When I was a kid in Montgomery, Alabama, my dad took me to the Montgomery International Speedway on Saturday nights to watch men like Donnie and Bobby Allison race Red Farmer and maybe some shade-tree mechanics from Prattville or Wetumpka or guys from local garages and car dealers or maybe former moonshiners. There I saw [...]
It hurts to lose a baseball game. It hurts even more to lose your entire team.
The most popular funeral tune is Amazing Grace. I can hear it now, the strains of the old notes riding the breeze north from Miami. How sweet the sound.
The old man slammed the sports section of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram down on the just-wiped table, took off his sweat-stained Resistol, placed it in the seat beside him and settled in with several other breakfast regulars in the cinderblock cafe near Fort Worth’s Stockyards.
NASCAR has hit a few speed bumps, according to a recent article in The New York Times. Attendance and TV viewership aren’t growing like they once were; new race venues around the country have been axed or aren’t pulling the numbers that races pull in the core Southeast. Maybe the best argument that NASCAR has [...]
It is impossible, in one blog, to even attempt to address the things that make the South a unique place. Note: You may see a food pattern forming below, but that’s okay. If you see a skinny Southerner, that just means they have a seriously blue collar job and are working off the calories faster [...]
After two mechanics did the lip-shimmy up the chocolate shaft of a Snickers bar while working on a car and ended the ordeal with a kiss during the Super Bowl commercial snoozathon, a particular group got offended and started complaining, and Mars apologized and yanked the spot “forever.”
Here’s my annual breakdown of the game and the commercials and the halftime show. Wait. What’s that smell? Oh, it’s the commercials. I thought somebody had left a cheese log out since the college bowl games. All in all, not a good year for our biz on the big one. A nice spot here and [...]
It was worth staying up until 1 am to see. The Tostitos Fiesta Bowl, a supposed snoozefest between powerhouse Oklahoma and former junior college Boise State (of the blue field) turned into the best college football game I have ever seen. David beats Goliath in a contest that rekindled the pure fun that has been [...]
There were football players and there was Johnny Unitas. He looked like a skinny Pennsylvannia plumber who snuck into a badly fitting uniform and somehow managed to take a beating long enough to get rid of a rope to win and win and win. Many books have been written about him, and a new one, [...]
Ingrained in the many football traditions of the University of Alabama are these odd words: “Rammer Jammer, Yellow Hammer. Give ‘em Hell, Alabama!” coined by the once-respected university literary and humor magazine of the same name. Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Harper Lee (“To Kill A Mockingbird”), served as editor of the Rammer Jammer during her stay [...]
We rode the old school bus to Geneva, Alabama, on a Thursday afternoon. Coach sat in the front and turned the radio up so we could hear smooth Philly soul through the AM static by Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff. Two by two, we sat in the long, rolling shadows of an orange October sunset [...]
I am itching as I type these words. If you have ever lived in the Deep South, you’ve seen more than your share of fire ants. One run-in with a few of the devilish little ankle biters and you’ll grasp the concept of the name quickly.
If Michael Jordan asks you to play H.O.R.S.E, don’t. Unless you want to be able to tell people that you were destroyed in a game of H.O.R.S.E. by His Airness.
By Dee Briggs, Production Guide
I don’t get the NASCAR thing.
This is what I tell people who bring up the subject. I don’t know if this is some pompous rendition of my pseudo highbrow tastes not to be linked with my Joe Six-Pack buddies, or just a vain attempt to steer the conversation into something I [...]