Low-Voltage News

[captainsblog]

In recapping all the household plans of the past weekend, I left out one ill-fated attempt.  We were home on Sunday afternoon after our morning of defoliation, and were either napping or puttering, when Ursula and her human came by. We'd put off our Sunday morning Dogless (for now) Dog Park visit because Ann and friends were working a water station at the Buffalo Marathon- and when they got here and Ann rang the doorbell, we didn't hear it and she left.

Eleanor remembered that the front door's button has been out of commission for a bit; me, not so much. But when she went to work Monday morning, I resolved to look up and implement the fix.  First, I did get in the Parp! run from the afternoon before, although I passed on joining the dog for a swim-



- but right after that, I checked if our village hardware store was open on the holiday. It wasn't, but I wasn't doomed to a Big Box, either- the midrange regional chain was open, and a $6.00 replacement buzzer was mine in mere moments!

I patiently unscrewed the old, and attached the (low-voltage) leads to the new. The button lit up! Cap'n! We haa circuit! I then pushed the button- which let off the same low hum that the broken one had been doing. Except every now and again, it would actually send a ding! up the wire.  This, apparently, was just to torment me, because no amount of jiggling and tightening (that day) or snipping and stripping the button ends of the wires (today) could produce a permanent solution.

So if you come to our front door, you will be greeted by antennae.  We recommend the garage side, which last we knew still worked.

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Yesterday then began this short but not terribly nasty-and-brutish workweek- although two of my four days are on the road in Rochester.  Yesterday's didn't require me to be there until 2, so I took my time getting out the door, got in my first (non-yard) workout since Thursday, and got to downtown for a court hearing that wound up taking all of five minutes.  I'd paid for 90 minutes of parking just in case (this city doesn't have an app like Buffalo does where you can both pay for metered spaces and extend your time from your phone), so I wasn't in a hurry. Then I saw a long-lost quarry of questioning, and I went over to introduce myself.

This is low-voltage direct current, this time- the kind that powers a much-loved but long-forgotten game from my preteen years.  I wrote about it after I saw these guys featured on an ESPN documentary back in the dark days of November 2016:

ESPN's "30 for 30" documentaries are amazing and worthy of viewing.  They have given Oscar and Emmy-award winning directors the chance to look at unusual angles of games, athletes and contests, old and new.  I've never watched as many as I should, but some I have include one about Goats in Baseball- how Bill Buckner and Steve Bartman became hated figures connected with the two oldest curses on MLB teams and how Buckner found redemption after the Red Sox broke the curse. (It may produce an update on Bartman now that the Cubs have slain their goat of a curse.) Another, focusing on this same era of my youth, was about the American Basketball Association's ultimate merger into the NBA and how a owners of a single franchise took the Lords of Hoops to the cleaners over the ensuing almost 40 years.  Yet another close-to-former-home one was about the New York Islanders, and how a con man became an NHL owner with no due diligence, no money, and no prospects.

The one relevant to this, I missed completely. It's from last June, and was done by Errol Morris, a much-decorated documentarian probably most famous for The Thin Blue Line, the true tale of a wrongly-accused defendant which is now the most common term for the silence and conspiratorial acts of law enforcement when they're determined to "get their man."  These few minutes are much lighter: they literally go into the basement, or as the title of the episode terms it, to the Subterranean Stadium, where a group of guys have been playing these games in league format since the early 1980s....

in Charlotte, New York.

That's pronounced Char-LOT, thankuvermush, and it's a once independent city which predates Rochester but was merged into it in the 1800s early 1900s #thanksScott. Relevant to my memories, it became the Nerd Capital of Electric Football, with an official league, standings, bling and long-suffering football widows.  The link from my 2016 blog piece at ESPN Proper is now dead,  but it lives on at this site- and at around 9 minutes in, you meet The Hotman, a longtime fan of the electrified board game, who also happens to run a hot dog stand outside the Rochester courthouse that I have probably spent a third of my lifetime profession toiling inside.

I was drawn to this because I played a particular version of electric football when I was in elementary school- at a friend's house who I knew from church.  All I remembered was that each player had four buttons to select from. The names of two are lost to memory, but one was "off tackle," and the fourth was "trick play." If I remember correctly, if both players hit the same button, the play would go for no gain; but if you hit different buttons, the football would advance through one of the twelve remaining combinations of the four buttons- nCr = n! / r! * (n - r)!, where n represents the number of items, and r represents the number of items being chosen at a time.

(I know. You were told there would be no math.)

In the year and a half since I discovered this downtown connection to an old memory, I thought a few times about seeking out The Hotman outside the main door of 99 Exchange.  It never happened. Sometimes, there wouldn't be any street meat out there, but usually I was just too busy running in at the last minute or back to my car before the meter expired or my ramp parking fee doubled.....

until yesterday.

Court got out about 2:15, and I had no particular place to go.  I saw a cart, but it had been so long I couldn't tell whether the purveyor of the porky comestibles was the guy from the documentary. So I asked, Are you the electric football guy? He was and is.

I told him my troubles. I identified the two buttons. He hadn't heard of it- but he knew "the Commish" would, if anybody would. A call was placed. A call was dropped. In the end, I gave him my card, and I am hoping to get a call that will identify this talisman of my (literally) misplaced youth. I have no desire to eBay and buy one, but if they happen to have one in the Subterranean Stadium? I'm staying late some afternoon and seeing if the Bills can finally win The Big One- probably on a trick play;)