1999, what a year. Actually, this is a year where virtually nothing comes to me off the top of my head. The first things I think of are of course my sophomore/junior year of high school, where by a bizarre twist of fate, Guy LaMont's desire for free cable led us to cross-country expeditions; and another Hanson family Minneapolis trip.

The year would have begun with me in my sophomore year at Willow Lake. I was just getting off my crutches from my 1998 broken leg, and eager to get back on the basketball court, where I had already missed a good portion of the season. Once the cast came off, I was immediately back on the court--often in the starting lineup--for the JV team and helped out a little on varsity, scoring my first two varsity points in a game at Doland. In the five or six JV games I appeared in that winter, I scored 31 points total.

By this time, I was driving my 1985 Monte Carlo SS. I had cashed in my savings bonds and bought it the previous fall, but due to my huge cast on my leg, I was unable to drive it. So the Monte Carlo went into the shop over the winter, and Dad and Uncle Stuart had it all ready to go. It became the hit of the high school. The first weekend I brought it uptown, I must have given ten rides to various people up and down the street. Even the upperclassmen like Corey Tellinghuisen and John Kannegieter were in agreement that the car rocked.

In the classroom, our English class focused on a stupid statewide reading program called MooseWorks. One day, our teacher asked us if anyone wanted to sign up for a large discussion group on the subject matter at the Student Extravaganza in Pierre, the world's largest conference organized by rural students. I wasn't interested until Guy LaMont, sitting next to me, nudged me and said, "Free cable!" Of course he didn't get cable at home, so it was a big deal for him to stay in the hotel and have cable access. I agreed. So, a few weeks later, we piled in the school suburban and headed to Pierre for the week. Brandon Hanson, Guy, and I had all sorts of fun going to different conferences and meeting all the rural kids. The Extravaganza ended up being a total success, and the three of us played an integral role the following year in organizing the whole event.

I also was back out for track that spring, where I was trying to rebuild my muscle from my broken leg. The orthopedic surgeon strongly recommended track to get my leg back to normal, otherwise I wasn't going to go out. The entire season, I amassed a total of one ribbon--a brown 8th place ribbon in the triple jump at Wolsey. There were nine people in the event and one was disqualified, otherwise he would have beaten me too. It was then and there that I hung up the track shoes forever. Then again, I didn't really have track shoes. They were just old beat-up shoes held together by tape.  It was in track that year that I became friends with seniors Amber Hanson and Niki Poppen, an unlikely connection.  We seemed to hang out during every meet and on the bus rides.

That spring also was the end of the Jesse Era at school, when he and his family packed up and headed to Mattawan, Michigan when Greg Van Heukelom got a new job as a pastor. There was a big class going away party at the Brower farm, where tears were shed in a Power Point video highlighting Jesse's time at school. Jesse was one of my best friends at the time, so it was sad to see him leave. Especially since we hung out at their house virtually all the time.

That summer, I decided to get a job in Huron, thinking it would be fun to get out and about and off the farm for a while. After applying at a handful of places, I accepted the lowest-paying job at the least desirable of places--the Restlawn Memory Gardens cemetery outside of Huron. Why I took that over other jobs, I don't quite know, but they offered me the job on the spot. So my job was basically to dig around the head stones and pour sand under them to keep them from sinking. I would also mow the lawns. It wasn't too bad until the end of the summer when the mausoleum opened, and certain families asked for their deceased loved ones to be dug up and moved indoors. I was one of the helpers on that assignment. And yes, the job was just as bad as it sounds.

There was another Hanson family vacation that summer to Minneapolis, this time with me and Kathy Brower along for the ride. Again, we went to Valleyfair, a Twins-Royals game, and the Mall. The Glanzers made a trip out to the trailer house on the Missouri River that summer as well, where boating and fishing took place.

In the fall, it was back to school for my junior year. I had very little interest in rejoining the football team after my injury the previous year, but was talked into it by coach Bill Stobbs, who assured me I'd be a big part of the offensive line. Football practices were the worst experiences of my life to date. It was so much conditioning. The three most dreaded words in the English language were "trip it up," which meant get in groups of three for monkey rolls. I often threw up from too much strenuous exercise. The best part of the day was when practice was over, but from then on I'd just spend the rest of the day dreading going back the next morning. And, as luck would have it, I saw very little action that season. I only played in about half the games and caught a handful of passes for the season. To this day I actually regret having played football that junior year, even though I stuck it out and made it through the season. I think Alex and Dad were the football players of the family. I was way more interested in basketball.

I don't think anything too exciting happened in school that fall. In December the basketball season started again, and I started on JV again and came off the bench early on the varsity team. The season started on a very low note when we were blown away by defending champions Castlewood in the opener. I remember scoring 2 points in the JV game and 4 in the varsity game. We trailed 34-2 at one point in the A game. New coach Judd Fryslie had a tough time relating to the players on the team, especially the senior class, and every game featured a locker room brawl at halftime or afterwards, it seemed. But I still enjoyed playing. The JV team was unstoppable that year, probably because we had all juniors starting. Me, Maynard, Brandon, Davies, etc. The other teams were probably made up of freshmen. But we went something like 21-3 that year. I scored a lifetime high 18 points in a game at Florence... but most of this technically happened in early 2000.

1999 came to an end at the Brower farm where we celebrated New Years. Corey Jans and Kathy were a hot little item back then. Jennifer Lamb and Jeromy Keating weren't married yet. And then it was me and Brandon. The six of us watched as Doug Lund counted down on Kelo-Land. There was no Y2K fiasco. It was a lame entry into the new millennium.

And that was 1999!