All aboard. People I very much appreciate:

Friday, April 26, 2013

The Importance Of Being Organized






When I was a kid, my uncles took Grampa to a football game. I asked him what he thought of it.


"Man blow leetle whistle. Ev'body fall down!"

This forever distinguished football from the other American sport, baseball, in which a ball is beaten into the sky with a club, and completed my education.  Life is simplified by good education. It is also simplified by simplification. Consider Quercus Suber, or Cork Oak. Cork Oak has a corky bark which is harvested for the manufacture of cork. Doesn't get simpler than that, but it is my heritage. As a result, I became a very simple mechanism.  One is nourished spiritually by ethnic tradition, and physically by whatever --Sopas, Linguica, Morcela and Chourico, which I believe are deviled barnacles-- things one is given, but the heart thrives on love.

Here is a picture of Norma reaching down to lovingly unfold my ear after it got inside out from sleeping wrong. She came to find out why I was barking. I was glad she did because I was in the wheelbarrow dreaming about Uncle Sam.

This is Uncle Sam:
I've seen this poster all my life, especially in the 1960s, then in the '80s and '90s when my children had to register with the Selective Service System.  Uncle Sam always looked like he disapproved of me.  I preferred my real uncles, the ones who took Grampa to a football game.

"Man blow leetle whistle. Ev'body fall down!"   


9 comments:

  1. Football...large men in tight pants slapping each other on the rear and falling on top of each other...there's just something wrong with that.
    While I find baseball about as exciting as watching paint dry I can at least understand the concept.
    I like the picture of Norma a lot better than the picture of Uncle Sam. Hope you are healing nicely.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Your Grampa's apt observation is the perfect summation of what a football game is all about.
    Uncle Sam actually looks like he could be a football referee - - in a different uniform, of course.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I have never been a fan of football - any code. I now realise that I lacked the perfect understanding of the game(s) which I would have got from your grampa.

    ReplyDelete
  4. You know, I haven't seen that poster in forever. I have seen parodies of it but not the actual poster in a long long time.

    Regarding baseball, it's my absolute favorite sport by far...filled with history and romanticism.

    ReplyDelete
  5. No other writing is like yours. Beautiful image of your lovely Norma.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Okay, hello. Somehow the Army lost its way with the "Army of One" campaign a few years back. Uncle Sam was more effective. He looks like a mean old cuss. Shape up or ship out. No mollycoddling allowed.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I hope you put all these in a book. Really. I want to be able to pick this book up and read a part or two before sleeping.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Yet another super post. The products of your mind never fail to please, dude. Our younger son procured an Uncle Sam poster from a recruiter, and it hung on his bedroom wall glaring at him for several years. He ended up going through college on an ROTC scholarship, and served in the Army Special Forces. All because of that poster...

    ReplyDelete
  9. What a great description of football!

    ReplyDelete

Please comment! Stats are just numbers and don't really represent you. I need to read what you think and thank you.