‘Over my many years of living in Dowagiac, I’ve seen DHS have some really good football teams, plus some not so good ones.

I’m hoping that this year will end up another good one.

Dowagiac also had some really good basketball teams.

My friend Bob Short lent me a picture from the paper dated March 21, 1908.

The heading of the basketball team picture was “The state championship team.”

They had just beaten Grand Rapids the night before to win it.

In my collection I have some old large pictures of the 1909 and 1910 basketball teams.

In the 1908 picture of the champions, Rutter was the center and the captain. Richey played left forward.

Before Grand Rapids was beaten by Dowagiac, Grand Rapids had won over Battle Creek, Detroit, Kalamazoo and Muskegon twice.

The only players in the 1908 basketball team that are in my 1909 basketball picture were Rutter and Richey.

In my pictures of the 1908 and 1909 football teams, the 1908 has all the names on the back.

In 1908, Rutter was center and captain. Richey was left forward and was the quarterback on the 1908 football team.

The other day, when I was finishing my bowl of Cheerios, I had an excess of milk and I had a piece of a little over-toasted muffin bread nicely toasted but not burned. I broke it up  and put the pieces in my milk.

Peg said her mother used to do that for her when she was a sick little girl.

Boy, old Cardinal Charlie put his foot in his mouth recently.

We were out at the Conservation Club fish fry while sitting at a table of eight folks.

I said it’s too bad one can’t go anyplace here in Dowagiac and get a cup of coffee and a piece of pie like we used to do at Burke’s Lunch Counter, Ma Lonnie’s and the Stiles restaurant of years past.

No sooner had I said it when one of the three ladies sitting with Catherine Hart said, oh, yes, you can, Charlie, at Trackside restaurant.

So, I stand corrected and it sure proves I don’t know everything, does it not?

“Cardinal Charlie” Gill writes a nostalgic weekly column about growing up in the Grand Old City. E-mail him at cardinalcharlie@hotmail.com.