The Turkey Bowl Recap

“The great gift of family life is to be intimately acquainted with people you might never ever introduce yourself to, had life not done it for you.” -Kendall Hailey -------------------- “Football is, after all, a wonderful way to get rid of your aggressions without going to jail for it.” -Heywood Hale Broun ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Springdale, AR (Family Press International) – A great nephew, though vastly underrated by the high school team he plays for, caught two fantastic touchdown passes to lead the Ahsweepes to a 14-7 victory over the Butholays in the Upteenth Annual Turkey Bowl, played on the front lawn of Uncle Larry and Aunt Jackie’s residence this past Thanksgiving. Junior center Jonathan ‘the Mean Machine’ caught the first of the two TD passes from his father, Geoff ‘Living his Second Childhood through his Children’ midway through the third quarter of play, beating out several defensive members of the secondary, including his brother, Brian ‘B-Ri’ and cousin Gage ‘Ewh Newh’, into the end zone, which was marked by a lamp post. The final TD came at the end of regulation when the Mean One connected again under heavy coverage, this time almost spilling out onto the street corner. The Ahsweepes’ offensive front lines were solidified by the imposing figure of ‘Uncle Nature Boy’ Barry, who has been known to be offensive on many occasions through no fault of his own. While Thanksgiving dinner put a noticeable crimp in his speed against the Brian-Gage combo, it was enough to hold back the attack of sack-master brother Patrick ‘The Neurotic One’ throughout the matchup (in fact, both brothers were the only ones who went back for seconds that day). Helping out their dad on offense were the famed ‘Terrible Twins’, Alex ‘Twilight Princess’ and Nikki ‘the Future Mrs. Cullen’, who played alongside Cousin Katie ‘Nail Breaker’ in the backfield. Katie also doubled rushing for several carries, but the defense of the Neurotic One, who quit smoking only three weeks before, held her to short yardage and stopped at least one embarrassing spill on the front steps. Assisting the Ahsweepes in the backfield was a harassing defense from Aunt Mel, ‘the cook from ‘Alice’’, whose sharp wit and sarcasm sent at least one opponent crying to Mommy, but she’s all better now. The Butholays were led in rushing by nephew Jeremy ‘Soy Un Perdedor’, who brazenly crossed over onto the sidewalk on several failed attempts before scoring the team’s lone score in the third quarter on a solo scamper around the front porch into the neighbor’s driveway. A review of the play showed him clearly staying within the sideline set by the Gus the Dachshund’s last constitutional. Contributing to the rushing attack for the losing side was ‘Speedball Jay’, who also played in the secondary against his wife, ‘Two-Fisted Amy’, who was playing for the Ahsweepes. Butholay center/nose guard Charlotte ‘the Virtuoso’ was instrumental in several defensive tackles, including what was supposed to be an easy run for ‘Lil’ Morgan’, but nobody told her she was supposed to get through. She was later called on a penalty for grabbing Aunt Mel’s bra-strap. Meanwhile, ‘Marvelous Mark, the Red-Headed Stranger’ was also part of a solid Butholay defensive line. Under the tutelage of Brian and Gage, the 3’6” bundle of M-80 exploded through the Ahsweepes front line several times, mostly sneek-sneek-sneeking around his dad, to harass the QB on several occasions. In a rare display of caution among all parties, the usual abrasions, bumps, sprains and broken garden pottery that set the standard for the game were noticeably absent, although Butholay line-person Aunt Leslie ‘The Eliminator’ nearly took out Amy on the sidewalk right in front of ‘Granny’ and ‘Papa’ Bill. The hosts for the affair, Uncle Larry, ‘the One True Hog Fan’, and Aunt Jackie, ‘the Second Coming’, sat out the game this year nursing a bum knee. Aunt Carla, ‘the Great Earth Mother’ was also sidelined as son Peter ‘Wii Man’ was beset with ennui because he couldn’t play video games with no one in the house. The victory puts the Ahsweepes into no post-season bowl contention, but the team did get first dibs on the sweet potato and egg custard pies at the conclusion of the game. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ -Story submitted by sportswriter ‘Red’ Ruffansore-

A Not-So-Pleasant-Valley-Sunday (or Up Yours, Thomas Wolfe)

(As it was then)

Within the walls of this house I spent early part of my childhood. It’s one of the smaller houses in the 4500 block of Grand Avenue, located between Tulane and Princeton in southwest Little Rock. It doesn’t look very big and, in truth, it wasn’t. The big window was formerly flanked by two conical cedar trees, which were eventually cut down for the flower bush you see here. That window opened into the living room. On the west side of the big window were the three bedrooms where Mom, Dad, four boys and three girls daily fought for the one bathroom located in the center of the hall. I still remember the day we installed the showerhead over the tub. It made Saturday night bath time go a lot quicker. A floor furnace was situated in the little square hall around the bedroom doors, where on particularly cold mornings you would find most of us straddled over the grate, the rising heat blowing up our pajamas and nightgowns. In the summer, there was a single large air conditioner on the east side that cooled the whole house. The rest of the time, we relied on open windows. The porch window to the east gave us a view of the street from the dining table, while those looking in could see past it into the galley kitchen and washer/dryer hookup before exiting out the only other door to the outside world, our backyard. For the record, it wasn’t always pink. Sometimes it was a dark brown. It depended on my dad’s mood and his relationship with my neighbors. Fortunately, there wasn’t much to paint... just the porch, the east side of the house and the framework around the windows and under the roof. The rest of the walls of the house were made up of a material similar to our roof, meaning it was covered in tiny glass-like granules, meant to reflect the heat of the sun away from the interior of the house. A friend of mine recently said that material might have been a form of asbestos…always good to know 30 years after the fact. My first memory in this house was climbing out of a crib in the front bedroom to catch my mom watching her afternoon soaps. This is also where the only phonograph record player and radio were located. Sometimes the TV was directly underneath the main window, other times, it separated the living room from the dining area. Since it then faced away from us, we soon became acclimated to eating in the living room and the dining table was relegated to laundry, homework and the occasional game board. I remember the occasional times I couldn’t sleep and snuck out for some late-night viewing. Back then, of course, there were only four stations to choose from and they all signed off after a certain point. Then I was forced to stare at either an Indian-head test pattern or static. I would turn the set off, watching as the glowing screen shrank to a tiny dot before fading away completely in the dark. Other times, I woke up extra early. Usually it was on a Saturday, where I had to suffer through farm reports before the cartoons commenced. On rare occasions, my parents were watching something of special interest. One morning in July of 1969, I poked my head around the corner to see Apollo 11 take off from the Kennedy Space Center on its way to the moon. A few days later man set foot on another astral body for the first time ever. Since it was late at night, I don’t remember if we were allowed to stay up and watch. There was a lot of growing up in that house, not just for me but for all of us, parents included. We learned to cook, some better than others. One time, Mom tried a recipe that called for beer to sauté hamburgers. There was a little too much beer in the mix, so on at least one occasion, some poor cow died in vain. A sister once tried to make brownies that literally bounced off the floor. Another sibling was doing Lord knows what with tomatoes and at least one found its way to the ceiling, where I think it stayed until the day we moved. I still don’t know how Mom and Dad were able to get all us kids up for school without killing at least one kid a day. The girls were allowed first dibs on the bathroom, then the boys. We made our way to the dining room where, depending on the time of year, we had cereal, buttered toast, oatmeal and, occasionally, eggs and bacon. My parents not only cooked for us, but would sometimes feed some kids down the street who they felt didn’t get the nutritional start they thought they needed. We were then all packed into the family station wagon and taken to a nearby parochial school, listening to the Mighty 1090, KAAY, along the way. Not everything was indoors, mind you. There was plenty of play time in the front or back yard or further down the street to play with the Lehmans, the Tedders, the Swindells, the Pattersons and the Greens. Often was the time the grass under the shade of the house was worn down to dirt level by the scamper of growing feet. In the winter, the same shade kept a sliver of ice-hardened snow on the ground long after everything else had melted. Among our favorite games was ‘Hot Lava’ where we took advantage of the two or three swing sets at our disposal and swung off them to stay off the ground, lest we burn our feet. Variations of ‘Cowboys and Indians’ or ‘World War II’ often had one or both parents stepping outside to see at least two children lying in a heap on the ground, not daring to show any sign of life until the all-clear was given by the winners. ‘Red Rover’ was also a big hit when there were enough of us, which was often. We got pretty tough trying to break through each other’s line. Street football was also a big hit. We pretty much kept to the ‘touch’ rules, but couldn’t resist the occasional foray into someone’s soft grassy yard where a full tackle was too impulsive to resist. We moved from the neighborhood in the summer of 1973. Rarely was the time we ever found our way back there, but it did happen. This past weekend, I took my family to the Old Mill in North Little Rock for our annual holiday pictures. As we looked for a place to have lunch, the attraction was simply too great for me to pass up. I crossed the Arkansas River to 12th Street and turned at my old Catholic school. As an anchor-reporter in Little Rock two years before, I attended the official closing down of the school after over 100 years of parochial education. The church where many of us received our First Communion remained open, but the windows of the classrooms were now covered in black paint. Finding the house from there will forever be imprinted in my head, having walked that mile or two to the house every day for seven years. A few blocks later, we came into the neighborhood. I mentally noted passing a LRPD squad car doing some investigating before we hit our old street. It had been over 30 years since we stayed longer than a few minutes, but I couldn’t help staring. So much had changed. I expected the row of tall pine trees down the street to be gone or at least pruned to some degree, but not removed completely. Many of the formerly pristine lawns were threadbare and dirty. Cars were parked not only in the driveways, but on the lawns of many houses. City trash bins were left out on the curb, regardless of what day pick-up was. Nearly all the houses had a fence. The street was barely wide enough to allow two cars to pass each other. I pulled into a house at the end of the street to turn around and noticed the place where our neighborhood ‘old lady’ lived. Every street had at least one lady who would yell at the kids to get off their lawns and was never home on Halloween, then would surprise us by being legitimately nice to you around Christmas. Ours was named ‘Old Lady Lydle’. I looked at her house…or rather, where it once stood. I saw a grass-and-debris covered plot of land with a walkway leading to two concrete steps going nowhere. I stopped the car in front of the Patterson’s old house and looked across the street. The house I grew up in was no longer there, not as I knew it. The new owner(s) had expanded the front porch east, enclosed it, replaced the walls with some sort of rock/shale siding and allowed Mother Nature to cut loose on everything else. Where there was a front lawn was now a forest. My wife tugged at my sleeve, motioning forward. Three rather tough-looking guys were sitting on the corner of the Green’s house (now a dirt mound surrounding a fire hydrant) glancing our way. I quickly took a shot of my past with my cell phone and drove off.

(As it looks now)