Now that another college football season is upon us, I splurged on a University of South Carolina baseball cap to show my team loyalty. This is the one I chose:
I've cheered for Carolina teams since I was a boy, long before I did my graduate work there (and far too often been poorly rewarded for my loyalty, but that's another story). Hope springs eternal in the Gamecock fan's breast however. This might just be the year the football team or the basketball team or the baseball team or the women's track and field team or somebody does great things.
When the cap arrived yesterday I wore it with great pride, but it reminded me that I had a similar one for Auburn University, my Dad's alma mater, a cap very much like this one:
Towards the end of his life, I noticed that Dad had taken to wearing a baseball cap whenever he drove to keep the sun out of his eyes. He was wearing a generic baseball cap he'd gotten from somewhere (the USC bookstore if I remember correctly). Two Christmases before he died of cancer, I gave him an Auburn cap. He smiled and thanked me. Later I learned that he wore it whenever he drove until he was no longer able to drive. After Dad's funeral, my brother Allen asked me if I would like to have the cap and I have kept it ever since.
Dad was never a big sports fan. Normally he paid very little attention to Auburn athletics—until perhaps the annual weekend that Auburn played Alabama. When I rediscovered the cap, however, I couldn't stop thinking about him. I found Auburn's fight song on the internet and have been listening to it almost compulsively. I'll keep an eye on how the Auburn Tigers (Clemson Tigers = BAD! Auburn Tigers = GOOD!) do this year, even as I'm cheering on my Gamecocks. And should Auburn triumph over Alabama, you will hear a rousing cry of WAAAAAAR EAGLE!" from this direction.
Miss you, Dad.
5 comments:
Hm. Team apparel. That's about all we own around here.
Strange twist. Your post reminds me of how we have managed (though admittedly bad theology) to explain that trumpet blast thing in Revelations to our youngest. The Tunnel Walk would, we argue, wake the dead. Especially "the faithful" dead.
Am I a bad parent or what?
PaperSmyth, help me out here. I'm having trouble following the analogy. Are you suggesting to your son that walking through the locker room tunnel and onto the field at a Nebraska game is comparable to going to meet Christ at the Last Judgment?
Not really. I'm saying that when your exposure to trumpet blasts is limited to a High School band concert, and the entire HS has less than 300 students, The Tunnel Walk event shared by the fans may be a more appropriate analogy for a big, spirited noise. See, told ya. Bad theology. But still, The Tunnel Walk actually shakes the concrete outside the stadium. When you go to one of these games, you could wear earplugs the entire time you are there and not miss a thing.
I've had people tell me, straight-faced, that it is a religion here. One more reason to respect people like your Dad who, by what you wrote, was in this world but not of it.
Hey, PaperSmyth, can you give me an e-mail address? I'd like to send you a little something that I think you might enjoy.
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