THE FRONT ROW WITH MARK NELKE: Sunday, Aug. 21, 2016

Friday will mark the beginning of the 35th season of covering high school football in North Idaho by yours truly.

My, where did the time go? Probably the same place as the hair.

Anyway, in 1982, on my fifth day on the job at the Daily Bee, I covered a Sandpoint High football game at Bonners Ferry. Sandpoint won 7-0, I believe.

Two other things I distinctly remember about that game.

Six days after purchasing some camera gear, I lost a lens cap somewhere along the way in Bonners, never to be found again. And at halftime, when I had to make my way through a crowded bleachers to get to the press box, the good folks in Bonners kindly leaned this way and that and allowed me to slither through.

That was one of my first tastes of North Idaho hospitality. I’m sure we’ve all been places where, when you try to make your way through a crowd, folks give you the death stare that suggests, “go around.”

Not here.

THESE DAYS, high school fall sports around here consist of football, volleyball, boys and girls soccer, cross country and swimming.

Back then in Sandpoint, soccer was still just a club sport, not to be played at the high school level for another couple of years. And as far as a pool in Sandpoint in those days, well, there was that big deep open-water one.

Back then, football games started at 7:30 p.m., because well, that’s probably when they always started. Back then it didn’t matter as much, as most papers were afternoon papers. These days, with deadlines getting tighter and tighter, 7 p.m. kickoffs are a blessing.

(In fact, varsity basketball games used to be scheduled for 8 p.m. tipoffs — following the 4:30 sophomore game, and the 6:15 JV tilt. Again, kudos to whoever pushed to move up the current varsity starts to shortly after 7 — so long as the JV games behave).

In 1982, the three-point line was still a few years away.

Sandpoint High was in the same league with Coeur d’Alene and Lewiston. The opening of Lake City High was still more than a decade away.

Back then, Sandpoint played Wallace in football. These days, they’re three classifications apart.

Post Falls was in the IML, with the likes of Moscow, Lakeland, St. Maries, Kellogg, Priest River and Bonners Ferry, if memory serves.

Mullan was a power in North Star League football then — now, the Tigers are struggling to field a six-man team. And back then, the North Star still played 11-man football; the switch to eight-man didn’t come for a few more years. Could you imagine trying to contain former Clark Fork star Ron Heller, who went on to play in the NFL, in an eight-man game?

ALSO BACK in 1982, the Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon for muscular dystrophy research was a big deal. KREM used to show the whole thing, from early Sunday night to late Labor Day afternoon, and for some reason it was riveting television, in part because Jerry Lewis himself was a big deal, hosting the show along with sidekick with Ed McMahon, who was apparently on loan from The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.

Anyway, in ’82 right around the Labor Day weekend, I caught a ride to Post Falls to cover a Sandpoint-Post Falls volleyball match (with a deadline not until the next morning, you could do those sorts of things then). When I got back to the Sandpoint High parking lot, I noticed my car had developed a flat tire. It was my second week in Sandpoint, so I didn’t know too many people, but a nice gentleman — a parent of one of the players, as it turned out — was there in the parking lot, and kindly offered to help me change my tire.

“Hi, I’m Jerry Lewis,” he said.

“Yeah, and I’m Ed McMahon,” I thought.

But he was, indeed, Jerry Lewis — not that Jerry Lewis, of course — and he helped me change my tire, and we both went on our properly inflated ways.

It was the start of a nice, long relationship with the good folks of Sandpoint (and Clark Fork) at the time, and eventually with all of North Idaho.

A relationship lasting longer than the telethon, in fact.

Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 664-8176, Ext. 2019, or via email at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter@CdAPressSports.