And my bond with him ran deeper than most, I always figured, because he and I shared the same birthday, Aug. 16 (along, incidentally, with Madonna).

As with many kids of my era and earlier, my first exposure to Parker was through the three-part Walt Disney special, “The Adventures of Davy Crockett.”

Davy, of course, was played by Parker, who just seemed to look, speak and behave like the real-life “king of the wild frontier” would have.

In part one, Davy helped broker peace in an Indian war, then beat the stuffing out of a piece of white trash who was trying to usurp the land rights of one of Davy’s Indian friends, Charlie Two Shirts.

Part 2 saw Davy go off to Congress, and Part 3 — sort of tough to watch for a 6-year-old — took Davy to the Alamo, where he was killed.

I saw the show a few times and liked it so well, despite the sad ending,  that my mom got me the record album version of it, which I listened to over and over — so much so that 40 years later, I can still recite much of the dialogue.

One bit that really stuck with me, as some of my closer friends will attest, was an exchange Davy had with Jim Travis, commander of the forces at the Alamo.

Travis: “They’ve been shelling us round the clock and haven’t hit a man of us yet. I just wonder how long our luck will hold out.”

Davy: “Luck? That ain’t luck. That’s the hand of Providence.”

Travis: “You really believe that, don’t you.”

Davy: “I shore do.”

I like to invoke that “hand of Providence” explanation, just like Davy, every chance I get.

In addition to playing Davy Crockett, Parker also starred in the title role, naturally, in the “Daniel Boone” television series, which also featured Ed Ames as Boone’s Indian friend Mingo, and Rosey Grier as another buddy, freed slave Gabe.  (Dallas McKennon, who played grizzled innkeeper Cincinnatus, actually showed up at my junior high one day; still not sure how that happened.)

I loved “Daniel Boone” as much or more as the Davy Crockett three-parter and, understandably, had to have a coonskip cap of my own. My mom ended up getting me the best version she could find, which featured an actual raccoon tale attached to a skullcap of brown polyester.

Anyway, thanks a lot for the memories, Mr. Parker. You may be gone but will never be forgotten. The hand of Providence will help ensure that.

Fess Parker, 1924 - 2010

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I’m not exactly up on all the ins and outs of Web access and all the terminology, but I believe at the DH we log on via a high-speed connection called a T-1 line. That’s a good thing, because it makes it easy to book hotel rooms, order new motorcycle tires, watch movie trailers, etc. Oh yeah, and do our work too.

On Wednesday and Thursday, though, it’s as if we were back to the 14400 modem days, minus that oddly endearing collection of static and other noises a modem makes as it connects.

Literally, you’d go to open up a web page — any page — and it would take long enough that you could get yourself a cup of coffee as you waited — from a java stand in, say, Lebanon.

Anymore, our work is so centered around the Internet, in a wide variety of ways, that the glacial pace with which everything loaded threatened to grind the whole operation to a halt.

It wasn’t always so, however.

The DH was, in all honesty, embarrassingly late in joining the online party. In the mid-1990s, when the Internet first came to the newsroom, we had exactly one computer with Web access, via a modem of course. We also had one email address for the entire newsroom, effectively rendering a wonderfully useful tool more trouble than it was worth.

This seems hard to believe, but it’s true: We did not have Web access at every reporter and editor’s desk, and individual email accounts, until February 2001. Prior to that, it was somewhat humiliating to have to tell people, for example, that email wasn’t really a very good way to send us information because it was such a production to retrieve it.

Anyway, by the end of the day Thursday, our Web situation wasn’t quite back to normal but it had improved enough that the Internet was usable again — that is, I could check the Linn County Circuit Court docket online faster than I could just walk over to the courthouse and look at it in person.

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As far as musical groups go, the Rovers are not really my cup of tea, but their music wasn’t punishing to me either. And that’s a good thing, because I spent many hours in the rocking chair getting one or both kids to sleep with the Rovers’ work filtering through the stereo speakers.

One song in particular that I remember was called “The Orange and the Green,” which sort of deals with how Catholics wear green on St. Patrick’s Day and Protestants, to distinguish themselves from the Catholics, wear orange.

Prior to hearing that song — like, 500 times — I didn’t know much about the day’s, or the faiths’, color-coded nature.

As a kid, like most kids, I learned to wear green on St. Patrick’s Day, lest I get pinched. As an adult, I sort of stopped doing that anyway, and then when I learned it was really a Catholic thing — nothing against Catholics, but I am not one — I figured I wouldn’t restart.

As a Protestant, technically I should’ve been wearing orange, but I decided against that too because, stupid as this might sound, I didn’t feel like doing anything, no matter how tiny, to promote the notion of sectarian divisiveness.

For that and other reasons, the pseudo-holiday that St. Patrick’s Day is in America holds no allure for me. However, in a nod to it anyway, this week’s list deals with the Top 7 things associated with Ireland or the Irish. Here we go (and forgive me, I wanted to use images, but our Internet connection at the paper yesterday was glacially slow):

1) Leprechauns.

2) The Blarney Stone.

3) Guinness.

4) The potato famine.

5) The Kennedys.

6) James Joyce.

7) Notre Dame.

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Comeback? I hadn’t realized the backpack had fallen out of favor.

Turns out the press release was from a company called Yak Pak that’s “pioneered the trend in bringing fashionable prints to the backpack market, thus transforming these bags that were once simply schoolyard staples into a fashion accessory that’s meant to be more than carried — it’s meant to be worn!”

I attemped to include the attached photo here, but it was going to take more work than I had time for. Sorry. Just think bright and garish.

Contrary to what the PR writer would have me believe, I still look at the backpack as a schoolyard staple — though it wasn’t always so, at least not in my world.

Unlike the elementary-schoolers of today, nobody had a backpack at my grade school, Riverside, in Milwaukie. I don’t recall anybody carrying anything other than maybe a book or two, a lunch box or sack, and maybe some PE clothes.

In junior high, many of the guys, including yours truly, carried books and other stuff in a smallish gym bag bearing the logo and colors of wherever we’d be going to high school: Putnam or Milwaukie usually, in some cases Clackamas or LaSalle. We then kept using those bags after getting to high school.

Backpacks, as I’d learned from my older brothers, were something college kids used. Duane had an Army rucksack, Craig a bright orange civilian model, both devoid of the zippers that make the modern backback easy to open and close.

I ended up with a dark blue Jansport model that got me through four years at OSU, then never gave much thought to the whole backpack thing again until my oldest kid, now 6 weeks shy of 22 and a senior at OSU, was about to start kindergarten. Among the supplies he’d need was a backpack.

As luck would have it, I just happen to have a photo of the Mickey Mouse pack with which he began his educational career; the shot was taken, with both Bob and me unawares, by my former colleague, Tony Overman, and it’s been on my desk for at least 15 years:

Yes, as a matter of fact, my shirt does say “River Rat,” and the pictured rodent is in fact holding a can of Coors; the shirt was kind of a nod to the many hours I spent as a kid at the Clackamas River … yes, drinking the occasional Coors at the same time.

Anyway, Bob’s need for a backpack as a 5-year-old signaled for me that times had really changed in the area of student luggage since I was in  school.

So when did backpacks take hold as a schoolyard staple? Anyone out there know?

And also speaking of backpacks, I’ve noticed the ones kids, even little kids, use are getting bigger all the time. Some of the ones I see are so large, I could pack in enough supplies for a hike across Oregon.

Hope we don’t end up with a generation of kids with back/shoulder injuries from the weight of all the stuff, whatever it is, that they’re hauling around.

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Back then there were a lot of pics on that board, of various subjects — ranging from Pete, Linc and Julie of “The Mod Squad” to 1960s Pittsburgh Pirate catcher Smoky Burgess — and the kids started looking the display over.

Truthfully, they were fairly disinterested in the newspaper, so I thought instead just to quiz them about three of the bigger names whose images were before them.

“The guy with the harmonica — anyone know who that is?” I asked. “Or the guy throwing the football? Or the guy in the coat and tie?”

“That’s Bob Dole,” one girl said, referring to the man wearing the tie.

“No,” I said. “That’s Richard Nixon.”

Blank looks and silence followed.

“President in the late 1960s and early 1970s, went to China, resigned amid the Watergate scandal?”

No one in the group had heard of Nixon. Or of legendary quarterback Johnny Unitas, “The Best There Ever Was.” Or of Bob Dylan.

That prompted me to write a column on what I call “cultural literacy,” which to me means knowing enough about major figures, dates, places, etc. that, well, you don’t embarrass yourself by your lack of knowledge.

This came up again recently when I suggested to my wife that everyone should be familiar with “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.” She disagreed, but I posted that question on Facebook and roughly a dozen people agreed with me, against no dissent.

The other day in the newsroom, I described my colleague Karen Petersen as “the Larry Bird of city editors,” and another co-worker didn’t know who Larry Bird was. So I posted on Facebook, “Everyone should know who Larry Bird is, true or false.”

I think the vote tally was 17 trues, zero falses.

Footnote: Everyone should know who Bruce Springsteen is too, but apparently when Bird was midway through his NBA career, in the late 1980s, so focused was he on his craft that he was not familiar with the Boss. Asking someone who Springsteen was, Bird was said to be told, “He’s the you of rock and roll.”

Pretty apt description, really.

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Long story short, basically what the nonpaid job entailed was scheduling, publicizing and running the panel’s meetings, which, for reasons that seemed beyond my control, became increasingly worse attended as time progressed.

Partway through my term, I decided that this type of volunteer activity was not the sort that suited me best — basically, I hate meetings — and resolved, upon completion of my term, to step aside in favor of someone else.

Apparently, that someone else never materialized because for at least a half-dozen years additional years I regularly received mail from Benton County addressed to me as the NBCAC Chairman, even after I called the county to make plain my status as ex-chairman.

My point here, though, is not to make the county look  bad; these things happen.

Here’s my point: Volunteerism is a fantastic thing, and a big key is volunteering in areas you actually enjoy and are at least sort of good at.

For example, I coached my son Bob in baseball and basketball through eighth grade and absolutely loved the experience. I was the scorekeeper for my daughter Pam’s basketball teams and loved that too. And in both cases, especially the coaching, I really felt like I was making a positive difference.

Nowadays I’m involved with group called Fences for Fido. One of the organizers is my friend Kelly Peterson, a former Albany and Lebanon resident who now lives in Portland and works for the Humane Society of the United States.

FFF’s clients are families with dogs who for one reason or another are chained up a lot of the time, or in some cases all the time. For these families, the group fences in part of their yard for the dog, for free, thanks to those who donate supplies and labor.

I’m one of the laborers. I love dogs and, having lived most of my adult life in the country, I’m a better than average fence builder, so this is a great fit for me. We built a fence in Albany on Saturday, and FFF will return to Linn County on April 10 with “builds” in Lebanon, Waterloo and Sweet Home. Get ahold of me if you’re interested in helping out.

My other regular volunteer activity these days, if you can call it that, is donating blood — every 55 days, as often as the Red Cross allows. It’s a really easy way to do something important, especially for someone like me with great veins; that’s what the phlebotomists always tell me anyway.

I’m giving blood this afternoon in fact, at the Old Armory Building in Albany. Maybe I’ll see you there.

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What I am, though, when it comes to clothing matters, is someone who has an interest in looking the part, whatever that part may be — that is, I do believe wholeheartedly in wearing appropriate clothes for the situation.

That’s why, when I spoke at West Albany High’s annual career day last week, I wore a coat and tie. To be more specific, I wore a coat and tie because when I was in high school at Rex Putnmam — which albeit was a long time ago — the most legit teachers (outside of PE class) wore coats and ties, including the most legit of them all, physics teacher extraordinaire Dave Cox.

Cox, btw, grew up in Albany and now lives a stone’s throw both from the DH and from West.

Anyway, in honor Mr. Cox and all the others of his era who shaped my views on what a high school teacher should look like, I wore a jacket and tie to West since I, like a teacher, would be addressing classrooms full of students.

Likewise, when I know I’ll be covering something in court or interviewing a judge, I typically dress that way as well, or maybe even wear one of my two suits.

If I know I’m going to be working on a story outdoors — like the day a couple weeks ago when I spent the afternoon at various tree farm locations in Sweet Home — it’s obviously going to be jeans and boots.

If I’m just going to be in the newsroom, I may or may not wear a tie, but either way I do try to effect a look consistent with what you’d expect to see in an office.

It just seems a decent idea, if you want to be taken seriously, to make an effort to wear the kinds of clothes most reasonable people would wear in the same circumstances.

Obviously attire is far from the most important aspect of a person, but it is important in a way. It’s kind of like the front porch of a house in that it gives a hint as to what’s on the inside, what the rest of the package is like.

Might as well give a constructive hint as long as you’re giving one.

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Today’s deals with appropriate service and sermon length. It’s come to my attention that there’s a church in the mid-valley where the services routinely last more than a couple hours and that the minister allows himself 45 minutes for a sermon and usually overruns it.

I found that shocking. To me, a church service should be an hour, tops, and if a sermon goes 15 minutes, that’s about right. Most people I know have neither limitless attention spans, nor tons of time on their hands to devote to that long sitting in church.

I mean, wouldn’t it be better to spend an hour in church and hour, say, mowing the lawn of a disabled person or doing some other act of kindness?

And how could you possibly expect a kid to sit through a two-hour church service and get anything out of it?

What do you think? When it comes to how long church should last, is more better, or is the law of diminishing returns in effect?

On a related topic, I heard a great interview on NPR Friday morning. Check it out.

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Running, as in pounding the pavement or logging laps on the track — as opposed to driving for a layup or trying to score from second base — is just … boring. Not as boring as swimming, of course, but mind-numbing nonetheless.

Still, I have been dutifully running 3 miles about three times a week for the last few weeks in preparation for the CARDV Mother’s Day Run/Walk for Safe Families on May 8.

Why? Well, a couple reasons.

One is that, if I’m going to enter some competition, any competition, I’m going to prepare for it as best I can. Don’t get me wrong — I have no illusions of winning my age group or anything like that. I just want to ready my joints to take the punishment of road running so I can turn in a time close to my 5K personal record of 22 minutes flat — set, admittedly, like 15 years ago.

But the main one is a bit deeper, more philosophical: If the women whom CARDV assists can summon the courage and strength to break free from their hellishly oppressive situations, then I can certainly muster the motivation to get out and train for CARDV’s fundraising event.

That’s the main reason I went out in the driving rain at about 7 p.m. Thursday night. It was my day to run, that was my first real chance to do so, and I was going to put in the miles no matter how wet I got.

Which, as it turned out, was pretty stinking wet. My rain gear wasn’t really up to the amount of H20 that fell from the sky but, well, who cares. It’s just water.

Bottom line, if at all possible, please turn out for the run and help CARDV generate funds to assist some of our communities’ most vulnerable people. At the present time, the nonprofit has no physical presence in Linn County, even though 60 percent of its clients from Linn.

Its long-term plan is to establish shelters in Linn County as it has in Benton County, and the more money it brings in, the faster that can happen. The need for action against this societal problem is great and urgent, so please do what you can to help, even if, like me, you don’t necessarily like to run.

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Thankfully, in addition to a collection of photographs, I have a handful of his personal effects to remember him by, including:

– The cribbage board he bought for himself in the early 1930s, when he was about 13.

– The jacket from his 1947 softball team, which won the city championship in Crookston, Minn., his hometown.

– And his Joe DiMaggio model Spalding baseball glove, a split-finger beauty from the war era.

Partly because I have a glove with his name on it, partly because he hit in an astonishing 56 straight games, and partly because of the way he made things look so easy on the field, always in control and with an economy of motion, DiMaggio has always been one of my favorite players.

And, though the reference confused the man himself, I always thought it was cool that DiMaggio was mentioned in Simon and Garfunkel’s “Mrs. Robinson,” the de facto theme song of 1967’s Best Picture, “The Graduate”:

“Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio, our nation turns its lonely eyes to you. What’s that’s you say, Mrs. Robinson? Joltin’ Joe has left and gone away.”

Partly because of the Yankee Clipper reference, and partly just because I like both the song and the movie, “Mrs. Robinson” is in fact my favorite Simon and Garfunkel song. Here’s the rest of the Top 7:

2. America.

3. I am a Rock.

4. April, Come She Will.

5. Fakin’ it.

6. The Sound of Silence.

7. Kathy’s Song.

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