Roy Exum
It was dark during my stroll through the garden but don’t worry – we switch back to Standard Time this weekend. So, as I remind you we “fall back” an hour between 2 a.m. and 3 a.m., I want to tell you that dogs, roosters and the squirrels in my garden could care less. Believe it or not, I’ve still got some flowers since we didn’t have a frost last month, and as usual there are plenty of orchids and onions:
AN ORCHID for the Alabama football team, perhaps the best college team I have ever seen in my half-century of watching closely. This week the top-ranked Tide will play at No. 4 LSU (8:00 on CBS) and in all my years I can never recall a 14-point spread between two top 10 teams. No. 6 Georgia is a 10-point pick at No. 11 Kentucky. (Wanna’ a tip? My man Cleo says take Alabama and Georgia, forget the points, and head to the SEC Championship game on Saturday, December 1, 2018, in the Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta.) And, yes, the Tide will be a double-digit favorite in that one, too.
AN ONION for the wonderful total uncertainty in college football this fall. In the last week of October, an unprecedented seven teams dropped out of the Associated Press’ Top 25. I cannot remember that big a turnover ever, but a record eight teams lost to unranked opponents last Saturday. I think that’s the best thing that can happen in sports – every dog has its day – and, lord have mercy, it makes the November finish so much more fun.
AN ORCHID to Dabo Swinney, who is perhaps the best rags-to-riches story ever in college football after he went from being a walk-on player at the University of Alabama to the head coach at Clemson. The other day he was talking about his time in Tuscaloosa and said when he was there the team traveled on two buses. “The first bus was for the best players and the second was ‘the ROY bus.’” The ROY bus? “Yep,” he grinned, “That stood for the ‘Rest Of Ya’ll!”
AN ONION for the unwieldy traffic in Nashville. But that’s what happens when 100 newcomers arrive every day. It’s getting so crowded a new area code – 629 – has been added to the 615 prefix we’ve associated with Nashville all of these years.
AN ORCHID to the third game in this year’s World Series. It went 18 innings and lasted seven hours, 20 minutes, until Max Muncey hit a walk-of homer to give LA its only win against the Boston Red Sox. And did you know Game 3 this year lasted longer than the entire 1939 World Series?
AN ONION to Clay County, Tn., which is right below the Kentucky border (think Celina). The county population is just south of 8,000 but DEA agents are wondering how the four drug stores in the county dispensed 1.5 million opioids last year … that works out to be 270 pain pills for every man, woman and child.
AN ORCHID to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation – and the head of its drug task force, Tommy Farmer – for reducing opioid overdoses in the state last year but the bad news is cocaine, heroin, and “meth” are now at record levels. Tommy still calls Chattanooga his home.
AN ONION to the announcement there were 72,000 drug overdoses in our nation last year – that’s four times as many murders as were committed in the United States in 2017.
AN ORCHID to Ben & Jerry, the liberal ice cream guys, for coming out with a new flavor just in time for the mid-term elections. It is called Pecan Resist! You may remember that in 2016 the creamery founders, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, were among a group of activists who were arrested while protesting for campaign finance reform in Washington. The whisper is neither is a big fan of the current president.
AN ONION for the coming new car fad --- Kia has announced it will be placing solar panels on the roofs’ of some models and other car manufacturers have the idea in front of design teams.
AN ORCHID to Barbra Streisand for braving up and saying that if the Democrats do not become the majority in the House next week, she may move to Canada. She also said she is so upset over what is happening in Washington that she’s eating pancakes, lots of pancakes, and they are making her fat.
AN ONION for the Texas A&M students who appeared in an interview in support of Beto O’Rourke, a Texas Congressman looking to unseat Senator Ted Cruz. But when the reporter asked the students what has O’Rourke done to earn their vote, not a single person could name one thing on camera.
AN ORCHID for the great line by Teddy Roosevelt that comes to life in every election: “To anger a conservative, lie to him. To anger a liberal, tell him the truth.”
AN ONION to the bumper sticker seen on Third Street: “Hillary did more to get Trump elected than Russia did.”
AN ORCHID to Roger Brown, UTC’s Chancellor Emeritus, for going to bat for a kid who I believe needs more seasoning before he will become a great servant of the people. By all accounts, Joda Thongnopnua is the face of our future. I am eager to get to know him. But we can no more send a stalk of green bananas to Nashville than some daffy candidate. There is too much both we and Joda need to learn and, while he’s played to rave reviews, he has been under-funded, ill-advised, and tactfully used by the Democrats. Whoops … that’s in my opinion, but if you will look at all the returns in Tennessee after the Nov. 6 voting, you will see the Democratic side has become a joke. Just wait until after Tuesday, don’t take my word … look for yourself. It’s a given.
royexum@aol.com