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Weather And Football
It is not indicative of a state of boredom that I refresh the National Weather Service website periodically throughout the day. My duties as caretaker require a certain "step ahead" approach to the possibilities of inclimate weather. Rap a few hose bibs here, run a little water there, make sure the house animal does not escape to the outside and become a frozen catcicle. The last bit was really a joke. The cat is probably snuggled up under somebody's covers in one of those upstairs beds. He doesn't have any motivation to escape.
Also, it has been fifteen years or so since I have seen snow, since that Cool Breeze tour of 87 (that's right, I used to name my road trips; you can take the boy from wherever he is but you can't make him give up his irony), which had me living for a few months in Great Falls, VA, just up the road from Oliver North and other superstars from the politcal/industrial/military complex. It snowed five or six inches once. It was neato. And what a long chapter that was between then and now, where I sit in Rappahannock waiting for snow or ice.
A bunch of ya'll aren't from the South and so probably don't consider snow and ice all that neato. It probably isn't that neat and will be very un-neat if frozen tree limbs crash the power lines and I lose heat, and get all cold to my close to the surface bone and my spine starts feeling like railroad spikes are being driven into it with a ten pound sledge hammer.
What I wanted to talk about yesterday but didn't was the success of Eddie Green, a New Orleans kid who used to live across from me on Dumaine, who I watched for a couple of years as his nationally ranked high school basketball team went to state championships (and won once). He went to Southern University in Baton Rouge on a football scholarship. He's a senior now, six feet and one inch tall and 250 pounds heavy. His number is 44. He worked for the NO Recreation Dept. over the summer mentoring young kids. He's a linebacker mostly. He's really good at hitting people on the field. He likes to talk trash on the field too. It's part of the game. Messing with your opponents head. He's having a really good last half of his senior year, recovering fumbles and getting five or six tackles a game and Southern is having their best season in several years. I think they are 10-1 or 11-1. Eddie has been spending his New Orleans time--holidays, game weekends (the big Bayou Classic game at the Superdome against Grambling every year) and summers at the Dumaine house with M (his mom loves him is why she pushed him out of her nest), so hopefully I'll see him soon, and he can tell me stories. There will be no snow.