"OHMAN, MOUNDS VIEW!" : I Was A Television Quiz Whiz Kid

My teenage life, phrased in the form of a question...

My beloved High School Bowl Team. Keith Hansen was always the best-dressed—that’s his dad’s Countess Mara tie. My hair was ready to be weekend anchor at KSTP-TV. John Fisher far right, rear. Roy Finden, the host, with Martin Feyerheisen and Ruth Temple. I still talk to the front row now.

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As older people are wont to do, they’ll ask you what you were like when you were, you know, not as close to debility as you are now.

“What activities or sports did you do in high school?”

“Oh, you know. The usual.”

“Like what?”

“Um. I was captain of the KSTP-TV High School Bowl Quiz Team.”

“The what?”

Yeah. And some of my dear readers here remember that halcyon moment in my life.

As a child, I loved watching quiz shows. I was watching Jeopardy! in black and white when Art Fleming was the host, and the questions seemed to be all about Greek mythology, upper division physics, 18th century English lit, and inorganic chemistry.

I watched anyway, knowing someday, I would be on Jeopardy!

I wasn’t. One of my best buddies in Oregon, Kerry Tymchuk, was a five-time Jeopardy! champion. I never tried out. Another one of my great pals here, HD Palmer, was on Win Ben Stein’s Money. Another good friend of mine had a sister on Jeopardy!, and she did really well, too. She was a librarian. The librarians and the newspaper copy editors really shouldn’t be allowed on Jeopardy! either. It’s like letting Stephen Hawking count cards at blackjack. He’s gonna win.

When I started at Mounds View High School in 1975, my number one social goal was to be on High School Bowl. Yes, you read that right: number one social goal. When the HSB tryout was held in the classroom of Mr. John Fisher, the social studies teacher, debate coach and a great mentor to me, I wasn’t quite sure how it was going to go down. I can’t even remember whether we took a test, or simply were asked questions.

Apparently I did well enough, and Mr. Fisher put me on the team, probably because I was one of the three kids who didn’t get get drunk on the Duluth Debate Trip, which became legendary in school. “Oh, you were on the Duluth Debate Trip? OHMIGOD. Were you injured?” It had taken on the quality of being on the Hindenburg.

No. Someone might have thrown a card file, though. For inherency.

The Duluth Debate Trip debacle wiped out virtually the entire team, except for Dan Hicks, me, and someone else whose name eludes me, like virtually all the names from 1975, except for Dan Hicks.

Briefly, the format of High School Bowl is this: the team has four starters and an alternate. Since I can’t find my scrapbook, I am relying on memory here, but Keith Hansen was definitely on that first team, and I am pretty sure Steve Strand was as well. A dark-haired girl was on the team, and I am pretty sure she was the captain. I know Martin Feyereisen was the alternate.

I gotta get that scrapbook out.

Two teams are asked questions in three rounds. Opening questions are called toss-ups, and if your teammate answers the toss-up correctly, the entire team gets to answer the bonus questions, which consisted of four more questions. In the second year I was on, KSTP added a ten question middle segment called the “Economics Rapid Round,” which I am now convinced was the idea of some eager beaver advertiser wanting to make sure we were all committed to destroying the planet later in life.

In the first season, we lost in the first round to Breck, which was an elite private school. Mounds View definitely was a high-caliber Twin Cities suburban public school, but it wasn’t Breck. I think Al Franken went there, in fact.

We got a few questions right, but mostly they wiped the studio floor with us while our parents and classmates recoiled in horror as blood spilled in quiz combat. These teams always have The One Guy, and Breck had The One Guy.

Hardly anyone was in the studio cheering for us. Anything that happens on television when you’re involved is fraught, so it was just as well that our humiliation just extended to the 1300 other people in the Twin Cities media market who watched us.

My junior year, Keith, Steve, and Ruth Temple made the team, and I was made the captain, and I can assure you that I was the dumbest person on the team by far. Keith went to Yale, Princeton, and Stanford Law. Steve I think has a PhD in chemical engineering. Ruth is a very, very talented artist. Oh, and Scott Johnson, the alternate, has a PhD in history and is currently a professor.

I did have really nice television hair, however. And navy suits. And very nice ties.

I don’t mean to underplay, although it’s comedically necessary, but these were and are terribly accomplished people.

Since I don’t have the scrapbook readily available…wait, I’ll go look, again. One sec.

Can’t find it.

Anyway.

In my junior year, we were almost unstoppable. I’d usually answer 6-8 toss-ups, get a lot of the bonuses, but one in particular stood out.

We were playing Edina East, I think. We would refer that type of school as “cake eaters”. We were behind, but it was very close. We made up some ground in the economics round, and then it could go either way.

We were still slightly behind. I got the toss-up (I don’t remember what it was, at all). When the host called on you, he would say, “OHMAN, MOUNDS VIEW!”

I got the bonus, and the last questions were Lincoln assassination questions, and when it was asked, there were audible gasps of delight in the room, because I was a history guy. Recall that I said no one came to the studio in my sophomore year. This year the studio was jammed with MVHS kids, a small band, and…wait for it (I hate it when writers say wait for it), cheerleaders!

So blue suit history boy listened very carefully to those Lincoln assassination questions. I don’t recall the first three, but the final one was “Who owned the boarding house that the Lincoln plotters lived it?”

“Surratt”.

“Correct!”

And the game was over. They showed the score, and host Roy Finden (who was also a stand-in weatherman), read the score. 185-180, I think it was, the margin of one bonus question.

Thank you, Lincoln plotters and the boarding house lady Mary Surratt.

The crowd screamed. I screamed. I held my fists up in victory, something I am pretty sure I haven’t done since (I fist pump made putts).

In some ways, at that point, it was the happiest moment of my life.

When I go to high school reunions now, mostly I get oh, Quiz Boy is here.

As an adult, I watched Jeopardy! for years. I never tried out. I also played in a “celebrity” contestant in the local Portland TV version of High School Bowl. We won. I was killer on the New Deal questions.

Later, when I was a history grad student, Portland State fielded a national College Bowl team, and I was the captain, there, too, at age 40. My team was a half a generation or generation younger, and they were very, very good. I did my usual thing.

Here’s a question I remember, kind of:

“San Francisco is 415. Minneapolis is 612. Cape Canaveral’s is (I don’t remember), but they want to change it to what?”

“OHMAN, PORTLAND STATE!”

“321”.

“CORRECT!”

OK, why? It’s the last three digits in a rocket launch countdown.

I also remember knowing who MLB pitcher Jim Bunning was, and that he represented Kentucky in Congress.

Our team moved to the regional semi-finals. We beat a lot of solid schools—mostly small privates. We lost to Oregon, which drove me crazy. I recall knowing that the Wallaces were the only father-son Agriculture Secretaries. It was a double-elimination, so we moved up.

We lost, anyway, to University of Alaska/Anchorage. Nice guys.

It is rare in life to truly relive your boyhood greatest moment, and I felt blessed to be able to play one more time.

When I watch Jeopardy! now, I have an idea for a new game show for people my age. It’s called, “Dammit! I Know That!”

I should have phrased that in the form of a question.

“Dammit! I Used To Know That?”