Almost Famous

I spent a great deal of my time in New England on the road, visiting the people and the Meetings of NEYM.  The winter of 1986 was brutally cold, and I gave my trusty Renault Encore a workout through snow and freezing temps.  I travelled alone most of the time, and quite often ate alone at various places along the road.  I had not been in the region long before I discovered Friendly's, an ice cream and sandwich restaurant that dotted the New England landscape.  I could eat at the counter, get great milk shakes (called Fribbles) and be back on the road pretty quickly.  I visited Friendly's quite often.

One day in early June I stopped at a Friendly's outside of Boston and went in to have some dinner at the counter.  I sat down next to a ruffled looking gentleman, and as I gave him the obligatory "hi" and nod I realized that I knew him.  It was Doug Moe.  That name may mean very little to most people, but I was excited.  Doug Moe was, at the time, the head coach of the Denver Nuggets of the NBA.  He was in the area because he had just watched an NBA finals game at the Boston Garden between the Celtics and the Houston Rockets.  But for me, Doug Moe was someone I had known about for a very long time.  He played at the University of North Carolina in the 1960's and being a huge Tarheel fan I had heard of him from those days.  He then played a number of years in the now defunct American Basketball Association (ABA) for a number of teams, including the Carolina Cougars.  My Dad and I went to a number of Cougars games in the early 70's and Doug was one of our favorite players because he played so hard.  At first he seemed a bit reluctant to chat, but when I brought up the Tarheels and the Cougars his face lit up and we talked non-stop for an hour!  He couldn't believe how much I knew and remembered about his days with the Cougars.  We also talked at length about M.L. Carr, the current Celtic and former Guilford College Quaker who had once been my Dad's lab partner and dissected a cat on our back porch.  Doug was everything I had heard he was- blunt, loud, animated and scruffy looking (see picture at top, from 1986).  He was just a normal guy, eating at Friendly's and talking sports with a buddy.  It was awesome.

I left that evening not thinking about how I had just spent an hour talking with one of the best coaches in the NBA, but rather about how, for one of the few times since moving to New England, I felt normal.   Talking abut M.L., the Cougars and the Tarheels was like being back home.  For the first time, with three months to go before our wedding, I began to think about what it would take to get me back to NC.  But not for the last time...

Because of Jesus,