McHuston Booksellers

Rare, Collectible, & Otherwise

Tag: used (Page 16 of 47)

Ooh. Sooners!

January 3, 2014 /

I expect a call immediately from OU coach Bob Stoops. Thanks are in order. There has been a (shall I say it?) jinx over the years. When I watch the Sooners play on TV, they lose. When I don’t watch – they win. Needless to say, I was in front of the television the night of the Sugar Bowl. I watched a crime show.

Granted, I flipped over every ten minutes or so. I was fortunate enough to watch – LIVE – a Sooner touchdown! I changed channels immediately, worrying about the whole sports balance of things. (When I flipped back later, there was a significant penalty against OU, which I figured was Karma for my having seen an OU scoring drive.

Earlier in the evening – me alone in the bookshop – I said some words I won’t repeat in this public forum – after hearing the ESPN announcers prognosticating the odds of a University of Oklahoma win as slim. NO. It wasn’t a no chance thing, not at all, it was an impossibility for the University of Oklahoma Sooners to win the Sugar Bowl game against the Alabama Crimson Tide. No. No chance. Nada. None, whatsoever. (Get it?) The Sooners can NOT possibily win. Oh, the announcers were very eloquent about the subject, but the bottom line was, the University of Oklahoma against the University of Alabama? Sell the souls of your children. It won’t make any difference. No divine intervention will stop the Crimson Tide. Not a prayer in the world will be heard on behalf of an OU win.

Arghhh!

It’s hard to hear that kind of talk. Especially when it comes to the Sooners. I’m old enough to remember the years of Sooner Magic. When – against all odds – the Sooners – Oh, OH! Time is running OUT! – pulled out the win.

OH!

The blood pressure! Now, SportsCenter is calling it the biggest upset in the history of the collegiate Bowl Games. AAAaaaaahhhhhhhh! It is only an UPSET because the on-air doofus-announcers chose to call a Sooner’s win an impossible task.

Ouch.

I’ m really proud of OU – knocking off the Crimson Tide in a BCS Bowl Game. It never occurred to me that winning the game was against ALL odds. But that is what ESPN is all about.

They’ve even hired Tim Tebow, their main-man, their Prince-of-Pigskin, their Messiah of Mainstream, as a broadcaster for future collegiate games. Their guy who was the answer of ALL football questions. His future co-horts?

Mark May? The fellow who said the Sooner had ABSOLUTELY (Absolutely!) no chance of winning the game? Ooops. He was wrong.

Has he admitted his error? Not as of this late hour.

It doesn’t matter to me, though. My daughter – and all the money I could spare – went to OU. She was gracious enough to invite me to some Father-Daughter games and I was flattered at her invitation and excited to attend with her. As an OU family, it means a lot to get a win. (I remember when she attended a Bowl Game in New Orleans and the Sooners lost. The LSU fans wound up buying her drinks, even in her loss. (She knows public relations!)

Congratulations, Sooners! (And – as for my personal struggle – wanting to watch the game but knowing I can’t because of the resulting jinx – I’m hoping my viewing-abstinence can result in some form of – game over recollection – or at least a chance to watch a replay.) Nah. On second thought – I’m just happy just to have tuned in at the end, when the University of Oklahoma got the win over the team that ALL over America thought would be the winner.

Boomer. Sooner!

Come visit!

McHuston

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

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!

Leanin’ on a lamppost. (Irish Olympic event.)

November 4, 2013 /

It’s a little bit like a flashlight with no batteries. You can bonk someone on the head with it, but only in the bright of day. Actually, it is nothing like that at all. The drift is, the bulb is missing, but the lamppost has been restored to its valued place on the sidewalk.

Hoo-haw!

My neighbor JoAnne (Hollow Tree Gifts) dropped in this morning, happy and sad at the same time. The good-news bad-news concerned the sidewalk in front of her shop. There wasn’t one. That was then.

I moseyed (have you moseyed lately?) down to her end of the block this afternoon and the workers are smoothing the last of the cement. She should be able to open her front door to customers in the morning.

In the sidewalk planter in front of the book shop are two gentlemen who are installing the landscaping irrigation and drainage. That’s a good thing. I was worried at the beginning when mention was made of the merchants taking care of the plants in front of their own stores. No objections from me regarding the work involved – it’s only my memory and the responsibility of keeping thirsty plants alive.

I’d hate to be the one who killed off the roses in the Rose District.

You can see in the image my headless-lamppost and in the other a view from the front-door looking north. For now, you’ll have to imagine the green foliage and rosebushes.

The block from Commercial to Dallas is getting back to normal, at least during the daytime. The tall lamps have banished the darkness, but it will be a much brighter nighttime on Main when all of the lamps are lit.

Timetables are approximate, but there are hopes that everything will be ready to go by the time the Main Street Merchants’ annual Tee-off comes around, mid-month. That’s the Holiday Shopping Season jump-start for the downtown businesses in which many of the stores hold open-house type events, and in previous years the event has featured horse-drawn carriage rides, live music, and traveling minstrel shows. (Okay. I made that last part up.)

A couple of ladies dropped in during the lunch hour just to see what “all the Rose District talk is about.” I’m glad to know there is talk going on and that it is piquing the curiosity of area shoppers. I hope they’ll come back with things are a little more tidy and the orange barrels have moved to some other B.A. location.

There is still plenty of work going on inside the shop, as well. Just shelved a nearly-complete Hardy Boys collection, nicely kept hardback volumes.

Traipsing down to the library (have you traipsed lately?) as a vacation-reading maniac one summer, I had as a goal to read every one of the mysteries. The librarian had a sheet of paper imprinted with an image of a suitcase, and with each completed book she applied a colorful “travel” sticker to the page. We naive young bookworms were traveling around the world through the printed page. My suitcase runneth over with stickers and – all the while – I was saved the worry of nasty tropical mosquito-borne diseases and Montezuma’s Revenge.

Golly-gee, it was a simpler time back then, wasn’t it? But, dad-gummit, I fell for it and wound up reading a stack of books that summer. In retrospect, I should have been practicing my little-league baseball skills. (Then again, I probably had better later-life prospects as a librarian than a second-baseman.)

The roast beef is on the stove and aroma drifting ‘round the shop is reminding me of Grandma Mamie’s Sunday table and Grandma Sylvia’s Thanksgiving spread. Irish stew weather is fast approaching. The kitchen is calling and my oven mitts are at the ready.

Come visit!

McHuston

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

« Older posts Newer posts »

© 2024 McHuston Booksellers

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑