Adios River Falls, We Will Miss You

From somewhere south of the St. Croix River

There is tinge of sadness as River Falls vanishes in the rear-view mirror.

For 19 years the Chiefs have been coming to this little college town in the northwoods to hold training camp. For 19 years I’ve followed along.

And I say with honor that I’m just one of five in the “Club 19″ of River Falls lifers: people with or around the Chiefs who made every one of those 19 camps. Equipment guys Mike Davidson and Allen Wright, groundskeeper Andre Bruce, PR maven Bob Moore and me. Chiefs President Denny Thum had a chance to join the club, but he spent only the first week of camp here before his new duties forced him to return and stay in Kansas City.

Mike remembers his first visit to River Falls. That came in the winter of ’91 when Chiefs officials visited the campus. It had the look of Ice Station RF, with snow piled up everywhere and the wind blowing constantly. The group included head coach Marty Schottenheimer. They checked into the Best Western Motel, one of those old school places where you parked your car right outside your room. Marty asked for a wakeup call and the desk clerk handed him an alarm clock.

The next day the group went to the UW-River Falls campus and toured the facilities. Mike remembers looking out of the back door of the ice rink at the practice fields, which were covered with 18 inches of snow. “Marty looked at the snow and I remember him saying, ‘It’s going to be gone by July, isn’t it?’ ” Davidson said.

Six months later the snow was gone and the Chiefs found their summer home.

I’ll never forget that first camp, when the Chiefs came in their buses from the Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport and stopped just outside of downtown. Waiting were fire trucks, police cars, the River Falls High School band and various dignitaries. It was a parade, with the players and coaches riding in on the fire trucks.

As they got to the middle of the five-block downtown, they were pelted by water balloons. Strength and conditioning coach Dave Redding was on the roof of one of the downtown buildings and Red Man was chucking those balloons as fast as he could. It was one of those moments when the NFL did not mean No Fun League.

In those early years, there were plenty of activity along Main Street, as members of the traveling party and the media found food and other sustenance in places like the Bo’s N’ Mine, the South Fork Café, Club Kaos, Mel’s Midtowner and Steve’s Pizza. There was the Copper Kettle out by the practice fields and the Westwinds on the road out of town. On night when there was a late curfew for the players, the streets would be alive with players and “friends” who showed up from all over western Wisconsin and the Twin Cities. There was almost a Mardi Gras atmosphere.

I remember one night when somebody finally talked Gunther Cunningham to leaving the dorm and going down to Bo’s for a beer. Now understand that Gunther’s annual consumption of alcohol would not finish off a six-pack of beer. But he had several that night and eventually he ended up on Main Street with a few folks from the Chiefs holding him back; he wanted a piece of a Kansas City talk show host.

Those types of days have gone the way of so many other things these days. Oh, you could find the media hanging out downtown, but the players were not as noticeable and the coaches certainly were not. That started with Vermeil’s staff and continued through this year’s regime change over.

The one thing that never changed was the personality of the people in River Falls. They were just about the nicest group of folks you’d ever want to meet. Having grown up in small town America, it was wonderful every summer to get a taste of that again. They always said hello, always went the extra mile.

In a neighborhood about two blocks from campus a man parked his truck on the street in front of his house every night when he came home from work. He left the keys in the truck every night. One early morning I took a walk through the neighborhood and noticed the keys. The next morning, same time, same neighborhood, different walk, the keys were still there.

The next morning I was a little bit later in arriving on that street, but I got there just as the man left his house. I couldn’t help but ask. He thought it strange that I thought it strange that he would leave his keys in the truck overnight.

The first time I saw UW-River Falls was in June of 1991. The U.S. Open golf tournament was played over at Hazeltine National Golf Club just south of Minneapolis. I went to watch some of the practice rounds and then drove over one afternoon to River Falls. I was met that day by Mary Halada. She was the university’s liaison to the Chiefs. Actually she was a Mary of all trades.

She showed me around campus, asked if there was anything they could do to help set up for what was a month of radio broadcasts.

And who was the first person I ran into on campus this year? Mary. She’s retired now, but when the Chiefs are around, she’s around and helps out.

One day sitting in the South Fork Café on Main Street I did the math. Nineteen years, an average of three weeks per year. That means I’ve spent more than an entire year of my life in the Falls. That’s a year of my life living in dorm rooms, watching practices, chasing players and trying to find entertainment on the flower lined streets of Normal Rockwell’s America.

I can’t really think of many other places I would rather have spent that time than in the land of beer and cheese.

Thanks River Falls. And, St. Joe, you’ve got awfully big shoes to fill.

That’s “Club 19″ posing with Mary Halada of UW-River Falls. In the front row it’s Bob Moore, Mary, Andre Bruce and Allen Wright. In the back it’s BG and Mike Davidson. We were all much younger the first time we stepped on the campus back in 1991.