Roll Tide – Mostly From Memory

Bumper stickers are a mystery to me. You would think that you could tell a lot about about a person by what kind of bumper stickers they have, but really you can only tell that they are bumper sticker people. And that is the mystery for me: is this bumper sticker accurate? I’ve always thought it would be funny to put bumper stickers on the vehicles of unsuspecting Wal-Mart shoppers at random. But I cannot bring myself to act upon these low juvenile thoughts. Although it does prove the point that a sticker does not necessarily define an individual. It is simply a label that has been applied by the driver. Or perhaps by hooligans in the Wal-Mart parking lot. You can label a jar of peanut butter chicken noodle soup or hominy but it will just be mislabeled peanut butter.

The label that I am most suspicious of is Salt Life. Especially if I see it on a car a long way from the beach. I have a hard time reconciling Salt Life bumper stickers and Tennessee license plates. How much of the Salt Life can this person really be living? People that are indeed living the Salt Life are probably on boats-or golf carts- and certainly not sitting in rush hour traffic seven hours from the coast. But we as people feel like that the bigger the sticker the more true it is. You’ll see a whole back window of a truck letting everyone know that the driver of this Silverado in Fort Payne, AL is living the Salt Life.

When I see a vehicle with a Salt Life sticker I usually make up a story for that driver. And then I imagine that story as a bumper sticker in place of Salt Life.

I went to the beach on vacation in 2016 and we chartered a fishing boat and I caught the biggest fish in my life and I really enjoyed my trip.

I go to Gulf Shores every year for this conference at work and I think it would be cool to live there.

I go fishing every year in Pensacola with my cousins and that is the only real fun thing that I do since my divorce.

I went to Panama City for my Senior Trip last year.

I am thinking about launching my own bumper sticker enterprise: Realist Bumper Stickers. Among other things we will offer a more accurate alternative to Salt Life. It is going to say: I Wish I Lived On The Coast. Alas, they probably wouldn’t sell. Bumper stickers are not the media of facts, but of ideals. We put them on our cars to in an effort to convince ourselves that things are not as they are but as they could be.

When I was growing up, the comics section was sometimes located in the Sports Page of the Birmingham News. Which created a bit of tension as the funnies were the most valuable part of the whole paper in our household: everyone read the comics. Added to their desirability was the fact that the crossword puzzle was attached to the comics; and Mom and Dad loved to work “The puzzle”, as Dad called it. It was a nice activity to exercise mental prowess and created a welcome diversion from a busy day.

The Sports section was only read by Dad and Zach. From time to time there would be something interesting in the Sports Page. Like when Perry Hodge shot a thirteen foot alligator not far from where we used to go fishing. Or the time an eleven year old boy killed a wild hog that weighed over half a ton and had five inch tusks. He shot it with a pistol. That kind of stuff is interesting, but the rest of the sports page I found pretty boring.

A friend recently sent me a job posting for a newspaper publisher. Not for the Birmingham News, but a smaller paper. I guess he thinks since I’ve been writing for a few years that I’m qualified to be a newspaper publisher. Do you ever wish that you believed in yourself as much as your friends do? Not that I hate my job, but I am for hire. All the happiness in the World can’t buy you money.

So I’ve been entertaining the thought of being a newspaper publisher. It must be something in my romantic nature to rally for dying causes like film photography, and print newspapers: and I like to day dream. The first thing I thought about was what would I do with the Sports Page? I mean, there has got to be a way to make it more interesting. If nothing else, it would confuse the tar out of a few old men who look forward to reading a football article every weekend.

Something fresh that I’m certain would get people’s attention would be to publish the half time marching band set from the lowest ranked football team in the wrong division. That article would need to be on the front of the sports page. I’d also like to get some post game analysis from some of the inebriated fans as they were leaving the stadium after their team lost. I’ve always thought it was a strange to ask the losing coach what happened after an upset. What kind of journalism is that? Did they not watch the game?

Covering some of the more odd ball sports out there might be fun. Cycling, fencing, chess, maybe thumb wrestling. Someone once told my brother, “I never knew that eating was a spectator sport until I met you.”

Let’s face it, most people in Alabama don’t even really like football; they just like Auburn or Alabama. Furthermore, I wouldn’t quite classify the attitude toward football in Alabama as a sport. The closest definition of sport offered by Webster that could apply to football is: a source of diversion. You can hardly call year round coverage of a seasonal activity as a diversion.

I’ve often made sport of the football situation in Alabama by referring to it as the State Religion. While I find it humoring, there are many who may wince at this because it hits close to home. During football season, many will not make it Sunday because their god was defeated on Saturday.

So if I ran the sports page, I would do my best to offer a genuine source of diversion. It’s safe to say that at this point in my life I can name more Grand Sumo wrestlers that I can football athletes, whether college or professional. What if the sports page covered Sumo Wrestling? Grand Sumo is a year round sport; but then again, it is also quite literally a religious ceremony. The only difference is that the Sumo Wrestlers don’t hide this fact.

There are something things in this life that I know I will never understand. Maybe the comics and crossword puzzle should always be in the Sports Page.