Broadsword calling Danny Boy: OK State -- K State post-mortem; Grandfather goes west: "we dug coal together" | Eastern North Carolina Now

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    Nobody can tell ya
    There's only one song worth singing
    They may try and sell ya
    'Cause it hangs them up
    To see someone like you

    But you gotta make your own kind of music
    Sing your own special song
    Make your own kind of music
    Even if nobody else sings along

    You're gonna be nowhere
    The loneliest kind of lonely
    It may be rough going
    Just to do your thing's the hardest thing to do - Barry Mann



The Correspondent and The Colonel consult, November 28, 1999, Vucitrn, Kosovo: Above.     Click image to enlarge.
    OK State stunk it up worse than a newly anointed Democrat running county wide in the Fightin' 79th: Wrong fight, wrong place, wrong time. Freshman wide receivers in a hostile environment on the road much like rookie candidates in the General Election -- their inexperience precludes successful execution of the air game unless coached up by superior offensive coordinators.

    With no air game, OK State was forced to challenge the strongest aspect K State brought to the table: run stopping defense. With injuries depleting the line this was going to be iffy from the start. But then K State pulled the Trump card as QB Martinez indeed did not play (hat tip to Westerby for that insight) but the Wildcats had Superman in reserve and the old pro did his thang. The kid came in with a new plan and it rolled bigly.

    Although a disappointing outcome for OK State punters, it must always be remembered that we only need 54 percent winners on flat wagering (same amount each contest) to come out ahead for the season. The loss reduces us to 1-1 but unlike in politics, margin is meaningless. A loss is a loss and there is another card next week for us to work harder on to improve. But in politics...

    Election day is it - there is no game next week and it not about school pride or lightening The Man's wallet. This is about the fate of the peeps who are your friends and neighbours - decent God-fearing people just trying to live a peaceful life and raise their kids right so they can have a better future. If you are one of those noble warriors, out there in the trenches each day delivering the mail for the forces of freedom and liberty, entrusted by the members of your community to carry the fight to the enemy, are you going to slow down this week?

    Do you think Mike Gundy won't be running the Cowboys hard this week? Bleep bleepin' right he will because that's what winners do: They put their foot on the gas the last lap whether they are a hundred metres ahead or same-same behind and bust through the tape.

    OK State was a bad call and the buck stops here-- it happens, and next week will be better. However in politics, with a local race, a bad call doesn't get better. A really bad call, like messing up a decent person -- a good man of the community, by enticing them with filthy ill-gotten currency to enlist under the dark banner of the Marxist-Leninist front -- well Man, that's just shameful.

    Anyway, best just to get things straight in folk's minds once and for all, as Harry Truman remarked mid-July 19 and forty-five. In the long run, putting your foot on the gas and wiping out the opposition with the big one the most merciful foe you can be.

    As Ellen Ripley once said, "It's the only way to be sure."

    Can you dig it?

    (Hope so, as peeps be needin' that coal, Man.)

    *************************

    (And thus, they be gettin' heaps of it here.)

    November 20, 1920

    Ponce de Leon Park, ATLANTA     Grandfather was stunned as he sat over the new fangled typing writer in the rickety old press box. Late in the fourth quarter, with Georgia and Alabama tied at 14, there was a stoppage in play to find another pigskin after an errant aerial had found an unattended storm drain. Grandfather was able to catch his breath and check the wires to see if any other game in the country was as crazy as this one.

NC State 90  •  Wofford 7 Harvard 9  •  Yale 0

    "My, my, Damme," he exclaimed. Grandfather was known to take a flutter on the scrimmages he did not cover, and was nonplussed as he lamented his failure to take NC State (-52 and the hook). But Grandfather had learned long ago, on that fateful day, the folly of the false favourite, and thus had an almost iron clad rule of never laying more than 46 points. Thus he had gone with Yale and all that boolah, boolah - where's my moolah - the hip phrase of the day.

    Seeing that the other two top eastern powers were rolling that day, Grandfather reflected on how Georgia was tied late without putting the pigskin in play on their two scores - Page Bennett had romped for 41 yards after snatching an Alabama fumble in the air and gone the distance. Later Art Pew had recovered a blocked Tide kick and had rambled, stumbly-bumbly into the end zone.

    Grandfather loved defense and was infatuated by the kicking game. He was an old man now but at 63 could still bang out the copy despite his mind constantly drifting to the past. As Alabama kicker Talty O'Connor lined up to launch the winning drop kick, his mind shifted to that fateful day, forty-four years earlier, that had altered the trajectory of his life...

    June 25, 1876

    Little Big Horn, SOUTH DAKOTA     How Grandfather came to ride into that fateful valley on that fatal day is still somewhat of a mystery as records of the time are spotty. As a spindly nineteen year old he had been dismissed from Franklin Male Academy in Louisburg over a technical misunderstanding in terms of the printed form. Drifting west, he had joined the cavalry and, other than being a superior marksman, was generally considered a bit of a prat.

    Unfortunately, like all soldiers on the battlefield, he would suffer when the leadership was poor and thrive when it was superior. General Custer, as he prepared to attack a force some twenty times his size, was overheard to remark: "It's not the size of the dog in the fight, its the size of the fight in the dog." All agreed the great man of vision would lead them to victory and immortality.

    Teamed with the Mule Skinner as an auxiliary scout - Grandfather overheard the conversation that changed the world:

    Custer: "You are advising me to go into the coulee?"

    Mule Skinner: "Yes Sir."

    Custer: "There are no Indians there, I suppose."

    Mule Skinner: "I didn't say that. There are thousands of Indians down there. And when they get done with you there won't be nothing left but a greasy spot. This ain't the Washita River and them ain't helpless women and children waiting for you. They're Cheyenne brave and Sioux. So you go down there General, if you've got the nerve."

    Splitting his forces into three columns, General Custer marched into the coulee confident of victory. Grandfather wasn't so sure about that...

    **************

    Grandfather was a bit of a card in his old age, they say, but here and there we run across old news clippings or the occasional journalistic mention of his adventures. He had two pet peeves later in life: rule changes in college football and Democrats.

    He felt the forward pass had ruined the game and even into his early 90s would ramble (a bit loudly as a Zulu assegai had clanged his good ear one tough day at Rorke's Drift) in the press box about how "an incomplete pass into the end zone on fourth down should be ruled a touch-back like a fumble going out of the end zone. Think about it."

    And out of respect for their elders most of them did listen and when he was finished thought the guy had lost his mind. But they quickly learned best to nod their head in agreement before the guy began a rambling dissertation of the technical evolution of the safety...

    Grandfather despised Democrats and always marked a straight ticket against them. When asked about it he would get quiet for once, ponder a bit, and then in a low voice start talking about Jim Crow laws in the American south, created and nurtured by generations of southern Democrats that treated black folks like second class citizens. Grandfather rode with the Buffalo Soldiers back in the day and knew -- much like Vietnam vets decades later -- how they came back home to mistreatment and abuse.

    He didn't like it.

    Just like people today don't like it. In fact, truth be told, regular folks getting pretty ****** sick of everything Democrat from the imbecilic fool at the top in DC all the way down to misguided local candidates -- sold some Democrat party magic beans in the hopes of slip-streaming a local race.

    Custer sought eternal glory and sold his soul to the Devil to get it. The banshee-like screams of eternal *********

    you hear on election night will be from those recent customers of Mr Scratch seeing/feeling the bill come due. Still they contemplate that wicked coulee path...

    "So you go down there, General, if you've got the nerve."