Karl Lindholm: ‘Spontaneous Bedlam’: The Demo Derby of 1972

I relate today, loyal readers, the story of the Demolition Derby on the campus of Middlebury College in the spring of 1972, at a time in the life of the country when college students were mostly out of their minds. 

Recently I wrote to a number of area coaches, both in the high schools and at the college, asking them to reflect on their experience coaching during the pandemic — “just a few sentences, off the top of your head.” I received a number of very thoughtful r … (read more)

In May, I helped my daughter Jane coach the Monkton Little League farm team — true beginners, five- to eight-year-olds.

Sammy Smith found out five minutes before the first pitch that he was in the starting line-up last Friday in the first game of the NCAA regional baseball tournament in Rochester.

I remember walking into Farrell’s Men’s Store in Middlebury my freshman year in college. Jimmy Farrell, the proprietor, shook my hand and asked my name. I told him and he immediately said, “You’re from Rutland.”

On Friday, April 15, the Middlebury College baseball team took on NESCAC archrival Williams in the first game of a big three-game weekend series. 

It’s a good thing the baseball bigwigs ended their bickering this spring when they did.

Understand there was always going to be baseball, even if the Big Boys had not ended their acrimonious standoff.

I’m so old, I predate the jump shot.

The storied Montreal Canadiens have hired a new general manager, Kent Hughes — a member of the Middlebury College Athletics Hall of Fame.

Over the last year or two, there have been a number of Cornwall Bear sightings reported on Front Porch Forum and elsewhere. I myself saw the Cornwall Bear.

Art Pepin had a big personality, was affable in the extreme: a raconteur; a crooner — he loved to sing and recite whole poems from memory (Frost’s “Birches,” for example). He said he was in the “business of making friends.”

We now have a Vermonter in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.

When the note came across my computer that the college was shutting down early for the holiday break, the Thursday before the last day of classes and the week prior to exams, I was dismayed.

There have been many great athletes from Middlebury Union High School over the decades, and Ken Burton has to be in the very top tier.