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An aerial photograph of the Autodromo Nazionale Monza in Italy.

Labor Day weekend is always significant because aside from paying tribute to the middle class of our threatened society, it signals the unofficial end of summertime, the end of the Minnesota State Fair, the general start to the football season, and often the final celebration of summer with a family trip somewhere. 

It also comes on or just after my birthday, which is on September 1, and is of significance to nobody outside my immediate family.

This year, the date has added significance because while my wife, Joan, and I got up early Sunday morning to watch the Italian Grand Prix, the Formula 1 race at Monza, Italy, which was won by Charles Leclerc in a Ferrari. 

When it was over, at least 100,000 Italians ran to get to the winner’s podium. We thought it was so fitting that a Ferrari won the Italian Grand Prix, and it caused us both to vividly remember that it was exactly 35 years ago when we attended the Italian Grand Prix at Monza and witnessed the exact same behavior by the exultant fans.

We were on one of our more adventurous trips in 1989, when we went to Germany, Switzerland and Italy on a barnstorming trip that also sent us driving to hockey games, the biggest auto show in the world, and finally over the mountains and into Italy for the Italian Grand Prix at Monza.

The trip incorporated stops at some German cities where the University of Minnesota hockey team was playing exhibition games, and wound up with a tournament in Switzerland. 

The games for the Gophers spanned two weeks, giving us time to visit the Audi plant in Ingolstadt, Germany, where I got a Coupe Quattro to test drive all over the region. We also timed it perfectly to coordinate with the media days at the Frankfurt Auto Show, an event so massive it can only be held every other year.

Driving as fast as we wanted, cruising at more than 125 miles per hour on the nation’s autobahns, was one of the highlights of the trip. But so was our side trip up and over the Alps and down to Milano, where credentials were awaiting us in suburban Monza. 

Neither of us spoke a word of German, or Italian, which made it more of an adventure, but we got along smoothly. We also learned to appreciate “real” coffee at every meal in Germany. And we learned about the monetary exchange rate in Italy, when we pulled off into the tiny nearby town of Leccho, hoping to find dinner, on the night before the big race.

We witnessed several sessions of street-racing among race-happy Italians, before we found a small restaurant with a big menu of things we didn’t comprehend, so we decided to order a sausage pizza. It was a pizza, with slices of wiener-like sausages scattered around on top. We got the bill, for something like 40,000 lira, and while we panicked at the thought of our Visa card exploding., we were so exhausted that all we could do was laugh uncontrollably. Then we found out it equated to a little less than $13.

By coincidence, the track had torn down the press tower for renovation and we were advised to go inside another hall and watch the race on television. 

We rejected that idea, and walked across the infield to a vantage point just beyond the big chicane on the back straight. We watched while standing on a pallet, and then on top of a box that formerly held champagne bottles for a better vantage point. 

We were more interested to watch Ayrton Senna, the defending world champion, in his striking orange-and-white Marlboro McLaren with an innovative Honda race engine. He blew away the field and had a substantial lead.

With three laps left, we hustled back across the infield to the finish line, just in time to see the familiar orange-and-white car take the checkered flag. 

We didn’t learn until later that Senna did not win; his car had a mechanical problem and he never finished, while Alain Prost, his teammate, won in an identical car!

Senna was the most skilled driver I ever saw, and that was in 1989 — 35 years ago. Five years later, the Brazilian star was killed in a crash at th Imola track in Italy at another Italian Grand Prix.

In those days, I wrote about racing and hockey for the Minneapolis Tribune, as well as writing the automobile review I still write for the Reader these days. I covered the Gophers, and I learned the odd fact that the large block “M” used as the Minnesota logo was a technical mistake — not identified by any font style. 

It always made me proud that UMD — where I started my college education before transferring to the “Main U” for journalism — had steadfastly appreciated being an affiliate of Minnesota but also sought its own identity by using its own logo, with a “proper” typographical “M” more similar to the University of Michigan in its accuracy.

When UMD opened the Duluth Arena for its fledgling Division One hockey team, if played Minnesota’s proud Gophers in the commemorative WCHA game. UMD won 8-1, and the late Huffer Christiansen registered six assists — still a record in UMD hockey annals.

So now, a new chancellor and new athletic director at UMD have decided that it is a good idea for UMD’s credibility to accept the plan to change its official logo to incorporate the big, blunt, incorrect Gopher “M.” 

They are quick to point out that it won’t require changing by all the UMD athletic logos, but who are we kidding? 

It will be on the sign outside the football stadium, and while the new administration might think it’s a good idea to expand UMD’s attractiveness, there are those among us who think not! 

And we also don’t trust the Main U to stop there. Next thing you know, it will also sweep through the athletic department in a sweeping move.

They’ve been having a big pre-school sale of sweatshirts at the UMD shop in Kirby Center, with specified sports as well as many general shirts. I couldn’t resist snapping some photos of the current shirts, which not only are at an excellent price, but will be a major souvenir of the days when UMD established its individuality.

Since the Bulldogs have taken over the state’s top level of elite hockey by dominating the head-to-head matches with the Gophers, who have fled to play in the Big Ten Conference, they may next try to erase that 8-1 blowout that started UMD onward and upward to its current elite level. 
Maybe the logo change should be called Motzko’s Revenge.

Meanwhile, back to reality. While we’re waiting patiently for the Gophers football team, and the Vikings, and the Twins for that matter, to become truly competitive, we can celebrate our own good fortune at the UMD football, volleyball, cross country and soccer teams for being at the top levels of contention in the Northern Sun Conference competition. 

And we also have St. Scholastica and Wisconsin Superior for high-end competition in UMAC and MIAC play.