YES, I AM STILL HERE peeking out of the newspaper’s window on Main Street and the high school football playoffs are on my mind.
First, let me congratulate the Dierks Outlaws and the Mineral Springs Hornets. They lost their playoff games but both had stellar seasons. Dierks won the district championship and Mineral rebounded from a zero-win 2021 season. In my long career I’ve had the pleasure of covering all of our local teams in state championship games — Rattlers included.
That leaves Nashville as the only local team still alive and kicking in the playoffs.
I’ve covered a lot of Scrapper playoff games.
One year we were hosting the undefeated Ozark Hillbillies. I like to walk the opponent sidelines to get a good photo for the newspaper, and it was on that sideline that I met a congenial gent from Ozark wearing buckskins and a coonskin hat. He had a long rifle. He warned me not to be alarmed at the loud noise from the rifle. “I shoot it every time we score,” he said with no small amount of pride.
Alas, not only did the Scrappers whup the formerly unbeaten Hillbillies, the Orange defense pitched a shutout. The poor guy never got to shoot that long rifle.
Nowadays if he brought a long rifle to the game he’d be arrested pretty quick.
The coonskin hat guy turned out to be a preacher at a small Baptist church in Ozark. I wrote him a letter afterward telling him how nice it was to meet him, and that I was sorry I didn’t get to hear that long rifle. It wasn’t a smartypants letter, either. I knew he was very proud of the kids on his hometown team.
As I am of mine.
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DON’T HOLD YOUR BREATH. Were you waiting for a comment by the #1 Fair Weather Razorback Football Fan?
Here it is:
There was a difference in the loss to LSU and the loss to Liberty.
In the former, the Hogs played hard and smart, and did well even without the star quarterback.
In that Liberty game our team just went through the motions and got their backsides thoroughly spanked as they deserved.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and predict that the Razorbacks will lose the final two games of the regular season (Ole Miss and Missouri) and could miss out on a bowl game altogether. Sometimes the bowls have a hard time finding eligible opponents, and they extend an invitation to a five-win team as part of Plan B.
I am predicting that the Hogs will play the Scrimshaw Institute of Wheelbalancing, a well-regarded technical school. The game will be played on a converted soccer field at Scalp, Oklahoma.
There won’t be room for the Razorback marching band, although Freddie Horne and Mark Keith and their buddies will be able to perform a couple of numbers at halftime.
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ANOTHER REASON I’m through with flying on commercial airlines. British Airways and Virgin Atlantic Airways have announced that all employees INCLUDING MALE CABIN ATTENDANTS can now wear skirts and makeup and jewelry and have all kinds of piercings if that makes them feel good about themselves.
It makes me feel like I need to take a Greyhound Bus. They don’t have cabin attendants.
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ANIMAL CRACKERS. It was about a half-hour before dark. Some friends were sitting on lawnchairs scattered in a loose circle on a remote road, enjoying the smell of autumn’s recent rains and the subtle color of the hardwood leaves.
A flock of geese flew low overhead going south. They were honking enthusiastically, happy to be going home from work.
Our bunch made comments about the pleasure of hearing and seeing the V-formation. The birds soon disappeared from sight and hearing.
Maybe 10 minutes later we heard honking again. This time it was a single goose northbound. For some reason it sounded frantic. I wondered if it had lost a mate or a child, and was going back to look.
It’s a great time to be outdoors even if you’re not a deer hunter.
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AN ATHLETE. Jack Williams, a freshman at the University of Arkansas, was recently named SEC Cross Country Freshman of the Year. He is the grandson of the late Mickey and Nobie Ann Williams of Nashville. His dad, John Williams, was Scrapper MVP his senior year.
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THINGS I LEARNED by opening the email: The hardness of the butter is proportional to the softness of the bread.
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HE SAID: “To give thanks in solitude is enough. Thanksgiving has wings and goes where it must go. Your prayer knows much more about it than you do.” Victor Hugo, writer and politician
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SHE SAID: “Thanksgiving is one of my favorite days of the year because it reminds us to give thanks and to count our blessings. Suddenly, so many things become so little when we realize how blessed and lucky we are.” Joyce Giraud, actress and television producer
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SWEET DREAMS, Baby
