My Sunday Feeling

We awoke today to brilliant sunshine peeping through the blinds. Thank God. The preceding week was so dark. It was warmer and for this I was grateful. But I can tolerate the cold. At this stage in my life, I need the light as much or more than I need the warmth.

Maybe I am just projecting, or maybe I am just making this up, but the world at least felt different around last Tuesday. The ice was pretty much gone by then and I seemed to hear more birds than I had up until then. I was talking to one of my friends in Biloxi the other day. He said they are worried that the birds down there were either wiped out by Katrina or that they may not return. The experts really don’t know.

Imagine. A spring without the birds.

Or maybe it is because I am doing stuff around the house that one might associate with spring cleaning. I will take delivery on a new mattress and box springs sometime next week. After that, I will replace the hot water heater, disposal and dishwasher. Then, new blinds all around and a new porch swing. By that time, I should have my new car. Ok. So the last item is not exactly synonymous with spring cleaning. But it does represent a certain spring-like catharsis to me for some weird reason that I can’t quite put my finger on.

In a couple of weeks, my buddy from Oxford and his son will be in town for the Polar Bear junior tennis tournament out at Pleasant Valley. Young Currie is ranked 32nd in USTA’s Southern Section which is pretty damn good. I have been watching this kid play since he was 13 or so. Therefore, I always consider junior tennis and the resultant high anxiety among the parents in the stands to be as much a sign of spring as the grass turning green.

So it’s coming. Spring is coming. So is the rest of this post.

How ‘bout them Hogs?- The Arkansas Razorbacks, who have pretty much underachieved for most of this season, finally seem to have gotten things semi-screwed together, having won 3 in a row. It’s about time, boys. The NCAA tournament is staring them in the face and they need to win 20 games to get in.

Yesterday’s thrilling 73-69 victory over the Tennessee Volunteers in Knoxville was one for the ages. They managed to come back from 14 at a place where Tennessee hasn’t lost all year. They did it by clobbering the Vols inside, making free throws and taking care of the basketball down the stretch, skills heretofore unseen on occasion this season. They also were helped by the fact that Tennessee inexplicably stayed in a press for much of the second half despite the fact that Arkansas was blowing through it with ease much as old Volunteer Bernard King used to routinely blow past stop lights while operating his motor vehicle back during his glory years in Knoxville.

This must be vindication of sorts for the much-maligned Stan Heath, whose clean shaven head has been much called for by the Monday morning quarterback types who tend to frequent sports call-in shows. As the old saying goes, everybody thinks they can practice law, be a psychiatrist and coach basketball.

Many Arkansas fans, and the redoubtable Wally Hall of the Democrat-Gazette, have taken upon themselves on the mantle of psychiatrist AND coach, and have criticized Heath for being too laid back and not sufficiently passionate on the sidelines. Which, of course, is shorthand for “Not Tough Enough?” Well guess what? While Bruce Pearl was chewing up the scenery over there on the Tennessee bench, his tenth ranked Vols were gagging away a 14 point lead at home. This turn of events produced the predictable amnesia in Wally who today described Heath with approval as “calm and seemingly sweat-free down the stretch.”

Heath, by all accounts, is a genuinely decent sort in a sport populated by pimps and grifters. There is no word on whether this kind of stuff makes him seriously crazy or not. I think that most coaches have to know that a certain percentage of the fan base consists of blowhards and whack-jobs. And the fact of the matter is that whoever followed the exceedingly volatile Nolan Richardson, who could find personal offense in “Good morning”, would seem positively Christ-like in temperament by comparison. So maybe he lets it roll off of his back.

All I know is that this quiet and calm sort of guy has got these knuckleheads peaking at precisely the right moment. And as long as they keep it up, he can sip hot tea from a cup and saucer on the bench for all I care.

Crazy people- As some of you may recall, last week during the ice storm, some nut appeared unbidden at my door at one in the morning, claiming to have helped me move into my house. This alleged fact, he evidently felt, was sufficient cause for me to allow him entry. I disagreed and summoned the gendarmes.

I live about a half a mile away from the Little Rock Zoo, where 2 nights later the cops arrested a guy that was trying to steal a sheep from the petting zoo. Upon questioning, the arrestee claimed that the poor sheep, who he had stuffed into a garbage can so he could drag it off, was his mother.

I discerned a pattern here and called the good folks at the LRPD in order to volunteer to look at mug shots to see if the Sheep Boy was my guy as well. The nice detective I spoke to told me that it wasn’t necessary as Sheep Boy “has been put far far away” to use her memorable line. Further, she doubted that my visitor and Sheep Boy were one and the same since “the guy we arrested down there was from Ward.”

Huh? I started to ask her just how in the hell the status of being from Ward, Arkansas means that the cops liked you as a suspect in one incident and not in another. But I thought better of it.

But what I should have asked her, just so I would know, is “How many full blown batshit crazy people are wandering around here unimpeded in the People’s Republic of Hillcrest on an average night?” By my calculations, as far as know, there’s still one unaccounted for.

Of course, maybe they got my guy too. Just because they didn’t call me last week doesn’t mean they didn’t nab him or that they weren’t able to figure out something to charge him with unrelated to showing up at my house which, unsettling as it was, ain’t exactly a crime. Guys like him always have a history with “The System” and I am certain that he has a couple of outstanding warrants following him around. Guys like him always do.

Still it makes you wonder.

The sun is streaming through the windows here. Despite the pretty day it is too wet for golf. I am starting to play a little tennis again primarily because tennis agrees with my asthma more than running does. Today would be a nice day to play if I could find someone likewise in the mood.

Currie’s father wants me to help him warm Currie up before his matches because, as he puts it, “I am too old for this shit every day.” Currie is built more like a running back than a tennis player and he hits the ball a ton as they all seem to do nowadays. He will knock the racquet out of your hand if you are lucky. He will perforate you if you are not.

If I can get some matches under my belt between now and then I might take him up on it. That and if I can find a catcher’s mask to wear while hitting with him.

It is “just spring” here in my little corner of the known universe. The tennis players and the birds are returning to Little Rock.

And that’s ok by me.