Over Labor Day weekend of 2002, the author attended the thirtieth annual conference of the North American Society for Sport History (NASSH) at French Lick Resort in French Lick, Indiana, where he worked as a student assistant for college credit.  What follows are some of his experiences and observations.

Friday, May 24

    10:00 am, EDT: As I wake up this morning, I realize the worst thing about this gig will be rousing myself from the arms of Morpheus at such an uncivilized hour.  I have to be up in French Lick at 12:00 pm to work the registration table.  Though it’s about an hour drive from my home in New Albany to French Lick, I realize I have plenty of time to get there, as central Indiana is an hour behind us–the result of a primitive State legislature that refuses to recognize Daylight Saving Time.

    11:30 am, EST: I arrive in French Lick with plenty of time to spare.  The town of French Lick and its neighboring city, West Baden, both feature large resorts which were very popular in the first half of the twentieth century, as evidenced by a picture hanging in French Lick Resort of Governor Franklin Roosevelt attending a 1931 US governor’s conference.  However, to my mind, it appears as if the entire backward town is hanging by a thread, living on past glories.  The resort, though still somewhat impressive, is quite run down and overpriced.  Both resorts, French Lick and West Baden Springs, are built near mineral springs, the sulfuric (or “Pluto”) water of which was reputed to have “healing” qualities.  One could argue that excess wealth equals excess idiocy, because how anyone could ever believe that water that smells like raw sewage could be therapeutic is beyond me.
    Other than the resort, French Lick really doesn’t seem to have much to offer.  A train museum, a Dairy Queen, a bed and breakfast, and that’s about it.  The bars close at 2:00 am, and the only type of live entertainment that comes through are no-name and has-been country acts like Shenandoah.  One saving grace is that an enterprising liquor store owner appears to have capitalized on the town’s name, opening a chain of liquor stores called “French Liquors,” complete with a sign featuring open lips and extended tongue.
    I spy Dr John Findling, my history professor who’s organized this conference, as soon as I enter the lobby.  As the first student slave there, the good doctor immediately puts me to work, helping his wife Carol to set up the registration table.  The registration process is fairly simple, consisting of crossing out names, passing out conference packets and free miniature Louisville Sluggers and other gifts, collecting money from those who’ve yet to pay, and generally being friendly and cordial.
    I’m soon joined by Tommy, a fellow student slave, and we quickly have the registration process down to a fine art form.  Dr Findling and Carol remain close at hand in case anything unexpected happens, but for the most part everything runs smoothly.  Many attendees are already at the resort and soon we’re registering about three or four people every ten to fifteen minutes.  Most of the NASSH members are rather nondescript, but there are a few characters who seem to stick out.  Tony Mangan, a cordial gentleman from the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, with his bushy eyebrows and unruly shock of black hair, has a rather Dickensian look about him.  Sam Regalado, of California State University, Stanislaus, though friendly, is overshadowed by the scent of his strong cologne, adding an unnecessary “rico suave” element to his aura.

  3:00 pm, EST: Hunger strikes, so I decide to sample the culinary wonders of French Lick/West Baden.  Turns out there isn’t much: a Chinese place, a pizza joint, the aforementioned Dairy Queen, and a local diner where the food’s decent but it takes forever to get served.  The Chinese place is closed, so I opt for the pizza joint.  The pizza’s pretty good, but the dining experience is somewhat hampered by the fact that they’re in the middle of remodeling.  One thing I notice on my way to and from the resort: though French Lick/West Baden are overrated and unimpressive, they do play host to an inordinate number of attractive young women.

  4:00 pm: The rest of the afternoon is spent at the registration desk.  During that time, several other student workers stop by to hang out or say “hi”: Greg, Travis, Brian, Antwain, and Jennifer.  At one point, one of the conference attendees, a middle-aged guy named “Mel,” approaches Tommy and myself, explaining that he didn’t get his mini Louisville Slugger when he signed in.  Each bat has a different signature, so this guy decides to go through every bat in the damn box before he finds one with a signature that he approves of.  To top it off, the bastard doesn’t even put the bats back in the box!  Though Tommy and I don’t really find the guy’s behavior offensive, we do find it extremely annoying.  I later point Mel out to Jennifer and tell her, “That guy’s an ass.”  She would approach me the next day and say, “You’re right, that guy is an ass!”  Apparantly she had her own run-in with the guy.
    Tommy has to make an airport run to Louisville, and another fellow student, Brian takes his place until he has to leave for the airport himself.  I play the Lone Ranger (occasionally assisted by Carol and/or John) until registration closes about 6:30 or so, and help Dr Findling pack everything away.

7:30 pm, EST: I, along with my fellow student workers, resplendent in our grey “Indiana University Southeast” t-shirts, take advantage of the free booze and cheese offered for the first hour of the NASSH Welcome Party.  French Lick shows what a classy establishment it is by offering only highest quality white trash beer, Budweiser and Miller Light.  Mostly the student workers hang out amongst ourselves and any significant others brought along.  I manage to engage a few of the conference attendees in conversation while trying to down as many free beers as possible, but most of them seem more interested in catching up with old friends from previous sports conferences.  The one I talk to longest is a grad student named Ryan, whose thesis concerns the image of the “all-American boy.”  Though there are a few attractive women present, they seem to be of two prevailing types: A) taken, and B) playing for the other team.  I don’t mind, though, I’m having a good time.  Tommy is entertaining us all–despite being a fairly large guy and only on his second beer, he’s quite wasted.
    The party soon thins when they start charging for booze, so Tommy and I decide to hit the pizza place.  Many of the conference attendees seem to have the same idea, and Tommy and I quickly become acquainted with an international trio sitting at a neighboring booth: Lars, from Germany; an American named Jerry; and a Korean named Bang-Chool (I actually think his name is “Punctual” until I see his name tag the next morning).  They’re all grad students except for Bang-Chool, who has just recently received his doctorate.  Nice guys.

    10:30 pm, EST: Tommy decides to call it a night, but I’m not done yet, so I head back to the resort and hit the bar.  This weekend’s “entertainment” proves that either A) French Lick Resort’s entertainment budget could barely fund the local puppet show; or B) the people that do the booking are deaf.  “Ten Feet Tall” is the name of the act, a woman in her early thirties playing sentimental seventies hits by the likes of James Taylor on an acoustic guitar, as well as some rather mediocre orginals.  However, since there isn’t crap elsewhere in this God-forsaken town, and this is where the booze is, I decide to remain.  I strike up a conversation with a couple of people, a guy from Texas named Mike who’s here for some family event, and Linda, a NASSH conference attendee who I think was from either Pennsylvania or somewhere out west.

    1:00 am, EST: I decide I’ve had enough and go on to have my most memorable experience of the entire trip.  The good people at IUS, too financially strained to spring for a room at the resort, have nevertheless dug deep into their pockets and supplied the students with a room at the “Ritz,” a cheap motel near Paoli, several miles down the road.
    I cross the bridge into neighboring West Baden, and just as I’m about to turn onto SR 56, I get pulled over.  The cop gets out and tells me that I was speeding.  Of course, I did not realize I was speeding, as any posted signs must have been well-hidden in order for this bunghole of a town to generate revenue, but I don’t tell the cop this.  He asks me where I’m coming from, my destination, and so on.  I put on my best face, explaining how I’m working for one of my professors at the sports history conference, trying to sound as upstanding as possible.  The cop tells me that he smells alcohol and asks me to get out of the truck.  Just what I need, to call Dr Findling and tell him I’m in jail.  By this time, another cop has shown up.  The first cop gives me the breathalyzer, but screws up the settings, so he has to wait for cop number two to set his (apparently West Baden cops are only expected to catch one drunk per night, maximum).  While we’re waiting for cop number two to get his doohickey ready, cop number one gives me the field test–walking the line, touching my nose, etc.  Even though this is an inconvenience, I must admit that these cops are more polite than most I’ve dealt with.  Cop number two is finally ready, and I blow hard and fast.  He this asks how much I’ve had to drink that night.  I tell him that I had about two beers in the last three hours (though it may have been closer to three in the last two).  Cop number two says, “That sounds about right,” and throws the blow tube down while number one returns my license and gives me a written warning for speeding.  Unable to believe my good fortune, I slowly drive to the motel and go to bed.

Saturday, May 25

    7:00 am, EST: I wake up (thanks to Travis and his alarm) and prepare to get ready, as I have to play AV coordinator at 8:00 am.  Unfortunately, the “Ritz” is not, as I quickly discover upon entering the shower.  It seems that there is no hot water.  Undeterred, I shower as fast as I can and get dressed.  Meanwhile, Travis has called down to the front desk of the Ritz, and they tell him to try turning the “cold” knob–this works, of course, and I remain the only one who gets a cold shower at the Ritz.

    8:00 am, EST: I arrive at the resort and quickly wolf down breakfast from Dairy Queen.  My main job today will be to make sure nothing goes wrong with the AV equipment, and transfer anything needed to different rooms.  Meanwhile, I’m expected to sit in on a few of the lectures in order to lend some academic credibility to this excursion.

    8:30 am, EST: The first session I attend is entitled, “‘Bad’ Bodies, ‘Good’ Bodies,” featuring two lectures, one on somatotyping (somewhat like astrology based on body type) by Patricia Vertinsky of the University of British Columbia, and the other on prostitution in early America by Nancy Struna of the University of Maryland.  Though it might sound otherwise, I actually found the one on somatotyping far more interesting.

   10:05 am, EST: The next session I sit in on is entitled “Reconstructing Lives Through Research.”  The first lecture was by Don Kyle of the University of Texas, Arlington, whose topic was a woman of ancient Sparta named Kyniska who won several Olympic victories.  Though I found this lecture fascinating, most people seemed rather bored.  In contrast, the following presentation by Russell Field, a graduate student at the University of Toronto, received high praises from everyone, including NASSH president Allen Guttmann.  Mr Field’s presentation was a biographical sketch of his grandfather’s shedding of his Jewish immigrant identity and assimilating into mainstream Canadian-American society, and the role that physical activity played in his life.  This by far was the most interesting session I attended the entire weekend.

    12:00 pm, EST: Though I’m signed up to go on a Louisville field trip to Churchill Downs and the Louisville Slugger Museum, Tommy is going instead.  Worn out, I decide to head home until Monday, when I’m next scheduled to work the conference.

Monday, May 27

    8:00 am, EST: I arrive that morning to find that I’m the only student working the conference today, as everyone else is either off, or doing airport runs.  Again, I’ll mainly be doing AV stuff, but I’ll also be doing anything else Dr Findling needs me for.  This evening, I’ll be collecting tickets for the banquet, which I should also be able to attend once all the tickets are taken.

    8:30 am, EST: My first session today is a real sleeper–“Baseball Roundtable: The Legitimacy of Baseball: Its Place in American Historiography.”  This session consisted of a panel of three sports historians discussing how “baseball history” fits in with “real” history.  Personally, I saw this as something akin to a bunch of men with low self-esteem holding a discussion entitled “Does Size Really Matter?”

    1:15 pm, EST: I attended a few lectures earlier, but none of them were very memorable.  After luch, I attend the Graduate Student Essay Award.  This year’s recipient is Jennifer Guiliano, a rather attractive young woman from Miami University of Ohio.  Her essay is entitled “Sports Mascots as Illegitimate Identities: A Case Study of Miami University’s Redskins.”  I find her essay, though it is well-written and makes some good points, to be little more than rehashed, overly-sensitive political correctness.  At one point she mentions that the particular Indian tribe sees the mascot as an honor, but yet she goes on to imply that the tribal members are misguided–an attitude which strikes me as taking on the “white man’s burden” in order to show the “savages” the error of their ways.  When the time to field questions comes, I ask if other ethnic mascots should also be targeted, such as Notre Dame’s “Fighting Irish.”  She’s all for this, of course, but feels the Indian mascots must be dealt with first.

    3:00 pm, EST: I’m out on the hotel’s veranda, sitting in a rocking chair while talking with David Zang of Towson University, when Dr Frank Thackeray of IUS shows up.  Zang regales us with his tales of a sixties all-white R&B act that he’s doing a biography on, while the two of us sit in rapt attention.  Pretty soon, it’s time for me to get back to work, so I take off.

    4:00 pm, EST: The last session I attend is called “Sport Performance and the Erotic.”  The highlight is a lecture by Thierry Terret of the University of Lyon entitled “Sport in Erotic: Sportswomen in Erotic Photos, France Annees Folles,” in which he showed several French postcards from the early part of the twentieth century featuring photos of half-naked women posing with various types of sporting gear.  Overall, I found the postcards more curious than erotic, but then again, I’m viewing them from a twenty-first century perspective.

    7:00 pm, EST: The banquet goes off without a hitch, and the food’s pretty good (though not quite worth the $35.00 price tag–yet another example of the resort’s hype).  I sit with Thackeray as Dr Findling gives his big speech, thanking Carol, the students, and everyone else.  After dinner, I say my goodbyes to everyone and make my way back home, exhausted but glad for the experience.