No classified documents in this man's office

After all, I once had contact for a couple days with a president and vice president and I wanted to be above suspicion. That was back in 1979 when I was lucky enough to be a part of a Minnesota delegation that got to spend parts of two days with President Jimmy Carter and Vice President Walter Mondale. I was the only weekly newspaper guy included among some media bigwigs that included names like Jim Klobuchar, the talented columnist from the Minneapolis paper.

The first day we had a roundtable discussion with President Carter at which we got to ask questions of the president and I had the feeling a Secret Service guy was eyeing me throughout the process. Maybe I was being paranoid but he kept looking at me like I was going to sneak off into the West Wing, or hide in the rose garden, and then eventually make off with a classified document.

And then when I, a nonentity compared to the others that were on that trip, was asked a question afterwards about our discussion that day by Leslie Stahl of CBS Television, I figured in my paranoia that the Secret Service guy got even more suspicious. I tried to avoid him the next day when we went to the home of Vice President Mondale.

We spent time with Mondale and his wife Joan the second day of our stay in D.C. at the Blair House, also known today as the  President's Guest House on Pennsylvania Avenue, where we were served hors d'oeuvres the likes of which I had never seen. Joan Mondale, known as an art lover, showed us paintings on the wall and meanwhile we got to spend time with her husband talking about various things. They were living there temporarily while their house was being remodeled. 

I got into a discussion with Al Eisele, a newspaperman from Minnesota who was Mondale's press secretary. He had played minor league baseball with Princeton's Russ Fischer in the Cleveland Indians organization and we talked baseball for quite awhile. Today I wonder if that was a setup so I couldn't sneak away and pick up a classified document or two to take back to Princeton. That same Secret Service guy was hanging around that day,  now that I think of it.

The only thing I brought back to Princeton with me was a reporter's notebook with ideas for a story, which I did write, about the happenings that weekend. And in case we didn't think the Secret Service didn't know who each one of us was, a couple weeks later I received an 8x10 black-and-white picture in the mail of me shaking hands with President Carter and a color shot of my time in the Mondale house with me talking to Fritz, as Walter Mondale was known.

A few years later I turned down an offer to be a liaison for Sen Dave Durenberger of Minnesota with weekly papers from Minnesota. Now I realize that might have been a chance to make off with some classified documents.

We have former presidents Obama (he says he has no classified documents), Bush, Carter and Clinton, as well as former vice presidents, and I can't help but wonder if one or two of those guys has a classified document lying around the house, or squirreled away in a drawer somewhere. There are also a number  of big-name senators who might have done the same thing. Last week a friend from Princeton mentioned to me that we are crazy if we think there aren't some classified documents in a house or two somewhere around the country, given the current state of things.

Good point.

SPORTS MEMORIES

Jan. 24, 1963 - Princeton beat Braham 74-57 as Roy Snford scored 24 points but then lost to Mora, giving both teams a 6-2 record and in a tie for second place in the Rum River. Dean Hansen and Steve Lindell scored 17 points apiece in the Mora game.

Jan. 25, 1968 -Jim Rajala led Princeton with 17 points in a 77-61 loss to Elk River in a game between teams playing for second place in the Rum River.

Jan. 27, 1973 - Rich Fitchenheier speared a 24-pound northern at Elk Lake  . . . Tom Rogde scored 22 points to lead Princeton to a 78-67 win over Foley. Mike Solheim had 12 and John Hoffman 10 . . . Craig Remus won five of the seven events in a gymnastics win over St.Cloud Apollo. He won the parallel bars, horizontal bar, trampoline, tumbling and floor exercise.

Jan. 26, 1978 -  Lynn Donner had 18 points and 17 rebounds in a 47-43 win over Chisago Lakes . . . Jim Wredberg had 20 points and 14 rebounds in a 52-47 loss to Chisago Lakes . . . Art Skarohlid had 22 points for Sternquist Implement in a  57-52 loss  to Zim City in city basketball league play.

Jan. 27, 1983 - Al Doebler got the shutout in a 4-0 hockey win over Sauk Rapids . . . Barb Blomberg had 23 and Kelly Auers, Kim Bottema and JerriAnn Peterson each scored 12 points in a 63-62 win over Pine City . . . Dave Barthel, Ron Trunk, Arnold Meier and Erik Soule had pins in a 37-22 win over North Branch.

Jan. 28, 1988 - .Dean Groebner had four goals and linemate Bob Hurt tallied six points in a 12-0 win over Pine City  . . . Jorge Sanchez, a foreign exchange student from Mexico, pinned the Sauk Rapids heavyweight, giving Princeton a 32-32 tie and ending a losing streak in wrestling of more than two years . . . Judy Bornholdt scored 25, Dawn Haehn had 11 and Jody Paulson 10 in a 65-38 win over Milaca.

Jan. 28, 1993 - Jeremy Werner won the  189-pound title as Princeton placed fourth in a Becker tournament  . . . Jim Burroughs scored two goals as Princeton beat Pine City 6-2 and Eric Stang had two in a win over St. Francis . . . Corrine Lundell had 27 points and Janelle Gerth 12 in a 56-42 win over Chisago Lakes.

Jan. 22, 1998 -  A first-period pin by heavyweight  Adrian Lindgren clinched a 36-26 win over North Branch in wrestling . . . Princeton (6-7, 2-4 in the Rum) earned a 6-5 win overtime win over 13th-ranked Mora in hockey as Erik Hermanson scored a goal 20 seconds into the overtime. Brandon Bieringer and Hermanson each had two goals . . . The boys basketball team beat North Branch 71-59 as Jeremy Olson had 20  and Chad Carlson 13. The team also beat Foley 69-47 as Olson had 13, Jason Kral 11 and Darren Gray 10.

Jan. 23, 2003 - The boys hockey team (12-6, 7-0 in the Rum) stayed unbeaten in conference play, beating St.Michael-Albertville 10-0 and Mora 6-3. Joey Bacon had three goals in the win over STMA, Charlie Ross and Ryan Fuller two each, and Kevin Englund had four assists. Goalie Jared Culver got the shutout and also recorded an assist . . . The girls hockey team (14-6-1) was ranked 16th in the state in Class A and beat Moose Lake 3-2 as Katrina King, Sheryl Parkin and Sara Olson scored the goals. 

Dorr is the former editor of the Princeton Eagle (2 years) and Princeton Union-Eagle (32 years) and has written about sports in the Princeton area for the past 55 years.)