Susan Sovereign Writes About Football

Down in Southeastern Illinois is a paper published by former State Representative and barrister Roscoe Cunningham called The Sumner Press.

It’s not a huge paper by circulation figures—1,715, according to the last annual filing with the Post Office—but this Lawrence County weekly has me as a subscriber.

There are two reasons: owner Cunningham’s “Roscoe”s Comments” and a column by Susan Sovereign.

During the first year of McHenry County Blog, for a time, I tried to put up one of Sovereign’s column’s every Saturday. Her writing reminds me of Erma Brombeck.

The typical column always brings smiles and often-uproarious laughter.

Unfortunately, I have to copy the columns, which takes a fair amount of time. Hardly ever can I get the images to look good.

And, if you want to read them, you have to click on them four times. Both the right and the left columns start on one image and end on the other.

Today Sovereign writes about football. Her son Donnie is on the high school team and her daughter Anna wants to be a junior cheerleader—the one who stands at the top of the pyramid.

She writes about what the referees do:

“Although it seemed almost unbelievable, these mighty warriors would cease their progress whenever one of the referees played ‘Drop the Hanky” and would listen to why said official had dropped his hanky. Then two people standing alongside the field with a pole that had large numbers at the top moved one way or the other down the field while changing the numbers on the pole. And they say women aren’t logical!…

“Sam and Donne both tried to explain the game in detail to me. Sam confided that he was please with the progress I was making on understanding what was happening until I asked him what would happen if one of the referees were to sneeze and take his hanky out to wipe his nose. After that question, which Same refused to answer, he and Donnie both ceased any additional explanation.”

Sovereign writes about the length of the game:

“We sat thru four quarters of play that were supposed to be ¼ hour long. One would therefore think that the full game would only last about one hour, or perhaps an hour and a half at the most. Because the one referee constantly wanted to play ‘Drop the Handkerchief,’ this game lasted about 3 hours!…

“If I were to invent a game similar to football, I would have the halftime last for about an hour and the football game itself last only about 15 minutes instead of the other way around. And if someone else wanted to play ‘Drop the Handkerchief,’ I’d ask him or her to do it sometime when it wouldn’t interfere with the game.”

There’s a lot more. Trust me.


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