This is the story of two brothers, one a hero, one forgotten to time.
A tale telling that it really matters how you get to that finish line…
“…and the winners of the 1988 Rolla Park Day’s Cop Williams Memorial 10k Race and Two-Mile Fun Walk are–“
“Ah! Hold the rotary phone! Not so fast my friend!”
Our beloved RHS principal, “Toad” Bane1This is not necessarily historically accurate. I don’t know who might have been in this role. Also, I wasn’t in the room where it happened. It might have been Mac Plummer or Mr. Casey or who knows. stopped short as another Who’s Who in our tiny Kansas community of 400 interrupted him and pulled him aside.
*psst-psst-psst-psst*
“What now?!?” mumbled Pop-Pop, my mild-mannered maternal grandfather who, despite having recently passed retirement age, had participated in the walk and finished comfortably ahead most of the pack.
Stepping back up to the microphone, Toad, with a solemn tone and a face that did, indeed, look like a stout, stoic amphibian, shared the breaking news with the modest crowd that had gathered at the Rolla City Park2I just have to get this out of my system–to this day, the main memory of that place is the bathrooms always reeked of piss, and I hated any time that I had to use them. End of Story. that fine August morning.
“I’m afraid that we’re going to have to delay the awards ceremony, folks…”
“You gotta be kidding me!” bemoaned Tadpole, Pop-Pop’s eldest grandchild and my oldest brother, who was 20 years old at the time. “It’s not like it’s a big surprise who got first–me!”
It’s true: Tadpole was indeed a proverbial “track star”–or more technically, “cross-country star”. This was a historically veritable fact, known widely at the time by the community at large. And at this point, he had finished his race a good hour an a half earlier.
“It seems that we have 2 walkers who are unaccounted for”, Toad continued, sharing more details of the truly grave situation at hand.
“What type of idiots get lost walking two miles? Jeez, what a bunch of morons!” interjected Jay, my slightly older brother who had just turned 10. “It may have taken me 1 hour, 35 minutes, and 24 seconds to run my 10k, and I may have finished last–it was a tie, to be clear–but at least I finished.”
Pop-Pop thought for a moment or two, doing the math in his head before speaking.
“It’s been 2 hours. They have had over an hour to cover each mile, and they’re still not back. That’s impressive for all the wrong reasons.”
He thought for another moment as he looked around the crowd.
“Say, I think we’re missing a couple of family members…”
“There you are! Jesus, what are you doing all the way over here?!? You’re almost a mile off course!” seethed K.B., the organizer of the race and walk, as he glared daggers at me and Mom from his car.
“Um…okay. But we’re almost done,” Mom replied. “We’re what, like 100 steps from the city limits? Can’t be more than a quarter-mile from the finish line.”
“NOPE. No time! You’re getting in the car with me–you’ve held up the entire awards ceremony for an hour already!” he said forcefully. “And we can’t give out a dang thing until every has crossed the finish line.”
“Very funny. We’re so close to finishing this four-mile walk, we’re not going to give up now. Besides, the little guy has worked so hard to make it this far,” she said, gesturing to me and my slightly stubby 7-year-old legs.
“IN. THE. CAR. NOW.”
“If there’s one thing that the fine educational institution that is USD 217, Rolla School Systems, has taught me is ‘never get in a car with a stranger’,” I stated matter-of-factly. “So, no thanks, I’ll walk.”
“Are you kidding me, you little sh*t-head?” K.B. asked incredulously. “I’m your ----- tee-ball coach.”
“STRANGER DANGER! STRANGER DANGER!” I yelled as I made a break for it.
…
…
Ok, so maybe I’m starting to take this dramatized “based on actual events” thing too far. I mean, you know I’m starting to stretch the truth a wee bit when I start claiming that I did any sort of running.
But, according to an anonmyous source that was actually there, my Mom did argue with those buttholes to just let us finish.
Alas, it was to no avail. We eventually got in the car and drove a whole 90 seconds to the park where the entire town was waiting impatiently for us.
You would have thought there would have been rejoicing in the streets that they had found and rescued the missing walkers, but nooooo, instead all we got were a bunch of dirty looks.
And after all that trouble–literally going the extra mile (or two), we didn’t even get a proverbial T-shirt…
“Wait, what?!?”
That’s me, present day, researching this story. I had been able to track down an archived article from the Hugoton, Hermes, which had regaled all of Morton and Stevens Counties with the glories that Rolla Park Day 1988 was. Yeah, that’s right, I brought receipts (and if you’re curious, here they are).
Here’s what I was looking at, and I couldn’t believe my eyes:
“Everyone else got ----- T-shirts?!? What the actual fuck, K.B.?”
Beside the humiliation of being bested by a 5-year-old who along, with my Uncle Randy snagged first place, you can throw in the fact that Hester Millemon–my 60-year-old-plus first grade teacher–handily finished the walk as well.
And I’m not sure if, er, you know what my last name is, son, but if you did, you would probably say, ‘Hey, I don’t see my dude and his loving mother on the list of participants.’
Yeah, that’s right, not an even an honorable mention, or ‘also participating but not finishing were…’ or ‘these dumb ----- got lost and had to get a ride back to the finish line…” No, man,they straight up is trying to erase from the history books!
And I’m not gonna lie: finding this out 37 years later on, yeah, it stings a little…
Anyways…
The point of the story is never give up, kid. At least until they forcefully remove your ass from the competition, that is. And even if your unnecessarily re-doubled efforts go forever unappreciated and are lost to the annals of time, at least you’ll have perhaps one of the pettiest grudges ever to take to your grave.
I can just see myself there on my deathbed, mumbling coherently about yet another one of my many grievances in life:
“Bah, humbug! They should have at least given me a t-shirt…Where’s my ----- t-shirt?!?”
Epilogue
Oh, you thought I was done with this nonsense? You should have known better…at least when I broke the fourth wall and left the dialogue-heavy narrative behind a few thoughts back.
I want to leave you with two last thoughts, just for sh*ts and giggles.
First, Dear Reader, take a second look at that newspaper clipping I shared:
I didn’t catch that last sentence there the first few times around. What I want to know is…what are the names of these people?!? Like, there were guides?!? Apparently these nameless ass-hats didn’t exactly do their job, wouldn’t you say? I mean, we were at least a mile off course, and all these years, I had been thinking that somehow we were to blame (which did always feel a little incongruent–even from my earliest years I had quite the sense of direction and always had a mental map in my head).
Now I’m starting to think perhaps it was these bumpkins falling down on the job that cost me a sweet, sweet T-shirt and a bit of local fame. And these unqualified volunteers? They almost got away with it, if not for that pesky Hugoton Hermes ratting them out…
On a much more positive note, Point #2–no pun intended–has always been and will always be my absolute favorite part of this whole story. But before I get to that, all me to share some context uncovered by my research.
So there were actually two similar races, 2 years apart, with the other one being in 1986. In the course of trying to figure out whether I was 5 or I was 7 when this story took place, I found the article for the other one here. In 1986, Tadpole won as well, with an impressive time of 35 minutes, 1 second–yet two years later, his winning time had bloated to 39 minutes, 16 second.
What happened in that lost 4 minutes and 15 seconds? A true mystery indeed.
One might chalk it up to the fact that in the summer of 1987 in between the two races, he was in a serious car accident. And given the fact that he had managed to recover and came back to kick some more ass barely a year later, one could forgive him for moving a little bit slowly.
Turns out, though, it was on account of something moving a little bit too quick. To quote the two-time Rolla Park Day’s Cop Williams Memorial 10k Race champion–something I heard with my own two little ears:
“Mom, it was a good thing I was so far ahead…because I had to make a pit stop at the Corner Stop3The sole convenience store in Rolla. and take a dump.”
Man, what an absolute ----- legend…
Content created on: 11 July 2025 (Friday)
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