks exactly like any other I've seen in the past twenty years or so; as I've described it to several people already, the main drag, from my hotel window, could be Rivers Ave., in N. Charleston, SC, or Dale Mabry Blvd., in Tampa, or Adamo Dr., in Brandon. Same long, straight stretch of fast-food joints and strip malls and Wal-Marts, all the detritus of sprawled-urban America.

Bleah.

Oh - the reason I'm in "the Gateway to The New South?" I'm working, part of a team training Army men on a new system; came up a week ago to inventory and power-up the gear, and will stay for the training gig. Twenty-eight days in yer Standard Suburban Setting, interspersed with forays into yer Standard Military Enclave.

More on impressions of the Standard Army Town later...