I’m doing this new thing on Twitter, starting the day’s incessant babble with a This Day in History. It is so useful when radio announcers do it, I figure why not bring it to the new format. It really sets the tone. Much like radio announcers.
I never did this day in history on the radio. It was dumb then, too. But, if you find the right things, pull the right threads and put things together just right …
And here were today’s things:
1991: Operation Desert Storm began 1961: Eisenhower warns of the military-industrial complex 1949: America’s first sitcom airs
Draw your own conclusions what these things mean. I’ve no idea.
Back then the talent did their own promotional spots. If you consider what she’s shilling you have to marvel at how things have changed.
Mrs. Goldberg seems to run the thing — she created the radio program prior to television, of course she’s the central figure. The dialog moves quickly, but the style would be lost on a contemporary audience. But dig this first exchange:
“A gangster killed a man in a telephone booth … ”
That’s just the beginning of the first sentence of the episode.
Alabama inaugurated its new governor and other elected officials today. There was a parade. There were clouds, but then a great clearing out by the sun just before Gov. Bentley address the crowd.
There were other speeches, and a flyover, and singing. There was also artillery. I watched it on television. The advisor of my master’s thesis was one of the studio analysts.
Our new governor, it seemed, had to wear an ID lanyard. That’s going to be my lasting impression, I’m afraid. If ever there was a man, and ever a day for a man to note require a brightly colored cloth necklace with a plastic sleeve containing information about his name and title, this would have been that day.
The new lieutenant governor is very excited. Kay Ivey has a perfectly shaped south Alabama accent. I always enjoyed interviewing her when she was the treasurer and I was still reporting. She had nice answers and delivered everything in her lovely tone. I thought she’d jump out of her shoes today.
The new state auditor could not be there for the ceremony. She was welcoming home her son. He’s an army captain who’s been deployed in Afghanistan. This isn’t a problem because her husband sits on the state Supreme Court. He swore her in later today. They have another son who’s a mechanical engineer at the huge steel plant in Mobile. That’s an interesting dinner table.
Spent the rest of the afternoon and into the evening writing. Writing, rewriting, moving blocks, reshaping words of clay, lumping it together and rolling it between my fingers. Finally I made a lumpy little ashtray — or something — out of it. It’ll be around on Thursday, I think.
And that’s it. That’s enough, says my mild, persistent headache.
The quote? That’s Eisenhower. It doesn’t strike you so much as rhetoric as an old man who has seen a thing or two and who knows a thing or two. Fifty years ago tonight he said that. It was a Tuesday, and that was his last big speech before leaving office on Friday. You wonder if he went to bed the rest of the week, hoping we’d listened.
I caught an escaping dog this morning while out pounding the pavement. There was a collar on the pooch, so we called, wonder who was named Colby. Turned out that was the dog. A big white pekapoo, or some such, out free and intent on telling the other dogs within sniffing range about it.
When Colby’s owner caught up to us she said the dog was more trouble than her kids. He’d figured out a way to get through the bushes in the yard. Maybe the children haven’t mastered that technique yet, but the dog is escaping every time if the deterrent is shrubbery.
Anyway. That was the beginning of the day. Good deed done. The day’s going to end with a bite of frozen yogurt, so it has rounded itself out nicely.
In between there was reading and a little more reading. There was also a delicious steak dinner, my balloon post from yesterday got picked up by The War Eagle Reader. Also I had a little chat with a member of the governor’s office that is leaving Montgomery today.
Bob Riley returns home — or to his lake house, his home is getting water damage repairs, apparently — after eight years in the governor’s mansion. I was a cub reporter when he was first elected to Congress. Interviewed him on election night. He was a very nice man, who could have been self-important, but was willing to entertain questions from a kid who didn’t really yet know what he was doing.
He’s not without his critics, of course, but there’s no denying the mark he’s had on the state in two terms. And, if half of the things for which executives get credit or blame are really directly related to his efforts, it has been a good administration.
The economy has slowed everywhere, of course, but there are several vital aspects of the state now leading the way in a way that wouldn’t have been possible a decade or two ago. There are car manufacturers everywhere. Mobile is poised to become a boomtown with new naval contracts and airline deals and shipping growth. Birmingham has completed the transition from being a steel town to being a medical center and a biomedical hotbed. Huntsville will grow as more military comes that way. Education, which has never been a strong area for bragging in Alabama, got some good news just today:
The report, dubbed by Education Week as the most comprehensive ongoing assessment of the state of American education, ranked Alabama 25th among all states and the District of Columbia for overall grades and scores on the report card. This is the first time Alabama has ever ranked ahead of the national average in the overall education quality.
[…]
(T)oday Alabama students are outpacing the rest of the nation in improvements in Reading, Math and Science scores and Alabama ranked 4th nationally in gains in the graduation rate between 2002 and 2008.
Not a bad bit of news to hear on your way out the door. Also, a few huge and ancient lawsuits against the state were resolved during Riley’s eight years. He also pushed some useful ethics reform bills late in his second term.
There are criticisms, to be sure, but if inauguration day is about hope and promise, the day you leave office should be something of a victory lap. Riley — and every member of his cabinet whom I had occasion to interview, come to think of it — was always considerate to me professionally. I tried to follow along on his re-election campaign for my master’s thesis, but that didn’t work out. Even so, his people were cordial.
This evening we went out to the gymnastics meet. This was the first home meet of the year for Auburn, and the first meet in the new Auburn Arena. Pictures and blurbs below:
The answer to a trivia question no one will ever ask: Who had the first routine for the gymnastics team in Auburn Arena? Allyson Sandusky. She also won the beam routine in the Arena opener.
Kendall Swartz scored a 9.750 on bars, putting her at fourth in the meet.
Lauren Brzostowski’s 9.800 was good for second on the beam, behind her teammate Allyson Sandusky.
Laura Lane’s 9.750 was good for third overall on the floor, an event the Tigers swept.
Rachel Inniss scored 9.900 to win the floor routine. Something about this pose seems familiar. Feels like I’ve seen that three times before, around here.
The Auburn gymnastics team got their first win of the season against No. 25 LSU, 194.775-194.475. The gymnasts performed for a crowd of 4,190 on hand to see the Tigers’ first meet at the Auburn Arena and the first victory for new head coach Jeff Graba. Auburn and LSU were tied after one event, but the Bengal Tigers took a lead halfway through the meet. Auburn, which began the season ranked 15th, pulled away in their final two rotations on the beam and floor. Petria Yokay won the all-around with 38.750.
It is really nice to be at a gymnastics meet and hear “War Eagle” after events.
Cam Newton says it is time for him to fly off to the NFL. And this is how I’ll remember the guy, a big joyous balloon-like creature — because balloons make you smile — flying out of the light holding something that I’ll choose to think of as a popsicle stick. Because if balloon creatures make you smile, then a balloon creature bringing popsicle sticks is all the better.
By happenstance I was taking that picture at about the same time Newton was announcing his goodbyes.
Yes, yes. Cam Newton was at the center of a controversy that was either manufactured or so shady as to be disbelieved, depending on whom you believe. I don’t know, and you still don’t either. What is definitive is that he was a nice part of a renaissance of fervor in the Auburn community and he did nice things while he was here, too. All of that won’t soon be forgotten, I’m sure.
We’d told ourselves the last several years that Tim Tebow was one of the greatest to ever play college football. And he was. So was Cam Newton. Consider: the guy played on three national championship programs in a row at Florida, Blinn and Auburn. Statistically you can’t get much more gaudy than his 1,473 yards rushing and 4,327 yards in total offense for the year. His 51 (!!!) scores — 20 rushing, 30 passing and one receiving — are more than 80something teams in big-time college football manufactured this season.
He wasn’t Auburn’s entire team, but he alone was statistically better than most of what you could see on Saturdays. He broke records previously owned by men named Tebow and Bo Jackson and Jimmy Sidle.
(That last one stood for more than 40 years. Newton would pick up the AP Player of the Year, the Walter Camp, the Maxwell, the Davey O’Brien and the Heisman awards, all as a matter of course. Best ever? If he was not he was darn close.)
His teammate, Lombardi award-winning defensive bear-dragon Nick Fairley will declare for the draft tomorrow. I can’t show a representation of him. Balloons can’t be twisted into savage rage machines. (He’s apparently a very nice young man off the field, though.)
So good luck to them, and all of their departing teammates, two dozen seniors in all. It has been a pleasure cheering you on and it’ll be nice seeing you when you return to the plain for a visit. War Eagle.
“Everyone should start today off by reading your article.” — an Email
Hardly, but I appreciate the compliment. I wrote this for The War Eagle Reader, but it has gotten a nice response, so I thought I’d reprint it. These are the days of almost beatific joy, the things we think and say should be remembered.
It is a relative certainty that one thinks of their time in a special place as the golden, gilded age. Birds never fly higher or sing any sweeter. The ladies were never more attractive and the young men never more friendly and willing to lend a hand. We’ll forget the things that caused us grief, because the mind is kind when it comes to pleasant memories. Instead we think of that perfect time, in that lovely place that strikes our hearts so tenderly.
It was my sophomore year at Auburn, when writing to a friend out west, that I realized how breathtakingly beautiful the sunsets are here. A flat place, with no big city to the west to add the character of smog to the evening’s show, the views were still startling.
For those of us fortunate enough to have such a pleasant experience at Auburn, the college years generally fit that bill. We think of our time on the plain as the perfect time to have been a college student. Those were the best Hey Days, the perfect cake races and maybe Chewacla just felt a bit nicer back then.
It was in the next year or so that the tenants in the downtown blocks started changing, and the feel of the town with it. The Tiger Theater was razed. A Gap went in that place. This was a before and after.
Of course college towns are often changing. And with the graying temples come blurring memories, but when we think of it collectively the fonts sharpen. The tastes from the Flush return, the sound of the Sunday explosion of the Kopper Kettle comes back to life. Spaghetti at the Auburn Grill is once again fragrant in that collective consciousness.
I used to marvel – and cluck – at the people who were frequent contributors to Sports Call, who would recall with fervor and detail some rainy, miserable night in Knoxville a generation prior or, older still, pedaling a bike to Columbus to see the Tigers play. How could this be relevant, or even worth remembering?
We define our charming little town and the notable old university far too much through something as silly as a football game. It is the catalyst for many happy memories as Bartley reminds us, and through it come many generous benefactors and a lot of publicity, no doubt. But in a Zac Etheridgian way we’re all aware of its relative place of human importance. Even so…
I had a professor who considered Jordan-Hare Stadium “A monument to lost causes.” I disliked it then, as now, but for different reasons. Years later and a professor myself I understand better his perspective. I know, too, the opportunity that the stadium and the program present to young men willing to make the most of it, even if it is only to trade on their name, so famous for a short time in white letters across their backs. I think of the young men who come from the deepest poverty the state can offer, who are fortunate enough to use their strength and their speed and their ability to shut out pain and parlay that into the potential for something positive – and I don’t speak of Sundays under the big lights, but the also difficult leap of improving one’s quality of life. Lost causes, indeed.
A lot of money comes through those old walls of cement and glory on Saturdays. The university, in its superlative way, has figured out how to monetize just about everything. You can have your picture taken with the golden eagle, for a small fee of course.
When I was in school I had a friend in the service fraternity that took care of Tiger. They flew her on that green space just outside her aviary, in the shadows of Jordan-Hare, between Haley and Parker. You could find them out there on sunny afternoons as people walked casually by on the concourse. This was no big deal.
When my grandmother came to visit I conspired to walk her by as the eagle was flying. She got to pose for a picture. You paid for this treat on game day. It was free during the week. “This sort of thing just doesn’t happen to everybody,” she said. “This is a once in a lifetime opportunity.” She got to do it again the next spring, too.
We took her onto the field. Then Jordan-Hare was just … open … and you could walk in during the day. She played pretend football with us. We had a goal line stand in the north end zone. Her best friend of 50 years was the referee, who marked the play dead. I love these pictures. These were the glory days, as we’ve all no doubt thought of our own experiences.
It comes to pass that those of youth and vigor turn to adulthood and confidence. And, God willing, we might one day stoop and shuffle and remember when we could take on the world. Some left for far flung places to do it. Others returned to their ancestral communities to lead the way. Others stayed in Auburn or returned, recalling that special time, that special place. They have found it changed – the Grille is gone, there’s more development on College Street than seems necessary, the Bottle is a figment, places like Lil Ireland’s and Ultravox have been swallowed up, there are buildings on campus you may not recognize and yet the place remains much the same. Their friends find themselves jealous of that opportunity to go back.
In some of the old Glomeratas there are luxurious shots of downtown. In the 1950s the town didn’t look that much different than what we would recognize from the 70s, 80s or 90s. A friend of mine — a grad that is also a townie, a boy of the 80s and a student of the 90s — remembers the Piggly Wiggly sign I’ve shown him in the old tomes. Much of that which has changed has seemed to do so relatively recently.
The enduring part of Auburn is not what it is, or what it was, but that which it aspires to be. The face, the complexities and the inanities vary as her people come and grow and go. Perspectives change. Dreams shift. Ideals are more long lasting.
I believe in Auburn, and love it.
It is a great sadness that Jim Fyffe could not see this and that Dean Foy could not lead one more Wah Eghul from the field. But it would not be surprising, in some idealized hereafter, to imagine Shug sitting alongside them with his Coke and peanuts, watching the boys play.
I think of them, and all of those collective memories, in that beautiful autumn sunlight, where the golden rays dip into the stadium and stretch long the shadows of mortal men. This is the casting forward of our memories. These are the triumphs we’ll tell children about, as they’ve been told to us. That sunlight seems to dance eternal.
Though it may flicker, we’ll long remember that glorious day Newton – every inch the 7-feet-2 of toned, hard-as-a-brick 357 pounds of pure muscle and lightning given to him from Bo’s magic scepter from Mount Heisman – carried the puny LSU defender across the goal line.
That story will mutate, just like the temperature on that bitter Thanksgiving weekend when the Tigers braved the elements, the people and the circumstance to best the Tide, though little embellishment will be necessary. Some things stay the same and to say “They did this” will surely carry a weight through the ages. We shall remember the impossibility of thumping Steve Spurrier good and hard, as we’ve always wanted too. We shall remember, too, the big, final stage; for we know it is football that people will see, but Auburn that we’ll get to tell them about.
As this moves from the irrepressible, improbable present to the poignant past, we’ll remember too, this season of great joy and hope. The town and the campus changes, the people the change, our neighbors in the stadium and the names on the jerseys flare to prominence, becoming another person, another bright bit of Auburn’s potential. There will be memories of our losses, but also of our gains. There’s the roar that greets the alumni who thrill us with flyovers and the renaissance of old characters back to say hello and that stirring video from Afghanistan, where Auburn men and women said with no irony “I believe in my Country, because it is a land of freedom and because it is my own home.”
And then we’ll know.
“I think Auburn, the whole town of Auburn University and everything Auburn represents is past due for something great like this. We’re not just playing for ourselves, we’re playing for so many people who don’t have an opportunity to play, but take pride in Auburn and wear it every single day.” – Cam, in the dessert.
