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Buckeye Memories
I saw my first game in the shoe in 1953. I managed to see at least one game a year until 1967, the year I entered the army. I was stationed at Ft. Eustis, VA for a ten week officers basic course. There was no way I was going to be at the stadium, a sad fact to contemplate after several years of student seats at every home game. The opening game that year was against Arizona and the Bucks were ranked #1 in many pre-season polls... this after some pretty disastrous seasons in 65 and 66... Saturday was approaching and I was as anxious as I am this year, seeing myself sitting in the Rose Bowl and watching the Buckeyes play on January 1.
The army had other plans. Our TAC officer ran us twice as far as usual that morning, then we stood for a barracks inspection, then changed from khakis into fatigues and ran through close order drill. Finally the sonuvabitch made us race, low crawl, across fifty meters of orange sand and gravel, six at a time. First and second place were released, everyone else had to race again until they finished first or second, down to the final two unfortunate, un-athletic guys. It got pretty brutal, the TAC, Lieutenant Jon Swann, really poured out a ton of insulting language on the last few guys. I managed to get out on the first try, but we had to stand around and wait for Swann to humiliate everyone else. Finally we were formed back into ranks, marched back to our barracks and released. I had discovered that there were five other buckeyes in the class of 106. We found each other right after our release; dirty, sweaty, tired, we were all excited, realizing that kickoff was in less than an hour and one of the guys yelled, "Hey, let's do Script Ohio!" Right there, in front of the barracks, we formed up single file, all singing "Le Regiment" and following this guy as he spelled out O H I O on the parade grounds.
If I hadn't loved the school, the band, the football team and the traditions before, I certainly did at that moment.
We finished up, gave out some huge OH - IO cheers, and then laughed. We showered up, headed for the O Club for beer and burgers and watched some crappy east coast game and waited for news from Columbus.
Alas, Arizona beat the Bucks as Woody kept everything under wraps, waiting for the Big 10 season to even think about passing the ball.
Last edited by cincibuck : 08-30-2005 at 01:03 PM.
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