Roy Exum
Due to a series of what we shall call misunderstandings, I went to high school a half-year longer than most people. That I was brilliant, refined and already worldly mattered not, but that I’d been kicked out of a boarding school held sway with the Board of Education guy who signed the diploma.
The boarding school, truly a gulag of a place, was run by exiled Communist insurgents who didn’t think some things were as funny as I did, and to make their point, lest some of my friends might use the same ploy to “climb the wall,” they refused to transfer my credits when I was summarily booted out on a blessed and memorable day one January.
My extra semester was “easy time” at City High. I was already working for the newspaper, so I’d get to the sports department around 5 a.m., handle picture cutlines, update the standings and smoke “Home Run” cigarettes with Allan Morris, then I’d zip up to school and attend just enough classes to get credit for the day, and leave around lunch.
One of my classes was in psychology. Since I’d taken it before, I knew the key points, so I’d sit in the back of the room with the crossword puzzle and The Sporting News while this sophomore football player named Ronny Robertson, who I shared laughter with, would take notes and try to look diligent when, secretly, his mind was wondering what a six-letter word for “parent” was that started with “M.”
We had a great time back then. I graduated the next January and left for Ole Miss the very next day, while Ronny became a heck of a high school player and was signed by Alabama.
Of course, I kept up with him and every time I’d see Coach Bear Bryant, I’d ask about Ronny, only to be crestfallen when Coach would shake his head and mutter, “He’s just ordinary.”
Now the worst thing a player at Alabama wanted to be was “ordinary.” It was one rung under “average” in Bryant’s parlance. Conversely, you didn’t want to become All-Conference or All-American or all-anything in Coach’s lingo, but you revered the day “The Old Man” would declare you “a winner.”
Anyway, Ronny just sort of rocked along, which, in a way was okay because unless you were Namath or Hannah or Musso or Newsome or somebody like that, Coach Bryant didn’t expect the “pay off” until a player’s junior or season year.
Ronny loved Alabama. He soon hung around gorgeous girls and funny fraternity boys more than he should. He even drove to the beach in L.A (Lower Alabama), and – guess what – he promptly failed out of school!
Coach Bryant knew it before Ronny did. One morning Ronny was hastily summoned to Coach’s office, and Mount Vesuvius already had the printout when Ronnie got there. Coach angrily denounced my man, telling him to get his gear and get gone, and Ronny took it all pretty well.
But when Coach Bryant took that black telephone and shoved it towards the now-sullen linebacker and told him to “Call your momma and let her know you’ve let us down,” it was Ronnie instead of Coach who exploded.
I don’t mean crying, I mean hysterical sobbing. The emotion was such that Ronny could hardly breathe, and it came in waves, each one worse. The only person worse than letting down your own momma was letting down Coach Bryant himself. And guess who had just said “us?”
Well, it was so bad even Bear couldn’t take it, so he came around the desk, gave Ronny a half-hug and muttered they’d do something, but to run along, get your stuff out of the dorm and stop and see if Coach Hennessy knows anywhere you can sleep.
Ronny immediately enrolled in summer school, and he had to pass three classes to regain eligibility. The first two, an English class and a history class, turned out to be a waltz. Ronny was not only a good student, but the summer professors adored Crimson Tide football, and they knew … er, they knew, you know.
But the third class Ronny took was “art interpretation.” And things couldn’t have been worse from the very start. Ronny had to do well to get eligible, but he and the “prof” didn’t gee-haw at all.
The teacher was evermore a hippie, long on hair and short on soap. He wore a lot of rings, far different from the championship ring Ronny had, and what’s more, the guy felt football was an abomination, that it used youngsters so rich cats could pursue worldly pleasures like betting and drinking and making money.
If Ronny’s first two art papers had been like the Rorschach Ink-Blot tests we’d studied in high school, Ronny would have been interpreted by Dr. Hermann Rorschach himself (pronounced raw-shock) as a serial killer with homosexual leanings.
But my man, eager to one day become a “winner,” was resourceful, and in a last-ditch effort spotted two homely female hippies in class who looked just like the professor. Soon our Big Man of Campus was squiring these girls to the coffee house, where they’d sit around and talk about beads, Yoko Ono, being free of oppression and serious things.
They also talked about how Ronny could pass the art interpretation class and conceived a plan that was a winner-take-all way of convincing the professor that Ronny Robertson was “in tune,” you dig? Didn’t hurt, either, that the “prof” was sweet on one of the chicks, but, ah, I digress.
So what these “art interpretationists” did was capitalize on Ronny’s extensive football contacts to procure a backhoe, a truck load of white sand, about six friends with golf-course rakes, and a photographer. So they all go deep into the woods up near Northport and dug this big hole with the backhoe.
Ronny Robertson, Crimson Tide linebacker, then gets real naked and crouches down in the hole. The dump truck comes, pours the white sand while the others with the rakes furiously smooth it out. Finally, they tell Ronny to take the deepest breath of his life and quickly cover his head with sand.
The first photo shows a serene field of sand. The second photo shows a finger emerging, the third an arm, the fourth a head (albeit half smothered), and so it went. The last photo shows the still very naked Ronny striking a magnificent pose on the field of sand, a victorious testament to life over death.
As a matter of fact, that’s what the project was titled when it was turned into the professor: “The Emergence of Life!” And the teacher, whose hair on the last day of class was braided with strands of a Tibetan prayer flag, immediately proclaimed the effort as the best he’d ever seen in his entire life, never you mind that he had fallen in love with the project’s co-director.
Ronny’s early Fs turned into maybe the only A he ever made at Alabama - outside of being in the “A Club,” which was for varsity lettermen. The raw shock of becoming ineligible changed his whole attitude, and not only did he become an All-Conference player, he was an academic standout by the time he graduated. Best of all, I heard Coach Bryant declare him “a winner” three different times.
I hadn’t heard from Ronny in about 10 or 12 years until yesterday. He saw an article I wrote about Coach Bryant last week, and I was evermore thrilled to get his e-mail. I was even more tickled to see that his signature included the title, “Associate Athletic Director for Development, the University of Alabama.”
But when he added this real cute little line at the end of his note to me, “Number 55 on the field – No. 1 in your heart,” it seemed like telling about the “Emergence of Life” was only fitting.
One more thing. After Ronny was reinstated and back in the dorm, he was pretty full of himself. One of his fun-loving teammates swiped that pictorial project out of his dorm room without Ronny’s knowledge, and, in the cloak of darkness, slid it under Coach Bryant’s office door.
On the cover picture, the one with a real-naked Ronny posing just so on that field of sand, the teammate autographed it, “To Coach Bryant, who taught me everything. Ronny Robertson.”
Oh, my heavenly goodness.
Royexum@aol.com