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memories

Games on the plain

Holiday travels this week, so we’re padding this out with videos and memories. But there’s a theme! This is Iron Bowl week after all. So let’s talk about football all week. Happy Thanksgiving!

Thought I’d throw in a few clips from memorable games during my years as an undergraduate. This space is nothing if it isn’t good for self-indulgent memories. So let’s take a stroll down that particular lane.

The first game I attended as a student was against Ole Miss. A fight broke out in the student body, probably over too many drinks or girls. Order was quickly restored by the people around them and Auburn won 46-13.

The biggest games of my freshman season were unavailable to me. Student tickets were sold on a seniority basis, which meant no Florida and no Alabama. I had to watch them both from my place just off campus.

Strange to now think that the 1995 Iron Bowl was just the third one on campus. I’d only missed history, the first time Alabama finally played a true road game in the series, by a few years. (This may sound silly to readers that aren’t involved. To you I recommend this column, this article, and also this piece and the CBS pre-game video below.)

That was all just before my time in undergrad. My freshman year was a mediocre one for football in the state. Both Alabama and Auburn came into the Iron Bowl with seven wins. Auburn would win 31-27 and Tide fans still complain about a referee’s call late in that game.

Later, in bowl season, a struggling Auburn played a solid Penn State.

Moving on, then.

In 1996 we watched The Barn burn down. That was one of the athletic buildings on campus. They used to play basketball in the facility, but in 1996 it housed the gymnastics team and was one of three wooden buildings on campus. A tailgater put their grill too near the structure and during the game the flames leapt higher than the football stadium directly across the street.

I asked Carl Stephens, the former public address announcer, about his most memorable games, and this one was in his top three. No one who was there will ever forget it, or Stephens’ deep voice announcing “Attention Auburn fans if you parked near the barn please exit the stadium and move your vehicle.”

A moment later he followed that up with “Attention fans. It is too late to move your vehicle.”

From most views in the stadium it looked like we were on fire. There’s no way you’re moving 85,000 people, so we were resigned: Well, if you have to go, go with friends.

The bigger problem at the moment, however, was why Auburn could not kick a field goal. Priorities: We have them.

Ironically, it was a building donated by LSU — my roommate said “Pistol Pete played in there!” — and it was destroyed during the LSU game. That there is no footage of this online is a glaring blind spot in mid 1990s video uploading. My friend Joe McAdory wrote about it, however.

That year there was also the famous four overtime game with Georgia. I was in Kansas City, but I could have flown home, driven from Montgomery to Auburn and caught the end. Georgia won, unfortunately, so I was glad to watch from my hotel room. Mostly, this is remember as the day Uga tried to bite Robert Baker:

The next week Auburn lost a narrow game to Alabama, 24-23 in Birmingham. But the days of going to Legion Field for that game were coming to an end.

Now to the story you will not believe. In 1997, I called this turnover. It wasn’t a wish or a hope. I was not being an irrational, desperate fan late in the game. I turned to the friend standing next to me and said “They are about to give the ball back to Auburn, just as if I’d looked into the sky and said “It is night.”

Ed Scissum, who fumbled the ball at the crucial moment, works at Evangeline Booth College, a theological school in Atlanta. Martavious Houston, who forced the fumble, had a nice career in the Canadian Football League and then had a moment in the NFL. Jaret Holmes, the placekicker who scored the winning points for Auburn, had three years in the NFL and is now back home in Mississippi.

Auburn earned their way into the SEC Championship that year, but we don’t speak of it much.

So 1998, then, featured the last ever Iron Bowl in Birmingham. I was there, and on a chill night watched the Tide close that chapter in a storied history with a 31-17 win over my Tigers.

Shaun Alexander was a good back.

To make matters worse, the next year Alabama came back to Auburn and for the first time won the Iron Bowl there. Not a pleasant experience:

On the other hand, it would be 2008 until Alabama won the Iron Bowl at their own stadium. Just took them three centuries to accomplish the feat.

Now. The purpose of this little entry was to talk about the Iron Bowls and a few other games from my time as a student. I was very fortunate, working as a journalist and in a few other capacities, to see some of these games and work with the people — like Pat Dye, Jim Fyffe, Rod Bramblett and others — that helped create these moments over the years. My experiences are a bit atypical.

For example, one of the best games I’ve ever watched at Auburn — and we’ll discuss the best game tomorrow — was the 2005 Iron Bowl. I was in grad school at UAB at the time, so it doesn’t fit the tidy theme here, but it bears mentioning. My future bride managed to land sideline passes, she worked at Fox at the time, and we shot the game. This was Carl Stephens last game behind the microphone. This was the last Iron Bowl flight for Tiger VI. They named the field in Pat Dye’s honor.

And this happened all night long:

We were on the sideline for that. It couldn’t get much better, I figured, on the way home. And until this last year’s championship run, I was right.

Tomorrow I’ll write about the best contest I’ve ever seen at Jordan-Hare Stadium in a special holiday use of bytes and bits.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Alabama / Auburn / football / history / memories / Tuesday / video — Comments Off
22
Nov 11

Seeing the light

Holiday travels this week, so it might be a bit light here. But there’s a theme! This is Iron Bowl week after all. So let’s talk about football all week. Happy Thanksgiving!

Yesterday we briefly examined a youth “misspent” as an Alabama fan. Today we’ll discuss sorting out the brain washed allegiances and finding what your heart tells you is true and right and just.

This will read like my college decision was centered too much on football. That’s an important part of the culture, but only a side note for me. Education is and has always been an important consideration for me. The program I was interested in at Auburn was great and … well … you’ll see …

The first time I visited Auburn was in the summer of my eighth grade year. It was part of a school trip and the teacher, an Auburn graduate, decided to visit one of the bookstores. This was awkward for me because I was wearing an Alabama shirt at the time.

The visit was brief, though. We got to where we needed to go, participated in the contest we were there to take part in and traveled to Montgomery.

The next visit was a few years later. More school organizations led me to campus for meetings. Being involved in the FFA meant spending more time with ag kids, and that was an important contribution to the exposure. There was also game experiences like this:

I watched Nix-to-Sanders in a hotel room in Montgomery, and — this makes no sense — there was an embodiment of attitude in that team and that game that seemed admirable.

Perhaps most importantly, when I was a high school senior the girl I was dating was a freshman at Auburn. I went to visit early in her freshman year, spent a weekend with friends and had a blast. Everyone was nice and the place was beautiful. And I knew people and all of that was very important to a high school kid.

[She and I dated off and on for the next few years. But being at Auburn never seemed a bad decision. (Except for chemistry classes. Yeesh.)]

I made it home, announced I was going to Auburn and went to my room.

My mother was … less than pleased. “If you’d told me you’d robbed a bank, I would have said ‘That’s OK, son, I still love you.’ But I never, ever, thought you would tell me you were going to Auburn.”

The only thing we’d ever really disagreed about was how to pay for this. There would be a way, said the wide eyed child. The pragmatic parent wasn’t so sure.

That same fall, this happened:

I missed the great comeback because of a flat tire. A flat tire! It would be six or seven years before I actually saw the game. Why LSU was throwing the ball still boggles the mind. But I digress.

I got one scholarship, was able to qualify for good grants and tried to figure out how to live cheaply. And then, just three days after my high school graduation, I was called in for a scholarship interview. I sat in a small room with two older gentlemen and discussed college, life, ambition and study habits. After the meeting I drove to my mother’s business.

“What if I told you they offered me a one-year scholarship?”

“That would be good,” she said.

“What if I told you they offered me a two-year scholarship?”

“That would be good,” she said.

“What if I told you they gave me a three-year scholarship?”

“That would be even better.”

“What if I told you they gave me a four-year scholarship?”

“I would say ‘War Eagle!'”

And so everything was fine.

She still gave me a hard time about all things Auburn, even beyond football. So did the family. I’m the one Auburn person in the bunch in the whole family — both sides! I catch a lot of grief, but it is, usually, all in jest.

And then after a few wonderful years I graduated (in spite of chemistry).

In 2004 I started graduate school at UAB. They all took great pride in pointing out what the A stood for in that acronym.

But no matter. The boy had long since become an Auburn man.

Tomorrow, we’ll dig up some memorable games from my time as an undergrad, as we try to pad out the holiday week. May all your turkeys be delicious, and all your football teams win. Unless that team is Alabama.

Happy Thanksgiving. War Eagle forever.

iPhone / journalism / memories / photo / Samford / Tuesday — Comments Off
15
Nov 11

Deadlines, dead store

A series of meetings punctuated the beginning of my work day. Check in with a colleague about the big upcoming journalism awards submissions that must go out tomorrow. Check in with my department chair for the regular this and that. Check in with another professor to make sure we’re on the same page about a class session later this week. There’s another professor with whom we must organize the awards submissions.

Then I ran into someone else I needed to speak with, and so we had a brief meeting at the top of a stairwell.

Make sure everything is graded for this afternoon’s class, nurse the printer through another round of printing things. I’ve been pointing out the eventual demise of this machine for a few years now. One day it’ll day, or they’ll replace it. Until now, CMND-P, which stands for Pray.

Staple all of those things which just got printed. Go to class where students are writing things that need writing.

And then to the Crimson, where the student-journalists are busy putting out another paper.

After a while, I went out for dinner. Stopped by the bookstore to look for a particular magazine for research. There was a book signing, featuring some science fiction writer I don’t know and his new book of which I am not aware. Not really my reading genre. The place was jammed, with little hope of walking or browsing.

So dinner, then. Stopped at Jason’s Deli in the mall where I met a couple who’d been at the book signing. Said he was a nice guy, who stopped and talked to his readers and signed all of his books, not just the new one. The restaurant employees, experts on book signing dynamics since the chain often has them, said a crowd that size would be there until midnight, easy.

Thought, then, I would go up the street to the other bookstore to look for the magazine we need. This was the scene:

Shame, really. This Books-A-Million always had great sale racks. Though, like every Books-A-Million, the tome you wanted was inevitably the 1,000,001st book. Never seemed to have the thing you’d want. Still, there were a lot of things in there. The entire back wall was magazines. I read an important newspaper in there one day. Another day I found myself making an important decision in the local section. I liked that bookstore.

They closed in September, the sign on the door said. Now, there’s only this:

As I mentioned this summer while in Portland, there’s really no need to buy anything in bookstores anymore. But still, this is a sad turn. And, yes, I appreciate all the many contradictions in this paragraph, but there is something useful about browsing a bookstore. There is a great deal of charm in spending part of a lazy afternoon aimlessly looking through the books. Now you’ll just have to do it somewhere else.

And now back in the office. The student-journalists are working on their paper in the newsroom. I’m working on the journalism awards submissions. This will require more work tomorrow. I’d bet we spend about three full days on this when all is said and done.

And that will be tomorrow, when the things have to be postmarked and shipped to the judges.

errands / memories / Thursday / video — Comments Off
27
Oct 11

A lot of talk about talk

Alabama’s new and controversial immigration law makes an appearance on the Colbert Report:Comedy as commentary is difficult to overcome, is it not?

Class this afternoon, so much of the morning was devoted to preparing there. The students were writing fake stories. Here are the details, write a story based on what you know. There was a fake story about a shooting death, another about a prominent local company moving their operations overseas and one more on a car fatality with alcohol involved.

These exercises are important, because the place we put ideas and the words we use to get there are critical to a story. For most people, winding up in the news is not a pleasant experience. We don’t need to make things worse with a misplaced modifier or some other syntax error.

The future! By Microsoft:

I scrolled down through the comments, hoping the very first one would have some incredible insight. The first three, however, noted that Microsoft envisions better tech in videos than they produce. And then a big argument about Apple and St. Steve inventing the tablet. Also, within about three minutes of each other different people thought this was the loneliest future they’ve ever seen, or the coolest thing ever and “I want one now!”

I’m glad to see that typos will still be a part of our future. Check out the 2:55 mark.

Also in the future, Roy Moore wants his old job back. The last time he had that job he was fired by the Alabama Court of the Judiciary. I remember covering that story like it was yesterday. November of 2003 he lost the job, but this fight had been going on for months. I remember sitting in my studio, watching video from Montgomery and a man in a red flannel shirt, red-faced, veins throbbing, screaming at the top of his lungs demanding Moore’s Ten Commandments monument be put back. I was concerned about that guy’s health. Wonder where he is now.

Because I love myself I visited Walmart tonight. I know! And this after getting a haircut yesterday. Haircuts are one of my least favorite chores, because of the conversations. These are is especially awkward if you go to one of those places where you never see the same person twice. The conversation, then, demands a very basic, elevator level of commitment spread out over a longer period of time than a three floor ride in a large box.

The lady that cut my hair this time smelled of cigarettes. She disliked the cold. She could not decide if she’d seen me before. (She had not.) And she had trouble breathing. The guy that’s cut my hair the last two times, elsewhere at an actual barber shop, scares me a little. And his finished job is a bit severe. The lady yesterday, though, did a nice job on everything but the sideburns. This is remarkably hard, trimming things to be level; no one ever does it right and is no longer something that can be judged.

Everything else, though, centered on the awkward conversation. I like conversation, but the hair chair isn’t the place. Cab drivers need conversation because some of them are already on the edge. Plus there’s the where are you going, where have you been, who will you be when you get there mystery of cab rides. Most any other place a little chit chat is fine. Rapport is great, fishing for repeat customers is understandable, making people feel at ease is applauded. I want you to concentrate on what you are doing. Don’t jam my eye with the clipper. She almost did last night.

Having survived, though, why not go to Walmart tonight? Taylor Swift has a line of greeting cards now. Bing Crosby warned that Santa Claus is coming to town. We change the clocks in two weeks. Halloween is this weekend. This might be a little early.

The checkout line was … post office-like in it’s slowness.

Maybe it was the guy trying to get information from the cashier about her coworker so he could go flirt. There’s another awkward conversation, at least no sharp instruments were used.

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21
Oct 11

Hedge hogging

The most productive accomplishment of the day was in trimming the hedges. This is no small thing, as our house is surrounded on three sides by shrubbery. I’m not sure why the southernmost side is bare.

Everything along the front, save the door, the sidewalk and the garage, are bordered with green, growing things. All but one segment was trimmed. The lucky ones — and isn’t that just like a bunch of bushes, bragging to their neighbors? “You got chopped up, but I’m still here. Look at me grow! — I left alone because they’ll probably be dug out of the ground in a few weeks. Others along the front got lowered, including one that borders the garage. We’ve developed a little contour into it for the car’s side mirror.

There are also two at the end of the drive. These must be maintained to preserve the proper turning ratio as one backs out of the drive. This requires the acquisition of surveying tools, and chalk lines. I am the only person in America going through such precise measurements.

The unintended benefit, or consequence, is that one of them is growing around the mailbox post. I’d let it grow over the thing, but that would probably violate some nuance of the neighborhood and only make the mail carrier mad.

I do all of this, by the way, with the 24-inch Black & Decker Hedge Hog, which is like mounting an M-60 onto Excalibur and plugging an extension cord into the hilt. You hit the trigger, feel that dual blade action, wave it above your head and know: your kingdom is only limited by your vision.

And municipally recognized property lines.

Trimming up the northern side of the estate required the ladder, because there are some bushes on steroids on that side of the house. Two of them would have been easier to reach from the roof.

So I’m standing on the top of a multi-use ladder. We have a transformer of aluminum that makes shapes that are only limited by your imagination, and not its contortion. I dutifully set the ladder into a standard A configuration, straddling the center hinge point with a foot on either side. I realized I couldn’t reach the very back of the bush. OK then. So I find myself standing on the top of the A, in the hinge-point, waving about a whirring 24-bladed saw with shark teeth moving at 2,900 strokes per minute.

My kingdom is suddenly a lot less interesting from this vantage point. I climbed down quickly.

The curious thing about the greenery here is that there is a lot of variety. Once the offending shrubs are out of the front there will only be one place surrounding the entire structure where you see two of the same species next to one another. I haven’t yet decided if that’s a feature or a bug. If you had to dig them all up, every annoying root, what would you replace them with? Uniformity or everything that could grow in this climate?

And that’s the sort of thing you think about as you rake away the leaves leavings. That’s some way to start your Friday evening.

YouTube Cover Theatre, where we see the talent that people have, until the advent of webcams and the Internet, people were hiding in their homes. Since Irecently watched the George Harrison documentary, we may as well check out covers of some of his work.

The Beatles weren’t my band. I like them fine, they just don’t belong to me. Wrong generation. But, if I had been in the right group, I think Harrison would have been my favorite of the bunch. And since you can’t have Harrison without the band, we’ll start with a cover of All Those Years Ago:

That looks like an impossibly difficult tune and he did a nice job. Then he leaned back against his den’s wood paneled walls and enjoyed the rest of his evening.

This cover of My Sweet Lord has received 26,000 views, which may be the largest count that we’ve ever seen in YouTube Cover Theater. Aside, is it just me, or has this song always sounded like it should be appropriated as commercial bed music?

One of the cool things about the Beatles, I would think, would be introducing what has essentially become timeless music to kids. I mean the clean cut, less drugs portion of the catalog. And while this is essentially a Paul McCartney tune, Harrison wrote the main riff, which is enough of an excuse to show a cute cover by a father serenading his daughter for her second birthday.

When she’s older she’s going to be humming Beatles tunes and won’t remember why. Then she’s going to stumble through her dad’s YouTube uploads and it will all click. It will be adorable.

Hard to believe it has been 10 years since George Harrison died. I was doing a network newscast at the time, the last segment of which was a 30 second spot and outro. That day I just played this song for 30 seconds and signed off:

Just for fun, here’s a recreation of Harrison’s Bangladesh Concert with members of Wonderous Stories, Alan Parsons Live Project and more, covering Wah Wah:

Other things happened today, too, emails and organizational things. We’ll have wrapped up the latest big project at work by the first part of the week, it seems my part has largely been completed, except for showing up at the various events next week. Homecoming at Samford means advisory council meetings and wall of fame induction ceremonies and all of the attendant activities.

With those things now completed I can return to other work. Like digging up shrubs.