Found In My Basement: Clinton Defeats Bush

I'm attempting to do a major clean-up/organization of boxes I haven't opened in years, which means that I'm bringing back the popular(?) Found In My Basement series. Enjoy my first entry in this series in nearly two years!

In 1992, the city of Pittsburgh did not have a major newspaper. Prior to this, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette published a morning paper while the Pittsburgh Press came out in the afternoon. The idea of an afternoon paper today seems ludicrous. Anyway, there was a strike by the newspaper delivery truck drivers (I remember that there was a strike; I didn't remember that it was by the truck drivers) that left Pittsburgh without a major newspaper for months. So if you wanted news, you had to watch the local news or the national nightly half-hour newscast on CBS, ABC, or NBC. Perhaps you could check out CNN or get a USA Today though the best bet may have been to pick up a suburban newspaper. You couldn't get news from the internet in 1992, and there weren't 10 stations with 24-hour news coverage.

While I briefly mentioned that there was little to no newspaper coverage of the shooting at my high school, there also wasn't a major Pittsburgh newspaper that covered the 1992 election. Yet, since my dad picked up newspapers of major events (something that I still try to do today), here is the November 4, 1992 edition of McKeesport's The Daily News showing the 1992 election results.

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TMI Thursday: Not Quite Bobby Fischer

One of the reasons for my trip home to Pittsburgh last weekend was to clean up my childhood bedroom. My parents recently put their house on the market so I needed to sort through what I wanted to keep and throw away.

Sea shells stuck in Plaster of Paris (is that the correct name?) from an art project I did when I was 5 = throw away.

Baseball cards, football cards, hockey cards, and even some type of Alf trading cards = keep.

A slightly dented plastic globe (not a nice fancy globe) that features East Pakistan = garbage.

A scrapbook with award certificates and newspaper articles I was in = keep.

The scrapbook brought back some positive memories, one of which I will share now. I was on the high school chess team. I’ve definitely mentioned before that I attended the same high school that NFL players Steve Breaston, Ryan Mundy and Jason Taylor (sort of) attended. Let’s just say that I was not fighting off girls because of my chess team involvement. Anyway, team is probably a strong word as we basically played each other and then competed in one annual tournament against 7 or 8 other high schools. As a sophomore, my team, consisting of all sophomores, won the tournament defeating the junior/senior team among those from the rival high schools. We were even featured in the now defunct Pittsburgh Press newspaper. I found the article and winning certificate in the scrapbook.

This brings me to a negative memory found in the scrapbook. As a senior, I was bumped from the #1 team for a sophomore despite the fact that we won the previous two years. We went back-to-back and were going for a third straight title. How could they break up the Fab 4? (No we didn’t have that nickname. Or any nickname.) Facing the replacement guy in the tournament, despite making a dumb move to lose my queen, I salvaged a draw. I won my other three matches and finished with the top score of anyone in my seat. However, my record wasn’t enough to carry my teammates, and the #1 team ended up winning the tournament. That meant that my former teammates all won 3 straight years. I was bitter, and as you can probably tell, still am. Of course, I decided to keep the scoresheet from this last tournament in the scrapbook because of my high score.

There’s no real end to the story here. That was my last competitive chess match. Except for the occasional times I play against my brother (I always win), I haven’t played chess in many years. I guess the fact that I remember a chess tournament match from 16 years ago is worthy of a TMI post. Don't feel bad for me though; I now write a blog. And I bet that my blog is better than anyone else's from that chess tournament!

Make sure to visit LiLu for more TMI Thursdays. Plus, you can click here to see all of my TMI Thursday archives.