Mel Bashore

Mel:   He [Dutch Clark] was single all his life, wasn’t he?

 

Elmer:    No.  He had a sweet wife, Dorothy.

 

Mel:   He lived back in the mining country didn’t he?

 

Elmer:    He went to Colorado Mines.  He was just an outstanding fellow.  Very good friend.

 

Mel:   Harry Ebding, the end.

 

Elmer:    Harry came from Saint Mary’s.  Very talkative.  Fun to play with.  Fun to be behind as a linebacker because he was always chatting, hollering with the opponents.  Always a hollering at ‘em.  Always talking, always chatting.  He just talked the game all the time.  I never did do much talking, but Harry was always a hollering at ‘em and going at ‘em and talking.

 

Mel:   Was he trying to rile them up or just joking?

 

Elmer:     Trying to rile them up.  Trying to get their goat, get their attention.  Raising hell.  “I’ll get you.”  They had maybe a few contacts, you know, banging into each other, what have you.  Instead of just thinking about it, he was verbally expressing.  Harry was jovial.  He was very verbose in practice and stuff like that.  Good fellow.  Done his job.

 

Mel:   Ox Emerson, a guard.

 

Elmer:    Ox Emerson was very much a gentleman.  He was very devoted to his wife.  A real nice couple.  Ox did the guard position and he was just steady and sturdy.  I’d just have to say he was a 100 percent ball player.  A very good friend.  I always remember also another occasion, Sam [Knox] and Barbara, after we’d won the world’s championship, why [?] decided to [?] the team to the Dodge plant.  There was 25 of us there.  They spun the wheel and gave away a new Dodge 4-door sedan.  One chance in 25 of us to get it.  Sam Knox won it, the guard.  He won the auto.

 

Mel:   Did Ox get his nickname because of his size?

 

Elmer:    No.  Ox was about 210.  He wouldn’t be much over that.  Ox was a goer.  He played low.  We called him a gentleman and he was a hundred percent player all the way through.  Lot of fun.

 

Mel:   Tom Hupke.

 

Elmer:    Tom Hupke.  He was from Alabama.  Running guard.  A good one.  Very good.  His wife, Liz, she was a southern gal.  Tom was always in good shape.  Done an outstanding job.  One thing that I just remember, Hupke, because he had me put into a position that I didn’t like.  We was having a little trouble in the guard line. Potsy Clark came out one day and said, “I want a little more weight in the line on running guards.”  So we had me play two games of running guard.  Running guard is a lifetime’s experience to get out in front of the interference and what have you.  But I played the game and did the best that I could do.  He wanted a little more meat on the line on defense.  That’s what he was really after.  I think I filled that bill for him.  I think I gave him a little stronger defense than we might have had as far as guard.  Giving them a better position on offense, no, I think I did the best I could into it, but I don’t think that I filled the offense because you just got, that’s a lifetime’s experience running interference as guard.  But defensive wise, yes.  That’s what Potsy was concerned that they’d been making too much yardage through the holes in there so he asked me to go in and play.  I played a couple of games at defensive guard and a couple of games at defensive tackle.

 

Mel:   We skipped over Ace Gutowsky.

 

Elmer:    Ace come from the oil fields.  Kind of a guy who liked to bet, play cards, liked to make small bets.  I’m not talking about big time betting.  He liked to make bets.  He’s not afraid to put a few bucks down, take a chance here and there.  Fast.  Fast starter.  Had a lot of determination [?] how to make an extra yard or so.  Just churn those old legs up and keep it going.  Ace and his wife . . . .

 

Mel:   It sounds like almost all the players were married on the team.

 

Elmer:    Yes.  We’d have a party and all dance together and just like a home club around the community.  It was wonderful.  You can’t believe such a nice, you don’t that kind of relationship in college.  You’re single and you have fraternities, but we knew all their wives.

 

Mel:   Jack Johnson, your tackle.

 

Elmer:    Big raw boned guy.  University of Utah.  He helped coach the line after I left with Potsy for a couple of years.  He got along real well with Potsy.  When we begin sprints and run around the place, old Jack, he must have been a heck of a good 440 man or something because he was always out there in the front end of the going.  He looked the part of a western rancher.  Jack was a very good tackle.  Very gentleman.  Very clean living, very outstanding.  Jack married Louise Caddel. [?] They had a child and they divorced.  But she was a nice lady.  It was just a different kind of a mix of social backgrounds.

 

Mel:   Tony Kaska.

 

Elmer:    Tony didn’t get to play too much.  Tony was a nice guy.  He never got in to play too much.  He was capable because Tony’s wife wasn’t there and my wife was, I just didn’t mix too much with Tony.  He was a gentleman.

 

Mel:   Ed Klewicki.

 

Elmer:    Ed Klewicki from Michigan.  Darling wife, June.  Oh, I may be mistaken with John Schneller.  I don’t know whether he was always a native of Michigan or not.  But he always kind of reminded me of a fullback because he was a tough one.  When he’d been in there, you know, it was a crash [?] going on in there.  He had good hands, too.  Ed and June, they were just a solid couple.  Ed done well after he got out of football financially, too.

 

Mel:   Is he still alive?

 

Elmer:   No.  I don’t think so.

 

Mel:   You mentioned Sam Knox winning the car.

 

Elmer:    Yes.  Sam was a guard.  Sam came in late.  Sam and his wife, Barbara.  Lots of fun.  Liked a good story.  A light-haired fellow.  Very nice.  I could tell you one incident.  We was traveling.  Going to the west coast when we won the world championship.  A lot of guys were driving new cars we had.  In fact, we got stopped at the California border because they thought we were pushing cars through to dealers and not paying any taxes come due it.  Mostly we bought these cars from our directors.  Barbara, we were going down to Arizona there, she made a big yawn, and her [?] had [?].  Sam was telling me this story.  Barbara was sitting in the back seat and she yawned.  Sam got a good sense of humor.  He says, “[?] can’t say a word.”  [?]  Sam was a good guy.  They were a nice couple.

 

Mel:   Gil LeFebvre, a back.

 

Elmer:    Right at the last, Potsy brought in a couple of players, right at the last.  I don’t remember him.

 

Mel:   Granville Mitchell.

 

Elmer:    Was you talking about 1935?  The championship team?

 

Mel:   These might have been guys who were on the roster for just a short time.

 

Elmer:    I’d have known them.

 

Mel:   OK.  Regis Monahan. Aldo [Richins] told me that was his best friend on the team.

 

Elmer:    See, Al just came in for a short time.  Regis Monahan was from Ohio State.  He played guard.  Regis was a good running guard.  Regis wasn’t married.  He roomed with Christensen.  I say I roomed with him—we lived in the same hotel.  I played cards and stuff with him.  He and Regis Monahan were actually roommates together.  Big George.  Regis was a big guard, a good running guard.

 

Mel:   Butch Morse.

 

Elmer:    Butch Morse from Oregon.  Alice is his wife’s name.  Butch is a very good end.  Butch and I had some several things in common.  He had an army commission in college and I did, too.  He was just a real good end.  Well liked.

 

Mel:   Doug Nott.

 

Elmer:    Doug Nott.  I guess I want to say Michigan.  Doug came in late that season.  He had trouble with his knees.  He played.  A very nice fellow and a very nice wife.  He came in just the last year.  I got to know him then.  That was the year that I got hurt [?].

 

Mel:   William O’Neill.

 

Elmer:    I don’t know.  Don’t make any sense.

 

Mel:   Buddy Parker.

 

Elmer:    Oh, hell, yes.  I’m not saying that you give me a name like William O’Neill.  And I bet you anything he wasn’t on a [?].  But when you say Buddy Parker.  My gosh.  He was a great guy, you know.  Played behind Gutowsky.  He kind of filled in to it.  Then later on Buddy became a coach over in Cleveland.  Buddy was a close friend of mine.  Very good friends.  Very good friends.  Very close friends.  A great guy.  You were just kind of amazed how he could, when he got through with playing ball, he made as much as he did.  A very nice fellow.  Quiet.

 

Mel:   He was a quiet fellow?

 

Elmer:    Yes.  I thought he was.

 

Mel:   I’ve heard stories about when he was a coach that wouldn’t lead me to believe he was quiet.

 

Elmer:    I don’t know anything about it.  Buddy and I were good friends.

 

Mel:   Glenn Presnell.

 

Elmer:    Glenn was a gentleman.  Very quiet.  His role, knowing that he was behind Dutch Clark, he accepted it very well.  A good place kicker.  I don’t say this derogative.  I don’t want it to be derogative, but when you could just kind of tell the atmosphere.  When Dutch was quarterback the atmosphere was a little bit more than when Glenn was quarterback.  It was a kind of feeling like it was a more assurance.  Now only from the standpoint that I think that Dutch called his plays a little quicker.  And that doesn’t really mean anything.  It just means that it kind of [?] the team that way.  Very well liked with the players.  Always carried his end of the share.  Just a gentleman.

 

Mel:   I guess he had a great college career, too.

 

Elmer:    Oh, yes.

 

Mel:   Clare Randolph.

 

Elmer:    Clare Randolph was the senior center ahead of me.  Clare played center three years before I came up there.  Good defensive player.  If he had any shortcomings at all it was the fact that throwing the long ball was [?].  Clare had a lovely wife.

 

Mel:   Were you the backup to him?

 

Elmer:    We used to try to switch each quarter since I got hurt, see.  We tried to switch each quarter.  He started more than I did because he was there before me.  Clare was a good ball player. [?] he’d been there longer.  I felt like, George Christensen, he was the captain of the team, was a little more comfortable with Clare in there than he was with me.  But I say this, and this is probably just between you and I, two or three times when I was in there, George would say, “Now, come on, Elmer, back me up.”  I would say, “George, play your position.  I got other people to back up down the line here.”  I’m just looking at what the situation is, you know.  I think that may have bothered George a bit.  I just come back and say, “Hey, you play your position up there and I’m going to play mine back here.”  Now maybe I should have stepped a step that way and said nothing and done as I wanted to, but I just was a [?] “Just stay right where you’re at.  You take care of that and I’ll take care of this.”  He was always after me.  He’d say, “Back me up.”  He didn’t want to have a big cod come over and look bad over him, see.  I was a linebacker on that side, backing up the line.  [?]  Randolph was a good player.  [?]  I have no qualms at all on that.  [?]  Clare was a good player.  Lovely wife.  Very friendly.

 

Mel:   Aldo.  You say he came later in the year.  His wife told me a funny story, Helen.  She was in the lobby of the hotel.  She just got there to Detroit.  I guess she went down early for breakfast.  They’d just got there the night before.  Aldo came down a little later.  She said, “Aldo.  I think the circus is in town.”  He said, “Why?  What’s the matter?”  “All these big men came walking through here. There they are,” she said.  He said, “That’s my team.”

 

Elmer:    Aldo’s a nice man.

 

Mel:   He didn’t play too much did he?

 

Elmer:    No, but when he played . . . .  I’m trying to think where Aldo came from.  Did he come from another team?

 

Mel:   No.  He came straight in from Utah.  He and Frank had a contract the year before in ’34 but Frank played in ’34 but Aldo decided not to.  But he got on the next year.  That was before it was in Detroit.  It was down there at Portsmouth.

 

Elmer:    He didn’t come on until late in the season.  He wasn’t there until half the season was over before he came in.  That’s why I didn’t know whether he come from somewhere’s else.

 

Mel:   John Schneller.

 

Elmer:    Big old John.  John and Nellie.  Nellie was his wife.  John was a made-over fullback from Wisconsin.  He played end.  Six foot four.  I just never did see a six foot four as a fullback, but he must have.  I’ve seen John Schneller play defensive end and take that six foot four and when the game was coming around, with the big long run and just stretch out and come [?] and take all the bruising and beating and the kicking and the hell in his hips and sides and everything else.  John was a cup full.  A good strong man and had a spark of a temper.  Not a temper [?], but he had a determination that told him to just come right back and do it again.  [?]

 

Mel:   You mentioned earlier Bill Shepherd.

 

Elmer:    Bill and Marilyn.  Played fullback.  He came in there and as time went on and on, he just became better.  [?]  He played some tailback.

 

Mel:   Jim Stacy.

 

Elmer:    Tackle.  Jim Stacy was a Oklahoma boy.  A very good player.  He came in at the same time I did.  Come along real well.  He held his end of the stick every time he was in there.  He’s still alive.  It’s kind of foggy in my mind, but he had a little bit of financial problems.  I saw him at the reunion.

 

Mel:   Jim Steen.

 

Elmer:    Jim was from Syracuse [?].  [?] if I remember right [?] he played up there.  Jim was a good ball player, a good defensive tackle.  A lot of fun.  But I have to tell you an incident about Jim Steen. [?] over in Hawaii.  And of course when we got all through, the governor had had a parade.  We went out to the country club.  We’re out of training.  We’d been in training since July and here it was the last of February.  And I guess there was a lot of going on.  I wasn’t right there at the incident. [?]  There was some kidding going back and forth with some of the guys at the club and Jim Steen.  I don’t know what it was all about, but it wasn’t serious.  No fist fight or anything.  Anyhow, this Jim Steen, he still got [?] bottles.  [?]  That was a kind of a [?].  Jim was a big rugged boy.  Jim was a sort of a, he and his wife with [?].  He worked for the automobile industry after he quit football.  He and our trainer, old Abe Kushner, kept close together.  They both lived in there and they kept correspondence and back and forth with the home office.  So my memories of Jim, we both went back to camp together the same year.  Later on our communication and correspondence [?].

 

Mel:   Charles Vaughan.

 

Elmer:   Pug Vaughan.  Very fast.  He came in later into the year.  I didn’t spend too much time with him, but he was quick and very fast.

 

Mel:   Is there anyone I’ve left off?

 

Elmer:    I can’t think of any.  You sure got some there that I can’t remember.

 

Mel:   What does your middle initial “H” stand for?

 

Elmer:    Henry.  Bear was my nickname.

 

Mel:   How did you get that nickname?

 

Elmer:   I think that being a linebacker and getting a lot of tackles.  [?]

 

Mel:   You say the next year your knee went out and you had it operated on.

 

Elmer:    Then I played, see.  We went down to California when we was playing the All Stars [?]  I was playing first base, get a dive up at first, a guy was trying to score from third and I was just running like heck and picked up the ball and immediately [?].  Oh, here we go again.  So, I just let the [?] know what had happened.  So they got ahold of Griffner[?], a Salt Lake doctor.  They sent me down and operated on me.  [?]  So they put me in a cast [?] days.  Boy, they were getting ready for the season and I cut the cast off and worked like heck and got into it and went back.  I just said, “There’s no way.  I just can’t do it.”  So they asked me if I’d coach a team down in Springfield, Illinois.  So I met a, he was a reserve captain.  They had a [?], made up in part of stuff like this.  So I went down there.  We was trying to get a franchise of a team with Detroit.  Like a farm team.  So I went down there and went to work with him.  Coached with him.  [?] We played Detroit.  I was there.  We went through that year.  [?]  I took Chuck Hanneman, that was on the next year’s [Lions] team, in ’37.  I took him down there with me because we was going to bring his name up, see.  The next year, he went up there and he just went crazy.  Oh, he was just a hell of a player.  They sent down some players that they had on the Detroit team.  I had a job.  He got a job down there.  So the next year I was running around and now my leg had healed up so they wanted me to come back to Detroit.  So I went up and worked out.  They wanted me to play guard and tackle.

 

Mel:   So this was in ’37?

 

Elmer:    Yes.  I went back [?] and tried to work out [?].  The knee don’t bother me now [?] and it just didn’t respond.  There’s no way I can be a linebacker and take that bruising and I just didn’t have the proper speed that I had to have.  So they wanted me to stay until finally I said, “Ah, the hell with it [?]”  [?] I felt like I could have played for ten years, but you got to be healthy.  So I just said, “No. No.”  They said, “Well, stick around for awhile.”  So I stayed around for a couple of weeks and worked out and was going to back and looked at it.  It would just swell up.  I just came in and said, “I’m sorry.  No more football for me.”  I want to be able to walk and the knees one of the main joints.  I just came on home.

 

Mel:   Was that Springfield team in a league?

 

Elmer:    No.  What they was trying to do was organize an association like the baseball’s got.  A farm team.  They wanted to make it a farm team and establish a league.  Detroit didn’t really want to do that, but they went they went along with him and sent down, I think, three from Detroit.  It’s all we had and the rest was just picked up locally.  I coached the team, see.  They had some games around some of the other places.  This guy that owned this league[?] was interested.  He was trying to organize a farm team.  He thought there would be a farm team in football like there was in baseball.  Well, anyhow, to make a long story short, [?] went back up there.  So I told my wife, I said [?], she kept wanting to know what I was going to do when I got through. . . .  I owned this property and I wanted to come out west . . . .

 

Mel:   On that Springfield team, you say you played against some of the other teams around there.  Was it some other minor leagues?

 

Elmer:    We just played teams that he brought in.  I don’t know where in the heck they was.  It wasn’t a league.  He was in hopes of becoming a farm team of Detroit.  I just can’t tell you.  We just had a game.  We had these players and I just coached these players.

 

Mel:   Do you remember any of the other teams you played against?

 

Elmer:    They was from Illinois.

 

Mel:   There’s a lot of minor leagues in the Midwest.

 

Elmer:    I couldn’t tell you that.  I don’t know why I didn’t get involved.  We just had a game with this team and that team.  We just played ‘em.  His whole object was trying to become a farm team of Detroit.

 

Mel:   It seems like your team was different than many of the other pro teams in the ‘30s.  There were players like Johnny Blood and other teams with wild drinking.  It sounds like your team was a little bit different than some of the other teams.

 

Elmer:   I’d have to give credit to George Richards.  He owned WJR and his automobile agency.  When I first went back there, the Detroit Lions had moved the year before from Portsmouth to Detroit.  He wanted us to not look like bums, to dress up, and lecture at high schools, and to kind of bring football up to the [?].  I never run into the atmosphere and I heard about what you are saying on it, Mel.  I just didn’t run into it because the group we were with was a family type of a home group, the biggest percentage.  Dutch and his wife, and John Schneller, and Ernie Caddel, and those fellows that were married had been an influence.  It was more of a home-type of an atmosphere.  That part of it didn’t become a major [?].  So with the influence of Mr. Richards to try to dignify the image of professional football players.  He even went so far as to fly roses, flowers from Hawaii to give to the wives at halftime during the football game.  Things like that to bring the image up on the public address system.  [?]  I say image, the dollar image is such a big thing now.  I don’t know the image character-wise . . . . It was a wonderful experience.

 

Mel:   It sounds like it was.  To go back to a big city, it would have been the best of situations for you.

 

Elmer:    We didn’t fly in airplanes like they are now.  Frank and Jack and I, our transportation back to Detroit was in a bus.  Not a train, a bus.  Then we traveled most of ours in train travel during that time.  Our limited travel as far as I was concerned as a player at Utah State, we’d go to Denver and around.  Here you are all of a sudden.  You go to New York, you go to Boston, you go to Washington, you go to Hollywood, you go to Hawaii.  You go all over.  Here we are down here in Hollywood, met Bing Crosby, met Wallace Beery, Joe E. Brown.  I could name two or three others.  [?]

 

Mel:   That football movie never was produced though?

 

Elmer:    No, it didn’t.  It didn’t come to pass.  We sit down there for a week . . .