Keeper of the Clown Bell

  I like the Winter Olympics. I attended the 1976 Insbruck games and saw  Franz Klammer and  Dorthy Hammel win gold.  All a hazy 50 year old memory for me now but I was there, hight of the Cold War , surrounded by spooks fighting for control of Europe and the future of the West. There was some great hockey at the '76 games which I also saw along with Alpine ski jumping and some other sports I can't remember. I was 14 years old and after a few days at the Olympiad I wandered around Austria with my grandparents swooshing the slopes of  Kitzbühel  and  Zürs. A lot has changed in the world over the past 5 decades but the Winter Olympics are mostly the same except for goofy snow board races and big air  loop-de-loops. Thank God we won the Cold War! A year and a half earlier President Nixon had resigned his presidency and I'll always remember the tears I wept watching this man address the nation on a black and white TV my grandfather had gifted me. I...