WildcatDan
08-16-2006, 09:41 AM
Saturdays With Daddy, Stoney, and Those Football Cats
by Bret Baierlein, Wildcat Nation contributing writer
I have been a football fanatic for nearly all of my life. A fact that I don’t suppose will ever change. My father (or Daddy, as I call him) dragged me to Kentucky home football games from the time I could first take a halting step, and it just sort of stuck.
I respect my dad a great deal for this. You see, as UK football fans we share a sort of heroic optimism for, and a perpetual disappointment in, the fortunes of our blue-clad warriors. Couple this demoralizing state with the fact that he had to listen to far too many fourth quarters from the truck because his darling boy had just decided that he couldn’t stand the heat (or cold) for another quarter and a half and Daddy was downright, well, noble.
However, as far back as I can remember, I shared my dad’s frustration at that “damned (fill in the blank with the name of whoever happened to be Kentucky’s coach at that time)”. But we took it all in stride, and I loved the time with him. I did finish out most games and grew to demand as much of the team as he did. We yelled at the players by their first names as if we knew them. We cupped our hands around our mouths and yelled things like “lesgo Cats!” and “C’mon Deeee!” We held our hands over our hearts during the “National Anthem,” and sang “My Old Kentucky Home” with 50,000 other people. We always split a bag of peanuts, which we both still eat in the exact same way; stick the entire peanut in our mouths and get all of the salt from the shell, then crack the shell w/our teeth, pull the peanut back out of our mouths and eat the little nut. We drank large cokes. We always got the large because we got to keep the commemorative cups. More about the cups later.
Click here to access the full article (http://www.wildcatnation.net)
by Bret Baierlein, Wildcat Nation contributing writer
I have been a football fanatic for nearly all of my life. A fact that I don’t suppose will ever change. My father (or Daddy, as I call him) dragged me to Kentucky home football games from the time I could first take a halting step, and it just sort of stuck.
I respect my dad a great deal for this. You see, as UK football fans we share a sort of heroic optimism for, and a perpetual disappointment in, the fortunes of our blue-clad warriors. Couple this demoralizing state with the fact that he had to listen to far too many fourth quarters from the truck because his darling boy had just decided that he couldn’t stand the heat (or cold) for another quarter and a half and Daddy was downright, well, noble.
However, as far back as I can remember, I shared my dad’s frustration at that “damned (fill in the blank with the name of whoever happened to be Kentucky’s coach at that time)”. But we took it all in stride, and I loved the time with him. I did finish out most games and grew to demand as much of the team as he did. We yelled at the players by their first names as if we knew them. We cupped our hands around our mouths and yelled things like “lesgo Cats!” and “C’mon Deeee!” We held our hands over our hearts during the “National Anthem,” and sang “My Old Kentucky Home” with 50,000 other people. We always split a bag of peanuts, which we both still eat in the exact same way; stick the entire peanut in our mouths and get all of the salt from the shell, then crack the shell w/our teeth, pull the peanut back out of our mouths and eat the little nut. We drank large cokes. We always got the large because we got to keep the commemorative cups. More about the cups later.
Click here to access the full article (http://www.wildcatnation.net)