Category: Bo, Jack, Mark — and Donna

Just Brown And Serve

The summer Donna and I got married, in 1963,  we lived off the $65 a week I made as an intern in the Sports Department at The Charlotte News and banked the $80-some a week she made as stenographer for the FBI.

I was going back to school in the fall, I was a rising sophomore at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,  and we tried to save on everything.  That summer we lived in an attic apartment of a house on Shenandoah Avenue, with no phone and no air conditioning.   Not that we cared all that much — we were 21.

Donna, who was still learning to cook, tried to save on food, too.  One night she cooked stew beef and we both chewed and chewed and chewed.   

It was stew beef, but not like this.
It was stew beef, but not like this.

That was about the toughest meat I’d ever tried to eat and finally I said, “Donna, I think we can afford to pay a little bit more next time and get some meat that’s not quite so tough.”

But, turned out, the meat wasn’t the problem.  My bride had boiled the stew beef for 10 or 15 minutes, until it turned brown, and then served it.

NOTE: Donna should have boiled that meat, her Momma told her later, for two hours.

Coming Monday: The Bean Counter

You’re Not Bo!

My sons, Bo and Mark, played football for nine years, from the fourth grade through their senior year at East Wake High School and, early on, I instructed them:  Do not fake an injury.  Do not lay on the ground acting like you’re hurt unless you are.  If you don’t get up, you better be hurt.

It wasn't #66.
It wasn’t #66.

And here we were, with less than a minute to go in the last game of Bo’s senior year, a playoff game we were about to lose, when he went down.  And stayed down.

I’ll be damn! I thought. One more play and his football career would have been over.  One more lousy play.

Then I did something I had never done and never dreamed I would do.  I stood up and walked down out of the stands onto the track beside the field. I walked down the track a little ways and then out onto the field.  I stopped beside the boy laying on the ground and looked down.

He was not wearing number 66, Bo’s number — it was the other offensive guard. Bo was standing nearby with his teammates, looking perplexed.

I was not embarrassed. I was relieved.  That was not my son laying on the field in pain. One more play and Bo would walk away from football dinged up some but with no injury he couldn’t live with.

Relieved and grateful.

Coming Friday: You Need To Check My Contract