Channel surfing
Sunday afternoon, drizzly rain, fog on the river, a miserable cold to the bone winter day in the Lowcountry.
Time for me and my telly, which has the basics and still costs the earth, to check out what’s happening out in the world and beyond.
Not much. Same oh, same oh.
Spent an hour or so watching modern day pioneers build log cabins in the wilds of Siberia, digging into hillsides, down deep into the earth, chopping down trees, stripping off the bark, cutting them to size with their handy dandy hand saws, dragging stones for a foundation, and when the temperature dropped, cracking through ice to fill water containers at a nearby stream.
Flipped the channel to Jeanne Robertson, my most favorite storyteller ever. A 6 foot 2 inch former Miss North Carolina in the Miss America contest of 1964, and deservedly named Miss Congeniality, she always, always, makes me smile.
When she came to Hilton Head, I was ecstatic to have managed to get a ticket to her show, a seat in the very front row, a seat that was two in from the aisle in what was originally designed to be the orchestra pit. When I sat down, I had to turn my legs sideways so they wouldn’t bump against the edge of the stage. Talk about being up front. I was there. My neck was sore for a week from tilting it backwards. Jeanne did not disappoint. Never an ugly word or lewd suggestion, she talked about Jerry, her husband, a 6 foot 6 inch former basketball player at Duke University she calls Left Brain or LB for short, Norma Rose, her Bestest Friend and Beaver, her son who topped off at 6’8” and played basketball at Elon University. I have watched her shows on long bus trips when I still had travel money and now on the television this nasty rainy cold Sunday afternoon.
She was, and is, a delight.
Jeanne Robertson passed in 2021. May she rest in peace.
I tuned into a professional football game, an NFL game. If you didn’t know, that’s the National Football League. The Green Bay Packers were playing the Chicago Bears on Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wisconsin. I looked it up. From what I learned, this was a long time rivalry. Matthew W. LaFleur, head coach of the Packers, versus Benjamin D. Johnson, his rival at the Bears, and just so you know, from Charleston, South Carolina.
An incredible game. Matt, age 46, and a Scorpio, stung Ben, 7 years younger at 39, and a Taurus, to a sit-on-the-edge-of-your-seat final score of 28 to 21.
I don’t know much about football, basketball is my game. Not that I am an expert on that sport, but at least I don’t have to watch while players hit each other so hard, bodies fly into the air,so many lying on top of each other, you can’t see the ball.
Yes, I know. In basketball, definitely not a game for sissies, they push and shove, use elbows like lethal weapons and absolutely love to thunder down the court, twist and turn and charge the basket.
My connection to football goes back to the middle 1940s, when for a brief moment they still wore leather football headgear, then hard helmets but with no front metal grills came on field, no built in communication system. The only instructions from coach was him jumping up and down yelling on the sideline. I’m not sure players even had mouth pieces. During breaks, the water boy ran out onto the field with a bucket full of H2O and those triangular disposable paper cups. Cheerleaders wore long sleeved sweaters in school colors, pleated white skirts that came to the knees and usually one male cheerleader who managed back flips galore and was keeper of the megaphone. “Hold that line,” and “Push ‘em back, way back,” they would yell. If you were on the team, you played the entire game. Yes, you had substitutes.
In those prior Women’s Lib days, Jodhpurs, slacks and pedal pushers were worn for horseback riding, wienie roasts, hayrides. That was it. Otherwise, we wore skirts. Even at football games, we wore skirts and sweaters or suits, brown and white saddle shoes, penny loafers with a lucky coin shining on top.
In Savannah, at “the” football game of the year, Benedictine versus Savannah High School, a game always played at 2PM on Thanksgiving Day, we wore a super-sized single white chrysanthemum pinned to our coats with dangling ribbons in school colors, red and white for BC, blue and white for SHS and headed for Grayson Stadium at the end of Daffin Park.
All over town, cars were decorated with crepe paper streamers. And if you had a red or blue convertible, well, that was even better.
After the game, tooting horns, twirling ratchets, making Noise with a capital N, the winners would meet in the middle of Bull and Broughton Streets in downtown Savannah and burn the loser’s effigy and coffin.
I do remember when the T Formation came out, which evidently created a new innovative way of forming a start up line and got all the game’s aficionados excited .
In 1953, I married G.W. Harrell, a football player who had played right end for the University of Florida, busted his ACL, gave it up and turned his attention to ‘da law’ graduating from Lumpkin School of Law at the University of Georgia.
Football was always his first love.
For our entire married life, if there was a television anywhere in the neighborhood showing a football game, George William could be found, eyeballs glued to the set.
Not me.
But, when Spring and March Madness comes around, look out.
Annelore Harrell’s journey is a tapestry woven with fascinating experiences and extraordinary accomplishments. Even at 92, Annelore’s energy and zest for life continue to inspire. Her story is a testament to living with passion, resilience, and a thirst for adventure.
