A long long time ago in a place reasonably far away, I rooted for Johnny Unitas, Big Daddy Lipscomb, Gail Sayers and Dick Butkus. We had no Pro team in Indianapolis. I rooted for Purdue, Notre Dame and Tennessee. Indiana University for basketball. You can tell by the football players I rooted for that I was not focused just on the offense.
Got old enough to run away from home. Family tradition on my father's side. Jobs were a lot easier to come by in that day and age. Traveled a lot too, which was pretty easy when jobs were plentiful. It did get awkward at times. I remember sitting in a bar across the street from the Texas University Student Union in Austin, Texas rooting for Notre Dame playing Texas in the Cotton Bowl on New Years Day in '71. The locals obviously thought I was either heeled or crazy to root for the enemy while deep in the heart of Texas.
I was building Pizza Huts in the eastern half of the US (one week just outside of Washington DC and the next week in Champaign–Urbana) one year until I got tired of building Pizza Huts and decided to hit the Rocky Mountains. I hit Wyoming first because I had known since 1969 that I would someday live there but decided to head south and drove down to Ted's Place (no longer there) and hung a right into Poudre Canyon. Fell in love with the mountains and got a job helping to build what would later be the discharge pipe for the Joe Wright Reservoir. The year was 77. I had not watched much football for a few years. In the Mishawaka Roadhouse I was watching a football game on the TV and fell in love with this crazy defense and had to ask who the heck that was.
Everyone looked at me as if I was crazy (which I was you know) and I turned into a Bronco fan on the spot even though I do not like living in the lower elevations like along the front range. Still love watching a good defense even more than a good offense. Still love watching the Orange Rush Crush and the No Fly Zone. Still have serious sanity problems and still have the neatest girl I have ever met. Met her in Mishawaka in '77. We were crazy enough to climb the south face of Greyrock in Podre canyon and crazy enough to fall for each other. Best break I ever had though that is another story for another time with at least three distinct puns.
