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Ramblin' Roses and Flyin' Bricks
Sometimes I kind of get amazed at how smart I'm getting in my declining years. By the time I'm 60 it's entirely possible I might even be a genius. What makes me realize how smart I'm becoming is a little incident that happened last Saturday in Columbus, Georgia, where I attended the Auburn-Georgia game. All of a sudden a fist fight broke out between two of the opposing players and the first thing you know both teams were swinging at each other and people along the crowded sidelines started playing knocking-on-the-head and then it spread to the stands. Well, sir, thirty years ago I reckon I would have jumped the fence and got right in the middle of the fracas and wound up with my nose bloodied and my eyes blackened. I always figured I won the fights I got in back then but it was sure mighty hard to convince my friends on account of the way I looked. There was a fellow sitting next to me and we had struck up a friendly conversation. He seemed like a nice sort of fellow, although he was a Georgia man and wore a bow tie. In spite of all that, though, we got along fine. He had quit smoking, he told me, just the week before, but it so happened that I had an extra pack of cigarettes and we got pretty chummy .he was about my age, and like me, had come to the game alone. He was an undertaker, he said, which probably accounted for the bow-tie, and I'm not positive but he seemed a little too enthusiastic about the fights that were springing up around the fifty yard line. He had just told me business had been kind of slack lately. It looked like the fights were going to spread to Section 0, Row 1, which is on the 10-yard line where I always sit. I wouldn't be at all surprised but what the ticket man at Auburn wears a bow tie, too. Spectators inside the 10-yard line are composed mostly of mothers-in-law and people who don't know somebody. The fighting was getting pretty serious and you could tell there would be a lot of Purple Hearts passed out in Memorial Stadium that Saturday afternoon. I looked around to this fellow I had been talking to and I said, "Buddy, how old are you" He said, "Buddy, I'm 52, and how old are you?" I said, "I'm 48, Buddy," feeling like maybe he was lying by about 4 years too. We called each other Buddy on account of neither one of us paid any attention to each other's names when we introduced ourselves. "Buddy," I said, "you're a good Georgia man and I'm a good Auburn man and it looks like everybody in this stadium is going to get mixed up in this thing which I have paid $4.25 plus mailing cost to witness. We are supposed to fight for our schools, but I very much dislike the idea of getting beat up after paying $4.25 plus postage for a seat on the 10-yard line, bottom row." The fellow, you could tell, felt the same way. "Buddy," he said, as he lit another one of my cigarettes, "let's you and me think this thing out calmly and sensible." By this time the fighting had spread to the 30-yard line and was traveling fast. "Suppose," I volunteered, "if the worst comes to the worst, let's you and me act like we're fighting each other. We can wave our arms around and hit each other very lightly and put on a pretty good show. My nose always starts bleeding when I get in a fight and it will look like the real thing." "That suits me, Buddy," my buddy answered, "although I had thought of a similar plan. I was going to fight that old lady right behind us." That fellow was just as brave as I was. About that time, though, the band struck up the National Anthem and all the patriotic people came to attention. Its amazing how patriotic people can get when they're scared. Soon the game was over and my buddy and I parted. He gave me one of his business cards, saying he would like to serve me anytime. Hi might, but it isn't going to be as a result of me getting bumped off in a fight over something I paid $4.25 (plus postage) to enjoy. If the players want to fight, that's their business. After all, they're getting paid for it.
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