09-18-2017, 08:52 PM
Last play-off win, where was I ?.....Let me get the old cartoon dog Mr Peabody and his pet boy Sherman and go into his Way Back Machine.....I was 35 going on 36 in January. Rough year 1990, because my Mom almost died around Easter and a good friend from High School did die in September of heroine. I never did that crap but I liked to drink after work all my life. Dec 1st, 1990, I had to face facts, start going to meetings and stop drinking or die. I was doing OK until the flu went through Ohio in February and I got it. It killed many people. Me, I was in hospital a week, and doctors kept me off work 2 months until April. Luckily I had a job I could take that time off, and I was still the store manager. I had a nice apartment also. 1991, I reinvented myself, as people have to do in their lives. The Reds had just won the 1990 World Series, which was cool. I bought the Wheaties Box and things of the 1990 Reds which I still have. After the flu I couldn't walk a block down the street to the store. I fought back, went to doctors, worked out, walked a little more each day until I could walk miles, and fought back. Luckily a woman from my past came back into my life who didn't drink and that was great. Thank God my Mom lived until 2010. I kept managing the store. January of 1991, was pretty messed up for me and it would get worse with the flu before it would get better. Here I am, going on 63, I must have did something right. Now in my 60's, my wife dying Dec 5th, 2010, I'm reinventing my life again as Mark Twain did several times in his life. After that play-off win over Houston Oilers, Bengals lost at Oakland Raiders in a game most know for football and baseball career ending injury to Bo Jackson. He can do it all, " Bo Knows ", Bo Jackson. A loss to the Raiders and The Kansas City Royals. Paul Brown Died. Mike Brown and the awful 1990's BUNGLES had not happened yet. ....The MAJOR EVENT at the time, January 16th, 1991, I went to my Mom and Stepdads for my 36th Birthday, a month and a half of sobriety. I really didn't have a Birthday because the family was watching the start of OPERATION DESERT STORM against Saddam Hussein and Iraq. A new cable channel called CNN was covering every second of it, and unlike anything before, people watched the start of the war like a sports game. One General came on TV telling all they were going to do. The Pentagon yanked him off TV quick and fast. CNN covered OPERATION DESERT STORM, maybe giving away military secrets and putting soldiers in harms way. It was kind of the beginning of CNN and other 24 hour cable news to follow. Certainly THE MAJOR EVENT on last Bengals play-off win, was OPERATION DESERT STORM, and how people in USA watched it start and sat and watched people die like watching a football game kick-off, and that was very new and strange. After 2001, Sept 11, the military didn't allow everything on TV as in 1991. It's really not a spectators sport. The old Sonny and Cher song, " People still keep on marching into war, TV lists the dead like a baseball score ". People watching the war start and for days on CNN like a football game was just very new and strange. I'm glad the military has backed the news stations off some on that because if we are watching our military secrets, the enemy is also. Many years have come and gone, since Bengals last play-off win. Kids starting 1st grade in 1990 would have graduated high school in 2003, now having their 14th anniversary high school reunion in their mid 30's, their kids graduating high school or close to it. Last Bengals play-off win is now Ancient History. Since The Bengals are celebrating their 50 Year Anniversary, I will point out that at least 25 of those 50 years are not worth remembering or celebrating and seasons I would rather forget. 2017 is starting out to be one of them....The one common denominator is Paul Brown dying and franchise taken over by son Mike Brown, which to this point has been the apple falling too far from the tree.
1968 Bengal Fan
