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It’s up and it’s… No Good, but Great!

November 30, 2013 /

I was yelling GO! GO! GO! at the top of my lungs, and he WENT WENT WENT! One of the craziest game endings I’ve ever seen.

Oh, don’t get me wrong. I loved the Westbrook-three that gave the Thunder the win at the buzzer the other night. But, I’m a college football fan – first and foremost. (Used to be Major League Baseball until the player strikes killed my enthusiasm.)

For the first time in over five months (since the Rose District construction project began), it was so busy in the bookshop that I could not ease back into the office and watch some Saturday afternoon TV sports action.

I’m SO happy for that. A combination of beautiful weather and who knows what else brought sidewalks full of shoppers to the Rose District. Finally got to slip into the office just as the replay folks were trying to decide whether to give Alabama a final chance to win the game against Auburn in regulation. Of course there was a time out to ice the kicker.

So I jumped back out on the sales floor to wrap up some details, the closing-time checklist. Decided I wanted to see the field goal attempt and hustled back to the office, just as the whistle blew to start the play.

The kick looked wide to me, but it wound up as short. I immediately realized the returner had a lane to run through, then decided it wouldn’t make any difference since they would reset the game in the overtime that would follow the tackle.

Except there would not be any overtime. There wasn’t a tackle. One-hundred-nine yards later – Auburn is the winner of the Iron Bowl, knocking off number-one ranked Alabama.

Don’t get me wrong, you Tide fans. I’m pulling for your quarterback to win the Heisman, but in America, we have a habit of cheering for the underdog. When I’m not invested in a game, I pull for the upset. Maybe O-State or the Sooners can benefit and move up in the standings. Roll Tide. Except, not today.

Personally, I don’t think Alabama will drop much more than a notch based on the way the game was lost. Auburn played to another level and simply caught a break. And it was a BIG break.

I love watching college football – big programs, little schools, and even games with nothing at stake except a W in the win-loss column. When the local teams are on the field, it is too nerve-wracking for me to watch the kind of ending that got played over and over just now, the camera following a run from endzone to endzone.

Auburn has to have completed one of the greatest turnarounds in sports, from a 3-9 season record (and not a single conference win) to knocking off the top-ranked team in the nation and a shot at the SEC conference title.

Whew!

If it had been the Sooners or the Cowboys or Tulsa on that particular field, I would not have had the nerve to watch. I’d have flipped over to the Food Network or Pawn Stars long before that last field goal attempt. As it was, I was privy to one of the most memorable moments in recent NCAA memory.

Ain’t life grand?

Come visit!

McHuston

Booksellers & Irish Bistro
Rose District
122 South Main St. Broken Arrow OK!

Go North, Young Man.

November 23, 2013 /

I was looking for a poetry book in the office and came across a high school yearbook. It was mine. 1970. Opened the cover and it scared me. The teachers look young.

Don’t remember it being that way back in high school.

Should have just put it back on the shelf, but I opened the cover and thumbed through it. Yikes! (When YOU look back at YOUR yearbook, the hair styles and fashions will look dated too. I promise.)

The first image shows Coach North from the 1970 Dancing Rabbit yearbook alongside his staff photo from 2000 at the University of Alabama. He looks happy and healthy, and pretty much unchanged given the passage of thirty years. The second image shows the coach in between those years, while at OU. Out of fairness to Coach, I’ve included my own class picture and will willingly admit that I’ve made up for whatever physical changes Mr. North was spared.

I cringed after turning to my class picture, just like I knew I would. It was the annual photograph that would have to stand the test of time. Oops. It hasn’t. Borderline masochistic that I made myself look at it, I suppose.

There was a lengthy note inside the front cover from Mike, who sat in the front row with me in history class. We were so jammed up in that class that both his desktop and mine actually touched the teacher’s desk. Behind Mike sat Jane – a pretty senior cheerleader and one of my first real crushes. Of course, as a sophomore, I wore an invisibility cloak all year.

Mike’s yearbook inscription starts with a reference to our antagonizing of Charlie North, our teacher. I didn’t remember it exactly that way. Coach North had things on his mind that weren’t necessarily historical. He’d cruise in and lower his big frame into the chair and push a passel of papers in front of him. Football stuff.

Coach North: All right class. We were working on chapter eight. (Turning to Mike) Right, Mike?

Mike: Right, Coach.

The next day when the routine was repeated, he’d put the question to me instead. I wasn’t as confident as Mike, an upper-classman. I would just nod in confirmation. Coach would set us up with a new assignment and we’d get after it. I’d look up occasionally and watch him go over the football plays he’d have spread in front of him.

It could be argued that – without an engaging teacher – the history class was wasted on the students. Never looked at it that way, myself. We were treated like adults (which of course, we weren’t) and were allowed by Coach North to progress at our own rate. I think that was part of Mike’s reference. I recall that he had Coach back us up a chapter or assignment. Coach would check his notebook and shrug. It gave me time to read ahead. In school, I read history books like novels.

Here’s what I remember from all those years ago. There weren’t any problems in the classroom: discipline, grades, assignments – nothing that I recall. The football team had won the state title a couple years earlier, as I recall. Hook Eales was the head coach, but Coach Charlie North was the one who made his presence known statewide.

Mr. North spent a lot of years at the University of Oklahoma as a special teams coach for Barry Switzer. From OU he went on to lend his skills to the Arkansas Razorbacks, and later the universities of Alabama, Texas Christian, and Texas A&M. After some forty years in coaching, he semi-retired to work as a volunteer assistant at Norman, to coach his grandson, who made the football team.

The former McAlester High School ball coach was inducted into the Oklahoma Coach’s Association Hall of Fame in August of this year.

Finding the old yearbook and the note from Mike made me curious, and I was happy to learn that Coach North had such an impressive career. Particularly, since I have good memories of his class. Could be because I like history, and did – even back then.

Or it could have been from sitting next to Jane.

We’ve got history and poetry, in stock. Come visit!

McHuston

Booksellers & Irish Bistro
Rose District
122 South Main St, Broken Arrow OK!

Fifty years later. That remembering thing.

November 16, 2013 /

If you haven’t been already, you’ll soon be buried in media reports regarding the anniversary of the Kennedy Assassination. I remember when the half-century retrospective reports had to do with WWII. Fifty years is one of those markers that everyone assumes merits a look back. We won’t have to direct our attention that way because the remembrance of the loss of the president will be found in every direction.

Half a century removed, we won’t be able to escape the rehashing of all the theories regarding the shooting in Dallas. I’d give you my own opinion, but I’ve already professed on this website the degree with which I assume the best – even in worst-case scenarios.

There are some factors involved – the presence of Dulles on the Warren Commission doing the official investigation, for example – but in the years since it seems hard to deny that the assassin, like the presidential killers before him, was under stress, suffering from emotional difficulties, and had a background that facilitated the possibility that such an event could transpire.

Like anything else, with enough wrangling it is possible to make a square peg fit into a round hole. The coordinates on any map can measure up to identify a lost treasure too – just ignore the signposts to make it work, then cuss when no one recognizes what you dig up as something valuable.

Of course, I’m no authority on the presidential assassination. I’m only expressing the opinion of someone who was camped in front of the television – pretty much from the moment we were dismissed from school until the body of John F. Kennedy was interred in Arlington National Cemetery. My dear mother told us to watch the news coverage. She said we’d later appreciate the fact that she made us pay attention.

My sisters and I pulled the cushions from the sofa and propped them up in a way that made the couch into a bus and our imaginations drove us up and down some imaginary streets. Even in our excursions we never escaped the eye of the television. That’s why we were there for the little salute, the caisson, the endless recapping, and the gunning down of Lee Oswald by Jack Ruby. Walter Cronkite in his element.

I lived it. Maybe that’s why I don’t really want to recount it.

It was controversial when Kennedy was elected, and I remember that too. There are just too many hard-wired recollections that seem to give me a jolt when they are brought back up. Not that I’d advocate just forgetting about the whole thing – I’m a history nut, for one thing. It’s just that I’m not certain what is gained by the rehash.

The thing is, I don’t even feel comfortable discussing my thoughts about the death of John Kennedy. I remember it vividly. I’ve seen so many discussions over the decades regarding this and that, who might have done this, who could have provoked that. It wears me out and makes me sad.

Those were different times, back then. Citizens respected the office of the president, even if they disagreed with his religion, upbringing, social standing, or age. Members of the opposing party were stricken by the death of their president, a sentiment that could never be aroused in this day and age, with limited exception.

I wonder if the theorists might be giving Lee Oswald too much credit when they propose he was a part of a bigger plan, an international conspiracy, a domestic plot, or a mob-based hit. The man had issues and unsure footing. He was unhinged and trained with weapons.

John Lennon died at the hands of a gunman as well. It is possible his murderer could have just have easily fixated on the president instead of a musical icon.

Perhaps in December of 2030, on the 50th anniversary of the notable death of that famous musician, the public will propose and the media will report the possible nefarious links that led to that tragic event.

You’ve got time. Write a book about it. We can feature it in the shop.

Come visit!

McHuston

Booksellers & Irish Bistro
Rose District
122 South Main, Broken Arrow OK!

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