Last week, I told you about the very first football game I officiated and that it was in Alpena with a controversial play of moving the chains by mistake in a rainstorm.

Now, I have enough football officiating stories for this column to last all of this football season and probably part of next season. However, I need to skip ahead many stories and 30 years from the game I described last week for a follow-up to that game.

In 2010, Julie and I moved from Saginaw to Hubbard Lake. I was 70 years old and figured that my officiating career was over. But, on a whim, I decided to send letters to local athletic directors, just in case, noting my availability to officiate football.

Tom Atkinson, Alpena’s athletic director at the time, put me in touch with Dave Kuznicki, who, at that time, assigned the ninth and junior varsity officials for Alpena, and soon I had a ninth/JV doubleheader at Alpena.

I got to the game early, and Dave was the only official there when I arrived. I just had to relate my first Alpena football experience to him.

Dave said, “I remember that game. You rode to the field in a golf cart, didn’t you? I was the driver of that golf cart and your referee had a beard.”

I said, “Yes that was Phil.”

Dave said, “You had a black man on the crew.”

I agreed, “That was Cecil.”

Then, another of our officiating crew for this game showed up, and Dave said, “This is Joe Garant, he played for Alpena in that game…and when you meet the Alpena JV coach, his name is Scott McKenzie, and he was the Alpena player waiting to return that punt that never happened in the rain.”

Talk about memories and coincidences.

I had always been concerned and wanted to find out if we were correct with our ruling of 30 years ago. I asked Dave if there was evidence that came up later indicating that our decision was correct.

Dave related that back then the games were filmed with 8mm movie cameras and the film had to be bussed to Bay City for development and, of course, didn’t get back for about a week. He did say that the call was debated all over on the local radio and in the newspaper.

Dave finally admitted that the film showed that we did make the correct decision (hooray).

I later got the message to Phil, retired from his Michigan State University Extension job and in a second career as an Episcopal priest, that we had made the correct call. Joe had long been deceased, so I couldn’t tell him, and our head linesman, Cecil, was quite ill but I did get a letter to him before he died and hope he got to read it.

I have a little space left for this week so here is small embarrassing moment from a football game.

It was a JV football game and I was the line judge — not a normal position for me. It was the first offensive play of the game. I am focused. The ball was snapped and the wide receiver on my side of the field retreated into the backfield. Aha, I thought, end around play, I have this one covered.

WRONG!!!

The wide receiver took a handoff from the QB and threw a pass about 40 yards downfield to the other receiver from my side of the field. He was also my responsibility and now he had a 40-yard head start on me plus he was 40 years younger than I was, so I had no chance of being in the correct position for following the play.

After the play the referee came up to me, laughing loudly.

He said, “The coach warned me that this was going to be their first play, but I forgot to tell you.”

Thanks a lot.