Viking

"When I was a young boy, no older than 24, my uncle asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. He said "Sampson, I want you to touch me right here between my testicles until I tell you to stop."

My answer that day, as it always had been, was that I planned on being a Viking.

Most laughed when I gave this answer, the same way they laughed when I said I'd be the first man to ride a cheetah at the Indy 500. In retrospect, it looks like they got the last laugh on that second part, thanks to restrictive poaching laws that came into effect in the 1940's. But I never cared. "Let them laugh," I'd say to myself. "Maybe they'll laugh so long that I'm the only one who ducks for cover when we get bombed to death by the Chinese." This would make them laugh even harder, and from then on I resolved to think personal thoughts to myself, rather than speaking them aloud.

Most thought that I would eventually give up my dream of being a Viking, as I grew older and wiser in the ways of the world. Many would have bet money on it, had the Hartwig clan not been genetically incapable of winning a money wager. But they were, as was evidenced the year dad bet the family car and the rights to my brother Goose on "Fat Charlie" Walker taking home the gold in the 50-yard dash at the 1952 summer Olympics.

But I proved them all wrong in the autumn of 1961 when I showed up at Minnesota's training camp wearing a ceramic helmet I'd made myself and gave them the best ten minutes of my life, in an effort to make the team. I may have been driven into the ground like a tent peg, but it was still a dream come true and sweet redemption in the eyes of all the Hartwigs who had looked at Sampson L. Hartwig cockeyed for years.

Later I learned that everyone thought when I said 'Viking' that I meant the guys in the big boats with the horned hats and such, and I understood why they were laughing."

Different
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State Fair
"When I was a boy, every year Dad would take Goose, Stephanie and I to the State Fair. Mom would never come, on account of her belief that the State Fair was the devil's yard sale. So once every fall, Dad would pile all of us kids into the family... (9/30/02)

Game Show
"At one time in my youth I was lucky enough to go on that game show, Twenty-One—that's the show famous for all the cheating, where they gave the contestants the answers. Well, Sampson L. Hartwig didn't get any answers, I'll tell you that much. It... (9/16/02)