Sunday Salon: Is there a sports fan in the family?

I can't say I come from a long line of sports fans, but, inspired by Sunday's Super Bowl LX broadcast, I'm going to talk about sports and my family for this week's Sunday Salon.  I don't know whether my father followed any sports, because he died about two weeks after my seventh birthday.  

I have a very fragmentary memory of attending a game in the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California, with my mother and father and my uncle, dad's brother, and his wife.  What I remember most is that I really did not see much of the game, because it was apparently exciting enough that people kept standing up, and what I saw most was their backsides!  I was five or six, and I didn't know a thing about football.

My mother was a football fan, and she shared that enthusiasm with our next door neighbor on London Road, Mrs. Baker, on the south side of Jacksonville, Florida.  They would gather either at our house or our neighbor's house and watch the games on Sunday.  

My brother was on his high school football team and track team, but other than that, I don't know that he particularly followed any sports.  I don't much remember him at home watching games.  In our neighborhood, we had our own sports.  We were a motley crew playing basketball in a neighbor's driveway, with participants ranging in age from six to nineteen, and in stature from three or four feet to over six feet.  I also played baseball with other friends, usually a small game in the street, or "flyers 'n' grounders" with a friend.

In summer in the 1950s, I would go over to my grandmother's house, in the next block from our house, and we would watch baseball.  I latched onto the Brooklyn Dodgers -- yes, they were still in Brooklyn at the time -- as my team, and they have been ever since.  

When I was in high school, I would often attend games, and enjoyed watching my friends on the team play, and also enjoyed the social contact at the games.  I was a member of the "intellectual elite" of the school, and a bunch of us would gather at the games and make up pseudo-erudite cheers:  "Progress!  Progress!  Ambulate over the turf!"  And such as that.  We enjoyed the word play; other students looked at us like we were weird.  Which we were.

Football at my college in the 1960s was a very big deal.  Florida State University had a great team and a great coach, Bobby Bowden.  My boyfriend (who became my husband in 1971) and I attended many FSU home games.  At one game, it rained and rained.  Despite having on our London Fog raincoats, we were eventually drenched to the skin! 

I married a sports fan.  He enjoys watching football, baseball, tennis, the Olympics, and auto racing.  I have shared that enjoyment with him.  We used to like watching golf, but since the PGA made some decisions we consider questionable, we have dropped golf from our watchlists.  One day, for his birthday, I bought tickets to a rugby game at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville, where I was a student at the time, having gone back to college at the age of 60.  The game was an international contest, the United States team v. Jamaica.  There were several UNF graduates on the U.S. team.  We got a good dose of just how weird rugby is!

My husband also enjoys basketball.  I can't stand it.  It's silly.  

For a time, when our city, Jacksonville, Florida, finally was awarded an NFL franchise in the form of the Jacksonville Jaguars, we had season tickets.  We were there at the founding in 1995 and for about five years afterward.  We went to an organizational meeting of the Jaguars Boosters, where a Green Bay fan came and spoke to us:  "You're gonna get crazy!"  He was right.  But my arthritis started presenting mobility problems, and we stopped going to the games.

 We have since enjoyed watching many games on television.  This football season, we watched the playoffs intently, as the Jaguars became the Division Champions (AFC South), but were eliminated when they lost to the Buffalo Bills.  The team had made amazing progress from 2024's season to 2025's with coach Liam Coen.  We're anticipating even more progress for 2026's football season.

 I have not found any professional sports team members among my family, nor even any amateur players.  Nor have I found any sports-team members among my family members who attended college, except for my father, who played Lacrosse for the Naval Academy.  

We enjoy being spectators, and at times making a family occasion out of the viewing.  For this year's Super Bowl, we had our older daughter and her husband over.  We had munchies -- cold cuts and cheese, veggies and dip, chips and dip, and pie and mini-cupcakes.  The game itself was not the most exciting Super Bowl ever.  All the excitement came in the second half, when the New England Patriots finally got on the scoreboard, but the Seattle Seahawks won, 29-13.  One thing that astonished me is how young the Patriots quarterback is -- 22.  Out there on that field, he looks like not much more than a child!  Of course, I'm 78, so they all look young to me!

#SundaySalon 

 

 

Sunday Salon: Everybody Talks About the Weather

Time for Sunday Salon, hosted by Readerbuzz.   

The weather has been in the news this week, for sure!  I have friends all over the area hit by the storm, and am waiting to find that they are all okay.  Here in Florida, we dodged that nasty storm.  It does get cold here in northeast Florida, and I've seen snow several times in the 70 years I've lived here.  

We had an ice storm when I was in high school, in 1962.  My best friend's family were all from New York, so it was not so much a surprise when she called me and said her mom was going to take us bowling.  Yes, there was a bowling alley open, though there weren't many people there.  We had a great time.  The results of the storm were pretty spectacular, with ice hanging from tree branches in crystalline beauty.

 In 1979 or thereabouts, we had a snowfall that left our daughters' swing set sprinkled with sparkling white.  In 1956 we had one in which we made a snowball.  Mom put it in the freezer, where it turned into an iceball.  

In 1989, we had another very cold experience, where my car, a Plymouth station wagon, ended up encased in ice!  Our grass was also sheathed in ice, and when our poor dog had to go out, he would take a step, stop, and pick up a paw and inspect it to see if he'd been stabbed by an icy blade of grass.  Poor Diamond.  He had never experienced anything like that.

Tonight it's getting down to 22 here in northeast Florida.  The faucets are dripping, a light bulb is switched on under the cover of our well pump, so we still have running water.  

It's a good night to curl up with a blanket and the cat, a cup of tea, and a book.

 

2026 Nonficiton Reader Challenge: You Went to Emergency for WHAT?

Number two among my posts in the  the 2026 Nonfiction Reader Challenge.  My category is that of a Nonfiction Grazer, the description of which is: "Read & review any nonfiction book. Set your own goal, or none at all, just share the nonfiction you read through the year." This best fits my nonconformist style. 

This next choice was You Went to Emergency for WHAT?: Bizarre, Bloody and Baffling True Stories from the Hospital ED, by Tim Booth, an Australian paramedic.  His tales of the oddball, the weird, and the unfortunately too mundane calls he and his colleagues receive rang all too familiar with me.  I spent time as a registered nurse, working in the emergency department of a large-city teaching hospital.  You might be examining a hangnail one minute and, right after that, you could be going into an exam room to take blood from a very large, muscular crime suspect.  It didn't take long for me to figure out that the ER was not the place for me.  I was much happier as a plain old medical-surgical floor nurse.  I also enjoyed my rotations in OB-GYN.  When the author comments on the stress of being in any part of emergency medicine, I am in total empathy with him.  Been there, done that, had a punching bag in my garage so I could unload my stress before being with my family.  It was highly therapeutic!

Author Booth uses two people in the emergency department he served as carriers of his stories.  One, a female doctor, has to deal with the unfortunate lack of trust many patients have, based not always on the skill, technique, personality, bedside manner -- or gender -- of the doctor, but rather in their own non-compliance with their doctors' instructions for medication, exercise, and/or diet once they return home.  This all to often brings the patients back to the ER, many times in worse shape than in their original visit.  The other cast member in these stories is a rather cynical technician who makes acerbic observations on medicine as it is practiced, on the particular circumstances of the emergency department, and on the patients whose behavior is not conducive to good relations.  

The description of some cases may be too much for some readers.  On the front lines as first responders, paramedics come into contact with some truly heartbreaking and often unpleasant incidents.  Emergency rooms are often places of desperation, suffering, and sadness.  I can heartily recommend this book to readers who are in or who have been in the medical profession, especially those with emergency-room experience.  Reader discretion is advised.