“Can We Talk About Communication?”

Welcome to the new SDADA Update!

Every trade association I know of struggles with communication. That means both sending information to and receiving information from their members.

Our SDADA Bulletin, in its current printed form, is not an efficient mode of communication with our dealer members. Certainly a quarterly publication no longer qualifies as “news”.

So we are taking a page from the playbook of many other associations, inside and outside the auto industry, and going to an electronic newsletter. We don’t want to jam up your email box up so we will start with a semi-monthly (1st & 15th of each month) publication and adjust from there.

The SenTree

sentry noun sen·​try | \ ˈsen-trē  \plural sentries

Definition of sentry: GUARD, WATCH  especially : a soldier standing guard at a point of passage (such as a gate)

A recent South Dakota Magazine article about trees and the stories they hold reminded me of a tree that has overseen so many of my late fall sunrises. The tree doesn’t even sit on my property. It does, however, sit as the backdrop for virtually every deer that has been harvested on our property for the past 25 years.

I think the tree is some kind of elm but I don’t know for certain. I’ve never touched it. I’m not sure I’ve ever gotten within 20-25 yards of it. By the time it factors into our deer hunts, the leaves have long ago fallen and it would be difficult for me to even determine what kind of tree it actually is - not that it matters. When you look at the tree during the day, it is extremely unremarkable.

During deer season, however, the sun rises directly behind this tree when you sit in our deer stand. It transforms from “just another tree” to “the tree”.

Bird Droppings

In November of 1978, I attended the Oregon State at Creighton game as a Creighton student. It was much different than that game I watched from the upper reaches of Civic Auditorium six years earlier. As a student, I felt much closer to the game.

Tom Apke’s Bluejays opened the 1978-79 season with six straight victories, including a 78-61 drubbing of in-state rival Nebraska. Things changed when they went on the road and by the time Larry Bird’s #5 Indiana State Sycamores came to town in late January of 1979, the Bluejays were stumbling along at 9-6.

The Sycamores were undefeated (15-0) and on cruise control headed toward their March championship game against “Magic” Johnson’s Michigan State Spartans. The Bluejays and Omaha were nothing more than a bump in their road coming in. But the sellout crowd of just under 9,000 fans in the old Omaha Civic Arena had different ideas.

Bluejay Baptism

The first “big-time” basketball game I ever remember seeing was a game between Ohio State University and Creighton University at Omaha Civic Auditorium in Omaha on December 30, 1972. Our family was visiting my grandparents during the holiday season.

My Uncle Mel came over and said he had some tickets for the Creighton basketball game and asked who wanted to go. I was 12 years old and had never been to a college basketball game so I was in immediately!

Even though it was a mid-major Creighton team, the visiting Big 10 Ohio State raised the profile of the game considerably. Ohio State dominated the Big 10 in the 1960's. Under Fred Taylor, they won three outright conference titles, shared three others, won the the 1960 National Championship, and finished national runner-up in 1961 and 1962.