We hope you enjoy the following words from the late great Lewis Grizzard. This is an excerpt from a longer piece he wrote for a newspaper collection featuring individual writers' thoughts about the opening of college football season. Especially towards the end of his career as his health deteriorated, Grizzard's writing became a little forced, it seemed. Some of his analogies were a reach. We read other writers, Roy Blount, Jr. had interesting things to say, Rick Bragg was better at longer form serious journalism, Dave Barry could be utterly hilarious. But for us, Grizzard was the top of the heap in short form humorous journalism. Usually the statement that someone "writes like they talk" is a pretty serious literary criticism. This was not true with Grizzard; just the opposite. He had a keen eye for a good story and a keen wit to tell it, even when he was the main character.
In particular, the work below shows what can happen when someone who has the gift of written eloquence turns that power on something that they truly and deeply care about. His Bulldogs should be very good this year. We regret he is not around to see them play. Thanks for expressing what so many of us feel, Lewis. RIP.
I was walking behind a
friend and his wife as we entered the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans on
January 1, 1981, to watch Georgia play Notre Dame in the Sugar Bowl. If Georgia won, the Bulldogs would be the
1980 national collegiate football champions.
My friend, a fellow
Georgia alumnus, was fraught with anticipation.
He was pale. He was nervous. He was perspiring profusely.
***
His wife, noticing his
condition said, “Calm down sweetheart.
It’s just a football game.”
He stopped dead. He turned to his wife -- who had not gone to
Georgia, and went to Bulldog games with her husband because she thought of it
as her wifely duty -- looked her squarely in the eyes and said: “It is not just
a football game. It’s our way of life
against theirs.”
He meant that. I knew the man well enough to know he did, in
fact, mean that.
It had something to do
with Southerners against Northerners.
Maybe it even had something to with his Methodist upbringing and the
pope.
Whatever, it was
clearly Us versus Them. Us won that day, tailback Herschel Walker leading Georgia
to the national title….
You can go into all
that stuff about the pageantry of college football, the fact the players are unspoiled
kids and not a bunch of millionaires, and it’s a nice way to spend an afternoon
and evening with friends.
But with me and mine,
and with a lot of others, college football offers us an opportunity to circle
our wagons and fight and kick and scream for our side against their side.
I supposed that’s also
possible in politics and various cultural disagreements, but all that can get a
little cloudy at times.
College football and
allegiances are clear as an October Saturday afternoon. We haven’t had a war in 50 years that wasn’t
tangled up in dissent and questionable motives…. But when Georgia meets Florida, when Auburn
plays Alabama, when Ohio State gathers against Michigan, there are no such
nagging annoyances.
Our way of life
against theirs; clear as a bell.
And there is the
opportunity to feel proud of something. Congress can waste your money, the
president can lie to you, and your kid can wear an earring and watch MTV, but
if your alma mater is 8-0, who’s sweating the small stuff?
And probably more than
anything else, it also offers the opportunity to share in what is believed to
be a noble cause, and such breeds friendships that can endure all else….
College football
season is the best time I live. I once
risked my life because of college football.
In late August of 1985
following two weeks in the Soviet Union, I found myself in a hospital in London
with a deadly infection of the artificial aortic valve in my heart. The British doctor said it would probably be
necessary for me to remain there for six weeks’ treatment.
Georgia was to open
its football season on Labor Day night a week later against Alabama in
Athens. I slipped out of the hospital,
caught a cab to Gatwick Airport and flew back to Atlanta.
When asked later why I
would risk my life in such a manner, I said, “I wasn’t about to stay in no foreign
country during college football season.”
Us could win them all
this year, or Us could lose a few. But,
right or wrong, win or lose, always Us.
And Them can go to
hell. Is there any part of that that
isn’t absolutely clear?
Alabama should have a very good team this year. Just about everything, coaching staff, players with experience, general talent level, should be better this year than last (and likely than next, but now I'm really wishing my life away). And last year's wonderful season and its bitter unlikely ending, will be supplanted with new memories of this new version of the Crimson Tide.
We are glad to have you to visit with about it. Roll Tide, my friends. Beat Duke.
TO COMMENT ON THIS POST, PLEASE CLICK ON THE ABOVE LINK.
No comments:
Post a Comment