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The game day experience
Last week, though, I was feeling kind of young and my ailing back hadn't been bothering me too much so I took off from Montgomery on a plane trip to Knoxville to see the Auburn Tigers meet the Volunteers of the University of Tennessee. We made the trip up without any trouble, except that ice started forming on the windshield and my feet when we got about 2 miles up. We came down through the clouds right over Knoxville, much to my amazement and we made a fine landing. We got to the stadium a little late where I found a woman occupying my seat. Having learned early in life that it's useless to argue with a woman, I made no effort to get her to move. Besides, she was enjoying looking at everything except the players on the field. Most women go to the football games to look at other women's clothes and to keep an eye on their husbands. Men go to games to watch the cheerleaders and take a few drinks. Children go to drink soda pop and be carried to the men's room at regular intervals. It started raining early in the game and 16,000 umbrellas went up, most of them right in my face. Everybody says it was a good game and every now and then I could tell Auburn was going good on account of the cheers from that side of the field. The drippings from an umbrella in front of me while one behind was letting it run down my back. I was equipped with circulating ice water. Finally the game was over and everybody left the stadium except two drunks who maintained that the game still had half-a-pint to go. Our pilot figured the weather was too rough to fly back, so we set out to get a hotel room. My pants were wet and creaseless. I needed a shave, my shoes were soggy from umbrella drippings and the alcohol fumes from thirty thousand bottles had permeated my clothing. The room clerk I tried to get a room from looked at me and probably smelled of me and suggested the Salvation Army. About that time, though, a friend walked up who knew the clerk and all of a sudden it just so happened that they did have a room left after all. The way it turned out, however, the room didn't help much. It was the first game the Auburns had ever won, I reckon, and they celebrated all through the night. Some people in the room next to ours would yell "War Eagle" ten times and bust a quart bottle against the wall. It was just a regular as Old Faithful, all through the night, except they ran out of quarts about 3 o'clock and switched to pints. They compensated for this by busting a bottle every fifth "War Eagle." The weather was still miserable the next morning and our pilot very wisely advised against the return flight, so we caught a train headed to Montgomery where we had left our car. Well sir, 12 miles our of Atlanta the train derailed and we had to get out on a crowded highway and catch rides. A bald-headed man in a baggy, rain-soaked suite with a twoday beard somehow doesn't cause motorists to stop and offer a lift, but one man did carry us into town. The way I looked I sure wouldn't have done it. In Atlanta we caught a bus and made the trip back to Thomasville, by way of Montgomery, just as the sun would have come up if it hadn't been pouring down rain. Although it was a miserable trip, we did meet nice, friendly people. We remember the boy at the parking lot loaning us a radio so we could pick up a night game and drown out the noise in the next room. We remember the hotel clerk who let us have a room and the splendid pilot who didn't want to see us crash into the side of the Tennessee mountain. We remember the kind motorist who gave us a lift into town. Woo, we remember the woman in the aisle across from us who, having finished eating her fill of friend chicken out of a shoebox, undoubtedly thought we were penniless and offered to share it with us.
I'm telling you that was good chicken!
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