Following UVA’s stunning win over Purdue last Saturday and a subsequent invite to this week’s Final Four, I enjoyed reading this series of emails from some of my my friends, and UVA Basketball fans that go WAY back. Here’s some of the the chatter.
From Sherman Shifflett:
Even if you are not a UVA -Purdue game Saturday night, you have to admit it was pretty exciting. The Purdue fans, and almost everyone else, felt the game was over, but the Cavs did not. Three points down, 16 seconds to go? Wow!
As a Charlottesville native I remember watching the Cavaliers play in old Memorial Gym (Mem Gym) as a small kid.
Go Hoos !
Replied Allen Carver:
Well spoken. In the late 1950’s – 1960’s I rarely missed a UVA home basketball game. Back then the game was preceded by a “freshman” game, so we got there early and sat on a front row seat so close that our feet were on the out-of-bounds line. While UVA did not enjoy a great won/loss record
back then, each season they usually upset one high ranked team – Duke, North Carolina or NC State.
Later, things got so rough at Memorial Gym that the officials got tired off pulling drunk students out of the lake immediately next to the gym, so they drained the lake and filled it with dirt.
My cousin, Junior, went to Coach Holland’s house to buy a van that the coach purchased so Ralph Sampson could have a ride. When Coach Holland’s dog came running out the Coach hollered, “Get back in the house, Dean.” The dog was named Dean after North Carolina’s coach Dean Smith.
Those were not the good old days. Today is the best of days. Go Wahoos!
Connie Crenshaw then piped in:
I can remember those Memorial Gym days. Bill Leatherman and I would get in for a quarter or fifty cents and sit upstairs on the track. I remember it was “Bill Miller to Buzzy Wilkerson and shoot”. Buzzy averaged 33 points one year. His two hand on the head set shot was different, but it worked. They didn’t know what a jump shot was. Some of us would go there and shoot baskets. Some good memories in that gym. From there to the house Ralph built and now the house Bennett built.
That was a great game last night. One player almost beat us. If I heard right, no one else on the Purdue team scored more than seven points.
Go Hoos!
(Not So) Neat Stuff
A few weeks back I wrote about Farmland Spiral Ham Pieces and Slices in my Neat Stuff column. I’d like a mulligan on that one. It’s not such neat stuff after all.
Last week I went to Wal-Mart specifically to buy a package of Spiral Ham Pieces and Slices. The first pack I bought – basically trimmings from a delicious spiral ham – had lots of nice cuts of meat and very little waste. The second pack had mostly fat, gristle and skin. Don’t waste your money.
I don’t know how two packages of the same stuff could be so different. Maybe one of the meat-cutters at Farmland was having a bad hair day and said, “I’ll teach management about that puny raise. Wait till the dumb ass who buys this opens it. Har, har, har!”
Well. The meat-cutter got his wish. This dumb ass will never buy that product again. You shouldn’t, either. Too bad. That first pack sure was a bargain.