YES, I AM STILL HERE peeking out of the newspaper’s window on Main Street and I am practically crowing that we are in the last month of 2022 without college football. Games begin at the tail end of August.
I am STILL the No. 1 Fair Weather Razorback Football Fan. “I will stay with you through thick and thick,” should be my motto.
I do love college football, and I am afraid college football is in its last days as we know it. Pretty soon the players will be allowed to sell ads on their jerseys and helmets, just like pro golfers have paying customers for promotional space on their caps, shirts and golf bags. Just like NASCAR drivers sell ads on their race car doors.
No matter how it changes, I will always look forward to the opening of the college football season. I will watch anything. I don’t miss a game between Kentucky Weslyan and Muncie Tech.
I hope it’s not too hot when the Hogs play. Not because I don’t want the little darlings to have heat stroke, but because I don’t want to be uncomfortably hot when I have to banish myself from the TV room to the patio. I have this terrible fear that in a tight situation, the Hogs always mess up if I’m watching. A fumble here; and interception there; and pretty soon we’ve lost another game we otherwise could have won.
The Razorbacks open up with a tough opponent, the Cincinnnnnatttti Bearcats, a team which made the Final Four last year. Then the Hogs get right into conference play on the next weekend.
Later in the season they’ll play Brigham Young University way out west in Provo, Utah.
Do Mormons abstain from pork?
Because the Hogs had such a miserable record against creampuffs in the Chad Morris era, I still expect the worst when we play the likes of UAPB and Louisiana-Moron. I realize we Hog fans need a break from a brutal schedule, and I am sorry the team can’t go out to join me on the patio for a beer when things get tense against the likes of the Aggies or the Rebels.
I hope I live long enough to see us beat Alabamamamama, but that probably won’t happen as long as Nick Satan is coaching there.
I am thrilled with our coach, though, and I’ll always be excited to see that we’ve won another exciting football game. But, I have to read about it because during the actual game I was outside on the patio looking at clouds.
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ANIMAL CRACKERS. If you’re getting tired of the voluminous scribblings about ‘my’ bluebirds you can pretend I’m holding a gun on you to make you sit still and read to the very end.
I’ve got surprise bluebird eggs in the patio bluebird box. Five lovely little eggs. Two very aggressive parents divebomb any other bird that dares come close to the box.
You can relax now. The gun wasn’t loaded.
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THE GOOD EARTH. There was a time when my beloved Centipede lawn got watered in dry summer months. But no more.
When I walk across the dry, brown blades, the grass crunches underfoot.
It is sooooo hot and dry.
I no longer hear lawnmowers cranking up as soon as the day gets light and it’s still cool. The grass ain’t growing.
Hot — By Tuesday morning our official weather report from the National Weather Service counted six days of temperatures reaching at least 100 degrees. One day was at the tail end of June; the others were July.
Some places said that the 104 reached on July 10 was a record high for our town.
I take their word on it.
Just as I take Alexa’s admonitions of heat advisories.
Dry — Even though May and June were slightly (very slightly) above normal in rainfall, most of those rains came on just a few days and a lot of it resulted in runoff. It would have been better if the rain was spread thinner among a few more days.
In July it’s a different story. Only one day with a teeeny bit of sprinkle — 0.04-in., so far. Even though I heard that the ‘north end’ got a rainfall exceeding an inch.
Merely by printing a column about how hot and dry it is insures that we will have a nice rain and some cooler days.
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THINGS I LEARNED from opening email: Apparently RSVP-ing to a wedding invitation “Maybe next time,” isn’t an encouraging response.
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WORD GAMES. Here are two more words that go together in some context: High and Dry. Some people have been left there.
Also some college football teams. Like, the former Big 12 Conference when Texas and Oklahoma jumped to the SEC.
Okie State, Baylor, TCU and some others were left high and dry.
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HE SAID: “In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.” Albert Schweitzer, physician and theologian
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SHE SAID: “Silences make the real conversations between friends. Not the saying but the never needing to say is what counts.”Margaret Lee Runbeck, author
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SWEET DREAMS, Baby
