This really warmed the cockles of my heart. Courtney Haden used my transcript of Phil Paramore's 2006 WOOF interview with Buddy Buie in his column this week.
http://npaper-wehaa.com/bhamweekly/2011/02/24/#?article=1180460http://bhamweekly.com
His bite was worse than its bark
The curious case of Harvey Updyke raises pertinent points. For one thing, he’s said to be an Alabama fan, but going on Paul Finebaum’s show to announce your crime on the radio suggests you may have done your undergraduate work at Bryce. For another, if Updyke did indeed commit dendrocide, justice might be better served by pulling the courts off the case and letting Yella Fella extract frontier justice.
Then there’s the bizarre motive for the crime.
The alleged perpetrator is said to have carried a grudge against Auburn since 1983, based on his notion that Toomer’s Corner got rolled to celebrate the death of Bear Bryant. However, Robert Register, on his excellent blog, Zero Northwest Florida, contradicts that via a transcript of a 2006 radio interview with Buddy Buie, composer of the song, “The Day Bear Bryant Died.”
Interviewer Phil Paramore from WOOF was a sports columnist for The Auburn Plainsman in ’83 and remembers well the mood of The Loveliest Village: “On that day it was almost as if a pall fell over even the Auburn campus…[Coach Pat Dye] sort of imparted the message to the Auburn family, ‘Look, there’s nothing good about this. We have lost a true legend and a guy who has been a major influence on me and I, in turn, have tried to impart that wisdom on this program and building
a foundation off what I learned from him, so let’s all be aware.’” Perhaps the alleged tree assailant was confusing Bear Bryant’s passing with that of John F. Kennedy twenty years before, for which there was indeed cheering and celebration in certain benighted parts of the state. Anyone fool enough to have applauded aloud Paul Bryant’s demise in 1983 would have been killed outright. Maybe even with herbicide.
The felony-weight peckerwood who thought killing a tree would be cool did more than poison the root system of historic oaks. Besides his family’s good name, he managed to poison his state’s reputation as well. At a time when the rest of the nation could look to Alabama as the first state with back-to-back national football championships from two different schools, the poison in this guy’s soul now persuades the rest of the nation to look at us as the place where sociopaths unable to differentiate between a football game and real life conduct blood feuds with vegetation.
It’s enough to make one want to curl up in a La-Z-Boy with a liter of Mountain Dew… Courtney Haden is a Birmingham Weekly columnist. Write to courtney@bhamweekly.com.
Coach Bryant & Mary Harmon @ an A Day supper, Friday night, April 22, 1978. Coach was 64.
Lee acquired Tarrant singer/pianist Alleen Goodwin's artist's scrapbook from '48 to '61. It is one of the clearest windows you have ever seen into pre-rock'n'roll B'ham. I'm goin' crazy tryin' to find a BROTHER DAVE GARDNER ad in all this stuff!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1kZ7SQ2MV4
Here's the Boss' latest yard sale acquisition WHICH HE ABSOLUTELY LOVEZZZZZZ! (wonder where the hell this has been in OLD TUSKEELOOSSEE!?????)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WUdlaLWSVMFlo McCorkle That is beautiful! Such innocent abandon in dance: throw your hands in the air like you just don't care!
Whatever happened to Pat Seymour? She taught me Freshman English in Morgan and then I got her for Composition in Woods. GREAT TEACHER!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKlJzvjg-uMRichard Burke Prof Seymour was the bomb with the toutalage of all Bama Footballdom. Later in my career working as a Vocational Rehabilitation Pro I met up with her at Bk'fast during one of her motivational speeches in Tusk Town. She was kind enough to remember me. We have stood on the shoulders of Giants!
THE SNAKE in a June '78 TUSCALOOSA NEWS photo. Kenny had a 28-3-2 record from '65-'67.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJpDMug1YMA
I know she'll never believe it but I've learned more from this woman than ANY OTHER MEMBER OF THE CARTEL!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQa7SvVCdZk
Reggie Young, Troup County Sheriff Turner, Bobby Emmons, Ima Whithers ~ Chips Moman's secretary at American Studios in Memphis, Tenn., and now executive assistant to the president of BMI, Reggie Young's wife- Jenny Hollowell, Lee Morris
So kewl to see my friend, Reggie Young, pickin' on ALABAMA's new video.
http://www.cmt.com/videos/alabama/607164/are-you-sure-hank-done-it-this-way.jhtml?artist=504205
JOHNNY SHINES image courtesy of the '72 COROLLA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbrf4fk8w5UJohnny was a great Tuscaloosa Countian and a great artist. More and more of his stuff is coming on line @ youtube. http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%22johnny+shines%22&aq=f
from ROBERTOREG on Sattiddee, Feburrerry 26, 2011~
We gotta come with some cash so we can get Eddie Kirkland back in his old hometown of Dothan. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8Y_hKjkM48
image courtesy of the '65 COROLLA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgMEPk6fvpg
The Boss loves this circa 1943 image. Not many books printed on good paper that year.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bR3K5uB-wMA
Steve Hope image from the southeast corner of the intersection of 23rd & Univ. Blvd. circa 1978 Keith Richards on vocals
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nNCz1D2hEY
