My legs hurt, my stomach hurts, I’ve lost my appetite and I don’t want to get out of bed. I don’t want to read anything, listen to anything related to the latest news or even turn on a television or computer. I want to eat coconut – I hate coconut, but when I feel bad I want to eat things I do not like to eat. Perhaps a Mounds candy bar or an Almond Joy – they have coconut in them don’t they? Why not a coconut “bunny cake” with those pink construction paper ears and cutesy jelly bean eyes and nose.
Cut me a big piece and make me eat it…
When you grew up in the South and understand what it’s like to live in a ghost town on a Friday night because everyone is at the high school football game and have been there since 4 or 5 in the afternoon waiting on a 7 PM kickoff – you will understand what I am about to say. The two “major” college football teams in the state I grew up in, lost this past weekend and I’m kind of glad that I’m not down there right now.
I would like to see the statistics on the number of folks who skipped work on Monday morning. It would be interesting to know if the fact that both teams lost was worse or better than just one of them losing – when only one group got the “Monday Morning Malady.”
I’m admitting that it makes me sick to lose… If I feel like eating coconut – By jingo, I’m mad and ill and on the verge of pitching a hissy fit.
It’s the same in Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Texas and Tennessee. Most folks understand this illness that strikes some more than others. It’s difficult to find much sympathy because of the teams often playing each other and the feelings being inversely related. In other words, I might want to be eating coconut, but another fellow might feel like eating a whole side of fried bacon or bucket of fried chicken or a pulled pork barbecue sandwich that has a lot of the outside tough dark smoky “barkish” looking part in it.
Good grief, if we only could have won…
Understanding the “outside” part of barbecue goes a long way in understanding the importance of football in some places, particularly in the Deep South. When I moved to Virginia many years ago, one of the first things I did was walk into what folks told me was one of the “best barbecue” places in town. With a great big appetite, I walked up to the counter of this place thinking it was going to be ok when I saw a big wash bucket of cold Nehi soda waters in bottles. I remember saying to myself, “These people probably know their barbecue.”
Good gosh a-mighty… was I ever wrong.
Don’t take that the wrong way, these are nice folks (Bless their hearts). What did I order? I ordered what I always had ordered in reputable barbecue places – “a barbecue plate outside.” Any reputable barbecue place with a reputable fellow in the back wearing one of those white paper butcher hats holding a great big knife, knows I want some or prefer the “outside meat” or bark or the “hard stuff” on that plate.
The nice lady taking my order at the counter looked at me kind of strange and said, “We have picnic tables under a tree outside.” I remember thinking, “Good grief, now I understand why you don’t get upset when your football team gets ripped apart like pulled pork on Saturday afternoons.”
If I’m going to eat your barbecue, you ought to know what the “outside” meat is and if you’re going to play football, you ought to at least care when you lose. It just makes sense to me.
I don’t think you should hurt anybody or cut off a toe or a finger or take your team flag down from the porch, but there is not a doggone thing wrong with being upset to the point of wanting to eat coconut.
They say we’re crazy down in Alabama and Florida and Tennessee, but we know what it is like to see 10,000 folks at a high school game on Friday night, building bonfires the night before and painting the town and the children and the dogs in the team’s colors.
It’s ok, it’s a passion – not a crazy passion, but a passion only understood by those who were raised with it, in it and live it now.
Sure, you have to be a “good loser” every once in a while and taste the stuff you hate, but you should never get used to it or just plain accept it.
Here’s hoping your team wins this Friday, Saturday or Sunday…
And somebody tell the dogs that there's a rabbit on the kitchen table...
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Cranks My Tractor
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I'm BN Heard and I like semicolons, dogs and white barbecue sauce like that fellow down in Huntsville, Alabama mixes up.
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I'm in mourning myself, Brent. But as for barbeque, when you're in DC, try Fat Pete's Barbeque. They even have a white "Alabama" barbeque sauce for you.
Posted by: tsw | 09/22/2015 at 09:15 PM