The Battle of Gray's Pasture: A Reminiscence of Old-Fashioned Football

A REMINISCENCE OF OLD-FASHIONED FOOTBALL.

THE old days of football in Gray’s pasture, the plain, simple, boyish game we knew, are gone. They play no football on the old field now. You will see no belated boys now running down the old road after school, listening to the shouts of the players, and rushing on eager for the coining fray. The very game is gone, with all its old rules and simple cunning.

The old school flourishes as it has never flourished. If you come here they will point you out the new building, quite big and imposing, with tower and belfry, and the name, WISCONSIN NORMAL SCHOOL, carved in the solid stone across the front. The homely old brick building we studied in stands humbly in the rear.

The “Academic Department ” we were so proud of when first our names were blazoned on its roll is not what it was then. Its course of study has been cut down; its glory shorn. There are no “big fellows ” now, as there were in our day, to walk as lords and heroes among the smaller boys. It has become a grammar school merely.

And our great “match game, ” — the one Great Game we played before the brief glory of “ the old Academic ” had departed, — who ever hears of that now ? What an event it was then! What a big, slow-swinging shadow it flung over our boyish world, looming up there, weeks ahead, watched by our eager eyes! But who hears of it now ?

And its heroes, where are they ? Where now is Rob Mackenzie ? our heroin - chief, and Academic King, whom we youngsters loved and admired and followed so unswervingly; and game “ Limpy ” Goodnow, who would not quit, but with a sprained ankle still fought on, and bore the nickname ever after as an honor; and big Nic, the mighty-shouldered and the mightyvoiced, with shout like the trumpets of Jericho; and Whitty, the swift and cunning to “creep; ” and gallant Dickie O’Hara; and Jim Greening and “Chickie ” Brooks, and the rest; where now is the name and the fame of them, who made so large a figure in the old football days ? They are gone. You hear of them no more. Down in Gray’s pasture the very wind in the oak leaves would sing their glory.

And the big, green “Normals ” we used to laugh at. How they stared when at kickoff they saw the ball, driven by Rob Mackenzie’s mighty foot, go sailing meteoric down the field! And how surprised they were when in the pride of rustic strength they tried to set it sailing, innocent of all the art of it, and only sent it rolling instead, a few foolish feet along the ground; or, as sometimes happened, missed it altogether, the great boot they had let fly at it sailing up instead, taking them along up too, until it dropped them, astonished exceedingly, upon the ground !

We could n’t help laughing at them, they were so big, and good-natured, and green; so smiling with verdure as it were; right off the farm, with all its dew and freshness still upon them. Such great stalwart fellows, too; like big winter-russets that have just attained their size, full-grown and full of sap and vigor, but still quite green. How the poor devils used to look the first morning of the term, herded for companionship of misery in a corner of the “Assembly Room,” their big, free limbs and bodies pent up in stiff, new shoes and Sunday-go-to-meetin’s of black diagonal, their sunburned necks thrust into the unaccustomed yoke of a collar, and looking fearfully uncomfortable therein, and their big hands ill at ease, at home nowhere, and looking as if they would be right glad of the friendly grip of a pitchfork or a plough handle.

You will find no such “Normalites ” nowadays. The old breed is gone. The greenest I see look quite correct and starched and tailor-made. No originality of costume now. No “high-water pants, ” such as refreshed the eye in the old days. No pitifully insufficient coat, stretching its seams across some great fellow’s back, button struggling with buttonhole to hold in his expanding chest, showing by its very insufficiency what a Hercules he was. You will see none of these things now. They have disappeared; the old sap and individuality quite, quite gone.

We used to laugh at them, but I don’t think I should laugh now. If I should see one now, I think I should just walk up to him, and smile, and hold out my hand, and say, “Brother, I ’m right glad to see you; it does my eyes good just to look at you; and are none of the other old fellows coining back ? And how are Laury Thompson, and John Hicks ? ” And then he would smile back at me, and we should grow friendly, and I would tell him about the old days.

They had grit and spunk, too, — those big, green fellows. How they did wake up after the scrub match, when we Academics had beaten them so badly and laughed at them so, and challenge us right there to try it again! That was how we came to play our Great Game. And how they did jump into the practice for it! and what a roaring old meeting they held on “Football Night” in the old “Lincolnian Literary Society ” room, when Laury Thompson made his famous speech!

There is no such spirit in the school to-day. They have a football eleven, it is true, and it holds its head well up among its mates; a little above ’em, too, most of the time; — the old school’s the old school yet, I tell ’em; — but, after all, it is n’t the old game, nor the old spirit. I go out sometimes to watch them, and think: “Well, it ’s a queer game they play now, and call football! ” They trot out in such astonishing toggery ; padded and “guarded ” from shin to crown, — welted, belted, strapped, and buckled beyond recognition. And there ’s no independence in the play; every move has to be told ’em. It’s as if they were n’t big enough to run alone; and so they hire a big stepmother of a university “coach,” who stands round in a red sweater, and yells, and berates them. Not a man answers back; he does n’t dare to. They don’t dare eat plain Christian food, but have a “training table ” and diet like invalids. I ’ve seen ’em at a game not dare take a plain drink of water; when they got thirsty they sucked at a wet sponge, like babes at the bottle!

It was not so in our day. No apron strings of a university coach were tied to us. We were free-born men. When we wanted to play we got together and went down to the old pasture, to the big oak tree that stood near the middle of it; and there we would “choose up, ” and take off our coats and vests and neckgear, and pile them round the oak, and walk out on the field and go at it, — everybody, — not a pitiful dozen or so, while the rest stood with their hands in their pockets and looked on, — but everybody / And it was football: no playing half an hour without seeing the ball in the air once; we kicked it all the time; — except when we missed it, and then we kicked the other fellow’s shins! And when we got thirsty we went down to the spring and took an honest drink out of an honest tin cup.

And what a fine, free, open game it was, — the old game! What art you could put into its punting, and running, and dodging, and creeping, and drop - kicking ! And what a glorious tumult in the old - fashioned scrimmage ; especially the scrimmages in the old ditch! It was a rather broad and shallow ditch, and into it the ball would often roll, a dozen excited fellows dashing after it; and there in the ditch bottom, in mad melde, frantic foot to foot, naked shin against sole leather, we would fight to drive the ball through the opposing mob. There might the rustic Normalite, with implacable cowhides, the bigger now the better, sweeten his humiliation with revenge, and well I remember the fearful devastation he sometimes wrought among our Academic shins!

But we were used to that. Indeed, we youngsters gloried in it. It was a spot upon your honor not to have a spot upon your shin! We compared them as soldiers brag of their wounds in battle, and he who could exhibit the largest and most lurid specimen was the best man. Those discolored patches were our “V. C.’s ” and “Crosses of the Legion of Honor; ” seals attesting our spirit, stamped with a stamp of good stiff sole leather, painfully enough, it was true, but who cared for that? We were only sorry we could not exhibit them in public. To be obliged to carry such decorations under your trouser leg was hard.

But I am a long time getting to the thing I aimed at, — I mean our Great Game. They smile at me here for a slow coach and old fogy enthusiast, and I fear I give them some occasion. I get started, and one thing leads to another, and I am never done, but go meandering on not unlike the slow-winding creeks of our southern Wisconsin country here, that take such an interminable time getting across our meadows. Yet, even so, they flow’ the slower the smoother, and the more truly mirror their willows and green crumbling banks, and I hope it may be something so writh these wandering recollections of mine.

Football Night at the “Lincolnian Literary,” and Laury Thompson’s speech there I must tell about. If any of the old boys ever read this, — and it is for them I am writing it, — they will wonder if I leave that out. For it marked an epoch in the Normal preparation for the game. And coming from Laury Thompson it was so unexpected. He always looked so cheerful in his high-water pants. His clothes were such a harmonious misfit. And he got off his absurdities with such a grave, humorous-innocent face; only the veiled twinkling in the eyes to show that it was not the most solemn matter in the world.

He “wore his pants high-water a-purpose, ” he told us ; “had ’em made so for hot weather; coolin’, ye know; refreshin’ ; lets the air in; breeze o’ heaven playin’ up an’ down your pantleg. ” And when one of the boys cracked some joke on his big shoes, he gravely remonstrated, assuring us that he “had had those shoes made sort of in memor iam ; hide of a heifer calf of his’n that got killed by the cars; a rosebud of a little critter; he kind o’ wanted something to remember her by; tarnation good leather, too.” He had “writ a poem ” on that calf, he said, but refused to recite it; “felt delikit about exposin’ his feelin’s.”

The old Lincolnian Literary Society is dead now, and its room has been turned into a shop for the Manual Training Department. It is a long, narrow room on the third floor, and was crowded that night to the very door. The meeting, called “to rouse public spirit in the matter of the coming game,” grew spirited and hilarious as the speaking proceeded, and when Thompson was called on, and his tall, odd figure rose up in the midst, there was a great thundering of boots along the floor.

“Boys,” he began, “our Academic friends, raised, most of ’em, in this proud metropolis, seem to ’a’ got the notion that because we haven’t just stepped out of a fashion plate we can’t play football. They tell us to ' thrash the hayseed out of our hair, ' and to ‘ slack off on our galluses, and see if we can’t get some o’ that high-water out of our pants; ’ they’ve been ‘ tryin’ to figure out our combined acreage o’ boot leather, ’ they say, ' and had to give it up ; Arabic notation wa’n’t equal to it. ’ “Well, let ’em laugh. I reckon we ’re duck-backed enough to shed whole showers o’ that kind o’ stuff; and when the game comes off they ’ll find that what wins a game o’ football ain’t pants, nor hair, nor shoe-leather, but what ’s in and under ’em. They ’ll find men’s feet in those shoes, and men’s legs in those trousers, and the brains o’ men under that hair!

“For I tell you, we ’re goin’ to win that game; and we ’re goin’ to win it just because o’ what gave us the hayseed an’ the high-water and the bootleather; because we’ve got on our side the men with muscle hardened on the old farm; men who ’ve swung an axe from mornin’ till night in the woodlot, and cradled two acres of oats a day, and who ’ll go through ’em in a scrimmage like steers through standin’ corn!

“Yes, boys, it’s true; we ’re ' hayseeds ’ and 1 country jakes. ’ All the better for that. Grass don’t grow down, and go where you will, you ’ll find the hayseed at the top. Why, what was he ? ” — he turned and extended a long arm and forefinger toward a picture of Daniel Webster that hung behind him on the wall of the room, — “What was he ? A hayseed, and son of a hayseed! ”

And then, while a roar went up to the roof and rolled out of the windows that must have reached and frighted the realm of Chaos and Old Night, John Hicks got upon his feet, his sturdy red countenance, lit by a near-by lamp, beaming out across a crowd of rustic heads and tanned faces.

“I tell you what, Mr. President,” he began, “that speech o’ Mr. Thompson’s goes right to the spot. I hope I ain’t one o’ these little-pot-soon-hot fellows that get het and boil over about nothin’, but I’m bound to say that Mr. Thompson ’s had my lid a-liftin’ for the last five minutes. I tell you, we want Mr. Thompson to keep this rhyme o’ his a-rollin’. I ’ve heard before what a big thing it is to be born a hayseed, and run up agin a lot o’ hard sleddin’, but the idee never got drove in till Mr, Thompson here hit it. That’s the kind o’ talk we want. Puts the pepper into you so ’s you ’re all up an’ a-comin’ ; want to jump right through the collar ! break the traces! pull six ton! I tell you, we want Mr. Thompson to keep on singin’. If he ’ll sing like that for us the day o’ the game, there-won’t be enough left of the Academic team for decent buryin’. I move, Mr. President, that Mr. Thompson be appointed Leader o’ the Hayseed Choir; PoetLauryate; Boss o’ the Rhymin’ Department, or whatever else you want to call it, to this Hayseed Football Team of ours.”

The poem made Thompson famous. It went everywhere. They found music to fit it, and then they sung it. You heard it roared through the night after you had gone to bed, and you heard it in the morning before you got up, sung by some sturdy-voiced Normalite “workin’ for his board,” who cheered his solitude with Thompson’s ditty as he milked the neighbor’s cow. They powdered their hair with hayseed, and wore bunches of dried clover-heads for buttonhole bouquets.

As the autumn season deepened, and the day of battle drew on, our excitement deepened too. There were rumors that the Normals had invented a new play. Every night after school, during the last week, Tom Powell, their leader, gathered them into the secrecy of Normal Hall behind guarded doors. We could hear voices, indistinguishable commands, the heavy tramp of boots along the floor. But what it meant no Academic knew.

And a little before the time set for the game there came on a November storm. I remember well how I sat at my desk in the darkening schoolroom, my eyes on the old Allen and Greenough grammar, and my dreams on the coming game, listening while the wind whistled at the roof and the rain-showers lashed the window-panes, and the big oaks outside rocked and roared, and wondered as I listened, would it never cease, and would the Great Game not come to-morrow after all?

But the morning came with a broad, red sun rolling and tumbling in mist, which blew away with rising wind and let the sun in to dry the field.

The opposing hosts assembled. A multitude surged and shouted along the side-line. There were carriages even, — the President and his lady, and wealthy Main Street people. And John Hicks’s folks were there in a new two-seater, and Laury Thompson’s in a farm wagon, — the same they had brought a load of oats to town in that morning. The Editor had come, too; he would report the game in next week’s Clarion, — Fame! right on the field there, her trumpet at her lips, ready to blow!

And we were the heroes; the great observed of all observers. We trode the earth with a large, heroic tread. I, the smallest, last, and youngest of the company, walked with the lordliest stride of all. The season long I had fought for a “place on the team,” and I had won, and Annie was there to see. Never mind who Annie was. I am telling now about a football game.

“ Look at Banty, here, ” I heard a Normalite say; “captain o’ the team, ain’t he? Hull thing, an’ dog under the wagon.”

Even Annie smiled, and just then my cousin Teddy came up.

“What are you lookin’ so red an’ savage about? ” says Teddy.

“Achin’ to jump into that Normal team,” says I.

Under the big oak Rob Mackenzie and Tom Powell, with the big fellows around them, were settling the last preliminaries. The referee pitched the coin.

“Heads it is,” called Tom quietly. “We ’ll take the north goal.” The wind by this time was stiff out of the north, and the Normals had won the toss.

The two teams scattered out over the field. Rob Mackenzie walked to the centre, the ball in his hand. He turned to us to see that all was ready, and stood there a moment, so tall and good to see, with his strong, confident look, and eyes so full of quiet fire, that we broke into a little involuntary shout of applause, which the Academics on the side-line caught and sent back in a great pealing echo. Rob smiled and flushed a little, and stooped to adjust the ball for the kickoff. Then laughter and tumult broke out along the side-line where the Normals had massed their shouting strength, and Laury Thompson came pushing his tall shoulders through the crowd, his face on a broad grin, and waving a pitchfork over his head. A great pair of cowhide boots swung from the tines of it, and a long, broomlike tuft of timothy hay, tied to the middle tine, shook in the wind triumphant over all.

Advancing to the front-centre, he planted this queer standard firmly in the ground, while the Normals gathered round it and roared their battle-song: —

As the chorus ended Rob rose, stepped back, and turned for a final look. He was laughing. I wondered how he could take it so. My heart was galloping like a fire engine.

“All ready, boys! ” he called out; then took three quick steps forward, and swung his foot on the ball. I saw it sail far down the field, while the sideline shouted. The Great Game was on.

What happened during the next few minutes I can give no orderly account of. I was an excited and wild-eyed boy, plunging about in the middle of chaos, and I can only remember fragments ; — Rob Mackenzie leaping suddenly out of the mêlée and darting down the field, his yellow hair blown back by the wind, the ball fleeing before him; the smash of great John Hicks into a scrimmage, and the thunder of his boot upon the ball; the roar of the crowd along the side-line; the cannonade and counter-cannonade of punts; the maelstrom of the scrimmage, heaving and hurling around the vortex of the ball, and rolling ominously on toward our goal; the mighty voice of Nic, booming over the tumult like a signal gun at sea, — “Avast there, my hearties ! Lay ’em aboard, you lubbers, lay ’em aboard! ” and then his huge shoulders, butting through the opposing play as the bluff bows of a Gloucester fisherman butt the tumbling fog, till, meeting the mightier rush of John Hicks, he, too, goes down, and the ominous tide rolls on.

Then, after a while, as I became accustomed to it, the whirl cleared, and I could see how the game was going. Plainly enough no comedy now, like the scrub match of the early season, when we had beaten and laughed at them so. Their practice had told. The big, new fellows were no longer green. Their “hayseed spirit ” was awake, and they fought with an energy and determination which in the scrimmage bore us back like fate.

Now, too, we saw the meaning of the mysterious practice in Normal Hall. Along the lower edge of the pasture, and forming the eastern side-line, there ran a “ tight board ” fence, and next it, the entire length of the pasture, the shallow ditch I have already spoken of. In that ditch we used to fight half our scrimmages, and in that ditch the Normals concentrated their strategy and strength. In massive formation, the ball in the midst, protected by the fence on one side and by a moving stockade of stout legs and sturdy shoulders on the other, down the ditch they would drive, sweeping away our lighter fellows like leaves as they went, on and on, to what seemed an inevitable goal.

But right there the weakness of the play developed. The goal posts stood, as in the modern game, midway the ends of the field. No “touch-downs ” counted; only goals; and to make a goal they must leave their ditch and protecting fence and come out into the open. And there Rob Mackenzie gathered his heavy men for the defense. With Whitty, and Nic, and Jim Greening, and the others, he would ram the Normal formation until it broke; then, unless some one had done it before him, he would go in himself, capture the ball, and with Whitty, his team-mate, rush away with it toward the Normal goal.

But on guard there stood always McNary, and big Van Lone, and Tom Powell himself, with two or three others who could drop back from mid-field when need came, — a guard too strong for even Whitty and Rob.

Twice only did John Hicks, breaking out of the mêlée after the Normal formation had gone in pieces, carry the ball on to the goal; and twice to match him did Rob Mackenzie, with the long range accuracy that always astonished the green Normals so, send the ball sailing between the goal posts almost from the centre of the field.

And so the first half drew to an end, and the score stood even. The intermission hummed with talk. Excited partisans crowded about their favorites. The Academics looked serious. The fierce effectiveness of the new Normal play scared them, and they huddled round Rob Mackenzie, who was radiating courage like a sun. I never saw him in higher spirits. On the outside of the crowd, where we youngsters were gathered anxiously waiting the signal for play to begin again, I caught now and then a bit of his talk: “Say, but this is great, is n ’ t it! — This is what I call a game! — Who wants to win in a walk ? — No fun licking a fellow unless he ’s your size. —• Lots of time to thrash ’em yet; whole second half.”

Around the Normal standard there was jubilation. They had held us down ; then put us to defense; their play was sweeping on in a rising tide; who should stop it ? The talk flew: “ Harder work ’n hayin’, ain’t it, John? ” — “Not a bit of it; those Academics are easy; stack ’em up like oats next half.” — “Show ’em some o’ yer Irish, Mac! ” — “Oh,did you hear that thunderin’ on the Academic shin? ”— “Back them cowhide boots to win! Academs, beware ! ”

The second half began, and the Normal pace grew faster. Those enduring muscles, “hardened on the old farm,” that “had cradled two acres of oats a day, day in, day out, under the July sun, ” were beginning to tell. Like a sledgehammer at a shaking door the Normal formation pounded at our defense. When the door should fall seemed but a matter of time. The Normalite roar along the side-line grew louder. Again and again, while the scrimmage thickened, with John Hicks and Scott and Simpson hurling into it, would burst out their thundering refrain: —

And only for Rob Mackenzie we should again and again have gone down. How through our darkening fortunes shone the unconquerable spirit and energy of his play! Like that kin of ancient Bedouins who, “when Evil bared before them his hindmost teeth, flew gayly to meet him, in company or alone! ” Again and again the Normal formation rolled along the ditch sweeping our out-fighters before it, and again and again, as it reached the critical point and swung out into the field to make the goal, would Rob hurl against it his heavy attack, — Whitty, and Rhodes, and Limpy, and Jim Greening, and big Nic, and finally, himself,

— till the Normal mass went into chaos ; out of which, through some unguarded gap, the ball would come tumbling, Rob and Whitty behind it; then down the field together they would dart, the ball before them, we youngsters yelling madly in the rear, the battle-fire in us, which had flagged with fear, bursting up again in yells of exultation like a flame.

Yet not to score; neither side again could score. The second half approached its end, and it seemed as if the game must remain a tie. As the two sides suddenly realized this, there came, as if by common consent, a pause. The Babel-roar along the side-line dropped into a hum. Then a voice called out,

— it was Tom Powell; you could hear him all over the field: —

“How much more time? ”

And the answer came clear and cleancut through dead silence: —

“One minute and a half! ”

The Academics yelled with joy; no hope now of winning; but in so short a time the Normals cannot score; we escape defeat; it will be a drawn battle. Then they stilled again, not so sure.

For the Normal “sledge-hammer” was uplifting for a last blow. One chance remained, and Tom Powell staked all on a final cast. He left only Van Lone to guard his goal. Every other man of his team he would build into the breaks of his formation in a last determined attack. Wave after wave he had hurled against us; now this last, “a ninth one, gathering all the deep,” he would hurl.

The attack came on, and our out-fighters as usual went down before it. In practically perfect order, with Simpson and John Hicks in flank, and Tom Powell himself at the centre, it turned out of the ditch for the goal. Whitty and Jim Greening went down; then big Nic. The Normal uproar gathered and swelled and burst, and swelled and burst again as they swept on. In front, Rob Mackenzie, with a last handful, stood yet. He spoke a few low, sharp words, and they went forward, not in mass, but in line.

The cooler heads looked and wondered. What did that mean? What could a thin line do against that massive-moving squad of men? but just wrap round it like a shred of twine and, like twine again, break, while the mass swept on.

So the line moved forward ; but just as it was on point to strike, it stumbled apparently, the whole line together, and went down. The Normal yell rose again. But it rose too soon; the line was not down, but crouching there, a barricade across the Normal path. The stroke of strategy was too sudden to be met. Driven on by its very mass and the blind momentum of the men in the rear, the Normal formation struck our crouching line, toppled momentarily, as a wave topples over a wall of rock; then, self-destroying, its van tumbling over the Academic line, its rear plunging on over its broken front, it crumbled, broke, and stopped.

Then, while the Academics along the side-line went mad with exultation, the fallen chaos struggled to its feet, a wilder chaos than ever, a score of boots slamming for the ball at once, which bounded back and forth like a big leathern shuttlecock in the midst.

So, for a long-drawn moment; then it leaped out clear and free, and a player after it like a cannon-flash, down the field toward the Normal goal. Well may the Academics yell! It is Rob Mackenzie, —.fastest man on the ground, and away now with a free field! Hard after him John Hicks, with every sinew at the stretch, and teeth grimset, and the whole Normal team streaming in a wild tail of pursuit behind. The side-line, which, until now, had held the surge of spectators, burst like a dam in flood, and poured a yelling torrent toward the Normal goal.

There stood big Van Lone, sole guardian bulldog at that gate ; an honest bulldog, but terribly bewildered, all pandemonium storming in on him at once. He started forward, but what could he do against Rob Mackenzie? The ball rises over his head, hovers an instant at top flight, or seems to; then shoots forward between the goal posts. The game was won!

And who that was there will ever forget the celebration that followed ? Rob Mackenzie tossed skyward on a hundred shoulders, with mighty shouts, till the old pasture rocked and swam; the great ruddy face of John Hicks, shining through the press, undimmed by defeat, as he came to greet his victorious foe; the meeting and hand-grasp of the two heroes, amid tremendous tumult, all lesser yells upborne on the oceanic roar of Nic; the wild processional through the town, tramping tumultuous to the roar of John Brown’s Body, with Rob in triumphal chariot, rolling on down Main Street toward the west, where the clouds of sunset flamed into bonfires and the fiery sun itself seemed a huge cannon’s mouth hurling a thunder salute in honor of the event.

Well, all that happened years ago. Those old days can never come back. Even the old pasture I cannot see as I saw it then. It was only the other day, drawn by old thoughts revived, that I walked out to see it, through the still summer afternoon, down the old familiar road, so well known hut so strangely quiet now, with its few scattered old white oaks and maples, that seemed to nod sleepily in a kind of old friendliness, till you come to the turn by the burr oak grove where the pasture opens.

There they lay, — the long tranquil slope, the green level that had been one field, the ditch along the fence, —under the quiet sunshine, in sleep and silence. Great, peaceful-looking white clouds, like great white cattle asleep, lay along the blue heaven overhead. The old oak where we were used to choose up stood motionless, as if it dreamed over the old days. Could this be indeed the old pasture, scene of our stormy uproar, this field asleep ? I turned away with a half lonely feeling.

The old boys are gone too, most of them, scattered I don’t know where. Do they ever, I wonder, after the day’s work is done, sit in the evening by the warm firelight, while the soft pipesmoke wraps them in its tranquil cloud, and dream foolishly, as I do, over those old days? I like to think they do.

George L. Teeple.