Post by Ardbeg... innit on Apr 10, 2009 6:49:13 GMT -6
Dollar Bay is a town of about 2000 about 10 miles form where I live. Bill Gappy, mentioned at the end of the article was, by coincidence, my high school gym teacher for two years, when I lived in Detroit. He moved up here to be bball coach at Michigan Tech, the year before I started classes here.
Horner Floors, the best damned hardwood floors in the world, if youve watched basketball at a stadium or on TV, the floor came from my neighborhood.
Link
Horner Floors, the best damned hardwood floors in the world, if youve watched basketball at a stadium or on TV, the floor came from my neighborhood.
Link
The Best Basketball Team in Michigan
The state's best basketball team is not a bunch of abnormally tall teenagers with super-human ball-handling skills.
It's a bunch of middle-aged folks up in tiny Dollar Bay, Michigan, at the tip of the Upper Peninsula.
Their passion is hockey, not hoops - but they just happen to make the best basketball floors in the world.
William Horner started this company in 1891 -- the same year James B. Naismith invented basketball.
Horner's genius was figuring out how to mass-produce inter-changable tongue-and-groove boards in the factory, instead of making far more expensive custom boards on site.
If you have a hardwood floor in your home, you have William Horner to thank.
Horner's hard maple floors are as sturdy and resilient as the folks who make them.
They've been snapped up by 14 NBA teams, over a thousand colleges and too many schools to count.
Basketballs bounce off Horner floors in Pakistan and Pontiac, Tokyo and Tupelo, Barcelona and Beijing.
They've built them for the Olympics, every NBA All Star game since 1983, and 20 NCAA Final Fours.
When the Spartans won their national title in 2000, they won it on a Horner floor, which they bought, and moved to the Breslin Center.
It takes sixty-five employees two months to produce a Horner basketball floor.
They start with the best wood, Acer Sacch-AR-um, better known as sugar maple or hard maple.
The UP's short growing seasons create nice tight rings, which makes the wood perfect for bowling pins, pool cues, guitar necks, and hardwood floors.
The final product is so smooth and beautiful, the workers will tell you it breaks their hearts to have to paint them.
Once the floor leaves the shop, it's at the mercy of truck drivers, longshoremen and arena crewmen.
Just before the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, a Forum crew member flipped the switch to lower their scoreboard.
While it descended, the guy at the switch got distracted and the two-ton scoreboard smashed through the floor, turning center court into colorful splinters.
Fortunately, Horner had a few extra panels on hand for just such an emergency.
They painted, sealed and dried them under powerful fans, then installed them in time for Michael Jordan to make his Olympic debut.
After Horner's floors finish their weekend in the sun, Horner sells them to thrifty colleges, and once to a free-spending woman in Utah.
Bill Gappy, Horner's sales director, thought he'd heard it all, until a woman in Salt Lake City contacted him to buy the NBA All-Star floor.
Gappy thought she was pulling his leg, right up to the moment she wrote a check at half-time for $80,000.
Her divorce settlement easily covered the cost of the floor, plus the labor to re-fit the unpainted panels for her palatial living room, the lanes for her two racquetball courts and the center logo for her rec room.
Her marriage may have broken up, but her Horner floor remains rock solid.
Knock on wood.
The state's best basketball team is not a bunch of abnormally tall teenagers with super-human ball-handling skills.
It's a bunch of middle-aged folks up in tiny Dollar Bay, Michigan, at the tip of the Upper Peninsula.
Their passion is hockey, not hoops - but they just happen to make the best basketball floors in the world.
William Horner started this company in 1891 -- the same year James B. Naismith invented basketball.
Horner's genius was figuring out how to mass-produce inter-changable tongue-and-groove boards in the factory, instead of making far more expensive custom boards on site.
If you have a hardwood floor in your home, you have William Horner to thank.
Horner's hard maple floors are as sturdy and resilient as the folks who make them.
They've been snapped up by 14 NBA teams, over a thousand colleges and too many schools to count.
Basketballs bounce off Horner floors in Pakistan and Pontiac, Tokyo and Tupelo, Barcelona and Beijing.
They've built them for the Olympics, every NBA All Star game since 1983, and 20 NCAA Final Fours.
When the Spartans won their national title in 2000, they won it on a Horner floor, which they bought, and moved to the Breslin Center.
It takes sixty-five employees two months to produce a Horner basketball floor.
They start with the best wood, Acer Sacch-AR-um, better known as sugar maple or hard maple.
The UP's short growing seasons create nice tight rings, which makes the wood perfect for bowling pins, pool cues, guitar necks, and hardwood floors.
The final product is so smooth and beautiful, the workers will tell you it breaks their hearts to have to paint them.
Once the floor leaves the shop, it's at the mercy of truck drivers, longshoremen and arena crewmen.
Just before the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, a Forum crew member flipped the switch to lower their scoreboard.
While it descended, the guy at the switch got distracted and the two-ton scoreboard smashed through the floor, turning center court into colorful splinters.
Fortunately, Horner had a few extra panels on hand for just such an emergency.
They painted, sealed and dried them under powerful fans, then installed them in time for Michael Jordan to make his Olympic debut.
After Horner's floors finish their weekend in the sun, Horner sells them to thrifty colleges, and once to a free-spending woman in Utah.
Bill Gappy, Horner's sales director, thought he'd heard it all, until a woman in Salt Lake City contacted him to buy the NBA All-Star floor.
Gappy thought she was pulling his leg, right up to the moment she wrote a check at half-time for $80,000.
Her divorce settlement easily covered the cost of the floor, plus the labor to re-fit the unpainted panels for her palatial living room, the lanes for her two racquetball courts and the center logo for her rec room.
Her marriage may have broken up, but her Horner floor remains rock solid.
Knock on wood.