One peculiarity of those who live in the Southern part of the country: we like to fight. Don’t forget that they were Virginians who led us into our first two wars against England, and South Carolinians who eagerly stampeded the whole nation to war against itself. Wherever Americans have fought and died, Southerners have been represented in outsized proportion. Often a Southerner is in charge of the fight. We like to fight so much it sometimes seems we must like blood and death. It’s true, in some ways we do – but more than the dying, we like the fight....
Oh but those were the old-timey Southerners, we smugly assure ourselves. People were crazy back then! Sometime around 1865, they realized you can’t fight a real war all the time. You’ll run out of population long before you run out of ammunition. Therefore God and man got together later in the nineteenth century and created college football.
Better to sweat your squads of young men through the heat of a Southern summer, put them in uniform and march them out on Saturday to do battle against the young men of other places. Much better to bring them back alive, so that you can schedule the battles for everyone’s day off.
Consider the fact that a holiday originally dedicated to the peaceful celebration of survival in the New World has now become a day upon which we time the turkey to come out of the oven long enough before halftime so it can settle into its juices and be carved and consumed before the third-quarter kickoff.
Consider that the game you watch at dinnertime will likely be the third game you’ve watched today. There will be three or four more games before you stumble off to bed. The tweet of the referee’s whistle will follow you to the pillow.
If your family is like ours, though, there will be only one game that matters.
In our house, the smell of celery and onion simmering in Blue Bonnet margarine on Thanksgiving morning was a sign that the Macy’s parade was about to go off, and the combat would begin.
Ours was a house divided. My Dad was a proud graduate of Auburn. I chose to go to Alabama, in part, to irritate him. My Aunt Hanna was a professor in the athletic department in Tuscaloosa, and her brother Freeman was the world’s biggest Bama fan.
Freeman’s doctor made him quit smoking, so he took up chewing cigars during the games. If the game was close, he would chew his way through six or eight cigars. On doctor’s orders, when it came time for a big play at Legion Field, Freeman turned around and gazed out over the streets of Birmingham rather than subject his shaky heart to the stress of watching. I admired his dedication.
When I defected to Alabama, Dad was suddenly outnumbered. For a time, Thanksgiving got tense around our house. Somehow Dad convinced Mom to swing to the War Eagle side – her wifely duty, I suppose – and he evened things up by persuading one of my brothers to root for Auburn even though he went to school in Colorado.
When it was a big game – when both teams were winning, as they normally did in the Bear Bryant/Shug Jordan years – watching the game together as one big happy family was impossible. One year Hanna thought up a yard project to occupy the Bama faction – we raked pinestraw and planted azaleas while her car radio blared the broadcast of a pro-Bama station. Inside, Dad watched the TV broadcast with an Auburnite announcer on a transistor radio plugged into his ear.
Auburn won that year. Hanna and I lingered in the yard after dark. By the time we went in, Dad had gone to bed early, the better to savor his sweet victory without interference from losers like us.
Now he’s gone. Hanna and Freeman too. If Bama wins, there’s no one for me to call up and manfully congratulate on what a great game Auburn played. If we lose, I won’t have to dread how happy Dad will sound on the phone.
I’m a peaceful person, mostly. But that’s one fight I’m going to miss.