Seeing assorted federal employees going postal (explanation later) about losing their seats on the gravy train has prompted recollections of my past — admittedly brief – experience working for Uncle Sam.

As a high school senior and into my freshman year of college, I worked at the Johnstown Post Office. It was something like 15 or 16 hours a week during school and much more during the Christmas rush and summer.

It was a sweet gig, paying more than $6 an hour, which was a lot in 1973, when the minimum wage was $1.60 an hour. I recall people being amazed to learn after the fact that I made more in one year on that part-time, temporary job than I made my first year working full-time at the local Woke Gazette.

In 2010, having retired from journalism in March 2003, I picked up a few extra bucks working a couple of months for the U.S. Census Bureau.

Both the post office and census time gave me great insight into the federal employment.

The job at the post office was a bit eye-opening for a teenager. This was before the term “going postal” sprang into use, a reference to disgruntled employees, often of the post office, shooting up their workplaces and killing supervisors and employees.

That usage started after such incidents began springing up at post offices in 1986 or so.

Let’s just say if some breathless reporter had asked me if I was shocked such things could happen, I’d have told them no – hell no.

It was on Aug. 20, 1986, that disgruntled post office employee Patrick Sherrill shot and killed 14 employees and wounded six others at the Edmond, Okla., post office before shooting and killing himself.

Sherrill had claimed to be a Vietnam veteran. Records indicate that while he had been a member of the Marine Corps, he had served domestically. Still, there was an association between “going postal” events and Vietnam veterans down the line.

I worked with a lot of veterans who were full-time employees during my time at the Johnstown Post Office and they ran the gamut from seemingly completely normal to obviously disturbed.

There was a supervisor and veteran we’ll call Lover Boy, who was married, but not a fanatic about it. He routinely took up a post hanging over the mail-sorting rack of one particularly large-breasted, female, high school part-timer.

I don’t know what, if anything, transpired between them. I do know she got whatever daily job duty she desired.

Another fill-in supervisor, call him Thirsty, had a habit of disappearing for hours at one of the nearby Washington Street watering holes of the time.

This became a problem when registered mail would arrive and he was the only person able to sign for it.

To make it all the more surreal, the guy looked a lot like actor Lorne Greene, who played the head of the Cartwright clan in the long-running Bonanza television series that was nearing the end of its run back then.

Probably the most memorable character of my post office time, call him Sgt. Bad Intent, was, in retrospect, exactly the type of guy who might have shown up armed one night and shot up the place.

Sgt. Bad Intent laughed a lot, but in a maniacal way. As strange as it sounds, back then bicycle wheels used to be shipped with only an address tag tied to a spoke. They were labeled to handle with care and use caution. Sgt. Bad Intent, when we were loading these wheels into semi-trailers out back, would read the label and wing them the length of the trailers, probably 40 feet.

“Let’s put them up front where they’ll get a good ride,” he would say, laughing at his own little joke.

The census time, while not as dramatic, was educational in its own way. I learned about bad management, government inefficiency, bending of rules, and trying to skew things to a desired outcome.

We were encouraged to go out of our way to help the cause of area political representation by counting any human being with signs of life, even if they might be living as squatters in condemned buildings.

We had some ex-military types in our crew, including one memorable guy with a full-time job in government who also was doing census work, theoretically on the side. He told a lot of stories, including being greeted on his stops by women with open blouses and similar such sexual overtures.

Alas, I was greeted by no semi-naked women, only irritated types disputing my authority to ask them questions, and one particularly disturbed individual who followed me around Kernville for a time, calling me names (sneaky fox?) and suggesting I was part of some conspiracy to oppress him.

This continued until I noted that if he didn’t desist I was going to kick his ass right there on the street.

By the way, we weren’t allowed to carry guns for our protection, even if we were duly licensed to do so.

Although I never did work full-time for the government, I did spend a lot of time working for private employers and always I tried to follow the commands of my bosses. As I used to tell co-workers, if you’re accepting the check, your task is to do what you are told unless it is illegal, unethical or immoral.

When I first started at the Johnstown Woke Gazette, the newsroom was not unionized and I saw more than one person get the old, resign-or-be-fired ultimatum.

When I moved on to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, I signed a paper acknowledging I was an “at will employee” and could be fired at any time, for any reason, or for no reason at all.

Being secure in my ability to do my job, I signed it and, guess what, I was not fired, but instead took an early buyout offer 15-plus years down the line when I no longer enjoyed working there.

Current federal employees, please take note.

So many happenings and so little time, which means we need an installment of news and views.

NEWS: CNN’s “Fake” Jake Tapper has a book about the media coverup of the failing mental state of Clueless Joe Biden.

VIEWS: Give Tapper the lead balls award for this. It was Tapper, in a video to be played over and over again, who derided Lara Trump for questioning Biden’s mental acuity during his time as president, saying she was mocking a stutter and lacked standing to make judgments about cognitive ability. Yo, Jake, anyone such as me who has had relatives dealing with dementia, recognizes the symptoms. Jesus, did Biden stutter up the plane steps, stutter off his bike, stutter when tripping on stages, or needing guides to show him the way off them, stutter when freezing mid-sentence or stutter forgetting names of individuals or countries they represented? Did Biden stutter during the debate that prompted Democrats to dump him as the candidate for re-election? Now, in an apparent effort to make a few bucks and rehab a reputation for unbiased reporting that the guy never really had, this book is the answer?

NEWS: President Trump is getting heat for proposing a $5 million gold card for would-be immigrants to speed up their process of coming to the United States and perhaps eventually becoming citizens.

VIEWS: I guess the critics think it is better to let in gang members and assorted criminals, put them up, at taxpayer expense, in first-class hotels, give them cell phones and pre-loaded debit cards for incidental expenses. This just in, almost by definition, the odds are people with a spare $5 million are more likely to be productive members of society than your average gang members. Also, unlike Clueless Joe’s refugee army, these people would be vetted before being accepted.

NEWS: Attorney General Pam Bondi has said to expect release of Jeffrey Epstein files, perhaps including passenger lists for plane trips to his isle of debauchery, as soon as Thursday.

VIEWS: A lot of leftists choked on their coffee when they heard that. I would suspect there will be Republicans on the lists, too, but I’m betting that more prominent Democrats show up on the manifests, not that merely being on the passenger list indicates felonious behavior. Regardless, it is not a good look.

NEWS: The usual media naysayers are outraged that Elon Musk was at the meeting Wednesday of the Trump cabinet.

VIEWS: Funny, I don’t recall them being outraged that unelected DR. JILL BIDEN !!!!!!! attended and spoke at a rare Clueless Joe cabinet meeting, or that feckless son Hunter spent a lot of time with daddy (perhaps changing his Depends) at White House staff meetings.

NEWS: Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick is a voice of raging optimism as shown by his Fox News interview with Bret Bair during which he expressed real hope about balancing the federal budget and paying down the national debt of $37 trillion or so.

VIEW: Too predictably, even for Fox, a panel was brought on later to discuss what Lutnick said and it was two-thirds dismissive, Taking the lead on negativity was Brit Hume who should know better, and some harpy from USA Today. But Charles Payne of Fox Business provided some balance, imploring the negative nellies at least to give Lutnick and, by extension, Trump, a chance to get the job done instead of saying it is impossible.

NEWS: Musk, speaking to the media at the cabinet meeting, noted that reining in spending and preventing that national debt from mushrooming further is the only chance this country has to avoid bankruptcy and a huge decline in living standards.

VIEWS: It’s hard to argue with Musk when our interest payments on the national debt, at about $1 trillion a year, now exceed the defense budget

Consider the curious case of Rachel “Mad Cow” Maddow, MSNBC’s often-wrong, never-in-doubt leftist mouthpiece.

You may recall Maddow pitching – hard – the Trump Russian collusion case night after night years back. When the whole hoax fell apart, Maddow moved on to another attack plan, failing to acknowledge she just might have been wrong.

More recently, Maddow was screaming conflict of interest due to a government plan to buy Tesla vehicles, a plan put in place by Clueless Joe’s regime as these incompetents headed to the exits. Some suggest it was a plant designed to make Trump look bad when it eventually came to the attention of the public. Or maybe, as others suggest, it was just more Biden regime ineptitude.

You make the call.

It is clear that, in the wake of Trump’s re-election, attrition is hitting the leftist LameStream media hard, as talking head after talking head moves on, either voluntarily or with a swift kick in the backside.

They all seem to think they will take their screeds to podcasts and live happily ever after. They might succeed, as long as they are willing to tamp down their lifestyles because podcasting in general is not as lucrative as milking a broadcaster with national reach for an exhorbitant salary.

This self-cleansing likely is rooted in the management finally tiring of being wrong and, more importantly, losing viewership and revenue because of it.

Hell, even Washington Post publisher Jeff Bezos has up and told the editorial page to knock off all the batshit crazy leftist stuff and instead concentrate on personal liberties and free markets. This, predictably, has sent assorted horrified leftists rushing out the door. Mission accomplished, as George W. Bush might have concluded with a banner as a prop.

MSNBC has been among the leftist organizations cleaning house. And there is Maddow, eager to come down on the wrong side of yet another issue.

Maddow is a person critics indicate bears a striking resemblance to Mark Cuban (which is unfair to Cuban). I think more of Ruth Buzzi’s Gladys Ormphby character from the old Laugh-In TV series, the spinster with the dowdy wardrobe and hairnet, always eager to use her massive purse as a weapon on those who offended her.

Ormphby was but an on-air character born in Buzzi’s mind. I’m beginning to think this strident, far-left, caring-for-the-downtrodden Maddow as seen on MSNBC, similarly is for show only.

I mean, Maddow is lamenting the dispatching of former colleague Joy (Less) Reid, whose mission in life in the past seemed to have been to post homophobic slurs on her social media, then deny it was her, blame hackers, and finally claim amnesia, but apologizing just in case she had written it all.

Reid quickly moved on to repeating ad nauseam on her MSNBC show that Trump and his supporters are Nazis, racists and general idiots. No apologies from her on that front, just a trip to the unemployment line.

Because she was a one-note singer, Joy (Less) had a viewing audience that would fit in a telephone booth (if we still had them) or an outhouse (same thing) or a subcompact car (there, something you can visualize).

Reid got the ax and Maddow cried crocodile tears. Maddow painted their bosses as racists, a fitting homage to the playbook of Joy (Less).

Perhaps it was only coincidence that word since has come out that much of Maddow’s staff is being cut, too.

Some have suggested that Maddow, who reportedly makes $25 million a year for, up until recently, doing one whole show a week (she has a future as a federal government bureaucrat) might take a pay cut and have the money redistributed in the interest of saving staff, or even Joy (Less).

Maddow’s silence on that front has been deafening.

Compassion ends at the purse. And even though Maddow needs an Ormphby-sized purse to stash all her loot, she’s not willing to share any to help some coworkers.

Keep on keeping it real, Maddow.

Add to the list of things sure to enrage a leftist, besides confusing their pronouns, asking if they are eligible to vote, or maybe if they’re in the country legally, is to email the bureaucratic drones among their number requesting a list of what they did last week on the job.

Oh, the indignity.

I recall as a child one of the teachers’ go-to requests early in a new school year was to get the students writing by having them outline what they did on their summer vacations. For someone who grew up in a household such as mine, a family for whom going for a Sunday drive, maybe visiting relatives, was quite the outing, I had limited source material.

Somehow, though, I answered the call and wrote something each year. I did well on those essays, even went on and got a job for three-plus decades writing for my keep.

It seems too many of our work-from-home, do-as-little-as-possible bureaucrats must have had it too easy on those summer essays, having raw material like going to the beach, to Disney World, to foreign lands.

Faced with a simple request to outline what they did last week, they freeze. Oh, you skeptics, who say they did nothing.

Baloney. I just read where hundreds of NSA employees (the spy folks) were on transgender chat sites talking about turning penises into vaginas surgically and celebrating it all.

I’m sure thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of bureaucrats were doing similar productive things on the taxpayers’ dimes, just last week.

We’ll excuse the USAid people, who saw their slush fund closed down. We know what they were doing, packing personal items in cardboard boxes and scribbling snarky messages on them. There is no group more shrewish than do-nothing slackers deprived of their spot on the gravy train and left to wonder if there is another organization as idiotic as the federal government that will pay them to spend other peoples’ money on their political causes.

Beyond the USAid types, we want more NSA-type tomfoolery. Don’t be shy, people. Details make the stories.

Judging by the ongoing string of reports regarding left-wing news hacks losing their jobs, this whole DOGE concept apparently is being co-opted by media organizations.

From Abilio “Jim” Acosta, to Joy (less) Reid, to Lester Holt, to Norah O’Donnell, or even MSNBC demanding her highness Rachel “Mad Cow” Maddow stop acting like a bureaucrat and start doing more than one show a week, it seems too many prominent leftists were asked to tell the bosses what they did in recent weeks, and it wasn’t nearly enough.

Or maybe it was too much, things such as calling half the country racists, Nazis, Russian agents and just, plain stupid for not kissing the hem of the radical left.

Although I never in my work life had to tell my bosses what I did the past week – presumably they saw enough of my bylines in the publications I worked for that they knew – I could have provided them a list.

Even now, despite being retired, if the wife emails me tomorrow asking what productive things I did last week, I can provide her an answer. It would be an eclectic list, including shoveling snow (multiple days), helping mind the grandkids, running the family investments, doing odds and ends about the house and writing entries for this blog.

There’s more, but I won’t bore you.

I bumped into a former co-worker over the weekend at the Pete Vizza memorial service. She was a Trump supporter before it was fashionable, and has been to numerous Trump rallies, along with the recent inauguration.

I asked her if she was tired of winning yet. She wasn’t and neither am I.

Reading the ongoing whining about Trump and his team taking on the deep state, cutting off its lifeblood of taxpayer funding, makes every day like another Christmas.

A recent poll indicates I’m not alone, with majorities in the 80- and 70-percent ranges approving of Trump closing the border and pruning government, among other things.

This email request to outline the past work week has been the gift that keeps on giving, providing daily amusement as Democrats find yet another losing cause to die for.

Have at it, you donkeys.

The biggest concern on my plate ahead of tonight’s USA-Canada championship game in the 4 Nations Face-Off is whether or not I’ll be able to watch the game.

I’m sitting her at the mercy of DISH, and the inability of its satellite signals to penetrate through much worse than sunny skies. I couldn’t watch the Finland-Sweden game Saturday due to my signal evaporating, touching off a phone conversation stretching more than hour with uncooperative DISH people who don’t understand that their signal guarantee specifically mentions receiving account credit for weather outages.

My backup for DISH crapping out again tonight would be trying to watch the game online. That, too, is less than a certainty because my Breezeline internet provider already has greeted me with outages earlier today.

I know, I know, I’m supposed to be on pins and needles worried whether the U.S. can win it all. I’d settle for being able to watch the game.

Spoiler alert, I expect Canada to win.

I’m as patriotic as the next guy, maybe even a little moreso. I’m not saying the U.S. can’t win, or even won’t win. I just understand that if the guys in red, white and blue triumph, it would be a momumental surprise.

As legendary sportswriter Damon Runyon is said to have quipped, “The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that’s the way to bet.”

First off, it’s hard to consistently beat an opposing team when the talent levels are close. The U.S. already has beaten Canada 3-1 in the round-robin portion of this tournament. As long as the games are played by humans, emotions intrude and it’s natural for the winner to have a touch less urgency the next time, while the losers are driven to atone.

It seems to me the U.S. has more depth, but Canada has more top-end offensive talent.

This is altered by the U.S. entering this game tonight in Boston toting a lot of injury baggage.

Begin with three top-echelon forwards – Auston Matthews, Matthew Tkachuk and Brady Tkachuk – who are less than 100 percent. Matthews and Matthew Tkachuk sat out the last game vs. Sweden with injuries, and Brady left it early after wiping out into the goal upright. Even if all play tonight as expected, will they be anywhere near 100 percent?

Some think Matthews has been hurt all tournament. His defense has been dogged, but this gifted goal scorer has yet to put one in the net.

Take Connor McDavid, Nathan MacKinnon and Sidney Crosby away from Canada and you might notice a dropoff.

The injury news continues for the U.S., who will be without defenseman Charlie McAvoy. Supposedly McAvoy got hurt in the opener vs. Finland, but still played vs. Canada. The Canadians will recall this because McAvoy delivered huge hits on Crosby and McDavid (twice) that had an effect on the outcome.

It was Crosby, perhaps a bit tentative after his run-in with McAvoy, who coughed up the puck for the game-winning U.S. goal. McDavid scored early, but was not a huge factor after the hits he absorbed.

Not seeing McAvoy in uniform will bring joy to Canada’s team.

The U.S. also has arguably its best defenseman, Quinn Hughes, missing the entire tournament due to injury.

Meanwhile, the Canadians were missing star defenseman Cale Makar for the first meeting with the U.S. He’s back and is a weapon.

That the game is being played in Boston, a supposed home-ice advantage, is mostly a non-factor in my view. How much did playing in Montreal and having the insecure Canadian fans boo our national anthem before the game help Canada? The hosts did lose, right, after going on top 1-0, which further hyped the crowd.

Vocal home crowds can raise the emotions of the visitors, too, spurring them to great heights if only to shove it back in the faces of the spit droolers.

This game is being pitched as much more than a hockey contest due to Canada’s hurt feelings over President Trump calling them out regarding unfair trade practices, noting how they depend on us for national defense and Trump kidding girl-boy prime minister Justin Trudeau that he’s just the soon-to-be-ousted governor of our soon-to-be-51^st state.

Canadians are overly invested in their hockey identity and should they somehow blow this game, it will be a national day of mourning.

If the U.S. somehow can prevail, it will 1980 Miracle on Ice, the sequel.

I just hope I get to watch it all unfold.

Fast-moving news events have raised a flood of questions, with less than a trickle of answers in response.

Here are some of the questions I’ve love to have answered, sooner rather than later.

Why, all these days after the Delta plane in Toronto did an upside-down runway slide, do we not know the name of the pilot? (There has been a lot of online speculation, including putting forth the name of a 26-year-old female only recently upgraded from flying tiny prop planes, as well as one listing the name and photo of a male TV aviation expert and, most amusing, another with the name and image of a prominent male porn star).

What is up with the cretins who rushed to blame the Toronto crash on President Trump, despite it happening in Canada?

Do Democrats realize how silly they look opposing cutting government waste, fraud and abuse?

Are Johnstown’s Myopia 2025 people serious about building houses on all the vacant lots in the city and selling them for $100,000 each?

Do these people realize average citizens need to do real jobs to earn their money and don’t have access to all the governmental handouts these behind-the-scenes elitists are used to raking in to fund the various nonprofits, charities, foundations and not-for-profits from which they draw their lavish salaries?

Do they really think people looking to purchase a house for $100,000 are eager to buy within the city limits, not Richland, Westmont, Southmont, Upper Yoder, etc.?

How many Myopia 2025 types live within the city limits?

Is ungrateful pipsqueak Zelenskyy crazy for deciding to attack Trump publicly as Trump tries to end the war that is destroying Zelenskyy’s country?

Should Mexican cartels be nervous that they’ve been designated as terrorist organizations, basically taking the gloves off regarding how they can be attacked?

In view of cartels running her country, shouldn’t Mexico la presidente Claudia Sheinbaum be more concerned with that than the renaming of the Gulf of America?

Can Democrats give the Elon-Musk-was-not-elected rants a rest considering the judges they rush to in attempts to stop DOGE were appointed, not elected?

Do Democrats take an oath “I will support illegal immigrants over U.S. citizens, trans males over females in women’s sports, gays over straights, any minority over whites, thieves over auditors, Muslims over Christians, Jews or members of any other religion, criminals over law-abiding types, climate crazies over rational folks, and misinformed left-wing media types over the truth?”

Are you upset to learn that Biden’s Energy Department funneled a $2 million grant to boondoggle electric truck company Nikola in 2021, despite the company’s founder being under federal investigation for shareholder deceit at the time, and now Nikola has filed for bankruptcy Wednesday morning?

Do you think they’re going to find all the gold on-hand at Fort Knox when DOGE gets around to opening the vaults?

Having spent two hours this morning shoveling the predicted 1-3 inches of snow – we got about six in Southmont — I’m not feeling kindly toward the weather geeks.

Their ridiculous, unending, inaccuracy seems to be across the board, like maybe they’re all reading from the same hymnal, just as Lame-Stream Media sing in unison, Russia, Russia, Russia, or Constitutional Crisis, Constitutional Crisis, Constitutional Crisis at any given time.

Why this is so with weather I can’t understand. These local TV stations all proudly proclaim the presence of their staff metereologist, plus assorted similary credentialed minions. They have super gigabillion watt radar, cameras and weather stations scattered throughout their viewing area, and access to a seemingly endless amount of weather services and online weather tools.

You’d think they could spit out some different, and accurate forecasts. But, no, they are a low-accuracy echo chamber where it seems to be better to be wrong in lockstep than to take the risk of being right alone.

Forgive me for noting they seemed to do better when they looked out the window and just went with their observations.

If you live where I live, they’ve absolutely blown the past three or four winter storms, but with a twist of constantly underestimating snow fall and/or how cold it would get.

In the past, they pushed weather porn, predicting virtual Armageddon on each occasion of an approaching storm and, when these dire predictions almost never proved accurate, they would come on the air with some version of “Whew, we dodged a big one.”

Terrified viewers, who had rushed to stores in prior days to buy out supplies of milk, bread and toilet paper, never seemed to hold a grudge with the weather people. Instead, they were grateful that they had not come face-to-face with disaster, forgetting that the only indication of said impending disaster was the over-active imaginations of the weather people.

Long ago, I swore off the local weather people and their changing cast of characters. In the case of the NBC affiliate headquartered nearby that thinks it’s in Centre County, weather guy turnover in the past in some cases has had to do with legal problems.

But even the formerly trustworthy sources such as AccuWeather.com or Weather.com, have failed miserably this winter.

They have become so predictably bad that I make allowances. Today that meant setting my alarm for two hours earlier than I might have needed to shovel away an inch of snow and clean a car. The way I looked at it, if they finally got one right, I could shovel, come in and relax with a cup of tea, then send the various household members off on their appointed rounds.

As I hefted my first shovelful of snow this morning, I was extremely grateful for that extra time.

Upon returning from one errand, we commiserated with a neighbor out shoveling snow for the umpteenth time in recent days. She noted, without prompting, that she’s tired of these 1-3 inch predictions that always undershoot.

Join the crowd.

We parted with shared envy — that professionals could be so consistently wrong and still maintain their jobs.

Can we get DOGE to look into weather types?

Canada’s inferiority complex regarding the United States, already an open sore due to President Donald Trump trolling about it becoming our 51^st state, or Trump’s tariff talk, now must cope with the effects of a defeat in the 4 Nations Face-Off hockey event Saturday.

On a night in Montreal that began with Canadian fans roundly booing the U.S. National Anthem, and saw the game start with not one, not two, but three fights in the first nine seconds, the U.S. team overcame a 1-0 deficit to win 3-1 and quiet those formerly loud and obnoxious home fans.

By game’s end, the American fans among the now diminished crowd could be heard chanting U-S-A, sounding a lot like a Trump political rally. Probably the Big Guy was doing a little cheering himself somewhere, maybe even having a Y-M-C-A celebratory dance.

It’s not bad enough that Canadian culture is dominated by our music and movies, that its economy is heavily depending on the U.S., now the U.S. has struck a blow in hockey, something smug Canadians love to call “our game.”

The funny thing is, even though hockey is easily the number one sport in Canada, it probably is No. 4 in the U.S. But that has not prevented our hockey players from winning two straight World Junior titles and three of the past five.

Those smug Canadians answer that with a yea, but. Yes, the younger U.S. players are dominating, but the so-called best-on-best international competition with NHL players involved, which we haven’t had for about a decade, should go to Canada.

It still could. It didn’t Saturday.

The U.S. won, and dominated during long stretches. Excuse makers among the Canada crowd will note defenseman Cal Makar didn’t play due to illness. OK, but American defenseman Quinn Hughes, generally considered in the argument with Makar as the best defenseman in the NHL, has not played the entire tournament due to injury.

Also, Canada was playing at home so to speak, before a raucous crowd, and got the game’s first goal, usually significant in games of this magnitude and talent level.

The win had its roots in a Trump-like mentality — fight, fight, fight.

One perhaps biased announcer noted that the Brothers Tkachuk (Matthew and Brady) were bigger than their fight opponents in the opening seconds of play. Matt (6-2, 202) is the same height as his opponent Brandon Hagel (6-2, 180) but does outweigh him. Brady (6-4, 225) has the size edge on his fight mate Sam Bennett (6-1, 193).

The announcer said nothing about the third fight pairing, pitting American J.T. Miller (6-1, 218) against Canadian Colton Parayko (6-6, 230).

I would hasten to add that the Tkachuk brothers had scored two goals apiece in the United States’ opening win vs. Finland, so the fights cost the U.S. the services of two key players for five minutes each, while the Canadians had two lesser lights forced to sit in the penalty box.

The third fight was more of an even loss in terms of talent.

Apparently the decision was made among U.S. players during a group chat that it was important to fight and send a message early, then deal with being temporarily short-handed.

Bottom line: The U.S. team has one remaining round-robin game, Monday with Sweden, but advances to the Thursday championship game regardless of that outcome.

Canada must beat Finland Monday to set up a rematch with the U.S. in the title game.

Those Monday and Thursday games move to Boston, where presumably the crowd won’t be booing our national anthem, but might return the favor regarding O Canada.

If you missed this game, be sure to catch a potential rematch. The Saturday game reinforced my preference for hockey over other sports. The players still put the team concept first, the games are a mix of speed and grace with physical violence, and seldom do you see players merely going through the motions. When they are wearing their nation’s colors, it adds another level to all the above aspects.

Fights don’t hurt the appeal. The talking heads were giddy over the three fights so quickly and were searching their memory banks for reference points.

Social media was buzzing over it all, too.

For those of us who grew up here in Johnstown, and witnessed the Jets teams upon which the movie Slap Shot was based, it was nothing special.

Hell, I can recall entire teams from Johnstown and Syracuse brawling in pregame warmups, before any officials were present to break up fights, One Jets tough guy beat a Syracuse player’s head on the ice repeatedly, leaving a pool of blood on the ice that spread to resemble yet another faceoff dot.

Three fights in the first nine seconds was entertaining, but I’ve seen much worse.

Let me tell you about Pete Vizza, who died Thursday.

Pete was many things to me, but most of all, a long-time friend.

We shared a philosophy, that people such as us, with jobs that caused us to deal with the public, have many acquaintances, but just a few friends in the way we defined it – that being friends are someone who would do just about anything for you, at any time, no questions asked.

Pete was that kind of person. I’d known him slightly since when I lived briefly in Hornerstown and attended the old Meadowvale School as a 6^th grader. Pete was in fifth grade at the time.

We became friends later in life, when I worked as a reporter and sportswriter at The Tribune-Democrat and he was a photographer.

In the late 1970s, Pete and I got our first new vehicles within a short time period. He bought a Plymouth Trail Duster SUV and I got a 1979 Jeep CJ-7. From then on, I’d call him Pete “Trail Duster” Vizza and he’d call me Sam “CJ” Ross.

Even after we’d both left the local newspaper, we remained in contact. I’d see him at summer union picnics or winter Christmas parties, until the membership banned retirees. Often, we’d go to AAABA games together, or he’d stop by my house for a visit.

Pete was a fixture at the Super Bowl parties I used to give, always arriving with a greeting card and gift certificate for some area eatery, despite my wife and I telling him constantly it was not necessary.

That was Pete, always looking to do something nice for others. And, when you did something for him, things as simple as my wife making sure he had a plate of homemade Christmas cookies every year, or the night I swung by his downtown apartment and took him for a long ride in my newly acquired Mustang convertible, Pete made sure you realized he was grateful.

I have so many fond recollections of Pete.

There was the time I was covering a state playoff high school football game in Altoona and Pete was the scheduled photographer. We went in separate vehicles because he would need to leave early. I arrived first, then got a message that Pete was stranded atop Cresson Mountain, having taken out five deer with his company car.

There were so many emergency vehicles with flashing lights when I got there to pick him up, it looked like a plane crash scene. But Pete calmly rode to the game with me, shot his pictures and I covered the game and wrote my story. It did provide a lot of laughs, though, in subsequent years.

Although slight of stature, Pete went through a period when he did a lot of weightlifting. They called him “Mighty Mouse” at the Johnstown YMCA.

At night, Pete would turn off the water faucets in the photo department darkroom with such force that on more than one occasion, the people trying to turn them on in the morning needed to get a maintenance man and a wrench.

Pete was an officer in our union at the newspaper and there was a story about Pete mentioning to the publisher – perhaps during contract negotiations – that he wanted to buy a Mercedes-Benz and the publisher laughing about it being some sort of unobtainable dream.

Not long after that, Pete stopped in at the office and offered the publisher a ride – in his new Mercedes. I’m not sure whether or not the publisher went for the ride.

I do know that Pete stopped by my house with the Mercedes one afternoon and took my wife and my then young son Tony out to Shaffer’s for ice cream. He was not afraid my son would get ice cream on the interior. Vintage Pete.

Pete took some memorable photos of my son as a younger child. One, Pete snapped while on our street during winter and it ran in our in-house publication, Office Chatter, with a caption of Tony telling Pete he was making snowballs to throw at old people.

On another occasion, my wife Ruby brought toddler Tony into the office at night to see me and Pete snapped a photo of Tony, in a Pirates ballcap, holding a phone while sitting on my desk. This black and white image remains one of my favorites, displayed on a wall by the staircase of my home.

Years later, when Tony had a daughter of his own, my son and I recreated the scene, with the original picture included in the new image.

Pete was a Democrat, but not in the modern, far-left way. He was a man of traditional values and eventually got out of local politics because he found himself out of step philosophically with his party.

Health reasons caused Pete to leave the area in recent years and I lost contact with him, sadly.

And now his run on Earth has ended. But the memories he made still linger. I’ll miss you, Pete “Trail Duster” Vizza. We all will.

‘Tis Valentine’s Day, yet another holiday usurped by commercial interests.

Just the other day, two granddaughters, exhibiting all the anticipation of Christmas, pondered what gifts they might be receiving on this day.

I guess there is some sort of parallel, with Christmas celebrating a holy birth and Valentine’s Day supposedly honoring the death of one, and possibly as many as three, St. Valentines in martyr fashion at the hands of Romans.

Jesus is the reason for the season, Christians note in the face of the commercialization of Christmas. But, when it comes to Valentine’s Day, there is not a lot of pushback regarding the message that presents are required on this day.

The granddaughters’ Valentine’s Day gifts were cards with money inside, which seemed to thrill them. It will be spent during a Monday family shopping trip.

But what about all the others seeking gifts on this day? Allow me to offer some ideas, not necessarily hearts and flowers, for them.

For gin-slinger-turned-House-member AOC, a brain. Every time she opens her mouth, she comes off as the Scarecrow character from The Wizard of Oz (if I only had a brain). AOC has blasted Elon Musk as an “unintelligent billionaire” and now wonders if ICE head Tom Homan can read. Sounds like more projection from a leftist.

For the uninformed leftist protesters who interrupted a USAID hearing Thursday in Washington, D.C., some brains from the AOC gift box. Even as they were ushered from the room after decrying funding cuts for PEPFAR, a program that deals with AIDS, chairman Brian Mast told the fools the program funding has NOT BEEN CUT!!!!!!!. He also advised them to stop watching leftist propaganda and perhaps tune in Fox News.

For Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman, a Democrat, an honorary Mensa membership. Fetterman is the lone voice of reason in his party who won’t buy into the constitutional crisis hysteria of raging leftist idiots spouting absurd talking points. “There isn’t a constitutional crisis, and all of those things – it’s just a lot of noise,” said Fetterman.

For hyperventilating Canadians and Danes, a boatload of Preparation H, the better to heal their butt hurt over President Trump mentioning Canada as a 51^st state, or Greenland as a potential U.S. territory. As to outraged types in either country wanting to claim California, Minnesota or other states in return, yes, take them, please!. And can we throw in New York and Washington, D.C., just to sweeten the deal?

For Mitch McConnell, a course in backstabbing from Nancy Pelosi. Clueless Joe Biden can provide a rave review on Pelosi’s effectiveness. McConnell, whose doddering ways and rides to votes in a wheelchair have him reminding many of Biden, could use improved backstabbing technique. Despite Mitch acting like a petulant child in voting against prominent Trump proposed cabinet members, all of them were confirmed regardless.

For Issa Rae, who canceled a Kennedy Center appearance because of Trump taking over the operation, a note reminding her that unlike no-show bureaucrats and countless virtue signalling projects funded by USAID, she can’t expect to be paid regardless of not performing the contracted task.

For Canadians who have taken to booing Americans and our National Anthem at sporting events, more of that Preparation H should the U.S. hockey team take care of business Saturday night in Montreal during the Four Nations Faceoff.

For Democrats spouting the “unelected” Elon Musk tripe, a basic civics lesson to help them comprehend that those left-wing activist judges they shop for to subvert the will of the people in electing Trump to shrink government and send illegals packing, are appointed, not elected.

For Ukraine’s Zelenskyy, unhappy that Trump is moving to end the Russia-Ukraine hostilities, a one-way train ticket to the front so that he might do something productive to try to win the conflict. The days are gone of him being allowed to spend/lose a few hundred billion dollars of U.S. taxpayer money.

For the motley crew of trans types who took over a Worcester, Mass., city council meeting, demanding and getting trans sanctuary city designation, a lifetime supply of perspective and attention, the first of which they desperately lack, and the second of which they seem to crave incessantly.

For 80-year-old, terminally confused Democrat House member Jan Schakowsky, an ambulance ride to the nearest nursing home, where she can spend her remaining delusional time on this planet not harming others or interfering with the nation’s business. It was Schakowsky who shocked her House committee hearing by suggesting manufacturing was a sexist word since it contains “man.” And that, she continues, perhaps explains why more women don’t work in manufacturing jobs. As someone who took a couple of years of Latin, I can assure Schakowsky the “man” part refers to hands being used. Social media has a wave of responses, including one woman asking if the term “menstruate” excludes women due to having ‘men’ in the term. Another wondered about the presence of ‘rat” in Democrat.

At least Schakowsky apologists can note that she’s 80 years old and apparently losing it, just like Biden, McConnell and other ancients. But how do we explain AOC?