"Sunshine Superman"

SUPER SUNDAY!!

O.K., it's not Christmas or the Fourth of July, but it has been around long enough to conjur memories.

This is my first Southern Super Sunday in years (I don't aknowledge McLean, VA to be Southern.) I've been invited to Bill and Barb's pool house next door to watch the game. Chili and beer will be served. Excellent.

An interesting insight into Knotts Island is that one need not have an actual swimming pool to have a pool house. Bill and Barb do, but Johnny Barnes down the street does not (Johnny is just completing a major renovation of his pool house to include a small bedroom.)

Pool Houses are places where guys go to drink, watch football, and fall asleep in big lounge chairs. They are decorated to look like island tiki bars. I wasn't introduced to the concept until I was too old to get away with it in my own life. Happily, however, I now have an entire garage that serves as my personal pool house. All my stuff is here and I can fall asleep with the TV on and no one gets on my case.

It is warm. Pool house doors are open, guests are arriving (see photo above), grills are being fired up, bags of ice are being dumped over buckets of beer, and all seems right with the world. I'm looking forward to the game and am glad that Bill and Barb invited me over. Who wants to be alone on Super Sunday!?!

I spent my first Super Bowl Sunday in the South and I was, for the most part, alone. I was stationed at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, the sprawling east coast anchor for the United States Marine Corps. I was a Private First Class, attending supply school, and learning the one transferrable skill that I took from the Corps - typing.

That Saturday morning I was granted a 48 hour pass and decided to visit Andover friends that were attending the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. I rose early, took the base liberty bus (known as the "vomit comet") into the neighboring town of Jacksonville, and boarded a Greyhound bus for Durham. Eighteen stops and 6 hours later I arrived to transfer and take the final three stops to Chapel Hill on a connecting bus.

I was young, excited, and free so have little recollection of the journey. I arrived, found some friends, drank a lot of beer, and flopped on a dorm sofa. Had I remained on base, I would have found some friends, drank a lot of beer, and flopped on my rack. The contrast seems less obvious to me now that it did at the time.

Sunday morning I was given a brief campus tour that included the college basketball stadium. I was stunned. Basketball was nothing at Andover. Even with the Glory Celtics, basketball was nothing in New England either. Hockey ruled! And yet, here was the home of the legendary North Carolina Tar Heels - a college gym bigger than the fabled Boston Garden itself.

I felt as though I was in a foreign land. Why ever would so many people want to watch a basketball game. Even my former classmates had been converted. Twenty years later, I moved with my young family to Charlotte. Several months after that, I began to understand the allure (the Tar Heels suck - a subject for a future blog.)

Super Bowl I must have begun around 3 in the afternoon as it was being played in L.A. It wasn't all that big a deal. In fact, it probably didn't become known as Super Bowl I until the next year when some genius decided to call the second rendition Super Bowl II. The Vince Lombardi Packers were playing the Hank Stram Kansas City Chiefs. Everybody was a Packer fan.

At halftime, I had to head back. I took a cab to the bus station, retraced my steps to Durham, and after a wait, boarded a Greyhound bus for the eighteen-stop six-hour journey back to Jacksonville. This trip I remember vividly. Every stop.

Raleigh. Zebulon. Bailey.

We reached Wilson at twilight.

I was now the only white person on the bus. It was a foreign country. We'd stop every few miles. People would get on and people would get off. I was miles removed from the Marine Corps and an entire light year from Andover or Chapel Hill, for that matter. The towns were small and ramshakle and the ground was perfectly flat. A single naked light bulb marked the bench that comprised the bus stop in each town.

Goldsboro, Kingston, New Bern.

New Bern?

My great-great grandfather came to the United States from Scotland with his brother. They were stone masons. When they arrived, my great-great grandfather went to Patterson, New Jersey (birthplace of the Industrial Revolution and consequently the epicenter of brick) and his brother came to New Bern, North Carolina. New Bern had been the capital of North Carolina prior to present day Raleigh. I made a point to return to New Bern in the daylight to review my great-great uncle's work. I've yet to go.

Pollocksville. Maysville. Belgrade. Jacksonville.

I disembarked with several other Marines who had joined the trip along the way. The Comet arrived around 11pm and we made the lonely last leg to Mountfort Point, Camp Lejeune. I flopped on my rack and during the brief instant before I fell aspeep, I wondered about what a long strange trip it had been.

Seven hours later, I was sitting tall in Sgt. Lerma's Monday morning class.

"Type 'A', you worthless motherfuckers, type 'A'.

It was good to be back.