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Whether your genealogy research emphasizes family trees and dates or expands into the realm of family history, you will find that city directories are an essential tool. While the United States Census records provide family insights in 10-year increments, city directories can fill in many of the years in between. The older ones typically included an address, occupation and often spouses.
You can use city directories to add details and color to your family history, or use them to determine where your ancestors lived in the years between the census.
You also may make discoveries as I did when researching my great-grandfather's uncle John Bruce who we knew lived in San Francisco and worked in the ship building industry starting before the Civil War. What a surprise to find in the 1856 directory that both John and his brother Martin had arrived, were working as ship caulkers and living at Isthmus House. [See story]. The directories helped me picture John's life through 1905, the final entry that I can find for him. And added a brief yet exciting chapter to Martin's life as well.
Where can you find city directories that you can search via the Internet?
There are websites that can guide you to the city directories you need, both free and subscription:
> Cyndi's List: http://www.cyndislist.com/citydir.htm
> Online Historical Directories: http://sites.google.com/site/onlinedirectorysite/
> US City Directories: http://www.uscitydirectories.com/
I am excited about the many directories online and easy to use, free, at Internet Archive: Digital Library found online here: http://www.archive.org/
That's where I found dozens of San Francisco directories, helpful to my search for the life of John Bruce. I have found a good number of Atlanta and Chicago directories there as well, helpful for filing out details on other branches of my extended family. And checking now, I find city directories for Boston, Brooklyn, New York City and more.
While no Milwaukee directories are found there, the Internet Archive does have the 1891/1892 Wisconsin Gazetteer and Business Directory that can be helpful. And Caspar's guide and map of the city of Milwaukee: directory of streets, house numbers and electric car lines for 1904, a treasure for understanding city locations before many street names were changed so they matched east and west of the Milwaukee River. With engravings and listings, this guide also provides a lively look at Milwaukee 106 years ago.
You may find transcribed city and town directories on websites for those locations. Especially helpful to me are the early Milwaukee directories transcribed and posted at Links to the Past: http://linkstothepast.com/milwaukee/ctydir.php
Also invaluable were the transcribed directories for New Holstein and Calumet County, Wisconsin. These include:
> 1893 Patron Directory: http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~calumet/14.htm
> 1905 City and Rural Directory: http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~calumet/cd1905.htm
Finally, there are many city directories on subscription websites such as Ancestry.com, and I use those as well. You also can find them the old-fashioned way, in microfilm format from your area Family History Center. It was the 1866 Milwaukee Directory read on microfilm that finally confirmed a link in my Bradley family lineage that seemed to be correct. [See story].
No matter how you obtain them, make sure city directories are a key part of your genealogy research strategy. Best wishes for your family history research, and Happy Thanksgiving!
Please follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/BBPetura
Please join my group Finding Family for Free at GenealogyWise:
Thank you!


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Jennifer Aniston is the beauty envy of millions of women across the world. Despite being 43, the actress has a dewiness and glow to her skin that seems to (naturally) only occur in 23-year-olds. And then there's her hair. It's shiny and healthy and always perfectly "sun-kissed." Oh, and her body, too. Yeah, it's incredibly toned and all around amazing (those arms!). And let's not forget about her teeth, and her nails, and everything in between. In short, woman looks gooood.
But, obviously, all of this comes at a price. A steep price, actually. The Daily Mail just broke down the actress' monthly beauty bill, and ohmahgah, is it expensive! It takes a lot of work -- a boatloads of cash -- to make Jennifer Aniston look natural.
More from The Stir: The Beauty Secret That Makes Jennifer Aniston So 'Sexy'
The rough sum they came up with is $8,000. A month. Eight-thousand dollars a month! That's almost a year's worth of rent for me! That's four 10-day trips to France! That's ... insane(ly awesome). No wonder she looks as good as she does -- we all would look like Jen if we had her money. Here's the breakdown:
- Euoko neck cream made with crystals from the planet Mars, $450
- Tracie Martyn Spa Red Carpet Facials, $50.
- Tracie Martyn goodie bag of products, $390
- Mila Moursi Rejuvinating Serum, $350
- Neutrogena Facial Cleansing Bar, $2.50
- Dr. Hauschka Rose Day Cream, $40
- Private yoga sessions with Mandy Ingber, $$3,500
- Dietitian Carrie Watt's delivery service, $2,700
No, the Mars crystals thing isn't a joke. I just looked it up. And yes, I'm just as shocked as you are, and yes!, I have questions, too. (Who shoots off and actually gets the crystals? Does NASA really work for Jennifer Aniston?) And, remember peeps, this list is rough. Nowhere in here does it mention hair appointments or those crazy facial peels she has an affinity for. I bet in actuality, her monthly bill is closer to $10 grand.
Does all of this crap seem a little excessive? Of course. Would I do it if I had Jen's money? Of course. Why not? This isn't a tiny dent in our girl's bank account. But, I will say: Hot damn, does all this seem exhausting. Maybe she should add "massage" to the list.
Would you do all this if you had the money?
Addicted to beauty and style? Make sure you follow us on Pinterest, the virtual pin board that is seriously addicting! Check out some of our favorite boards, including Spring Style 2012, Celebrity Style, and our hilarious I'll Take That Dare style videos, and you'll see what we mean.
Image via Frazer Harrison/Getty

subset: commoncrawl


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WELCOME to Pioneer Farm Museum & Ohop Indian Village
Recalling the Past and Inspiring the Future
Escape to another century...
Journey back to the 1880's with our tour guides to experience homesteading in Washington state.
Then step back further, to before the first local contact with Europeans and experience our seasonal Ohop Indian Village.
We provide "HANDS ON" tours which educate while being a really fun time for children of all ages.
Our facilities are a little bit of today and a little bit of yesteryear.
Throughout these pages we'll give you an idea of what you can expect when you visit us.
By exploring through the links you will find out about the various tours we offer, how you can get us to come to you, and maybe even a few surprises.
We hope you enjoy your time here and come visit us soon. Please wear closed toe shoes so you can visit the animals inside their barn stalls.
Public Tours and Hours
Pioneer Farm Tour
Spring: March 15 through Fathers Day--Sat. & Sun., 11am-4pm
Summer: Fathers Day-Labor Day Weekend--Daily, 11am-4pm
Fall: Labor Day through day before Thanksgiving--Sat. & Sun., 11am-4pm
Winter: Closed--Thanksgiving Day through March 14
Native American Seasons Public Tour
Summer: Fathers Day-Labor Day Weekend---Fri., Sat. & Sun. @ 1:00 & 2:30
Reserved groups (20 paid admission fees) may schedule 7 days a week from
March 15 - day before Thanksgiving
The Pioneer Farm Museum is a not for profit 501(c)3 organization dedicated to providing living history, enviromental, and cultural education opportunities through hands-on activities and experiences.


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Author Robert Byrne once quipped, "Anyone who believes that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach flunked geography." This humorous statement hits home with what any adult with a brain knows: Sex is very, very important to men. Research consistently shows that between 80 and 90 percent of men view sex as the most important aspect of their marriage. When asked what one thing they would like to change in their marriages, they wish that their wives would be more interested in sex and more willing to initiate physical intimacy.1 Marriage experts Gary and Barbara Rosberg surveyed men about their sexual needs. The vast majority of men indicated that mutual pleasure and female initiation of sex were among their primary sexual needs.2
No doubt, our sexually explicit culture plays into the prominence of sex on a man's mind. He can't open the newspaper, turn on the television, surf the Net, or walk into a mall without being reminded of sexual desire. Yet long before the Internet or bikinis were invented, sexuality was an extremely powerful force in men's lives. History teaches us as much.
David and Bathsheba. Samson and Delilah. Reuben and Bilhah. Scripture is filled with references to and examples of men falling into sexual temptation. Archaeological discoveries reveal that civilizations thousands of years ago had houses of prostitution. Solomon's warnings in Proverbs and the exaltations in Song of Songs written 3,000 years ago are completely relevant today. Time and culture have changed the venues of expression, yet the power of a man's sex drive has remained a constant force of both intimacy and destruction.
Before we go too much further, let me acknowledge that you may be married to a man who falls into the 10 to 20 percent of men for whom sex isn't all-consuming. Although sex may not be as dominant a factor in your husband's life, it doesn't discount the fact that it's important. In fact, many men who avoid or minimize the impact of sex in their lives do so because of past painful experiences or because of the fear of future failure. Regardless of how often your husband thinks or talks about sex, make no mistake, it is a vital aspect of who he is as a man.
Understanding His Sexuality
Your husband doesn't want you to have sex with him because you feel guilty; he wants you to want to be with him!
Although the average wife acknowledges that her husband's sex drive is stronger than hers, she still tends to underestimate the impact this one aspect has on their relationship. According to a poll of 150 Christian married men, 83 percent stated that they don't believe that women understand a man's sex drive.1 Husbands feel alone with their secrets and desires; they are at a loss about how to communicate this to their wives. For many men, their attempts to bridge the gap have been met with disinterest or even disdain.
From the female perspective, male sexuality is often viewed as a sordid desire. It seems to represent the worst of masculinity — passion without love, drive without self-control, sensuality without sensitivity. I've talked to more than one wife who would rather pretend that her husband's sexuality just didn't exist. At best, women tend to compartmentalize their husbands' sexuality. Sex represents Mr. Hyde, tainting an otherwise moral and approachable Dr. Jekyll. Here's how one woman put it:
Although we have a pretty good marriage, sex feels like another chore on my list. I hate that my husband thinks about it so much and that he always wants it. I dread going to bed, fearing that he'll ask me for sex. Sometimes I find things to do around the house, hoping that he'll fall asleep before I'm ready for bed. I just wish I could shut him off somehow.
Truth be told, many wives can identify with this sentiment. Over time, their sex life has become a burden. They feel guilty for withholding and responsible to keep their husbands pure, but mostly they wish the whole ordeal could just be put on hold for a couple of years.
When we think about the relationship between sex and guilt, the natural link is feeling guilty about sexually immoral behavior, a flirtation at work, or a checkered past. Although these aspects of sexual sin often result in tremendous guilt, I believe even more women struggle with the "guilties" of not meeting their husbands' sexual needs.
Practically everything a Christian wife hears or reads about sex revolves around the message "Your husband needs sex, so give it up." After a hefty dose of guilt, she resolves to make sex more of a priority in her marriage. Her resolve lasts a while, but eventually she becomes resentful. She and her husband may be having sex more often, but it's not getting any better.
Although feeling guilty can cause you to examine your heart and actions, it isn't a good long-term motivator for change. Your sex life won't significantly improve because you feel bad about not meeting your husband's needs or because you're afraid he will cheat on you otherwise. Feelings of guilt are simply an indication that something is wrong. If you don't take the time to examine the underlying problem, you'll continue in the cycle of reacting to your guilt temporarily, only to fall into the same pattern of resentment. Besides, your husband doesn't want you to have sex with him because you feel guilty; he wants you to want to be with him!
This series is all about understanding your husband's sexuality and why sex is so important to your marriage, from his perspective. Please understand, this information isn't intended to add to your guilt. Instead, I pray that this series will challenge your heart. As you more fully understand the place of sex in your husband's life, my hope is that you will catch a glimpse of the bigger picture of sex in your marriage. Guilt won't last, but a change based on love will.
Sex Is a Physical Need
A man's sexuality has a tremendous impact on his emotional, marital and spiritual well-being.
One of the biggest differences between you and your husband is the fact that he experiences sex as a legitimate physical need. Just as your body tells you when you're hungry, thirsty, or tired, your husband's body tells him when he needs a sexual release. Your husband's sexual desire is impacted by what's around him but is determined by biological factors, specifically the presence of testosterone in his body.
Immediately after sexual release, men are physically satisfied. But as their sexual clock ticks on, sexual thoughts become more prevalent, and they are more easily aroused. The physical need for sexual release intensifies as sperm builds in the testicles. The body continues to produce and store sperm, although sperm production fluctuates based on levels of testosterone and the frequency of sexual release.
The best way for a woman to understand this dynamic is to relate it to another physiological need. If you've had a baby, you may relate to the experience of milk building up in your breasts a few days after giving birth. The buildup of breast milk becomes annoying (and even painful) until the milk is expressed. You may have even had the embarrassing experience of leaking breast milk when it was not expressed. A male's semen buildup is sometimes released through nocturnal emissions if it is not otherwise relieved. Just as with breast milk, sperm production tends to "keep up with demand." The more often a man has sex, the more semen his body is likely to produce.
As women, we don't experience the physiological drive for sex in this same way. There is no buildup that demands release. Instead, hormonal fluctuations drive our sexuality. Female sexual hormones are largely determined by two factors: the female reproductive cycle (menstruation, ovulation, pregnancy, menopause, etc.) and a part of the brain called the hypothalamus.
A woman's sexual desire is far more connected to emotions than her husband's sex drive is. A man can experience sexual arousal apart from any emotional attachment. He can look at a naked woman and feel intense physical desire for her, while at the same time he may be completely devoted to and in love with his wife. For most women, this just doesn't compute. A fundamental difference in the wiring of male and female sexuality is that men can separate sex from a relationship while for a woman, the two are usually intertwined.
In today's culture, girls and young women are becoming more involved in casual sex. Terms like hooking up and friends with benefits are code words for guys and girls engaging in sex outside the context of a romantic relationship. Women are also becoming more involved with Internet porn, obviously seeking a sexual experience outside the boundaries of relationship. Even in these scenarios, a woman's desire for sex is still linked to an emotional or relational need. For example, porn geared toward a female audience has an intentional relational component that doesn't exist in male-oriented porn. A young girl who engages in oral sex with a stranger may still be motivated by a desire for love and acceptance.
Although the physical need for sex can be compartmentalized in a man's life, his sexual behavior still has ramifications for every other part of his life. Many women make the assumption that because sex is a physical need for their husbands, it doesn't have an emotional or relational impact. Nothing could be further from the truth. A man's sexuality has a tremendous impact on his emotional, marital, and spiritual well-being.
Sex Is an Emotional Need
Male sexuality is a central part of who he is as both a man and a husband.
Shaunti Feldhahn's best-selling book For Women Only underscores the fact that sex has a deep emotional impact on men. Feldhahn interviewed several hundred married men about different aspects of marriage. Not surprisingly, sex dominated their expressed needs and desires. Perhaps the unexpected twist to Feldhahn's findings was the men's feelings behind their sexuality. The vast majority of men indicated that being sexually fulfilled in marriage significantly impacted their confidence and their masculinity. Seventy-seven percent agreed with this statement: "If my wife was an interested and motivated sex partner, it would give me a greater sense of well-being and satisfaction with life."1
A man's ability to perform sexually, to arouse and please his wife, is central to his confidence as a man. The impact ripples into practically every other area of his life.
Think of the word impotent. Although we use it as a term to describe the inability of a man to achieve an erection, the broader meaning speaks volumes. Impotent literally means "unable to take effective action; helpless or powerless." A man who feels like a failure sexually, feels impotent — helpless and powerless — in all areas of his life.
Dr. Archibald Hart, in his extensive work regarding male sexuality, has concluded that a man's sexual prowess and the need to perform sexually is a fundamental emotional need. While some men become obsessed with proving their masculinity through sexual conquests, others avoid sexual interactions because they fear failure.2
As I mentioned earlier, men are extremely sensitive to sexual rejection and take it very personally. In Feldhahn's research, men confided that when their wives say, "Not tonight," men really hear, "I'm not interested in you."3
A man can have sex with his wife every day of the week and still feel emotionally rejected by her. Having his wife just go through the motions isn't enough. Again, he longs to know that he is pleasing her and that she is sexually interested in him.
This partly explains the lure of sexual outlets like porn and fantasy. Think (briefly!) about sexual images you've seen of provocative women. While their body parts are exposed (and airbrushed!), the most sexual thing about them is their availability. Their eyes and pose scream, "I want you, and I won't reject you!" Read Solomon's description of a woman trying to entice a man into adultery:
She threw her arms around him and kissed him, boldly took his arm and said, "I've got all the makings for a feast — today I made my offerings, my vows are all paid, so now I've come to find you, hoping to catch sight of your face — and here you are! I've spread fresh, clean sheets on my bed, colorful imported linens. My bed is aromatic with spices and exotic fragrances. Come, let's make love all night, spend the night in ecstatic lovemaking! My husband's not home; he's away on business, and he won't be back for a month. (Proverbs 7:13–20, The Message)
Notice that Solomon doesn't mention anything about the physical attributes of the woman. She is attractive because she wants him. She is taking advantage not only of his physical desire but of his emotional need to be desired.
Translation: You cannot compartmentalize your husband's sexuality. You cannot love him as a husband but reject him sexually. From his perspective, his sexuality is a central part of who he is as both a man and a husband.
Sex Is a Spiritual Need
If you're married, your husband depends on you to be his partner in his battle against sexual temptation.
Read what the apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthian church:
It is good for a man not to marry. But since there is so much immorality, each man should have his own wife, and each woman her own husband. The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. … I wish that all men were as I am. But each man has his own gift from God; one has this gift, another has that.
Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I am. But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion. (1 Corinthians 7:1B–3, 7–9)
Paul commanded husbands and wives to be sexually available to each other to avoid temptation. He then encouraged Christians to remain unmarried, unless they have a strong sexual desire. According to Paul, battling sexual temptation is a significant reason for Christians to marry! So, what happens to the man who marries because he "burns" only to find that his wife doesn't "burn"?
Dr. Archibald Hart writes, "Most men face a lifelong struggle to control their sexuality. The struggle is between their hormones and their higher aspirations. It is a battle between their seemingly uncontrollable urges and the fear of succumbing to these urges. Ultimately, it is a struggle over integrity, right and wrong, uprightness and wholeness."1
Hart's statement explains why sex is a spiritual need for a married man. He likely battles daily to stay pure. His walk with the Lord and his integrity are largely determined by how he handles sexual temptations and impulses. When he gives in to lust, pornography, or inappropriate sexual relationships, he carries a tremendous burden of guilt. He may doubt his salvation and feel disqualified from the body of Christ. Because he feels so ashamed about his struggle or failure, he may feel that he can't share his burden with anyone else.
Initially, Sheila and Mark really enjoyed their sexual relationship. The first couple of years of their marriage was the honeymoon stage that most couples hope for. As time wore on, though, their sexual desires changed. Sheila was busy and exhausted taking care of their young children, and she lost interest in sex. While Sheila seemed content to put their sexual relationship on hold for the time being, Mark responded by initiating more frequently. If he was a deer panting for water, she was a camel who seemed capable of walking through the desert for months at a time without a water break.
When Mark got the message that his advances were likely to be thwarted, he stopped asking for intimacy. He had no idea how to express his frustration and despair to Sheila. Her loud sighs and condescending expression at the mention of sex communicated that she could never understand how critical their sexual relationship was to him.
Over time, Mark began to direct his sexual needs through masturbation and light pornography. A few nights a week, he would stay up late, surfing channels, hoping to catch a glimpse of something sexual. The guilt and shame he felt only intensified the rift of intimacy in their marriage. Although he rationalized his actions, Mark knew that Sheila would be devastated to discover what he was doing. More than anything else, he longed to be pure, to share his sexuality only with Sheila. But life was too busy, his desire too strong, his will too weak, and the gulf between them too great.
Like Mark, your husband depends on you to be his partner in his battle against sexual temptation. Although you aren't responsible for his actions, you are a key component in his victory. You're the only woman in the world whom your husband can look at sexually without compromising his integrity!
Again, please understand: You aren't responsible for your husband's sexual behavior. Don't be motivated out of fear that he will act out if you don't meet his needs; rather be motivated out of love and a desire to share his spiritual journey with him.
Sex Is a Relational Need
The lack of regular sex is a significant barrier to emotional connectedness and intimacy for men.
Research indicates that sexual satisfaction and marriage go hand in hand. 1 Surprised? Probably not. From a woman's perspective, it makes perfect sense that people are much more sexually satisfied when they have a good relationship. Before drawing too many conclusions from this fact, let's take another look at it.
In graduate school, I took several classes to learn how to conduct and understand psychological research. (Not my favorite classes by any stretch of the imagination!) One of the most important principles that stuck with me was "correlation does not mean causation." Correlation means that two events tend to coincide. For our purposes, sexual and marital satisfaction are correlated. Our assumption that a good relationship leads to good sex is making the leap from correlation to causation. It's just as possible (especially from the male perspective) that great sex causes a satisfying marriage, not the other way around. In fact, some biological research supports this theory.
Just like sexual drive, the warm feelings of connectedness, trust, and bonding that we associate with good relationships are also impacted by brain chemistry. Oxytocin is often called the "cuddle hormone." The presence of this hormone causes people to feel bonded to each other and experience relationships as emotionally gratifying and positive. Both men and women have oxytocin in their bodies. However, the presence of estrogen in a woman's body makes the impact of oxytocin much more powerful. This partly explains why women are far more likely than men to seek emotional intimacy in their relationships.
In women, levels of oxytocin skyrocket during labor and breastfeeding, encouraging the maternal behaviors and bonding so powerfully experienced in new moms. The only time levels of oxytocin significantly increase in men is right after orgasm. (Women's oxytocin levels spike after orgasm as well.)
Have you ever noticed that your husband seems to treat you differently after sex? He's more attentive (perhaps after a brief nap), more affectionate, and more appreciative? This isn't just your imagination. He is biologically wired to bond with you after sex. He literally feels emotionally closer to you after orgasm — and that's not just a line!
The lack of regular sex is a significant barrier to emotional connectedness and intimacy for men. Likewise, sex is perhaps the most powerful force bonding a man emotionally and relationally to his wife. Beyond just the act of having sex, sharing and embracing your husband's sexuality is perhaps the most powerful way to build the intimacy you so desire in your marriage. How can you truly be connected with him if you ignore or minimize the one aspect of his life that dominates him physically, emotionally, spiritually, and relationally?
So, What's the Holdup?
More important than giving your husband frequent sex is a commitment to embrace sexual intimacy in your marriage.
Typically when I meet with a couple for marriage counseling, I ask both the husband and the wife the question, "What would you like to see changed in your marriage through our time together?" Most of the time, the wife is the first to respond. She doesn't have to think too hard about the question because she usually is the one who initiated counseling. Her answer often sounds something like this: "I hope we communicate more. I want him to understand my needs. I want to feel closer and more appreciated by him."
She might also include specific requests, such as help with housework, more involvement in parenting, or a more active role in spiritual leadership.
Nine times out of 10, the husband's response has something to do with sex. His request is usually short and straightforward. And nine times out of 10, the husband gets some kind of disgusted or dismissive look from his wife. Her body language screams, "You have got to be kidding. That is so superficial!"
Sometimes she gives me one of those woman-to-woman looks that say, "See what I have to deal with! How are you going to fix this?"
Take a step back from this situation and look at the facts. The wife has made at least three or four demands on her husband. He makes only one from her . . . and she dismisses it as petty and superficial. As a wife I understand the woman's reaction. As a psychologist, I recognize that her response is illogical. Why is this such a roadblock? If sex is the one thing that would make the difference for him, the one thing that really makes him feel loved, why not make it a priority? Why is it so much easier to make his favorite meal or buy him an elaborate birthday gift than it is to meet his sexual needs?
As you read about the importance of sex to your husband, you may feel as if 50-pound bags of sand have been heaped upon your shoulders. As much as you want to be a good wife, it just feels like he's asking too much. But why? Although we have addressed and will continue to address aspects of this question, let's look at a few reasons why sex may be unappealing to you:
- You have a physical or emotional illness that interferes with the desire or ability to engage in intimacy. Really investing in sex requires a tremendous amount of emotional and physical energy — energy that you probably don't feel you have.
- You have your own issues with sex—perhaps related to body image or scars from the past. Focusing on sex will likely bring up painful feelings and experiences.
- Sex makes you feel vulnerable. Perhaps you don't feel safe enough in your relationship to expose yourself physically and emotionally to your husband.
- He doesn't deserve it. Walls of hostility and bitterness can keep you from even thinking about sex. Why should you be the one to take the first step toward intimacy?
- Everything within you may be screaming that the relationship must be fixed before you can even think about sex.
Although these are valid barriers and concerns, remember this: Your lack of interest in your husband's sexuality is a significant barrier to intimacy. You may have legitimate reasons for minimizing sex in your marriage. In fact, your marriage may need a lot of work before a healthy sex life can even be considered.
I also want to emphasize that I am not saying, "Just do it." Your needs are just as important as his. A great sex life means taking into account both persons' needs and desires. I don't agree with well-meaning counselors who suggest that a wife promise to have sex three times a week with her husband. That approach is one-sided and defeats the whole purpose of sex: oneness and love.
More important than giving your husband frequent sex is a commitment to explore and embrace sexual intimacy within your marriage. There is a huge difference between the two!
Your Husband's Sex Drive Is God's Gift to You
Your husband's sexuality was designed for your pleasure and intimacy.
For the most part, this series builds the case that sex is the greatest gift that you can give to your husband. Let's switch gears for a moment and explore how your husband's sex drive is a gift to you. (No, you didn't read that wrong, and it's not a typo!)
You can spend so much time fretting about and avoiding sex that you miss the obvious. While acknowledging that sex is a huge force in your husband's life, don't neglect the fact that God created that force for your use as well. In fact, you should become jealous and possessive of the power inherent in your husband's sexuality. It was intended for you!
The story of Samson has always intrigued me (Judges 13–16).What he had in brawn, he must have lacked in brains. When Sunday-school teachers tell the story of Samson, they usually skip past the fact that Samson had lady problems long before sexy Delilah entered the scene.
Samson was a strapping young man whose attention was seized by a beautiful Philistine woman. He told his parents, "Go get her for me," which they did. (I guess they never read The Strong-Willed Child!) During the wedding feast, Samson taunted the Philistine guests with a riddle, betting them that they couldn't solve it. Samson's brand new wife told her kinsmen the answer to the riddle and ended up marrying Samson's friend. The next time we see Samson with a woman, he is sleeping with a prostitute.
Fast-forward several years to Delilah, another beautiful woman. Three times, Samson lied to Delilah about the source of his strength. Three times Delilah betrayed her lover. Yet Samson stayed with her and eventually confided the true secret of his prowess. As strong as Samson's muscles were, his sex drive appears to have been stronger.
We often look at a man's sexual desire as a weak link or an Achilles' heel. As with Samson or David, the promise of fleeting pleasure has the power to strip him of all that he values in life. However, what can be a source of evil can also be a force of great good. Just as twisted women are able to pull men into sin, virtuous women can use the influence of sex to call men to morality, love, and godliness.
Like many wives, you may be desperate to work on your marriage. You may long for your husband to read relationship books with you or attend marriage seminars (and actually take notes). If you really want his attention, work with the way God designed him. A great sex life won't solve the problems in your marriage; however, it will fortify your husband's desire and commitment to work toward intimacy. Your sexual relationship may be the "on-ramp" to communication, conflict resolution, and building the emotional intimacy you are longing for.
Like any married couple, Mike and I have our disagreements. In fact, we even have a full-out argument every now and then. He retreats to his corner, and I retreat to mine. Each wonders when the other will extend the olive branch with a hug, an apology, or a kind word. During these tense times in our marriage, I pay more attention than ever to how I look. I'm conscious to put on makeup and wear something relatively attractive. Why? Because I desperately need my husband's attention. I want him to desire emotional and physical connection with me. It's a potent force for encouraging reconciliation.
No amount of nagging, pleading, talking, or counseling can grab your husband's attention the way his sexual desire for you can. Just look at advertising. No approach is used more frequently or more successfully than sex appeal. Why aren't you using it in your marriage? As a good friend of mine says, "If you want to improve your marriage, invest in your underwear."
Look at it this way: How is your husband likely to respond to these two statements—"Honey, I really think we need to talk about our marriage. I feel like we are drifting apart." Versus . . . "Babe, I want to work on our sexual relationship. I want to know how to please you and how to make our sex life awesome."
Which book do you think your husband would be more interested in reading: The Seven Keys to a Great Marriage or Red-Hot Monogamy?
Please understand — I am not suggesting that you use sexuality to manipulate your husband! Withholding sex when you don't get your way or lavishing him with it when you do is manipulation. I am suggesting that you embrace this fact: There are many forces in your husband's environment that use sex to garner his attention. They are stealing the power that God intended for you. Instead of sitting passively by, claim it.
Satan consistently twists into evil what God designed for good. By God's good design, a man's sex drive is strong. If it is harnessed and intensified within marriage, it can be an incredible force fastening a man's affections and passions to his wife. I believe that it is right and godly to claim your husband's sexual desire as a potent source of influence in your marriage. This power was intended for you and for no one else. Unfortunately, if you don't claim it, someone or something else will.
"Do not worship any other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God" (Exodus 34:14).Notice that in this verse, God tells the Israelites that His name is "Jealous." We often think about jealousy as a bad quality, so why would God define Himself as jealous? The obvious answer is that there are some things that we should be jealous about. God's jealousy for the hearts of His people is holy and righteous. They belong to Him and were created for His pleasure.
The same applies to your sexual relationship with your husband. You should be jealous of your husband's sexuality! It was designed for your pleasure and intimacy. The power of his sexuality was also designed for your influence in his life. Through his sexuality, you have a powerful place in your husband's life that should belong to only you. It sets apart your relationship as distinctive from every other person in his life. No one can share with him as you can. Instead of lamenting the compelling sexual appeal of pornography and co-workers in your husband's life, focus your energy on reclaiming the influence that is rightly yours.
It's Your Gift. Unwrap It!
As you digest this information, you may feel defeated by your perceived inability to meet your husband's sexual needs. Perhaps emotional or physical limitations convince you that the gift in this series is impossible for you to unwrap. No, you cannot compete with the raw sensuality dangled at men in our culture. You have neither the energy nor the physical attributes to look like a cover girl or a Playboy centerfold. Yet what you do have to offer your husband is far more profound.
Fulfilling your husband sexually encompasses so much more than the physical act. It means inviting his sexuality into your marriage, embracing all that he is, hopes, and desires. It includes wanting to fully understand him and welcoming the sexual appetite that expresses his masculinity. It involves striving with him through weakness and temptation and covering his fears and failures. No magazine, no coworker, no porn site can be this teammate and confidante for your husband. This is your place; this is your power; this is your gift. Unwrap it.
Next Steps and Related Information
Additional resources addressing sex and intimacy in marriage
Popular questions on this topic:
- I have a very high sex drive, and my wife has a very low sex drive. How is her "not in the mood" different from my "not in the mood?"
- Does my husband need me in ways I may not fully understand?"
- My spouse is frusterated by our bedroom relationship, and I've come to think of sex negatively. What can we do to fix this?
- Having children has hurt my sexual relationship with my spouse. How do we maintain enough privacy to be intimate?
Related Resources
- No More Headaches: Enjoying Sex and Intimacy in Marriage (Paperback)
- The Sexual Man
- Sex 180
- The Fig Leaf Conspiracy
- The Passionate Marriage
- Five Essentials for Lifelong Intimacy
- The Way to Love Your Wife (Paperback)
- The Love List: Eight Little Things That Make a Big Difference in Your Marriage (Hardcover)
- False Intimacy
Related Articles
- God's Design for Marriage
- Managing Temptation
- Building a Pure Marriage
- The Overcoming Marriage
- The Role of Friendship in Marriage
- Devotional: Spiritual Foundations


text:
Thank you Ned Martin
Thank You, Ned Martin
By Shaun L. Kelly
His distinct tenor, reassuring and cerebral, was the second-most heard male voice of my childhood. Only my father's fixed baritone surpassed his as the soundtrack of my years growing up in the greater Boston area. For thirty-two summers, with discernable sagacity and style, Ned Martin served as the principal voice of the Boston Red Sox.
In an age where humility and grace slowly receded from our national character, Martin's modesty and elegance separated him from a host of other announcers - and people. He never intentionally developed a defined signature call for a homerun. The ball was simply, gone.
And yet, he used words as a composer uses the notes on a scale. He seemed to embrace the notion first put forth by Emerson "that every word was once a poem". There was nothing ever "programmed" about Ned Martin. Cogent phrases seem to tumble from his mouth like falling stars.
Unlike most sports announcers of any era, Ned Martin was able to frequently quote from the most gifted bards of English literature - Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Dickens, Hemingway - in order to put the narrative of baseball into its proper context. He was a reader, and he brought a reader's sensibility to each and every broadcast.
Ned Martin was also a deeply-rooted theorist and philosopher. Because he had dipped into the bonfires of hell as a Marine at the close of the Second World War, Ned described each game as an inherent existentialist. Like his beloved Frost, he had "a lover's quarrel with the world".
But Ned Martin was more than just a Red Sox announcer. To me, he served as a personal captain, steering me through the choppy waters of both youth and adolescence - guiding, nurturing, and instructing me as I listened intently, seemingly his most loyal and devoted student.
Twelve seasons have passed since he last broadcast a Red Sox game. And yet, when I turn on a ballgame these days, it is Ned's voice that still echoes. Two years ago, he appeared to be his vigorous, cordial self as he participated in the Ted Williams Tribute at Fenway Park. Less than twenty-four hours later, he was dead.
While hundreds of players have come and gone since he first began to broadcast for the team in 1961, for many of us, Ned Martin remains the most indispensable Red Sox figure of them all. As Globe columnist, Bill Griffith wrote in a notable eulogy a week after Ned's passing, "Today's broadcasts are slicker and technically superior, but those bygone days were a wonderful time to be a baseball fan in Boston. Long before there was 'Morgan Magic' on the field in 1988, there was Martin Magic on radio."
In a storeroom of searing play-by-play moments, the "magic of Ned Martin" was most evident at the culminating moment of the most beloved team in Boston sports history - the Impossible Dream Red Sox. His celebrated broadcast that afternoon of the last game in the most competitive pennant race in American League history remains the Gold Standard for sports announcers to this day.
To appreciate the wizardry of Ned Martin, one only has to review his lucid play-by-play of the final out of a closely-fought contest between the Sox and the mighty Minnesota Twins in order to demonstrate his obvious luster. Leading 5-3 with two outs in the ninth inning, the Twins harried manager, Cal Ermer, sent up pinch-hitter Rich Reese to face Red Sox ace Jim Lonborg.
As always, Ned Martin provided the scene with absolute precision... "Jim Lonborg is within one out....of his biggest victory ever....," he began, with a slight tremor in his voice, "....his twenty-second of the year....and his first over the Twins." Efficient, accurate, to the point.
He then paused - letting the listener take in the scene. Silence was always one of Martin's most laudable broadcasting attributes.
"The pitch......is looped toward shortstop...."
A living and breathing thesaurus, Martin could have used any of a host of words from his prodigious vocabulary, but he chose, "looped". My father later described Reese's popup as "a little squirt from the hose". Looped was an inspired choice, impeccably capturing the bending flight of the ball.
While the Red Sox announcer was also able to inform the listener where the sphere was heading, there was, at first, no intimation in Martin's tone whether the ball was going to be caught.....or fall in for a hit. Ned Martin would never impulsively rush to judgment. He was, first and foremost, a patient man. To him, accuracy was the antonym of hyperbole.
However, as the ball began to topple, Ned's voice hurriedly changed; his tenor commenced to soar as he exclaimed, "Petrocelli's back...." A hint of expectation in Martin's voice could now be detected. Because Red Sox fans were so used to Ned's understated demeanor, thousands and thousands of New Englanders began to raise their arms in joyous expectation.
"He's got it! The Red Sox win!"
Even in the clutches of euphoria, Martin maintained praiseworthy integrity. The Red Sox win.....win, what? For with that last out, the Red Sox had just tied for the pennant; they would have to wait for the final result of the Tigers-Angels game to determine whether the team would win the AL flag outright - or be forced to play in a one-game playoff against the Detroit nine the following day. Thus, Martin could not really confirm anything official.... except that the Red Sox had won a most critical ball game.
The Sox radio announcer then took in a breath of air, mostly to observe the players and fans who had instantly enveloped the jubilant Lonborg to the right of the pitcher's mound. Chaos ensued, but Ned Martin was well-equipped to describe it. He immediately punched out, "And there's pandemonium on the field!"
He could have used havoc, mayhem, commotion, hubbub - but he chose - pandemonium. From the least-used word for bedlam, pandemonium is, according to Webster's, "An utterly lawless, riotous place or assemblage." A toss-off line by Ned Martin - "there's pandemonium on the field" - immediately entered the general lexicon of an entire region of baseball fans.
The last ingredient of Martin's call contained just one word - and a cacophony of elation. Mindful that he was describing the action to a radio audience, Ned paused, and then called out, "Listen!"
An opus of horns could be heard - the air-kind that were allowed at the time by management - instruments of exultation that always gave out a piercing glee as they resounded throughout the old ballpark. The fans' collective primal-shouting verified Martin's precise account. The resulting din, deftly recorded by WHDH engineer, Al Walker, was nothing less than the single greatest moment in modern Red Sox history. In the end, Ned Martin wanted all of his listeners to join in and swig from the nectar of jubilation.
From this lens, there were two miracles that occurred that long-ago Sunday afternoon: the 100-to-1 shot Red Sox securing the American League Pennant, and Ned Martin's flawless, twenty-three second description of the final out of the game.
I first became aware of Ned Martin in 1964 when I received a new transistor radio for my ninth birthday. As the Red Sox began Spring Training in Scottsdale, Arizona in early March, I began to tune in to the local flagship station at the time, WHDH 850 AM Boston, in order to listen to the handful of Red Sox radio broadcasts emitting from the desert. At the time, Ned Martin was the team's second broadcaster behind the venerable Curt Gowdy, who was already receiving national exposure as NBC's chief baseball and football broadcaster.
From the moment I first heard Ned's recitations, his unique style was dissimilar in both tone and approach to any other baseball broadcaster at the time. He was cerebral, ironic, expressive, low-key. Even as a nine-year-old, I recognized that Ned was a minimalist in a profession where over-the-top enthusiasm was becoming the norm. Fidelity - not exuberance - seemed to be his modus operendus. And yet, despite his calm overtones, it was also evident that he had a genuine affection for the game.
Like many of us, Ned Martin had fallen in love with baseball at an early age. In an interview conducted with the esteemed Joe Fitzgerald of The Boston Herald, Martin remembered, "One morning when I was about ten, I got up and noticed two cocktail coasters my parents brought home the night before. I looked closer and saw that they'd been autographed by Johnny Marcum and Jimmie Foxx. Foxx! He was like God to me because the Philadelphia Athletics were my team. My folks had seen them in the lounge and my father later told me he was tempted to come home, wake me up and bring me with him but my mother wouldn't let him, so he got the autographs for me instead. I've never forgotten what a thrill that was, or the thrill I later felt when I stood outside Shibe Park and collected the first one on my own, from Skeeter Newsome.''
Ned Martin's resulting love affair with baseball would last a lifetime. When Fitzgerald asked him about his thoughts on the game, the Red Sox announcer responded, ``Red Smith used to say he loved `the music of the game.' What a great line. There is a music to it, whether it's the first crack of the bat at Winter Haven, a full house on Opening Day, the murmuration of a meaningless game in July, or the buzz you feel at a World Series."
"There's orderliness to it as well, with batting practice, fielding practice, all of the things that take place right up to game time. Yet you can still see something in almost every game that you've never seen before. That's the beauty of baseball, I guess. It's never predictable, even though it never changes."
It was clearly evident even at first glance that the unspeakable elements of baseball were what mattered to Martin the most. From his eyes, the game was melodious, elegant, and impeccably graceful. In the end, Martin seemed like a seamless violinist, playing each and every note with both exactitude and poise. After I began listening to Ned's broadcasts, my father stated, "You know, son, you are listening to a genuine master."
As I continued to soak in each and every one of his broadcasts, Ned Martin's imposing array of words and phrases that colored each game left a prevailing, tangible impression on me. Spewing forth from my tiny transistor, Ned's lucid descriptions provided a landscape that depended not on rank sentiment but on radiant terminology.
For instance, in Martin's lexis, a baseball might rocket, balloon, soar, sail, glide, dart, float, sputter, plummet, plunge, bound, skip, hop spring, or dribble. A ferocious swing of the bat by Harmon Killebrew could create "a crosswind in the box seats." Cleveland's young pitcher, Luis Tiant, "uncoiled" when he delivered "the confused sphere." Centerfielder Gary Geiger might "coax the ball down to his glove as if by supplication." Sox reliever Dick Raditz invariably raised his hands in exultation "after setting down a gaggle of Yankees!"
Longtime Red Sox fan Michael Burns remembers, "Growing up as I did in Worcester, Massachusetts, I'll never forget some of Ned's beautiful and apt descriptions such as, 'hung a frozen rope, 'pool-queue shot', 'pealed foul', 'maypole dance' and "the threat goes by the boards," - phrases that filled so many of his broadcasts over the years. Like many of our fellow Red Sox fans of that era, our family would turn the TV sound down and tune in Ned's radio play-by-play."
Ned Martin's eloquence had a profound affect on my own emerging language. My neighborhood in Wellesley, the embodiment of the Baby Boomer explosion, would often be the setting for gargantuan baseball games sometimes involving forty or more children.
Loquacious and impulsive, I invariably broadcast each game even as I participated in it. Ned Martin's choice in both syntax and vocabulary slowly became part of my word arsenal. If someone "blistered" the ball between third and short, "skied" to center, or threw a "laser" to home, my voice would invariably echo Ned's phrases. As Martin's words began to fill my summer days and nights with the sounds of the game, the Red Sox announcer began to transform me into nimble speaker without me ever realizing it.
As the seasons passed like shuffling cards, I slowly began to absorb a host of literary allusions that made Martin's episodic brushstrokes even more compelling and influential in the end. One evening, a low-hanging fog shrouded eastern New England, causing the well-lit Fenway Park to appear as a huge firefly in the Back Bay horizon. When the fog continued to encircle the Fens, Ned sighed, "Fog comes/in little cat's feet." I glanced up at Mum who was listening intently to Martin's words. "Sandburg," she smiled.
Later that year, during a re-cap of a doubleheader with the White Sox in which Boston impossibly came back to win the first game only to lose the second in heartbreaking fashion, Ned began, "It was the best of times; it was the worst of times."
After I looked at the radio in puzzlement, my father explained, "Mr. Martin is referring to the opening passage of Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities."
When the cerebral Elston Howard joined the Red Sox for the pennant drive in 1967, Ned perfectly captured Ellie's prowess as a catcher by quoting Wordsworth: "Wisdom is sometimes nearer when we stoop then when we soar."
Martin particularly loved to use the words of Shakespeare to help paint the scene for his listeners. Once, when describing the vigorous Dick Williams' shrewd managerial moves that had resulted in a dramatic victory for the Boston nine, Ned quoted from The Merry Wives of Windsor: "Why, then the world's mine oyster/which I with sword will open."
After some blatant luck - a bad bounce - had afforded the Red Sox with a fortunate victory during the 1972 season, Martin used the Bard's words to summarize the game, "And so, ladies and gentleman, as Shakespeare once wrote, 'Fortune brings in some boats that are not steered.' Good night from Fenway Park.'"
Three years later, when he was teemed with the legendary Jim Woods, the two announcers found themselves in an extra-inning contest in Oakland in which both bullpens were outwardly spent. Martin ended up citing Macbeth, much to the astonishment of the blustery Woods: "If you can look into the seeds of time and say, which grain will grow, and which, will not, speak then to me."
Ernest Hemingway was a particular favorite of Ned's; he seemed to recognize the pathos that swathed the writer's work. After a series of managerial movements by Don Zimmer seemed to fall flat for the team in a contest with the Orioles in the late seventies, Martin used a noted Hemingway line as the focal point at the conclusion of a post-game summary. "Never confuse movement with action," Ned confirmed as he signed off for the evening.
As longtime listeners to his broadcasts eventually discovered, Ned Martin's obvious passion for words and phrases was instilled in him early on growing up in Upper Merion, Pennsylvania. Later, he would major in English literature at Duke. When he broadcast a game, Martin seemed to personify the very essence of Hemingway's text that the illustrious wordsmith penned when he finally accepted his deserved Nobel Prize for Literature: "The individual, the great artist when he comes, uses everything that has been discovered or known about his art up to that point, being able to accept or reject in a time so short it seems that knowledge was born with him - rather than that he takes instantly what it takes the ordinary man a lifetime to know. And then the great artist goes beyond what has been done and makes something of his own."
When we listened at the beach, in our bedrooms, or from our cars to the sage commentary of Ned Martin, we intrinsically recognized that he was truly making "something of his own". From a personal standpoint, he was also serving as something of a role model, the cerebral reader-baseball fan, who relished Willie Mays as much as John Steinbeck. In the end, Ned's music became the vinyl for my own developing interest in timeless literature. While I struggled as a reader early on, I soon began to tackle the classics, thanks to the inspiration provided by the "the Voice of the Red Sox".
The artistry of Ned Martin seemed to soar especially when he was "on the radio side" of the airwaves. Journalist Bill Griffith eloquently explained the culture of broadcasting in the pre-cable days in an ambitious Boston Globe remembrance on Martin: "TV production and replays were still in relative infancy in those days - and telecasts were mostly limited to weekends - so it was common for Sox fans to have the game on radio. Tales of being able to walk down the street and follow the game from the radios on people's porches were true. Baseball was a game made for listening on summer nights and for youngsters to follow in the time-honored radio-under-the-pillow manner." As the skillful Art Martone wrote in a poignant tribute to Ned in The Providence Journal two years ago, "Ned Martin's was the perfect voice for the day-to-day flow of this sport."
While Ned was both urbane and eloquent, brevity was at the core of his success, a quality that, except for Red Barber, has never been duplicated by any other baseball announcer I have ever encountered. Art Martone lucidly remembered that quality in Pro-Jo a few days after Martin's death: "He frequently seemed detached from, rather than immersed in, the day-to-day workings of the team and the game . . . and thus was able to provide a context that other announcers could never hope to capture. My favorite Ned Martin call from the 1967 'Impossible Dream' album was not the 'pandemonium' clip that everyone's mentioning today, but from the day before. The Sox were leading the Twins, 3-2, in the eighth inning on Saturday afternoon -- remember, they had to win both Saturday and Sunday to stay alive in the race -- and Carl Yastrzemski put the game away with a three-run homer off Jim Merritt in the eighth inning. It wasn't so much the call itself that I liked, but the postscript he added when the cheering began to subside."
"'If you've just turned your radio on,' Ned said in a voice tinged with a tiny hint of disbelief, and then he gave just the slightest dramatic pause, 'it's happened again. Yastrzemski's hit a three-run homer, and it's now 6-2, Red Sox.'"
Martone concluded, "It was perfect. He captured the joy of the moment, the unbelievable, Superman-esque qualities of Yaz's 1967 season, and the turning of the game in the Sox' favor, in two brief sentences. He didn't bellow, he didn't scream, he didn't trot out a forced, signature home-run call. Perfect."
When I received The Impossible Dream album from my parents for Christmas in December 1967, chills literally flushed my cheeks and arms when I heard the Yastrzemski clip for the first time. While a score of team albums would subsequently be released by Fleetwood Records in Revere over the years, none would match the unspoiled quality of The Impossible Dream.
Another Martin cherished clip featured on the same disc - typically understated and sagacious - described Red Sox newcomer Norm Siebern making a triumphant pinch-hit to secure a late Boston rally: "Norm Siebern wastes no time as he raps a ground single in the hole between first and second, scoring Petrocelli with the go-ahead run."
In 2003, Fleetwood released both The Impossible Dream and Super Sox '75 in CD form. Not surprisingly, a recent mint-condition "Dream" album went for $108 dollars on E-Bay. Because the Red Sox won two rare pennants during the years that Ned Martin dominated the local airwaves, his memorable radio calls were fortunately preserved for all-time.
Interestingly, the one signature call he ultimately became famous for, "mercy," was something that leisurely developed through the lens of time. While "mercy" was often stated after a particularly imposing homerun, strikeout, or fielding play, Ned also used it an interjection of remorse, regret, even pathos. Irony was always at play when Ned Martin broadcast a baseball game.
Red Barber once wrote, "Being on the air for three hours for half-a-year, demands patience, imagination, perspective, and intelligence." Through the singular vehicle of radio broadcasting, Ned Martin found his true niche as an artist. While he would serve as the team's television voice for well more than a decade, his work on radio with such partners as Curt Gowdy, Ken Coleman, and Jim Woods, defined him as a Hall of Fame sportscaster.
It should be noted here that until the explosion of cable television in the mid-seventies, radio play-by-play dominated the local sports scene. Each of the four local professional franchises were prominently featured on 50,000 watt stations back then; the teams' announcers was as identifiable as the squads they covered. And while Ned Martin remained with the Red Sox for over three decades, there was another local announcer who lingered as his team's play-by-play man even longer than Ned Martin - the most salient homer to ever describe sports action in the Boston area - the celebrated play-by-play announcer of the Boston Celtics, Johnny Most.
As fragile buds of crocuses began to peer through the rock-strewn soil of Massachusetts each spring, a fan could easily switch from Ned's evocative eloquence to the rat-a-tat-tat of Most's unyielding, theatrical narrative - an ongoing saga in which the good guys were forever attired in the green and white. For nearly forty seasons, Johnny Most was able to describe in excruciating detail the heroic plight of a "warranted championship team" that even malevolent referees and hooligan thugs couldn't conquer. As one Boston sportswriter once commented, "John didn't broadcasting a basketball game; he thought he was narrating the 'Passion Play'."
Unlike the sedan-like quality of Ned Martin, Johnny Most's voice sounded like a car crash. He would sit, emperor-like, in his haughty perch just below the rickety third balcony at the old Boston Garden, inhaling non-filter after non-filter, creating a minefield of smoke that shrouded him in a perpetually dimming stupor. For more than two hours, Johnny would inexorably describe the proceedings taking place on the historic court below, whining over the inequalities of life even as his team won a gaudy sixteen championships in thirty years.
Amidst Buick-sized rats, plastic beer cups, and drunken louts, his grating voice and discriminating commentary became the adhesive to which legions of Celtic fans embraced in what might have been the most flourishing Off-Broadway production in history. There were very few critics; nearly every Bostonian seemed to warm to his antics like a tepid southerly breeze. An absolute original, Johnny Most made even the most irrelevant game in November seem important.
It is also certain that Johnny's exaggerated storylines knew no bounds if he was into it that night. His habit for glorious overstatement would invariably be replicated the very next day in countless schoolyards across the Boston area: "Big Red snags the rebound, and gets absolutely cuffed in the stomach by Kareem! Oh my goodness! But, of course, Jake O'Donnell isn't calling anything because there's no blood on the court! Do you believe that?"
Even the immortals wore black hats in Johnny's unambiguous world: "Oscar gets the rebound...... and puts his left elbow right in the face of Satch Sanders! Right in the face! And Manny Sobel has the nerve to call a foul on 'The Lord!' The audacity! Well, ladies and gentlemen, those of us who have been blessed to see him in the flesh know that Oscar Robertson would never, ever commit a foul!"
One night, I actually heard him bawl: "Gene Shue just gave his Bullets' players an armful of tire irons so that they may attack anything out there in green and white....knowing that Mendy Rudolph will call it 'justifiable homicide!'"
Some of the more unique Mostian broadcasts occurred away from Boston, when opposing fans learned to unmercifully bait such a polarizing figure with aplomb. Inevitably, after being peppered by coffee cups and cigarette butts throughout much of the game, Johnny would growl, "I just got hit by a bagel! They're throwing things at me, ladies and gentlemen, because the fans here at the Civic Center are frustrated that their shabby, mediocre team always loses to the Celtics!"
It's not to say that John didn't have a sense of humor. His recurrent cackle sounded like an old Dodge Dart attempting to start on an arctic January morning. When veteran NBA guard Dave Bing was traded to the C's, Johnny couldn't wait to sing out, "The ball goes out to Dave Bing. He backs up to the right of the key as Dynamite Don clears the way. It's Bing from the corner - Bing........bang!"
In the end, though, Johnny Most's calls were both original and extraordinary. His signature phrases became compulsory axioms for an entire region of basketball fans:
"This is Johnny Most high above courtside." "Cousy fiddles and diddles - now he daddles." "Outside to Sudden Sam - swish!" "Russ gets the rebound - what a play by Bill Russell!" "Jarring John tricky-dribbles with the ball..." "The Celts are fast-breaking to victory as Tiny dishes it off to Larry!" And, of course, his nightly signoff, "This is Johnny Most - bye for now."
Indeed, Johnny Most was the Puck to Ned Martin's Hamlet.
We must remember, however, that the revered Mr. Most was not the only game in town after Ned Martin signed off for the last time each fall. Sharing the radio booth on Causeway Street each winter were the two most proficient play-by-play men to ever broadcast the Boston Bruins, Fred Cusick and Bob Wilson. Both announcers were meticulously prepared, inherently cogent, and naturally engaging. A contest described by either announcer was both compelling and unblemished. Ultimately, Bob Wilson and Fred Cusick served as admirable bridges to Ned Martin each and every year.
However, this did not mean that the local hockey team was always in the capable hands of adroit announcers. When TV38 began to broadcast all seventy Bruins games each season at the pinnacle of the Bobby Orr era, the station named the inane Don Earle and his incoherent sidekick, Pat Egan, as the television voices of Boston's storied hockey franchise.
Earle, a native of Philadelphia, never knew a clich� he didn't like. Johnny Pie was "a gamer", Espo took scoring "to a different level", and Bobby was "a star among stars."
His recurrent use of bad puns and smaltzy humor caused my father to remark one night, "Ned Martin is crystallized ice; Don Earle is two-week-old slush." For three seasons, it seemed as if Ted Knight was serving as the Bruins chief TV announcer.
In one of his more memorable quips, Earle stated that "there were no holes in the B's 'Cheese'," moments after Bruins' goaltender Gerry Cheevers had shut out the Rangers. Earle also used the infuriating expression, "if you will", like MacDonald's uses salt on its fries. Once, when an irate fan tossed an egg at Derek Sanderson in Chicago, the Bruins' television announcer commented, "I'll have mine poached - if you will."
In the end, however, sidekick Pat Egan made Don Earle sound like Henry V. A former Bruins defenseman who had toiled as a security guard at Northeastern for more than a decade, Egan was inexplicably tapped with the color job in 1968-69 where he would be regularly featured for one unforgettable season as the B's number two TV guy.
Ultimately, malapropism might have been Pat Egan's most flagrant broadcasting quality. After a particularly gory game against the Leafs one evening, Egan signed off, "The Garden gang will have a hard time removin' the blood from the ice before they put on the parakeet floorin'."
With ol' Pat ensconced in the catbird's seat that winter, thousands of New Englanders were exposed to such grievous errors in syntax that scores of well-intentioned parents banished the TV38 volume for a spell. From botched verb-tense agreement to dangling participles to droppin' the g's from both action verbs and gerunds, Pat's recurrent verbal gaffes caused English teachers around the Route 128 area to seriously consider seppuku.
Despite the fact that Egan hailed from Canada, his mispronunciation of French was singularly astonishing. For example, he once reviewed the action at the end of a frenetic second period in the Forum by signing off: "At the 19:45 minute mark - with Donnie Awry off two minutes in the 'sin bin' for roughin' - Montreal come back on goal by Lap-ee-air."
When TV38 announced that it would not rehire Pat Egan - and that General Manager Bill Quinn would soon find an adequate replacement for him, my father later commented, "On a certain level, a follow-up to Pat Egan was absolutely inconceivable." Fortunately, by the time the Bruins had skated their last shift on the Garden ice, Ned Martin was back behind the radio mike in his crowded cubicle at Fenway Park.
In early each and every Red Sox broadcast, even the most casual of listeners could discern a hint of melancholy in Ned Martin's voice. While he obviously rooted for the Red Sox, he never, ever approached the over-the-top terrain inhabited by the kinetic Johnny Most. There were even times when Ned would gently hint to his listeners about the possibilities of defeat just as it seemed as if the team was on the cusp of victory.
It turned out that this rational, insightful announcer had already witnessed the absolute worst that human beings could do to one another as a young man fighting in defense of his country on the remote island of Iwo Jima.
As Martin told Joe Fitzgerald of The Boston Herald before he retired: "I joined the 4th Marine Division and on D-Day, February 1945, we hit Iwo Jima. I don't think we were there thirty minutes when we came upon a shell-hole. I looked in and saw it was filled with dead Marines; I mean blown-up Marines, with entrails and . . . oh, God, I'd never seen anything like that before. Then I started looking around and pretty soon death got to be common. This wasn't anything like watching Desert Storm, a war that seemed so clean on TV. This was people being blown apart."
No wonder that In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning remained one of Ned's most cherished contemporary albums. There was surely an underlying pathos that filled him even as he described the sun-splashed game below. To his enormous credit, however, after every tempest in Ned Martin's universe, the sun would inevitably peak through the daunting overcast skies. As Ken Coleman once observed, "Ned was always a blatant optimist".
While talking about the horrors he experienced in the South Pacific, Martin joyfully exclaimed to Joe Fitzgerald, "They told us it was going to be a nine-day operation but I was there for twenty-six days, and I will never forget the day word spread that the flag was flying on Mount Suribachi - our flag! What a feeling!''
Because he had climbed out of a manhole of hell as a Marine, Ned's passion for life was also palpable, especially during rain delays. He would take his listeners on a tour of his off-hour interests, from traveling to reading to appreciating "first-class music". A reserved man by nature, Martin was still able to share his sundry passions both on and off the air.
The day after he died, former Red Sox broadcaster, ESPN"s Jon Miller told The Globe's Bill Griffith about Ned's affection for one of those immense artists who seemed to exert a pull on Ned's heartstrings, the immortal Francis Albert Sinatra: "'Both Ken Coleman and Ned Martin loved Frank Sinatra's music,' said Miller. 'Ned had a Walkman with plugs for two headsets and sometimes they'd be listening to Sinatra on a flight home and break into song together. It was not broadcast quality."
There is an old Latin dictum that was used as an addendum to conclude Sinatra's own funeral service -Ars longa, vita brevis. "Art is long, life is short". Ned would surely have liked that phrase.
After fourteen seasons broadcasting Red Sox baseball on WHDH, Ned Martin gained a new radio partner in 1974 with the arrival of Jim "The Possum" Woods. Pugnacious, impulsive, anecdotal, and brisk, Woods would serve as a brilliant converse to Martin throughout their five celebrated years as a baseball announcing team. In Woods' hail hearty, good fellow world, Ned became Nedly and every topic under the heavens was open for discussion.
Martin especially took great delight in bantering with "The Possum" over his days as the number-two announcer to the longtime Pirates broadcaster, the legendary Bob Prince. Because "The Possum" and the brash Prince were two of the most legendary beer connoisseurs in Major League history, Ned once asked, "Did Budweiser sponsor you, or did you two sponsor Bud?"
Animated, spontaneous, and gutsy, Woods seemed to always bring out the best in Martin. As Art Martone remarked in his sterling remembrance of Martin in The Providence Journal: "Announcers, and especially radio announcers, are one of a team's main link to its fan base. They're the prism through which information about the team is shot, and they often set the tone for the fans themselves. For five glorious seasons, Ned Martin was teamed with the sublime Jim Woods, giving the Sox a radio duo unmatched before or since, by anybody -- and it was Ned Martin, more than anyone, who helped define us as what we thought we were: Educated, intelligent students of the game, lovers of our team but also lovers of the sport . . . which, believe it or not, was how Red Sox fans were viewed (and actually were) in those days. Ned was one of the main links to our sense of superiority over Yankee fans, whose symbol was the shrill and hysterical Phil Rizzuto. It was, we thought, the perfect microcosm of the difference between Boston and New York baseball."
Listening to two such erudite yet disparate men night after night made the summer months seem even more fleeting and urgent. Even then, I recognized then that we were steadfastly ensconced in a provisional Golden Era, where names like Martin, Woods, the Gold Dust Twins, Yaz, El Tiante, Rooster, Pudge, and Dewey were firmly embedded in both the hearts and minds of Red Sox Nation.
Within seven years, however, it would be all gone as free-agency altered the ethos of baseball, and corporate America modified the landscape of sports broadcasting. As Art Martone recapitulated in his tribute published in The Journal, "Ned Martin's strengths became less and less important to the radio industry as it evolved from what it was in the 1960s to what it is today. Quiet and intelligent doesn't play over the airwaves these days; modern radio execs like shrillness and hysteria. His profession changed, and Ned Martin couldn't -- or wouldn't -- change with it."
When two such unswerving iconoclasts were ordered to promote the sponsors' products more vociferously on the air, Martin and Woods balked, eventually causing their dismissals at the end of the 1978 season. Although Ned was quickly rehired as NESN's principal baseball announcer, Possum was not. Thus, the greatest broadcasting team in the history of professional sports in Boston was abruptly dispersed. While everyone remembers the infamous Bucky Dent game with a sense of revulsion, most casual fans have forgotten that it was also the last broadcast of the great Martin and Woods.
Ned Martin would serve as the Red Sox television announcer for another fourteen seasons before being summarily dismissed at the end of the 1992 season. While there were pockets of brilliance in many of his telecasts, Ned's discreet eloquence often fell flat within the visual realm of television. He sometimes seemed confused as to whether he should fill the silence with prose. It was as if Faulkner were suddenly ordered to write in haiku.
By his last year with the Sox, 1992, baseball and television had resolutely entered the age of] Sportscenter], in-your-face journalism, and enduring union-owner-agent greed. At the time, Ned seemed slightly anachronistic, a gentleman in a society of "me-toos." In Bill Griffith's accolade to Ned in ]The Globe,[] his last TV partner, Jerry Remy, talked about Martin's controversial dismissal: '"Ned was sad the last week of that season because he'd learned that NESN wasn't going to bring him back the next year,'' said Remy. 'And I knew they were afraid he might say something on the air. There was no chance of that. He went out with dignity and class.'"
Ned Martin subsequently retired to Clarksville, Virginia where he spent time with his beloved wife, Barbara, his daughters Caroline and O'Hara, his son, Roley, nine grandchildren, a bevy of dogs, and his cat, Emily. While we in Red Sox Nation occasionally heard his tranquil, reassuring voice from his new outpost via the talk show circuit, he seemed genuinely at peace in his new surroundings, a fitful and deserving reward for a life lived so well.
In 2001, Ned Martin entered our radar screen once again when he was deservedly named to the Red Sox Hall of Fame. At the reception that year, he received a profound and sustained ovation from a grateful audience. He was so astounded at the reception that the very private Martin blinked away a few tears as the applause surrounded him.
On July 22nd, 2002, Ned attended The Ted Williams Tribute at Fenway Park, where he interviewed old friend, Carl Yastrzemski, the other Sox legend who had d�buted with the team forty-one years previously. While he seemed a little feebler, his luminous spirit, as always, seemed to blanket the proceedings.
Less than a day later, Ned Martin died of a massive coronary at the Raleigh-Durham airport, a few miles from his beloved home. Fittingly, his last public appearance had been on the infield at Fenway as the blinding sun seemed to protect the park from the unforgiving faintness of night.
When I heard Ned had passed, I impulsively took out an old Simon and Garfunkel album that featured the underappreciated baseball tune, "Night Game". Ned's shadow seemed to envelop the lyrics as Paul Simon mournful voice echoed throughout my darkened living room:
There were two men down And the score was tied In the bottom of the eighth When the pitcher died And they laid his spikes On the pitcher's mound And his uniform was torn And his number was left on the ground Then the night turned cold Colder than the moon The stars were white as bones The stadium was old Older than the screams Older than the teams There were three men down And the season lost And the tarpaulin was rolled Upon the winter frost.
As I turned off the light before retiring for bed that night, I swore I could hear Ned say off in the distance, "The lights are dimming; it's time to go home. And so from Fenway Park this is Ned Martin. Farewell."
In the final analysis, the great Ned Martin incessantly stressed the enduring narrative of life through the potent medium of sports broadcasting. From his sage lens, the seasons ran together like an impressionist painting. Ultimately, they became chapters in a book that seemed to accentuate the same reoccurring theme over and over again even as hundreds of players entered and exited the tale like apparitions in a drawn-out war.
But he was more than just an invaluable bard - he was also a master-teacher. In the last analysis, Ned Martin served as an invaluable mentor to thousands of New Englanders who faithfully listened to his broadcasts year after year. Without knowing it, he not only vastly extended our vocabularies, but instilled in many of us an infatuation for language that stuck with us long after he broadcast his last game for the Boston nine. Mr. Martin provided countless baseball fans with a landscape of metaphor and simile that enabled us to apply the gift of comparative language to own lives as both speakers and writers.
In addition, Ned also served as a wellspring of insight for thousands of us who developed an emerging passion for literature due to his recurrent allusions to the great writers and their masterworks. Finally, he gave us all a sense of perspective about the game, time, and life itself. His broadcasts were his gift to us.
For me personally, Ned Martin gave me a focal point, a purpose, a sense of the possibilities, a future. For the past quarter of a century, I have entered my classroom each and every day as his undisclosed yet grateful apprentice, efficiently equipped to provoke and kindle my students with the same elixir of perspicuity and insight that he first used on me four decades ago. I became an educator because of Ned Martin.
Early on in my professional career, my first headmaster asked me, "Shaun, who most influenced you to become a teacher of English."
I gazed out my classroom window as the trees began to sway in rhythm. I looked back at him and whispered, "Ned Martin".
Sadly, however, I never had the chance to personally say, "thank you" to him. "Regrets are as personal as fingerprints," sighed Hemingway after the death of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Because Mr. Martin seemed eternally vigorous, I always thought that there would be time to drop him a note that would convey to Ned how much he meant to me - to us.
Unfortunately, this little tract will have to suffice. Huxley once wrote, "We live in a world which is full of misery and ignorance, and the plain duty of each and all of us is to try to make the little corner he can influence somewhat less miserable and somewhat less ignorant than it was before he entered it." Using Huxley's words as a measuring stick, Ned Martin lived a most gratifying life.
In an lovely piece entitled, "A Day of Light and Shadow," first published twenty-five years ago in Sports Illustrated, acclaimed Red Sox fan and musicologist, Jonathan Schwartz, wrote, "Ned Martin is as articulate and creative a sportscaster as there is in the country. He is often poetic and moving. 'The Yankee score is up,' Ned observed late last in September from Toronto, where scores remained only momentarily on the electric board. 'Soon it too will be gone,' he continued in his usual quiet tone. 'It will flash away like a lightening bug into the chilly Canadian night.'"
In my mind, the sadness - the vulnerability - that sometimes crept into his broadcasts, made Ned even more endearing in the end. Despite the fact that he had lived through the anguish and terror of war, he bravely emerged as a humble and generous human being. Three days after Martin died, former ESPN broadcaster Keith Olbermann wrote, ''He was a subtle, controlled, educated man, from Duke via Iwo Jima. His favorite on-air expression of surprise or delight was `Mercy,' and in a summer in which we have lost Jack Buck, Darryl Kile, Irv Kaze, Ted Williams, and Jim Warfield, that quote from Hamlet which Ned Martin always invoked in times of crisis seems all too tearfully appropriate: `When sorrows come, they come not as single spies, but in battalions.'''
An unfussy romantic, Ned Martin often used musical allusions to describe the choreography of baseball. The game had a certain rhythm and Ned was most cognizant of its nature, the season, and the fixed beat that seemed to slowly dissipate as fall began to envelop the region. During an extended rain delay in Cleveland in the mid-seventies, Martin and his buddy, Jim Woods, impulsively began to discuss their own favorite musical numbers over the years. Suddenly, as if on a dare, Ned began to croon out the old Kurt Weil classic, "The September Song", a standard that his beloved Sinatra had once sung so well. As Martin began to sing, I instantly recognized that I was getting a rare glimpse into the soul of an introvert.
For it's a long, long time From May to December And the days grow short When you reach September And the autumn weather Turns the leaves to flame One hasn't got time For the waiting game As the days dwindle down To a precious few September, November And these few precious days I'll spend with you These golden days I'll spend with you.
From 1961 to 1992, we were fortunate to have spent a plethora of golden days with Ned Martin as we listened to him artfully describe the daily episodes of a team that truly mattered to us all in the end. Despite the dark clouds that sometimes rolled inside of him, Martin was able to emit a potent luminosity, a tangible light that was able to cut through the very shadows of our own lives. The best Boston sportscaster of them all showed us the way even as he guided us through the haze of the seasons. Without realizing it, thousands of loyal Red Sox supporters were able to learn from an exquisite artist.
There is an old proverb that states, "Power lasts ten years; influence not more than a hundred." Like a weathered chestnut tree, Ned Martin planted enough seeds to eventually create a prodigious forest. In the end, we his pupils became his enduring legacy.