{"id":495,"date":"2016-11-10T23:03:13","date_gmt":"2016-11-11T04:03:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/?p=495"},"modified":"2016-11-10T23:03:13","modified_gmt":"2016-11-11T04:03:13","slug":"roll-eagle-war-tide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/?p=495","title":{"rendered":"ROLL EAGLE\u2014WAR TIDE!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"img_0690\"<\/a><\/h3>\n

\u00a0THE NIGHT THAT BENJAMIN ASKED ME TO MARRY HIM<\/strong><\/h3>\n

My latest book, HALLEY, awarded 2015 Jefferson Cup Honor for Historical Fiction, awarded the Moonbeam Silver Medal for Young Adult Fiction,\u00a0 and awarded the 2016 Frank Yerby Award for Fiction.\u00a0 Available at: NewSouth Books:\u00a0www.newsouthbooks.com\/halley and Amazon<\/strong>.<\/h2>\n

Well, the event of the year i<\/strong>s drawing near one more time\u2014and I\u2019m not talking about Thanksgiving or Christmas.\u00a0 I\u2019m talking about the IRON BOWL, battle of the giants, competition between Good and Evil, War of the Worlds.\u00a0 Auburn versus Alabama!<\/strong><\/h2>\n

I remember when I didn\u2019t know Auburn from University of Alabama.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t know they had a football game or any other rivalry.\u00a0 I got my first clue on the subject when I was passing through the teacher\u2019s lounge at my first teaching job after graduating from Berry College.\u00a0 Two of the school coaches were discussing the lawsuit of someone known as Coach Bryant and speculating that \u201cBear\u201d was bound to win the suit he\u2019d brought against a magazine that claimed he\u2019d fixed a game.\u00a0 I heard \u201cAlabama\u201d and said, \u201cThat\u2019s where my brother John is going to school next year.\u201d<\/strong><\/h2>\n

\u201cI thought John was going to Auburn,\u201d one of the coaches answered.<\/strong><\/h2>\n

I shrugged.\u00a0 Auburn?\u00a0 Alabama?\u00a0 \u201cWhat\u2019s the difference?\u201d<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The coach laughed.\u00a0 \u201cA whole lot if you\u2019re talking football.\u201d\u00a0 <\/strong><\/h2>\n

Well, I wasn\u2019t talking football, and I didn\u2019t care who won or lost, or who played the game.\u00a0 Little did I know how fortunate I was.\u00a0 <\/strong><\/h2>\n

Two years later, I was just as ignorant when my sister and I drove over to Alabama at our mother\u2019s urging to see what kind of boys John was rooming with while working his every other quarter co-op job with NASA.\u00a0 Mama was afraid that with money in his pocket\u00a0 and who-knows-what-kind of boys for roommates, he might just go wild the way Daddy had in his youth.<\/strong><\/h2>\n

John had not gone wild, and neither had his roommates.\u00a0 In fact, the next night at an impromptu party John threw to introduce us to his friends, I saw one of his roommates doing the worst Twist in the history of dance and promptly fell in love\u2014or at least into deep infatuation. I even loved his name: Benjamin.\u00a0 No matter that back in Georgia I had a boyfriend my age with a full-time job and a car, I wanted this<\/u> guy.\u00a0 And I needed to impress him.\u00a0 So at the first opportunity, I decided to pull out what I thought was the Auburn slogan.\u00a0 \u201cRoll Tide!\u201d\u00a0 I said with great enthusiasm.\u00a0 Every person at the party froze, \u201cNo University of Alabama fans allowed!\u201d they chorused.<\/strong><\/h2>\n

To show you that my interest was fully returned, Benjamin kept on dancing with me.\u00a0 I went home the next day and broke up with my boyfriend, who was suddenly as boring as dirt.\u00a0 Benjamin and I began a long distance courtship.\u00a0\u00a0 By the time we were engaged, I knew his father was an Auburn graduate.\u00a0 Eventually, we had two sons who were also Auburn grads, and the older one married an Auburn girl. Now we have an eighteen-year-old grandson who will soon be a freshman at Auburn.\u00a0 I even attended Auburn myself for one quarter.\u00a0 I think Auburn was mandatory if I wanted to stay in the Gibbons clan.\u00a0 <\/strong><\/h2>\n

Unfortunately,\u00a0 membership in this select family comes with a price.\u00a0\u00a0 I had to start knowing and caring who wins the big game.\u00a0 Though three months later I won\u2019t recall\u00a0 which school triumphed in the Iron Bowl, I root for Auburn to win every single year.\u00a0 Just don\u2019t make me watch.\u00a0 I still don\u2019t give a toot for football.\u00a0 Watching grass grow is more exciting!<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Sometimes\u2014especially those years when Auburn loses\u2014I wish I could get back to those days when I didn\u2019t know or care.\u00a0 <\/strong><\/h2>\n

In this case, ignorance really was bliss!<\/strong><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0THE NIGHT THAT BENJAMIN ASKED ME TO MARRY HIM My latest book, HALLEY, awarded 2015 Jefferson Cup Honor for Historical Fiction, awarded the Moonbeam Silver Medal for Young Adult Fiction,\u00a0 and awarded the 2016 Frank Yerby Award for Fiction.\u00a0 Available … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=495"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":497,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495\/revisions\/497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}