That's him in the front yard, pointing to the new bungalow he had just won as first prize in a local newspaper contest. He was grateful for his good fortune, but then again, they say luck is where preparedness and opportunity meet.

In June of 1912, Albert D. ("Bert") Wismar was a married 29-year old, and the proud father of a newborn baby girl. He worked as an accountant at the Struthers Furnace company in their downtown Cleveland offices. By all accounts, Wismar was a hard worker, and he and his wife Sadie tried to save all they could, with an eye toward eventually buying a home of their own.

Wismar had moved to Cleveland from the family farm near Bowling Green, Ohio. The small town of Custar was the location his grandfather had chosen to buy land when he came to America from Germany in 1866. Bert's dad Fred was a teenager when the family arrived from the old country to farm in Ohio, and Bert was the fifth of Fred's ten children.

Uphill Both Ways

Bert was the only one of Fred Wismar's kids to pursue higher education, and to do it he had to regularly bicycle the 80 miles from Custar to Tri-State University in Angola, Indiana for his teacher training. After working as a teacher in Wood County for a couple years, Bert came to the big city around the turn of the century, and took up accounting, eventually working his way into a lead accounting position with the furnace company.

The family shared a double house on Preston Rd. in East Cleveland, but the baby meant they needed more room, and the couple talked often of their dream house, maybe even one "on the Heights". In what spare time he did have, Wismar was an avid participant in contests of all sorts. He and an uncle in Detroit engaged in a friendly competition, taking each other on in ventures like the "booklovers' contest" sponsored that year by The Cleveland News. 

Bert's Big Week

All that practice paid off in June of 1912, when Wismar was notified that he had won the first prize in the News' contest...a $6,000 bungalow in what they were then calling "Mayfield Heights". Actually, that meant near the top of Mayfield Road hill in what is now Cleveland Heights, in the neighborhood where Superior, Euclid Heights Blvd, Mayfield and Lee Road all converge near Cumberland Park.

The cascade of blessings in the same week was overwhelming to the young man. "Joy unrestrained fairly shone in the eyes and the whole being of the happy man," said the News' reporter of Wismar's reaction to his good fortune. "What haven't I now?" he wondered. "I believe I am the happiest man on earth."

Happy, but not lucky. Winning this house was something Wismar had decided not to leave to hope. He and Sadie had even walked up to the heights to scope out the house on Somerton Rd. they knew was the top prize in the newspaper's contest. And the young accountant was diligent and meticulous in his pursuit of the prize.

The Contest

The Cleveland News furnished readers with a 32-page booklet containing a list of over 4,000 books with authors' names. Over a three month period beginning in December, 1911, they published 77 different cartoon-style drawings in the paper, each one representing one of the book titles in the booklet.

They started out with an easy one to get people interested. The most famous American book of the just-finished century is depicted by a girl saying "Bye, Uncle Tom" to a man standing in the doorway of a small dwelling. Number Two wasn't much tougher...a drawing of a house with seven gables. After that though, most of the titles become unfamiliar to the average 21st century observer.

Readers were encouraged to submit more than one guess for each rendering, which, in the days before Xerox, let alone email, meant buying more than one copy of the paper. In Wismar's case, that often meant acquiring as many as six or eight copies of the paper every day during the contest. He won by getting 75 right answers out of 77 possible, but he submitted 425 entries to get there.

To say that Bert Wismar took the booklovers' contest seriously is to understate the case. He studied the puzzles in his off-work hours, and carried his contest entries with him during the work day. He kept notes of his guesses...in shorthand no less..(you never know who could be looking over your shoulder)...on his employer's stationery, and typed up lists of his multiple guesses for all 77 puzzles, complete with carbon copies (look it up, kids).

That all of this documentation survives him a century later is ample evidence of his record-keeping preoccupation. Included in his personal effects was a bundle of blank copies of all 77 contest entry forms, clipped from the paper and neatly stacked, in order.  No...Bert Wismar's first prize bungalow was not a function of luck.

Contest organizers suggested that readers send additional copies of the puzzles to friends (Buy more papers!), asking for their help, and if the list of prize-winners is any indication, there was lots of out-of-town participation. Second prize, a 1912 Garford Touring Car valued at $3,750, was won by a reader from Indiana, and Chicago area residents won 3rd Prize (a $900 Steinway grand piano) and 4th Prize (an $800 Miller player piano).

In all, the newspaper gave away prizes valued at $17,500. Several readers won lots in Cleveland, and in other Ohio towns as far-flung as Ashland and Mt. Vernon. ( a 40 x 120 ft. lot in Cleveland could be had for $500 in 1912)

The headline on page eight of The Cleveland News of June 26, 1912 read: "NEW BABY WILL LIVE IN $6,000 BUNGALOW". Bert Wismar is pictured just below, pointing to the new home he had just won. The baby of the headline was my Aunt Mary, and 21 months later, my dad, also named Albert D. Wismar, was born to Bert and Sadie, and he spent his early childhood years in that first prize bungalow on the heights.

A century later, the bungalow still stands, and its gracious owner recently invited me in for a look. Newspaper contests like this have gone the way of...well, the way of $6,000 new houses and $500 lots. But 100 years ago this June, the booklovers' contest helped a young couple's dream come true, and helped put down our family's roots in Cleveland Heights for two more generations.

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The full text of the portion of the News article dealing with Bert Wismar's first prize follows below:

PDF File of Cleveland News p. 8, June 26, 1912 - Scan1.pdf

Genuinely curious and sincere friends and acquaintances of mine who know I cover the Buckeyes will ask what I think about the ongoing turmoil in Columbus, and I always have to resist the urge to say "go read the 12,000 words I've written about it over the last three months and then if you still have any questions, come talk to me". And that's mostly because I can't do justice to the issue in a 2-minute conversation, (even though I suspect what they want is the 2-minute version)

What I've been missing to this point is one link I can send to people who really want to read what I've written on the subject without sifting through links at my TCF archive to find what they want...and now I'll have one. Here's a summary of my related TCF articles since December when the players' violations were disclosed...most recent first...

(Updated 6/18) - Buckeye Leaves - 6/18 - How heavy will The Hammer be when it finally falls on OSU?

Buckeye Leaves - 6/11/11 - Fickell in, Pryor gone, and questions about who'll be coaching the offense.

OSU: Reaching For the Bottom - 6/4/11 - Tressel resigns and OSU fans wait to bottom out.

Buckeye Leaves - 5/28/11 - on the undisguised glee of the national media, and my errant prediction, two days before the resignation, that Tressel will fight on.

Buckeye Leaves - 5/1/11 - after the NCAA "notice of allegations" went public and the media feeding frenzy got restarted.

Buckeye Leaves 4/9/11 - thoughts on the impact of Tressel's 5-game suspension.

The Tainting of Tressel - 3/10/11 - my first article following the OSU press conference...contains links at the end to other reaction from various writers and pundits.

Sugar Bowl Preview - 1/4/11 - first coverage of the Tat5 player suspensions.

But I also acknowledged soon after his knowledge of the memorabilia sales was disclosed that I would understand completely if the university felt it had no choice but to sever ties with him. And it wasn't long until it became clear that there could be no happy ending at OSU as long as Tressel remained in place as head coach, suspension or no suspension.

There are many people inside and outside of the Ohio State community who simply do not believe that Athletic Director Gene Smith and/or his compliance department were never told anything by Tressel about the player violations. I have no insight into that of course, but Smith's handling of the whole affair, from the press conference to the shifting strategies on whether or not to support Tressel at the NCAA hearing, has been weak and inconsistent. President Gee has said Smith's job is safe. I can't imagine why. Then again, they said much the same thing about Tressel's job back in March.

With the benefit of hindsight and a little bit of knowledge of Tressel, one can guess at the way his vision of himself as a developer of young men, and his traditional insistence on keeping everything "in house" may have combined to let this situation get out of control. Tressel's capacity for patience and forgiveness has seemed boundless, and it has worked to his detriment before. The players who saw fit to take advantage of it (Ray Small comes to mind) made no friends among teammates who saw them receiving seemingly endless second chances.

Terrelle Pryor was known to ignore the set of rules that was set up to govern all the players, and as a result he was not well-liked among his teammates either. And we now know that Tressel's under-reaction to the last of Pryor's misdeeds ended up costing both of them their Ohio State careers.

Maurice Clarett was forced out of Ohio State after one season based on his own selfishness, and ultimately his law-breaking, but he stands as yet another example of Tressel's commitment to helping his players, no matter how badly they have abused his patience in the past. Clarett had his hand out for every possible benefit, legal or illegal, he could derive for being an Ohio State football player. He embarrassed his coach and his teammates, and infuriated OSU fans in the days leading up to the BCS title game in Jan. 2003, demanding to be flown back home for a funeral at OSU's expense, calling out the administration in the national media for their refusal to do so.

No one deserved Jim Tressel's good graces or forgiveness less than Maurice Clarett did. But when Clarett was getting out of jail years later, there was Jim Tressel, working quietly behind the scenes to help him land a contract to play professional football, and offering support and advice for a man he could just as easily have shunned. Last week, Clarett spoke up in defense of his coach, placing the blame on the players themselves for rules violations. A spot of reciprocal loyalty, however belated.

One lesson to draw from this whole affair is that always looking to do what seems best at the time for the player, isn't always what's best for the team...nor obviously, for one's career. It's notable that Tressel's players past and present are fiercely loyal to him. The former Buckeyes in the national media that have been the first people asked to comment on the situation... Kirk Herbstreit, Chris Spielman and Robert Smith primarily...never played for Tressel, and are speaking as "outsiders" to the program as currently constituted. I have yet to hear one of Tressel's players from a decade of coaching at OSU say one derogatory word about him...beyond the obvious...he made a mistake.

It looks as though Luke Fickell has the deck stacked against him to become Tressel's long term replacement. He goes into the 2011 season with a program in turmoil, with star players suspended, a coaching staff in limbo, and national speculation about the next man to have his job going on all around him. In an open contest for the Ohio State job, he probably wouldn't even get an interview, having never held a head coaching position, and being tainted by his close association with the now disgraced Tressel.

That said, he is extremely well thought of in Columbus, and shows great promise as a head coach. Could be he's the right man, at the wrong time. It will be fun to watch to see what he makes of his opportunity.

...and counting. We assume what we're experiencing is a Twitter-lanche.

UPDATE 12/9: Allen Barra quotes yours truly, and plugs TCF in his Wall Street Journal article today. My fifteen minutes counting down....

A week after the original article, I address the feedback: Reaction on Lowder and Auburn

Another follow-up piece: Auburn Revisited - 2/20/11

4/20/11 - Rumors of Lowder's Demise Greatly Exaggerated

5/12/11 - Alabama Senate Blocks Lowder's Reappointment

5/16/11 - Lowder Withdraws at Auburn

The New Slavery: Sex Trafficking - Hudson New York

The above link is to the transcript of a truly moving speech given by Emma Thompson in New York this June on the ongoing global catastrophe that is human sex-trafficking. Longish, but hard to excerpt....please do RTWT.

More here, here, and here on Thompson and the Journey exhibit.

Barack, can we, uh, talk for a few minutes?

Oh, nothing. It's just that it just seems we haven't had a chance to talk for a while. I mean, I know we've both been busy for the past year or so. You with your fundraisers and golfing and stuff, and me with all those appointments at the unemployment office. But you know I think it's important in a relationship like ours to keep the lines of communication open.

So anyway, I've been think that... look, this is really hard. God. Do you remember when we met at that big party in Denver back in 08? I mean when I saw you across that crowded convention floor, it was like, Oh My God. I don't think I ever saw anything like you before. I was on the rebound from a bad relationship and you were so tall and articulate and, well hot. And then I couldn't believe that of all the democracies in the room you picked me out.!

Read it all...but remember...nostalgia is not what it used to be.

Mr. DeLay, the Texas Republican who had been the House majority leader, crowed that he had been "found innocent." But many of Mr. DeLay's actions remain legal only because lawmakers have chosen not to criminalize them.

Had those lawmakers known in advance what actions Delay would take, they could have passed laws criminalizing them. Think ahead a little bit next time, Democrats.

UPDATE: Taranto:

By the same logic, the New York Times editorialists are not in the dock only because "criminal stupidity" is a figure of speech and not an actual law.

The fundamental problem with the [financial reform] legislation is that it doesn't address...the underlying problems with the mortgage market. It was the mortgage bubble, instigated by liberal social justice demands placed on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which caused the crisis, not a failure of securities rules and regulations. No mortgage market problems, no mortgage-backed securities problems; no mortgage-backed securities problems, no financial crisis. One of the greatest scams ever is the success of Democrats in distancing their mortgage policies from the financial crisis, and portraying the crisis as simply a matter of Wall Street greed and lack of regulation. . . . Reform of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac never is going to happen unless Democrats have no other choice. Not at least as long as Barack Obama is President or Democrats control all or part of Congress. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are off limits for Democrats, just as they were when the Bush administration warned of problems.

This was not a problem caused exclusively by one political party, but the ""mess we inherited" rhetoric by the White House necessitates reminding people that the Bush administration did warn of problems...and they did propose reforms...which were shot down and the need for them dismissed by Sens. Frank and Dodd...and as you can see here...

UPDATE 8/23: With an election looming, Barney Frank sees the light.

UPDATE 8/24: The Obama administration fesses up about who their HAMP program was designed to help.

Serious Human Beings

This election will not be fought over the fine details of a few specific pieces of legislation. It will not be a contest to find someone who can escort an unpopular Barack Obama from the White House, then trot back inside and continue shoveling trillions of dollars into the deficit furnace. We don’t need a national CPA to provide a lecture on deficit reduction during his inauguration, then return for a State of the Union speech in which he explains spending cuts are pretty much impossible, while forklifts roll in with massive new tax packages. We have no use for someone who thinks ObamaCare is an awesome machine that just needs a new transmission and some mag wheels to reach its potential.

We are about to conduct an election about the very philosophy of our government. It is our last chance to avoid the Great Crash which Obama has brought to our doorsteps… but which would have lurked twenty or thirty years in the future even without him. The Obama presidency has begun a fundamental transformation of the relationship between Americans and their government. The groundwork for this transformation was laid over many years, by politicians from both parties. Government bloat has accumulated for decades. The State isn’t really changing all that much under Barack Obama. It’s working to change us.

To reverse this process, we must reach farther back than the administrations of George Bush or Bill Clinton. We are being crushed by engines of regulation, taxation, and corruption that were designed in the first decades of the last century. We’re approaching the end of the story that began during the New Deal. It won’t be good enough to merely rewind the tape a few years. Even such a half-hearted measure, simply returning us to where George Bush left us, would be the most spectacular reduction of State power in our entire history… and it wouldn’t be good enough.

Hitchens' apostasy from the Left wasn't nearly the abrupt and devastating "crucible of despair" endured and described by Horowitz, but David's message that "you can't have it both ways" is hammered home in countless examples for Hitchens. The larger point made by Horowitz is to show how powerful is the seductive appeal of the utopian fantasy...that such a lover of freedom as Christopher Hitchens cannot and has not rid himself of it. Pack a lunch.

"Second Thoughts" - Part One - Part Two

Also a very worthwhile read is this transcript of Hugh Hewitt's conversation with Hitchens last week. Another long one, but not to be missed by Hitch fans.

Here's the link to the Hitchens memoir. And here's to his successful treatment and speedy recovery.

It'll be interesting to see how the Democrats handle this issue in 2012. Pass the popcorn.

It's one thing to leave. I get it. You're 25. You don't know any better. You're tired of carrying mediocre teams. You want help. You want the luxury of not having to play a remarkable game every single night for eight straight months. You want to live in South Beach. You want to play with your buddies. I get it. I get it. But turning that decision into a one-hour special, pretending that it hadn't been decided weeks ago, using a charity as your cover-up and ramming a pitchfork in Cleveland's back like you were at the end of a Friday the 13th movie and Cleveland was Jason ... there just had to be a better way.

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We are already fools for caring about athletes considerably more than they care about us. We know this, and we do it anyway. We just like sports. We keep watching for moments like Donovan's goal against Algeria, and we keep caring through thick and thin for moments like Roberts' Steal and Tracy Porter's interception. We put up with all the sobering stuff because that's the price you pay -- for every Gordon Hayward half-court shot, or USA-Canada gold-medal game, there are 20 Michael Vicks and Ben Roethlisbergers. Last night didn't make me like sports any less -- my guard has been up since 1996 -- it just reinforced all the things I already didn't like.

Well said. It didn't really help to have the Cavs owner respond immediately, sounding like a sixth-grader. ("The curse" moves to Florida? Really?) As much as some of his lines have generated applause in town, I'm thinking he really should have slept on it before penning his response.

The other thing that strikes me is that the NBA's reputation for being well-run by David Stern is in serious jeopardy. I suspect Stern will fine Gilbert for his outburst, and probably act to get his arms back around a system that used to require things like contracts being in place before players announced where they were going to play. There's a real sense now that the inmates are running the asylum, and Stern will have to act decisively to reassert control.

Meanwhile, I can go back to treating the NBA like I treated it before LeBron came to the Cavs....as my least favorite pro sport, and one where I'm too disinterested to ever watch a game start-to-finish until the Finals...maybe.

UPDATE: A pretty good column by Adrian Wojnarowski.

Countdown to the LeBron James decision

19. I always thought the goal was winning rings. That's what Russell, Bird, Magic and Jordan taught us. That's what I grew up believing. But sports are different now. You're a brand as much as an athlete. In the past 72 hours, with the suspense building for his announcement, LeBron created a Twitter account, launched his own website and agreed with ESPN on a one-hour live selection show that, incredibly, was the exact same idea that a Columbus reader named Drew had in my Thanksgiving '09 mailbag … but I thought he was kidding. Now I think he's Nostradamus. Or even Nostradamu-SAS.

Drew from Columbus looked into the future, and here's what he saw: A world in which it was totally conceivable that an NBA superstar would sell an hour-long show in which he picked his next team and tainted his legacy in the process. I played along and pushed a "Bachelor"-type setup ("The LeBrachelor!") in which LeBron whittled 29 teams down to six, then four, then two, then one over the course of six episodes. Hell, have him hand out roses. Why not? It's not like this would actually happen, right?

20. Seven months later, it's happening. I can't wait to watch for the same reasons I couldn't turn away from O.J.'s Bronco chase or the Artest melee: it's Car Wreck Television. If LeBron picks anyone other than the Cavaliers, it will be the cruelest television moment since David Chase ended "The Sopranos" by making everyone think they lost power. Cleveland fans will never forgive LeBron, nor should they. He knows better than anyone what kind of sports anguish they have suffered over the years. Losing LeBron on a contrived one-hour show would be worse than Byner's fumble, Jose Mesa, the Game 5 meltdown against Boston, The Drive, The Shot and everything else. At least those stomach-punch moments weren't preordained, unless you believe God hates Cleveland (entirely possible, by the way). This stomach-punch moment? Calculated. By a local kid they loved, defended and revered.

It would be unforgivable. Repeat: unforgivable. I don't have a dog in this race -- as a Celtics fan, I wanted to see him go anywhere but Chicago -- but LeBron doing this show after what happened in the 2010 playoffs actually turned me against him. No small feat. I was one of his biggest defenders. Not anymore.

And here's where I really worry, because I don't think LeBron James has anyone in his life with enough juice to hurl his or her body in front of the concept of "I'm going to announce during a one-hour live show that I'm playing somewhere other than Cleveland." It's the best and worst thing about him -- he has remained fiercely loyal to his high school friends, but at the same time, he's surrounded by people his own age who don't stand up to him and don't know any better. Picking anyone other than Cleveland on this show would be the meanest thing any athlete has ever done to a city. But he might. Assuming he's not malicious, and that he's just a self-absorbed kid who apparently lost all perspective, that doesn't make him much different than most child stars who became famous before they could legally drink -- or, for that matter, Tiger Woods. That's just the way this stuff works. Too much, too fast, too soon. You don't lose your way all at once; just a little at a time. Then one day you look up and there's a TMZ photo spread with 15 of your mistresses, or you're agreeing to stab an entire city in the heart on a one-hour television show.

Charleston, South Carolina, was the cradle of the Confederacy. And come next January, barring unforeseen developments, it and the rest of the 1st District will have a black Congressman for the first time since Reconstruction. Tim Scott defeated Paul Thurmond for the Republican nomination last night, and the district has been a safe Republican seat since 1981. It wasn’t even close, with Scott trouncing Strom Thurmond’s son by 61 to 39 percent.

That a black man could beat the son of the legendary segregationist so badly in a district where the Civil War began — the district where Confederate troops fired on Fort Sumter in April 1861 — is a measure of just how much the South has changed in the last 50 years, and the country’s politics and race relations along with it.

But assuming Scott is elected, he needn’t apply for membership in the Congressional Black Caucus, of course. It’s a measure of how little the left in American politics has changed in the last 50 years that the Black Caucus — devoted to race-based politics and victimology — admits only liberal Democratic members.

To be fair, it has been a while since there was such a thing as a black Republican Congressman for the Black Caucus to consider (J.C. Watts), and if elected, Scott will face the customary leftist smears of inauthenticity and Uncle Tomism endured by all blacks who stray from identity politics orthodoxy. If the past predicts the future, he will be called a "race traitor" and there will be no end to leftist attempts to marginalize and defame him.

May he have the courage and character to persevere until he is joined in Congress by many more black conservatives, and the poisonous and condescending idea that all blacks should be of one correct political persuasion is consigned to the scrap heap once and for all.

It is notable that Scott was endorsed by Sarah Palin, and won big in a majority white (66%) congressional district...all of which confounds and refutes the "Tea Partiers are racists" crowd...an inconvenient reality that they will doubtless ignore.