Why do these memories pop into my mind?
I was sitting in the living room of a townhouse on the campus of Presbyterian College in Clinton, South Carolina, watching the football team from the state university in Athens, Georgia receive a butt-whooping from the football team from the state university in Knoxville, Tennessee. Some of my daughter's friends were sitting around with us, along with a couple other parents, drinking refreshments and eating potato chips, watching the game.
Suddenly, the synapses in my brain were drawn back to a weekend in late October or early November in 1978, I don't remember which, when my parents drove up from Atlanta along the spine of the Blue Ridge to Lexington, Virginia to watch my last home game as a college football player against Emory & Henry, another small college in western Virginia. My college football career was in its last year and this would be the last time I would play on Wilson field before the friends and faculty and family assembled that beautiful Fall afternoon among the orange and scarlet leaves and soft, cool breezes of Rockbridge County, Virginia.
We only had one year in which we came close to winning more games than we lost during my entire college football career. Most years we struggled from week to week, only looking forward to two or three weeks of our schedule when we were confident we could win the games those weeks. My senior year was no different.
In previous years, we had lost two straight games to Emory & Henry. In 1976, they had brought a strong team up to Lexington in the first week of the season and defeated us handily. In my junior year of 1977, we played them in Emory, Virginia and lost 7-6. It seemed like every game in my junior year was the same. We rarely scored. On defense, we would allow one long drive in which the other team would score and then our offense would fumble or throw an interception near our goal-line which would lead to another score. In that game, I remember I had been introduced as Tom Bynum from Dinwiddie, Virginia, and I had yelled my fruitless objections to a rainy, windy sky and an uncaring crowd in Emory, Virginia. No response availing, no correction given, we lost that game in the usual way, by a close score, only allowing one touchdown from the opposing team in the muck and rain, after the inevitable fumble by our own offense inside our ten yard line.
Anyway, as the fall of 1978 wound itself out, we again had lost more games than we had won, despite the fact that we had a new coach, whose program and prodding had promised success somewhere in the future. Nevertheless, that week we faced an Emory & Henry team that was fairly evenly matched with us. Their offense had little running attack and they depended on a quarterback with a strong arm to compensate for the lack of defense and running offense.
As the game began, our offense miraculously scored three times unanswered, and we led the game 18-0 at half time. The first half was so promising. After gaining little by running on first and second downs, the Emory & Henry quarterback would invariably take the snap, roll to his left or right, only to find Greg Lilly or myself in his face, or, even sometimes, on top of him for a loss. Even if we didn't sack the quarterback, we often raised our arms in the air to block his passes.
During that first half of football, there came a number of moments when the furies that can awaken in one's mind and body when the emotions you are feeling match the goals in your mind and the collective struggles of the teammates around me and I found myself tackling the quarterback sharply into the green turf to the approval of my teammates and the parents and students in the stands.
There was a play in the first half of that game which I will never forget. The ball was snapped and the movement of the backfield moved away from me in an option play to the opposite side of the field. As I trailed the ball from behind like a shark toward a school of baitfish, our strong side linebacker penetrated across the line of scrimmage and pounded the quarterback from the side, spinning his body around so hard that he swung around and he faced me in my line of pursuit. As I came up from behind, I hit him with all I had at full speed and drove his head back, backward until the back of his helmet found its way to the hard ground. When I got off of him, I noticed his body twitching and jerking as his mind was lost into the interiors of his consciousness. I stood over his body and took extreme pleasure, like some predator in the forest, in the lack of intelligent and controlled movement coming from his being.
As I stood there, I began to exult over the product of my effort and the competitive air of conquest breathed deeply through my nostrils. But then, as I returned to the defensive huddle and watched the trainers for Emory & Henry examine the prone quarterback, I stopped and considered the true result of my actions, and realized that here lay another college student, just like me, who was lying on the field, and would be carried off by stretcher to find a clean bed in the local hospital, for observation. The struggle of my emotions at that moment caught me and caused some introspection that you don't often get on a football field.
This game was a struggle and became more so as the game progressed. I remember play after play when the other team seemed to throw multiple players in my path as I tried to slip past them, over and over again, to try to take hold of the quarterback before he threw. I remember stout fullbacks and tall, heavy tackles running at me and my efforts to take them on, to throw or give slip to them to the left and to the right, meanwhile trying to catch a glimpse of the progress of the quarterback as he hid himself behind their bulk and tossed pass after pass downfield.
The second half seemed to play out in the same way, play after play. Our offense managed no more points in the game, and Emory & Henry continued to march down the field toward the end zone as we tried to defend it. Pass after pass went over my head toward some ill-defended receiver. I managed to sack the quarterback one time, when he rolled away from me and I ran past the tackle, my foot speed compensating for his superior size, to find the backside of the quarterback, driving my facemask into his backbone, pitching his body into the grass before he threw downfield. Another time, he turned and tried to lateral the pigskin toward a halfback on a sweep, who missed the ball, and I was able to roll and cradle my body around the loose ball, recovering a fumble and ending another drive toward our goal.
But it was too little. When the final horn sounded, we had lost 20-18. I remember wandering off the field toward our lockerroom underneath the stadium. As I found my home locker for the last time, the emotional response to that loss and all the effort for nothing, the experience of the last loss at my personal locker built under those stands at my alma mater, hit me, and I sat heavily down on the bench seat in my grass-stained uniform and wept deeply into my hands. As I sat there and cried, one of the defensive coaches who had been in the coach's box above the field during the game, came up to me and put his arms around my shoulders and tried to console me. He told me that my effort had been amazing. And I think he cried too.
The locker room was silent or nearly so. It was as if someone or something had passed on. Players struggled to remove their uniforms and pads and trudged off to the showers. I took a small bar of ivory soap and a white cotton towel and walked like a zombie to the showers. I know I showered and dried my body off and dressed in my street clothes. I know I walked the short walk from the deserted stands to my apartment after the game, but I don't remember any of it.
I do remember opening the door to the apartment I shared with four other athletes to find all of our parents sitting in chairs around the living room, sharing some time together as their sons arrived, one by one, from the field. I am sure I was the last one there. I remember cutting my eyes toward my parents and mumbling something about needing to lay down. My mother and father followed behind me to my room. I undressed and lay down under the comfort of the sheets and my blanket. My mother stroked my temples and said they would check on me later. I fell asleep.
Later, my parents came in and asked me if I wanted to go to eat with the group. I couldn't; I was aching and felt the flue symptoms that came from the release of so much adrenalyn and emotion. They left me in the dark of late October outside my windows and the comfort of my bed.
Only later did I recover enough to want to feed the hunger which my body had developed, which had been hidden from me by the warring of chemicals and electrical synapses running inside my body and my mind.
I have only had two other football games which caught me up so strongly. One game occurred when I was about nine years old, playing little league football in Atlanta. The other occurred in the third game of my senior year in high school at North Dekalb Stadium in Chamblee, Georgia. In the first one, we came away with a hard-earned victory against a team roughly our equal. In the second one, we played against the best team in Dekalb County, a team which would later find their way to the state championship against Thomasville High School sometime in December of that year. At the end of that game, the coaches drove us back to the parking lot on the north side of Dunwoody High School and back to the lockerroom. I pushed my forehead on the bus seat in front of me and moaned my misery in the hearing of the player in front of me. As the bus pulled into the Dunwoody parking lot, I exited and trudged back down toward lockerroom. Suddenly, all of the pain and misery of the evening welled up inside and spilled itself onto the pavement of the parking lot. After releasing the bile collected in my stomach during that game all over the parking lot at Dunwoody High School, I at least was named Dekalb County Defensive Lineman of the Week.
But this weekend in Virginia was the last chance to give everything in a game in such an effort. From here out my struggles would be more intellectual and academic. Only the opportunity to say goodbye to my parents on the Sunday morning following the game and the promise of the next weekend's trip to watch me play on the fields at Georgetown University offered any solace for my efforts on that gorgeous Autumn day in Lexington, Virginia.
This is what I remembered suddenly in the living room of a townhouse in Clinton, South Carolina on October 6, 2007. Just a brief moment's memory, but so many years to travel.
Monday, October 8, 2007
DNA
Restless ever
My chromosomes' journey began on a plain
Somewhere in southeastern Europe
Or perhaps in a forest in Skandinavia
Listening for the touch of wind
Signaling the end of Winter
And the rebirth of dirty, rough living
The rude struggle to another day
Subsisting off of pockets full of grain
Gathered on some sabbath to fuel the day's journey
Or a crude basket of fish
Lapped and heaved from the rough water
And with a stone ax I felled those trees
And plaited the flax until it fit my hand
And whipped the dumb animal forward
Always forward
To the west and the dying orange ball
Which pulled me on like another dumb animal
To the new life ahead
And the promises of other days
Little pieces plaited together
In a chain, two chains
Twisted together into one double chain
Moving forward.
My chromosomes' journey began on a plain
Somewhere in southeastern Europe
Or perhaps in a forest in Skandinavia
Listening for the touch of wind
Signaling the end of Winter
And the rebirth of dirty, rough living
The rude struggle to another day
Subsisting off of pockets full of grain
Gathered on some sabbath to fuel the day's journey
Or a crude basket of fish
Lapped and heaved from the rough water
And with a stone ax I felled those trees
And plaited the flax until it fit my hand
And whipped the dumb animal forward
Always forward
To the west and the dying orange ball
Which pulled me on like another dumb animal
To the new life ahead
And the promises of other days
Little pieces plaited together
In a chain, two chains
Twisted together into one double chain
Moving forward.
Saturday, October 6, 2007
Not so early morning
Saturday. All the blue hose are wandering around the lobby of the Hampton Inn, looking like they are trying to find their lives in a cup of coffee or a plate of egg casserole. I love watching people in such an environment in the morning. They either seem like zombies or way to cheerful for the hour.
I looked out the window this morning to discover the sky was grey and looked like rain. I wonder how warm it will get or if the sun will show itself in the afternoon. Cindy is still sleeping. I have eaten my breakfast and am now awaiting the rest of the party.
I guess I am one of those people who are way too cheerful in the morning. At least I try to stay quiet until everyone else catches up. I think I will go check on Cindy.
I looked out the window this morning to discover the sky was grey and looked like rain. I wonder how warm it will get or if the sun will show itself in the afternoon. Cindy is still sleeping. I have eaten my breakfast and am now awaiting the rest of the party.
I guess I am one of those people who are way too cheerful in the morning. At least I try to stay quiet until everyone else catches up. I think I will go check on Cindy.
Friday, October 5, 2007
The beginning of the weekend.
Boy, was that a round about trip from Griffin, Georgia to Clinton, South Carolina. I left the office around 11:00 a.m. and went to two different banks, making deposits and cashing check (1). When I was through, I went home, knowing that my wife had left the task of making the bed, mopping the kitchen floor and vacuuming the downstairs carpets. Since she had had about three hours to finish her preparations for our leaving, I assumed she would have had a bath and would have got her clothes and what-not together for the trip. Boy was I wrong.
Instead, she gave me my orders and hopped in the shower. I had already swapped cars at the garage, since we were leaving to travel in Cindy's car. When all the chores were completed and everything was in the car, including kitchen chairs Kate wanted to borrow for her apartment and two long formal dresses from which she would pick for a dance tonight.
Anyway, we both got in the car and I turned the key in the ignition. Unfortunately, the starter didn't start and the battery seemed dead. So I called the garage back and they promised to bring my other car and pick up the one with the dead battery.
An hour and one half hour later, the wrecker driver arrived with a wrecker and my car. I quickly transferred all of the items in Cindy's car, with the exception of the kitchen chairs, which would not fit. We were finally on the road.
Due to the lateness of the hour, Cindy suggested we go the back route past Athens and on to Clinton through the woods of Northeast Georgia and the country in the uplands south of Clinton.
We drove to Jackson and Monticello and on to Madison. I was followed by a sheriff's car for most of the route between Monticello and Madison. He exited the highway to enter onto Interstate 20 and we then got caught in the most bizarre traffic intersection on the south side of Madison, where the road from Covington and the road from Eatonton combine. We waited and waited and waited.
Finally, we made our way through town and headed toward Watkinsville and Athens. After an hour of driving, I found the bypass and wound down through traffic until I found Georgia 72. This would be the last road to Clinton. We turned off and followed the 72 signs through little Georgia towns, across Lake Richard B. Russell, into South Carolina, through the oddly designed roads of Abbeville and the urban blight of Greenwood, South Carolina. Finally, we arrived in Clinton and delivered the dresses to Kate.
Tonight we sleep in the big beds of Hampton Inn, Clinton. Tomorrow, Homecoming for PC alumni, a game for us, and a corsage for Kate. Later we will eat supper, probably in Greenville, and attend church in Clinton, probably at First Presbyterian, and head back to Georgia. These are our plans, short as they are. Go Dogs! Go Generals! Go Blue Hose!
I am very tired.
Instead, she gave me my orders and hopped in the shower. I had already swapped cars at the garage, since we were leaving to travel in Cindy's car. When all the chores were completed and everything was in the car, including kitchen chairs Kate wanted to borrow for her apartment and two long formal dresses from which she would pick for a dance tonight.
Anyway, we both got in the car and I turned the key in the ignition. Unfortunately, the starter didn't start and the battery seemed dead. So I called the garage back and they promised to bring my other car and pick up the one with the dead battery.
An hour and one half hour later, the wrecker driver arrived with a wrecker and my car. I quickly transferred all of the items in Cindy's car, with the exception of the kitchen chairs, which would not fit. We were finally on the road.
Due to the lateness of the hour, Cindy suggested we go the back route past Athens and on to Clinton through the woods of Northeast Georgia and the country in the uplands south of Clinton.
We drove to Jackson and Monticello and on to Madison. I was followed by a sheriff's car for most of the route between Monticello and Madison. He exited the highway to enter onto Interstate 20 and we then got caught in the most bizarre traffic intersection on the south side of Madison, where the road from Covington and the road from Eatonton combine. We waited and waited and waited.
Finally, we made our way through town and headed toward Watkinsville and Athens. After an hour of driving, I found the bypass and wound down through traffic until I found Georgia 72. This would be the last road to Clinton. We turned off and followed the 72 signs through little Georgia towns, across Lake Richard B. Russell, into South Carolina, through the oddly designed roads of Abbeville and the urban blight of Greenwood, South Carolina. Finally, we arrived in Clinton and delivered the dresses to Kate.
Tonight we sleep in the big beds of Hampton Inn, Clinton. Tomorrow, Homecoming for PC alumni, a game for us, and a corsage for Kate. Later we will eat supper, probably in Greenville, and attend church in Clinton, probably at First Presbyterian, and head back to Georgia. These are our plans, short as they are. Go Dogs! Go Generals! Go Blue Hose!
I am very tired.
A crack in the present with a glimpse of my past
Today is Friday. My client, his mother and his girl-friend/financee are waiting in the lobby of my offices. I am sitting here in front of my computer awaiting a phone call from the assistant district attorney.
The phone rang a few moments ago and it was one of the realtors for the closing which was supposed to happen today. I had to discuss with her the fact that it was not closing today and would probably close on Monday or Tuesday of next week.
The brain is a strange thing, and perhaps mine is stranger than most. For some, unknown reason, I just had a brief memory of my previous life in Huntsville, Alabama flash through my mind. For just a second, I could smell and see a dark, rainy afternoon in Summer, on the sidewalk in a suburban shopping plaza on the outskirts of Huntsville, in 1965. I could witness the dark clouds hovering above us and feel the humidity as it wrapped around me in a precursor to rain. The concrete was clean and hard on my tennis-shoed feet and I could sense my brother and mother around me, but they weren't in my vision.
The odd thing is that the little aches and burdensome heaviness of my fifty years were not felt for the moment, and I really felt like I was eight again. The years and the pounds had melted magically away and I felt like all of my future was ahead of me, rather than only half of it. The sense of youth was so palpable that the promise of life ahead of me was not just a promise but a present reality. An unforeseen, unsensed future reality in the present.
Now it is gone. I sit in front of my computer and jam heavily on the keys. My shoulders ache from the stress of my body drooping down towards the center of the earth, as if magnetized towards the core. If I stood up and walked I would feel the sharp knives in my knees cutting through the years of torquing my knees one way or another, reaching for running backs or chasing a toddler. Stressed by the extra pounds around my abdomen. Just thinking about my shoulders, exacerbates the feelings in my neck and shoulders. Age. Fun.
But why did Huntsville creep through my mind? I consider the Huntsville of 1965. The somnolent village along the Tennessee River in Northern Alabama, surrounded by cotton fields and Monte Sano are almost gone, replaced by the world of Space Exploration and missiles. Werner Von Braun, a rocket scientist, plucked from Germany at the end of World War II and sent to live and work in this little Southern town, is the unofficial king of Huntsville. He appears at school open houses and Fourth of July parades. Everything is brand new and modern. My school is new, my home and the subdivision in which it is located are brand new. The designs are so modern, so different from the little frame houses in which the rest of my family live.
The school age boys in my neighborhood play in the houses under construction after the construction crews go home at night or run through the cotton fields at the end of our road, picking cotton bolls like mad boll weevils in the summer sunshine. Nothing is more wonderful than a large pile of dirt in someone's yard, a place for the imagination to see battlefields and constructions sites (what irony) or plantations along the Tennessee River. Only the call for supper and the inevitable shower from a garden hose before we enter the house with all that dirt, can stop our ramblings.
This time living in Huntsville was only a short respite between the Indianapolis of my toddler years and the rest of my life in Georgia. Everything about it was a midpoint. I remember shopping for groceries in an old country store a couple of miles from home and eating pork barbecue in a joint on the edge of town, the walls covered with calendars decorated with hunting scenes or the latest team from Tuscaloosa or Auburn. I remember my bus driver loudly singing country songs to us as we pulled into the drive for our elementary school. And I remember the "whites-only" pool in which I learned how to swim and the exotic vegetables at the farmer's market, varieties of which I had never heard until we came down South and inspected nature's bounty up close.
But I also remember attending school programs at Redstone Arsenal and seeing the missiles and rockets and cannons, which were all the most current techology, pointed away from Huntsville and Alabama and toward the world and beyond. I see my dad representing the brand new computers of IBM in his suit, white shirt and tie. I remember feeling the earth shake and hearing the windows rattle as NASA tested the Saturn rocket boosters which would lead man to walk on the moon. I remember looking out my window at night, trying to catch a glimpse of one of the astronauts as they sailed overhead.
So everything was old and antique and a sleepy reminder of earlier times, but also restless, brand new, vibrant and promising of the Future. Ray Bradbury had come to live with Truman Copote and the world of To Kill a Mockingbird. That was Huntsville, Alabama in 1965.
The phone rang a few moments ago and it was one of the realtors for the closing which was supposed to happen today. I had to discuss with her the fact that it was not closing today and would probably close on Monday or Tuesday of next week.
The brain is a strange thing, and perhaps mine is stranger than most. For some, unknown reason, I just had a brief memory of my previous life in Huntsville, Alabama flash through my mind. For just a second, I could smell and see a dark, rainy afternoon in Summer, on the sidewalk in a suburban shopping plaza on the outskirts of Huntsville, in 1965. I could witness the dark clouds hovering above us and feel the humidity as it wrapped around me in a precursor to rain. The concrete was clean and hard on my tennis-shoed feet and I could sense my brother and mother around me, but they weren't in my vision.
The odd thing is that the little aches and burdensome heaviness of my fifty years were not felt for the moment, and I really felt like I was eight again. The years and the pounds had melted magically away and I felt like all of my future was ahead of me, rather than only half of it. The sense of youth was so palpable that the promise of life ahead of me was not just a promise but a present reality. An unforeseen, unsensed future reality in the present.
Now it is gone. I sit in front of my computer and jam heavily on the keys. My shoulders ache from the stress of my body drooping down towards the center of the earth, as if magnetized towards the core. If I stood up and walked I would feel the sharp knives in my knees cutting through the years of torquing my knees one way or another, reaching for running backs or chasing a toddler. Stressed by the extra pounds around my abdomen. Just thinking about my shoulders, exacerbates the feelings in my neck and shoulders. Age. Fun.
But why did Huntsville creep through my mind? I consider the Huntsville of 1965. The somnolent village along the Tennessee River in Northern Alabama, surrounded by cotton fields and Monte Sano are almost gone, replaced by the world of Space Exploration and missiles. Werner Von Braun, a rocket scientist, plucked from Germany at the end of World War II and sent to live and work in this little Southern town, is the unofficial king of Huntsville. He appears at school open houses and Fourth of July parades. Everything is brand new and modern. My school is new, my home and the subdivision in which it is located are brand new. The designs are so modern, so different from the little frame houses in which the rest of my family live.
The school age boys in my neighborhood play in the houses under construction after the construction crews go home at night or run through the cotton fields at the end of our road, picking cotton bolls like mad boll weevils in the summer sunshine. Nothing is more wonderful than a large pile of dirt in someone's yard, a place for the imagination to see battlefields and constructions sites (what irony) or plantations along the Tennessee River. Only the call for supper and the inevitable shower from a garden hose before we enter the house with all that dirt, can stop our ramblings.
This time living in Huntsville was only a short respite between the Indianapolis of my toddler years and the rest of my life in Georgia. Everything about it was a midpoint. I remember shopping for groceries in an old country store a couple of miles from home and eating pork barbecue in a joint on the edge of town, the walls covered with calendars decorated with hunting scenes or the latest team from Tuscaloosa or Auburn. I remember my bus driver loudly singing country songs to us as we pulled into the drive for our elementary school. And I remember the "whites-only" pool in which I learned how to swim and the exotic vegetables at the farmer's market, varieties of which I had never heard until we came down South and inspected nature's bounty up close.
But I also remember attending school programs at Redstone Arsenal and seeing the missiles and rockets and cannons, which were all the most current techology, pointed away from Huntsville and Alabama and toward the world and beyond. I see my dad representing the brand new computers of IBM in his suit, white shirt and tie. I remember feeling the earth shake and hearing the windows rattle as NASA tested the Saturn rocket boosters which would lead man to walk on the moon. I remember looking out my window at night, trying to catch a glimpse of one of the astronauts as they sailed overhead.
So everything was old and antique and a sleepy reminder of earlier times, but also restless, brand new, vibrant and promising of the Future. Ray Bradbury had come to live with Truman Copote and the world of To Kill a Mockingbird. That was Huntsville, Alabama in 1965.
Thursday, October 4, 2007
3:21 news
Well, Kate did not make the top ten for Homecoming Court at PC. Kate has informed me that Claire and Alli will be in the top ten, but that we will cheer for Alli. Since her dad is providing a pre-game tailgate meal for us, I suppose we should oblige. I like little, cute redheads, anyway. Blondes and brunettes too. Since Kate has been all three, she is clearly at the top of my Homecoming list.
By the way, Kate does not seem too out of whack since she didn't get on the field at Homecoming. She does get a corsage to wear in the stands during the game. That is nice. A tad bit of consolation. Not that she apparently needs any consolation.
So apparently the answer to the loafer question is as follows: Back in the old days in Scandinavia, farmers wore a laceless slip-on shoe when they fed their cattle. Apparently, the area around where the cattle were fed was called a "loaf." So, the slip-on shoes they wore were referred to as "loafers." These were marketed in the U.S. to men as "loafers." So that's where the name came from. Its only later when they added the little slit on the top of the shoe where you could slip a penny and they became "penny loafers."
Cute little story. On December 30, 1982, my cousin Ed and I travelled from Atlanta to New Orleans to meet Cindy's family and attend the 1983 Sugar Bowl between those beloved Bulldogs and the Nittany Lions of Penn State. At the end of the Sugar Bowl festivities, the three of us hopped into my handy Chevy Monza (the sportiest compact car made by General Motors at the time, and my dad's biggest customer at the time and the source of my Chevy) and drove back to the ATL (which wasn't called that back then). Anyway, the next morning, we rode MARTA down to downtown Atlanta to look around. After walking around Mid-town for awhile, we were going to get back on MARTA and return to Dunwoody. Checking our collective pockets we found that we were about twenty cents short of the fare for the three of us. We were scrambling all over midtown trying to find a bank which would cash a check. Finally, we found one and returned to the MARTA station. As we entered the train and sat down, Cindy noticed that she had two dimes stuck in the slit on the top of her penny loafers. We laughed and laughed. At the time it was hilarious. I think my romantic ardor for the sweet young thing rendered it much more humorous at the time than it seems now. Nevertheless, a cute story, I suppose.
Interestingly, loafers have only been around since the 30's. I would have thought they were older than that. I don't know how long they have been putting pennies (or dimes) in the little slits on the tops.
Well, that's the news for this afternoon.
By the way, Kate does not seem too out of whack since she didn't get on the field at Homecoming. She does get a corsage to wear in the stands during the game. That is nice. A tad bit of consolation. Not that she apparently needs any consolation.
So apparently the answer to the loafer question is as follows: Back in the old days in Scandinavia, farmers wore a laceless slip-on shoe when they fed their cattle. Apparently, the area around where the cattle were fed was called a "loaf." So, the slip-on shoes they wore were referred to as "loafers." These were marketed in the U.S. to men as "loafers." So that's where the name came from. Its only later when they added the little slit on the top of the shoe where you could slip a penny and they became "penny loafers."
Cute little story. On December 30, 1982, my cousin Ed and I travelled from Atlanta to New Orleans to meet Cindy's family and attend the 1983 Sugar Bowl between those beloved Bulldogs and the Nittany Lions of Penn State. At the end of the Sugar Bowl festivities, the three of us hopped into my handy Chevy Monza (the sportiest compact car made by General Motors at the time, and my dad's biggest customer at the time and the source of my Chevy) and drove back to the ATL (which wasn't called that back then). Anyway, the next morning, we rode MARTA down to downtown Atlanta to look around. After walking around Mid-town for awhile, we were going to get back on MARTA and return to Dunwoody. Checking our collective pockets we found that we were about twenty cents short of the fare for the three of us. We were scrambling all over midtown trying to find a bank which would cash a check. Finally, we found one and returned to the MARTA station. As we entered the train and sat down, Cindy noticed that she had two dimes stuck in the slit on the top of her penny loafers. We laughed and laughed. At the time it was hilarious. I think my romantic ardor for the sweet young thing rendered it much more humorous at the time than it seems now. Nevertheless, a cute story, I suppose.
Interestingly, loafers have only been around since the 30's. I would have thought they were older than that. I don't know how long they have been putting pennies (or dimes) in the little slits on the tops.
Well, that's the news for this afternoon.
Thursday blues
There is some concern about continuing to publish pictures of Kate on this blog. Cindy is worried about it. She is the mother, of course. So we will have to be more discrete in this. Today is the day when we find out whether Kate is on the final ten of Homecoming Court. Cross your fingers and toes, people. I will get back to this later.
It is a dreary day and the sky is crying again. I hope Saturday is pretty in Clinton.
This morning several appointments have cancelled. There are rumours that several closings are going to take place today and tomorrow. Now one of them is going to probably be on Monday, although they said they wanted to close on Friday afternoon. The other one is supposed to close on Friday morning; however, I haven't heard anything from them. I really need to cross my fingers and toes for those two.
I would love to get some closings closed in the next few weeks. I keep hearing from lenders and borrowers and they are all in earnest, and sound hopeful, but nothing happens. Meanwhile, I get calls from potential clients who then cancel at the last minute or balk at the fees they are quoted.
Tomorrow will be here before we know it and Cindy and I will be winging up to the upcountry in South Carolina. South Carolina has a broad diversity of terrain and georgraphic features. They have the Low Country along the coast. They have the Piedmont around the capital. They have the Upcountry in the north and west. They also have some of the most unusual names for cities and towns (I say that, knowing that Devil's Elbow and Monkey's Eyebrow are both in Kentucky). Everything seems to have a story or a derivation. I don't know why South Carolina has to break down the whole state into these romantic regions. Romantic, I suppose, to someone.
South Carolina is actually kind of strange to me. I say that knowing that South Carolina is basically the mother or big sister of Georgia, being the immediate predecessor to the last original English colony, and the place from which Oglethorpe left to set out and build Savannah. Since the Carolinas weren't set up as a debtor's colony, they have a little bit on us poor Georgians. Charleston is better than Savannah. But St. Simons is better than Hilton Head. And Atlanta soars over Columbia. All the intermediate cities like Greenville, Spartanburg, Macon, Columbus, Gainesville are a wash as far as I am concerned, although I think we have more than they do. We have better sports teams. They have better pastimes. We have better roads. And we are bigger. Of course, if you combined the two Carolinas into their original composition as "Carolina", they would probably be bigger and better than most states. Of course, if you did that, you would have to give us back Alabama and Mississippi. Boy, what a pile of rednecks that would be.
That is my attempt to compare and contrast the two states. Do with it as you will.
By the by, the antique expression for the day, as given by my calendar, is "shoe the gosling". This is an expression which apparently means to do something that is not worthwhile, or as they put it,"a profitless task." Interestingly, the phrase "not worthwhile" and "profitless task" clearly mean the same thing. You can see their lineage in the words "not worth-while" and "profit-less". Profit and worth being similar in meaning.
Anyway, getting back to the expression, apparently this goes back to a fair which was established in 1284 and held in Nottingham, England. The fair was established by King Edward I for all of the farmers and stockmen to bring their geese to the fair, I suppose to exhibit or sell. Farmers came from far distances to show off their geese. They would gather their geese, clip their wings to prevent them from flying away, and walk them to Nottingham. I can only imagine what that looked like, particularly when they all arrived in Nottingham. Come to think of it, imagine what it sounded like. A little like downtown London at 5:00 p.m., around Piccadilly.
At any rate, the farmers travelled far distances to bring their geese to the fair. Often, they would coat the feet of the geese with tar and sand to make a little "footee" for the protection of the feet of the geese. I suppose that this expression came from the value of these shoes to the geese. Maybe the fair did nothing for the owners of the geese. Or maybe the shoes didn't help the geese. Who knows? Anyway, this expression came out of the fair and shows, I suppose, the value of trying to put a shoe on a goose.
Which doesn't explain why there used to be Red Goose shoes. Which leads me to ask why Buster Brown and his dog, Tige, would sell shoes either. And who was PF and how or why did his shoes fly? I do remember the Red Goose and the little boy and his dog, trying to get my mom to buy us shoes. My mother, who was in the shoestore to buy us shoes in the first place, didn't need a goose or a little boy and his dog to help her in picking out shoes. What was the point?
It was probably hard enough just getting two little boys to sit still long enough to try on shoes in the first place.
By the way, as you all must know by now, my mother is the reigning queen of shoes (since Imelda Marcos is no longer with us). She has come along way since she used to remove her shoes after school so she could walk home barefoot in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. Now she needs many closets in her house just to house her shoes. Thankfully, all of her children have left the roost and given my mother more closets to house her shoes.
Then there is the fact that my great-grandfather's brothers had a chain of shoestores in Kentucky, Tennessee, Indiana and Florida.
Did you know that I was a child model in a fashion show in Indianapolis? Did you know I was paid in a pair of shoes? My first dress loafers.
So you see, shoes have been very important in my family. That is why I always take mine off as soon as I get home in the afternoon.
Nevertheless, did the shoe company use a goose to sell shoes because they couldn't get the shoes on the goose? I could have told them there would be no profit in trying to shoe a goose? And I didn't need an entry on a calendar to tell me that.
Ok, Ok, that's enough.
One more thing: why are they called loafers? I think I will look that one up.
It is a dreary day and the sky is crying again. I hope Saturday is pretty in Clinton.
This morning several appointments have cancelled. There are rumours that several closings are going to take place today and tomorrow. Now one of them is going to probably be on Monday, although they said they wanted to close on Friday afternoon. The other one is supposed to close on Friday morning; however, I haven't heard anything from them. I really need to cross my fingers and toes for those two.
I would love to get some closings closed in the next few weeks. I keep hearing from lenders and borrowers and they are all in earnest, and sound hopeful, but nothing happens. Meanwhile, I get calls from potential clients who then cancel at the last minute or balk at the fees they are quoted.
Tomorrow will be here before we know it and Cindy and I will be winging up to the upcountry in South Carolina. South Carolina has a broad diversity of terrain and georgraphic features. They have the Low Country along the coast. They have the Piedmont around the capital. They have the Upcountry in the north and west. They also have some of the most unusual names for cities and towns (I say that, knowing that Devil's Elbow and Monkey's Eyebrow are both in Kentucky). Everything seems to have a story or a derivation. I don't know why South Carolina has to break down the whole state into these romantic regions. Romantic, I suppose, to someone.
South Carolina is actually kind of strange to me. I say that knowing that South Carolina is basically the mother or big sister of Georgia, being the immediate predecessor to the last original English colony, and the place from which Oglethorpe left to set out and build Savannah. Since the Carolinas weren't set up as a debtor's colony, they have a little bit on us poor Georgians. Charleston is better than Savannah. But St. Simons is better than Hilton Head. And Atlanta soars over Columbia. All the intermediate cities like Greenville, Spartanburg, Macon, Columbus, Gainesville are a wash as far as I am concerned, although I think we have more than they do. We have better sports teams. They have better pastimes. We have better roads. And we are bigger. Of course, if you combined the two Carolinas into their original composition as "Carolina", they would probably be bigger and better than most states. Of course, if you did that, you would have to give us back Alabama and Mississippi. Boy, what a pile of rednecks that would be.
That is my attempt to compare and contrast the two states. Do with it as you will.
By the by, the antique expression for the day, as given by my calendar, is "shoe the gosling". This is an expression which apparently means to do something that is not worthwhile, or as they put it,"a profitless task." Interestingly, the phrase "not worthwhile" and "profitless task" clearly mean the same thing. You can see their lineage in the words "not worth-while" and "profit-less". Profit and worth being similar in meaning.
Anyway, getting back to the expression, apparently this goes back to a fair which was established in 1284 and held in Nottingham, England. The fair was established by King Edward I for all of the farmers and stockmen to bring their geese to the fair, I suppose to exhibit or sell. Farmers came from far distances to show off their geese. They would gather their geese, clip their wings to prevent them from flying away, and walk them to Nottingham. I can only imagine what that looked like, particularly when they all arrived in Nottingham. Come to think of it, imagine what it sounded like. A little like downtown London at 5:00 p.m., around Piccadilly.
At any rate, the farmers travelled far distances to bring their geese to the fair. Often, they would coat the feet of the geese with tar and sand to make a little "footee" for the protection of the feet of the geese. I suppose that this expression came from the value of these shoes to the geese. Maybe the fair did nothing for the owners of the geese. Or maybe the shoes didn't help the geese. Who knows? Anyway, this expression came out of the fair and shows, I suppose, the value of trying to put a shoe on a goose.
Which doesn't explain why there used to be Red Goose shoes. Which leads me to ask why Buster Brown and his dog, Tige, would sell shoes either. And who was PF and how or why did his shoes fly? I do remember the Red Goose and the little boy and his dog, trying to get my mom to buy us shoes. My mother, who was in the shoestore to buy us shoes in the first place, didn't need a goose or a little boy and his dog to help her in picking out shoes. What was the point?
It was probably hard enough just getting two little boys to sit still long enough to try on shoes in the first place.
By the way, as you all must know by now, my mother is the reigning queen of shoes (since Imelda Marcos is no longer with us). She has come along way since she used to remove her shoes after school so she could walk home barefoot in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. Now she needs many closets in her house just to house her shoes. Thankfully, all of her children have left the roost and given my mother more closets to house her shoes.
Then there is the fact that my great-grandfather's brothers had a chain of shoestores in Kentucky, Tennessee, Indiana and Florida.
Did you know that I was a child model in a fashion show in Indianapolis? Did you know I was paid in a pair of shoes? My first dress loafers.
So you see, shoes have been very important in my family. That is why I always take mine off as soon as I get home in the afternoon.
Nevertheless, did the shoe company use a goose to sell shoes because they couldn't get the shoes on the goose? I could have told them there would be no profit in trying to shoe a goose? And I didn't need an entry on a calendar to tell me that.
Ok, Ok, that's enough.
One more thing: why are they called loafers? I think I will look that one up.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)