The Minneapolis Tribune reported on a curious trend among co-eds at the University of Minnesota: Wearing large hats to class to conceal widespread … doily making?

Co-Eds Impose on
Guileless Professors

Directoire Hats Enable Col-
lege Girls to Sew in
Classes.

A “Hats Off” Rule May
Have to Be Pro-
mulgated.

Co-eds at the University of Minnesota have recently begun to show a remarkable ingenuity in the art of living up to the old proverb of “improving each flying moment,” and at the same time are acting in a mean manner toward their various instructors by taking an undue advantage of the fashion of wearing the wide “merry widow” hats.

	Multiply this by a dozen or so and you’ll have some idea what the professors were up against. (Photo courtesy mnhs.org)

Girls at the university have in nearly all their classes been allowed to wear their hats to class. Many girls have been in the habit of smuggling a novel or the Minnesota Daily into a back row of seats, and, screened from the eagle eye of the professor, have read more “interesting” literature on the side.

With the advent this fall of the more copious “directoire lids,” the co-eds who drew the back seats in the recitation rooms have been encouraged to take up a more practical subject than the reading of literature. Under the regime of the newest millinery creations it is now impossible for instructors of very large classes to see what those in the back rows are doing.

Hence, in the last two weeks a fad has sprung up among a certain group of girls, who may be seen nearly every day sitting quietly in the rear of their classroom, industriously sewing away, and fashioning wonderful creations in doilies, sofa pillows, exquisite drawn work, and other creations known to feminine witchcraft. Many say that this is an argument for a sewing school to be established at the university, but there are others who say that the professors should pass a “hats off” rule to apply in the recitation rooms.

	At the end of a long day in about 1910, these U students retreated to Sanford Hall and donned less bulky nightcaps. (Photo courtesy mnhs.org)

Where were you when Tommy Kramer led the Vikings to an astonishing comeback over Cleveland at Met Stadium on a chilly December afternoon nearly 30 years ago? A colleague on the copy desk recalls that she and her dad were listening to the game on the car radio, and that he pulled over on Franklin Avenue after Ahmad Rashad’s winning catch so that they could jump up and down in celebration. I, too, was listening on a car radio, running solo errands in the same part of Minneapolis. I let out a whoop but didn’t stop the Pinto wagon or even honk its horn, though I distinctly remember hearing many others honking theirs.

Minutes later, the Tribune’s Joe Soucheray was in the visitors’ locker room at the Met, gathering fodder for this page one account of the “miracle catch.”

Sign of the times (1): It appears that the Tribune sent only one photographer and two reporters – not counting Sid Hartman — to cover a home game that had playoff implications. Nowadays, such a game would draw three times as many staffers, with or without Brett Favre wearing purple.

Sign of the times (2): By advancing to the playoffs with this victory, each Viking pocketed an extra — wait for it – $5,000.

Vikings win title again, but … it was no less than astonishing

By Joe Soucheray
Staff Writer

Maybe we have become too cinematic with this game of football and all its pretentions, but Sunday afternoon at Metropolitan Stadium the ball seemed to travel its arc through onrushing dusk as though in slow motion. There aren’t many moments like it, when the season is on the light end of the scale and the football is sailing through the air to upraised hands in the end zone and thousands of cold and disbelieving fans have stopped in their tracks to the exits.

The Vikings trailed Cleveland by a point, 23-22, and Tommy Kramer had just launched a pass from the Browns’ 46-yard line into the right corner of the end zone, with four seconds showing on the scoreboard clock. Terry LeCount, Ahmad Rashad and Sammy White had been deployed to the right corner, LeCount in the middle as if it had been a wing formation. The clock ticked down to zero with the ball in flight. The Browns had responded by sending out a fleet of six deep backs, most principally Thom Darden, the eight-year safety out of Michigan.

	Vikings quarterback Tommy Kramer embraced wide receiver Ahmad Rashad after the two hooked up for the winning touchdown against Cleveland at Met Stadium in Bloomington on Dec. 14, 1980. (Star Tribune photo by Duane Braley)

“I chose to stick with White,” Darden said later in his locker room. “I am sure the ball was intended for White to tip to Rashad. In my mind White was the tip man and I wasn’t going to permit it.”

“Where was Rashad?” somebody said.

“At that point I was between White and Rashad,” Darden said. “Suddenly, White stopped. When he stopped, I stopped. And when he went into the air I went with him. I did get a hand on the ball.”

“Where was Rashad now?” somebody said.

“By now he was in the vicinity,” Darden said.

Rashad caught the ball, on what the Vikings insist was a tip off White’s fingers. Rashad was near the 2-yard line and he backed in, victorious in this astonishing and totally unlikely game of volleyball that had given the Vikings a victory and yet another Central Division championship. It was almost a replay of the ball Drew Pearson of the Cowboys caught in the shadow of Nate Wright at the Met in a 1975 first-round play-off game.

“I wasn’t going to allow Sammy to tip the ball, much less catch it,” Darden was saying. “And I ended up tipping it to Rashad. It did not occur to any of us – me or Rashad or White – what had happened until we heard the crowd reaction.”

In the Cleveland locker room later there was an occasional curse. Dirty laundry was flung this way and that. A television newsman discovered Cleveland coach Sam Rutigliano in the corner of the bathroom.

“Can we get a live interview?” the TV man said.

“How can you?” Rutigliano said. “I’m a dead man.”

Rutigliano was more than gracious, almost bemused by what had just happened. He couldn’t for the life of him remember Darden as his primary defender on the miracle catch.

“It was great concentration by a great player,” Rutigliano said of the catch. “It was a 30-foot putt and he’ll never make it again, but it was memorable. Neither team got much pressure to the quarterback today and the quarterbacks proved resourceful, didn’t they?”

“Are you as cool on the inside as you appear on the outside?” Rutigliano was asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “You’d have to perform an autopsy.”

As interesting as the miracle catch – or more accurately, as astonishing – was a Brian Sipe pass intercepted by Bobby Bryant minutes earlier in the fourth quarter. Cleveland held a 23-15 lead with nearly five minutes left in the game and the Browns were cruising upfield when Sipe chose to pass on a second-and-nine from his own 41 yard line. The pass was intended for Reggie Rucker.

“That was an option screen play,” Rutigliano said. “It worked well for us earlier in the game. We were thinking first down. We were thinking ball possession. I had warned the team at half time that the Vikings were an extremely patient team.”

“Were you surprised that Sipe passed at that point?” [Vikings coach] Bud Grant was asked.

“Not at all,” Grant said. “They’ve always used the short pass as a form of ball control. Bobby Bryant just cheated a little. He knew that Sipe wouldn’t throw deep and he moved in front of Rucker.”

“Rucker was the intended receiver,” Sipe said over in his quarters. “But in retrospect I wish I would have dumped it off to Cleo Miller, which was my option on the play. But hey, even after that I didn’t think we were in trouble.”

But the Vikings struck quickly with a touchdown to Rashad. Cleveland got the ball back and eventually punted, giving Minnesota its final possession at the Minnesota 20-yeard line with 14 seconds left in the game. The play that moved the team downfield was a pass to Joe Senser and the subsequent lateral to Teddy Brown, a play that moved the ball from the Viking 20 to the Cleveland 46, from where Kramer struck with the miracle throw.

“A flea flicker is what beat us as much as anything,” Calvin Hill said afterwards. “A damn good flea flicker, that Senser-to-Brown play.”

But it was the catch that people will remember, one of those great moments in sports that can be called up in the mind and played over and over again. It did take the chill off a winter day, all that heat and passion boiled down to the final play of a football game.

	The fans who streamed out of Met Stadium with the Vikings trailing Cleveland by eight points with less than five minutes to go missed this scene: Ahmad Rashad stepping backward into the end zone for the winning touchdown. (Star Tribune photo by William Seaman)

Some older readers – hi, Aunt Shirley! — may have childhood memories of Longfellow Gardens, a zoo adjacent to Minnehaha Falls. It opened in 1907 and attracted thousands of visitors each year before closing in 1934.

At its peak the Minneapolis zoo boasted a variety of animals: hippos, zebras, camels, elephants and, of course, lions and tigers and bears. Most were kept in small pens, pits or cages, but deer, elk, flamingos and sea lions were allowed to roam the grounds, at least in the early years.

In 1907, one sea lion decided he’d had enough of the place and found a way out. The Tribune took a fanciful approach to Paupukeewis’ escape, with reports suggesting that the animal “flip-flopped” over Minnehaha Falls and made his way down the Mississippi River, stopping briefly at a houseboat in “Lillydale” on his way south in search of “sunny climes.”

In this initial report, the Tribune informed readers that the escapee “wore a plain suit of shiny black” and answered readily to the name of Paupukeewis. The clever mammal proved elusive. Despite numerous sightings in the days that followed, Paupukeewis was never recaptured.

Roaring Sea Lion
Is Rolling Along
to Sunny Climes

Paupukeewis, the sea lion which R.F. Jones thought was tame enough to stand without being hitched, has neglected to wire its master since it left its beautiful suburban home in Longfellow Gardens and went splashing down the Mississippi. Thinking it might have decided to spend a few days at that delightful down-the-river bathing place, Harriet Island, Mr. Jones has forwarded its description that it may be apprehended, but thus far no one seems to have seen the animal there.

Mr. Jones is afraid Paupukeewis is intending to make his way to the gulf and then wait around until the completion of the Panama canal, when it will cross to the Pacific to visit relatives at its former home, Santa Barbara, Cal.

The sea lion is said to have made a friendly overture to one John Knutson, a sorter on the St. Paul boom, to the extent of biting a piece out of his trousers and to have paddled away with the sample. Another report of the missing animal described him loitering lazily at the mouth of the Minnesota river, but plain-clothes men sent out from Longfellow Gardens failed to locate Paupukeewis.

Mr. Jones is afraid the animal will be the target of some sportsman who will mistake him for a great river monster, and to hasten the return of the pet he has offered rewards.

When it left home the sea lion wore a plain suit of shiny black, and it answers readily to the name of Paupukeewis.

Wearing his trademark top hat, zoo founder and owner Robert (Fish) Jones fed some of the sea lions that still roamed the grounds in about 1910. Click here for more photos of the zoo. (Photo courtesy mnhs.org)