For double-instance, in my personal recollections of the “emotional apocalypse” of 1989 (which sadly turned out to be the only substantive post – unless you count Stacy Danley’s soap opera schedule), I referenced a story that I wrote that year (5th grade, age 10) about my Dad and I riding to Auburn in his Lincoln Town Car, blaring “Hangin’ Tough” as we rolled through Toomer’s, and going to the game, a story “that ended with me having powers like Star Man” or something.*

I found the story. Then I lost it.

And then I found it again.

Please to enjoy 1990′s The Never Ending Adventure Vol. 1, without commentary, save for my promise that the unfortunate placement of the lightning bolt / laser beam in the final illustration is completely devoid of sexual innuendo. Also, it was actually my fourth Newberry Honor Book (I lost count). And here’s the Reggie Slack to Alexander Wright pass if you want to see it. And, yes, it does kind of look like “TWER” if you cock your eyes.

[Click to enlarge]

*I had a mean deus ex machina streak in those days thanks to an inability to cope with deadlines… which, right, hasn’t exactly disappeared.

Hangin' tough.

I was down here. Not at the game, but Grandmama’s, Lee Drive. I’d been to ’87 and ’88. In ’88, Mom got some tickets from one of her friends, a bigwig at CBS. Someone offered her $300 a piece. She probably would have sold them had they called back.

Point is, no way a 5th grader was going to get into ’89.

Dad and I drove down from Birmingham the night before. I journal’ed about it that day in school and later included it in a story I wrote that ended with me having powers like Star Man.

I was 10. I knew the significance: first time in Auburn. Huge, huge. It took a little to understand the significance of the significance. But you felt it.

We came 65 / 85. We rolled into downtown around 7 at night. There’s the clock tower glow, the huge hair, the jackets… it was bangin’. I sat outside on the window of the Lincoln Town Car, we were going so slow, blaring The New Kids on the Block’s “Hangin’ Tough.”

“We ain’t gonna give anybody any SLACK!” – Slack. Like Reggie Slack.

God, it was awesome…

Dad and Russ, my uncle, got the tickets. There is a picture of us I just found, right before they left: Russ, Cousins Josh (making this awesome face) and Jenny, Dad and me. I’m decked out in face paint, Braveheart-style, and one of the two Auburn hats that I would occasionally sleep and even shower in, and wearing Auburn boxer shorts outside of my sweatpants, with a paper shaker, and we’ve got some sort of giant “Beat Bama” sign on a picket — all to watch it on T.V.!  The way Dad looks in that picture is the way he still looks to me, the way he will always look to me.

Dad and Russ take off. Hours go by.

It came on. It. It.

I remember being down at half time, going outside, my soul gasping, throwing the football, throwing it, throwing it, throwing it, touchdown, touchdown… it was like, my body was praying. Dye hard. Slack attack. Slack, Wright, Slack, Wright, Slack, Wasden. Believe! No doubt! Believe! I was trying to become one with the air and the trees and the grass and sound and light and put myself there, the spiritual Flubber gas for an Auburn miracle.

“… and if you try to keep us down we’re gonna come right back.”

We come back. Of course we come back. We hold on. Of course we hold on. Slack, Danley, Joseph, Wasden, Riggins, Ogletree, all of them.

There’s something like a minute left. We’re going to win. Grandaddy gets up from the recliner. I remember watching him walk down the hall.

He comes back with an arm full of toilet paper and a smile on his face, like he’s watching us at Christmas. “Let’s go.”

We hit Toomer’s. It’s a ball pit. It’s Disney World. Emotional apocalypse.

Where are Dad and Russ? War Eagle! We’ve got to find them! War Eagle! Haaaa!! Oh God… War Eagle!

No one else remembers this, but I swear… I heard, “War Eagle! Hey, War Eagle!’, and there are Dad and Russ up on a light pole, on Magnolia, right at the corner, and that’s how we found them.

God cares about football.

…

Keep Reading:

* Playboy in Auburn, 1989
* Auburn’s Heisman-posing gymnast says getting Bama fans to boo was the whole idea
* Pat Dye on Faulker, Bo Jackson’s sex life, David and Goliath and other topics
* Staff of luxury NYC hotel shouts ‘War Eagle’ to guests on cue
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* Mates of State’s Jason Hammel talks football
* Pat Dye responds to ‘loudmouth’ allegations from 1959
* G.I. Joe’s Auburn’s connection
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* Actor named Auburn can’t get gig going by his first name
* How Fraternities Work
* That time Green Day played an Auburn house show
* Fantastic photos of Bjork inside Jordan-Hare Stadium
* Auburn buses still driving around Phoenix
* The Ten Best Auburn Games That Never Happened

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Aubie and, so the 1991 Glom caption says, Dr. Dre — the Yo! MTV Raps version — on stage at the Student ACT, Nov. 16, 1990.

People talk of the orange’n'blue haze, the claustrophobic Tiger Walk, the never-before-or-since ‘lectricity.

But when trying to gauge just how big Alabama’s first trip to Jordan-Hare was, consider the 3 minutes and 33 seconds of “Our House,” track 13 from 1989′s all-but-extinct “Auburn Blue” album: the first time Auburn Spirit was ever set to rap.*

OUR HOUSE

War, War Eagle…

Yeah, buddy

(x3)

Auburn Tigers, they’re never known to fail you

So let me tell you

They’re bringing hell to

Bama, like it ain’t no thing

With the run and pass, the toss and swing

Ima be the first man to buy a ticket

Front row at the show before they even kick it off,

I’ll be there at Jordan-Hare to see Auburn take victory

And make history

So they can hold control

Of the SEC as champs of the Sugar Bowl

And beat Bama to a bone

So “Roll Tide” on your way back home

Cause’…

You’re in our house

Yo, you’re in our house

(x2)

You’re in our house, the right location,

Perfect place for the confrontation

For you to witness an act of fitness

And if you get this you must admit it’s

About time for the first beginning

Place your bets cause you know who’s winning

But if not visualize a rush down

To the Jordan-Hare while the touchdown

Is being scored by the Auburn Tigers

On the real tip, who else could supply ya’

With enough performance to twice pack the stadium

Bama’s wack – what do I say to’em?

You’re in our house

War Eagle

You’re in our house

War eagle, War War Ea—War War Eagle..

You’re now in my house and you must abide

Rule #1: No Crimson Tide

So as you see there’s a conflict

So we gon’ treat Bama like a convict

Lock’em up in a cage and throw way the key

In front of fans so they all can see

Orange and blue is the color champions

War Eagle! Cause we’re gonna trample’em

And let’em know who rules

So here’s a lesson for messin’ with the AU school

And for us to lose s irrelevant

Tell me who would run from an elephant?

You’re in our house.

War War Eagle.

You’re in our house

War War Eagle (Our House)

The point to get across in the matter:

Dreams will shatter when they gather and wouldn’t you rather

Stay home and pray on hopes for next year

Cause in the crowd, you know the next year

Will be for Auburn to add the hype

As for the trophy, you know the black stripes

Carry it high with the pride of warriors

(Don’t you feel bad?)

Of course I’m sorry the team had to travel and then get beaten

Don’t come with weakness and claim we’re cheatin’

You want to prove it? Prepare to joust.

This is Auburn, boy…

You’re in our house.

Yo, you’re in our house

(x2)

Our house, our house… boy

Our house, our house, boy boy boy boy boy…

Yo, our house, our house, yo

Yo, our house, our house, yo, yo

Yo J-Man, we’re puttin’ Bammer in the slammer with the gramma, man…

Yo word up, Joe-Len (?), Bama caught the hysterics from my lyrics, home boy…

You’re in our house

You’re in our house

You’re in our house.

*or at least set to rap and recorded and released. Who recorded it? I don’t know— some dudes going by J-Man and Joe-Len (?). I can’t find the case to look for proper credits.

Related: Listen to the 1970 Bear Bryant diss ditty “Birmingham Bear Chase.”

…

Keep Reading:

* LSU girls love Auburn men, says HBO’s “Treme”
* Auburn fan selling Toomer’s Corner toilet paper for Tuscaloosa relief
* Toomer’s Oaks sapling to be planted on Capitol lawn
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* How Bama remembers “Punt, Bama, Punt”
* Charles Barkley avoiding the Noid, 1981
* Nikki Cox, Auburn fan

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The Daily Believer is your daily-ish dose of whAUtever, a dose that grows by the second, minute, hour, who knows. Maybe there’s something going on tonight at the Gnu’s Room. Maybe there’s a volleyball game. Maybe there’s some update to The War Eagle Reader you need to know about. Maybe last night’s episode of House referenced Bo. Maybe Pat Dye’s Pants have no reserve on eBay. In other words, we’re live-blogging Auburn – town, gown, idea – and we need your help. Are you putting on an event? A show? Let us know. Know about one? Let us know. Spot Chizik at Byrons? Let us know. Did you see that episode of House? Let us know.

Write to mail@thewareaglreader.com.

Monday, November 23, 2009 [new posts at the top]

Check here – the same post. Check AUften.

**** Current forecast for Friday: Sunny and cold, high of 49. – [JDH - 10:50 a.m.]

*** Oh… yes. Oh… this makes me so very happy…

From Bitter’s blog:

Chizik pulled out some old footage to try to get the team pumped for the game. “He came in our team meeting and showed us some film, a clip from 1989, something like that, the first time Alabama came and played,” running back Ben Tate said. “He showed clips from that. It was just nice to see that with them winning and everything like that. I think Alabama was undefeated and No. 1 team in the country that year and something like that. Just seeing that whole emotion and seeing coach (Pat) Dye giving that speech after they won, it was pretty exciting.“

– [JDH - 8:o3 a.m.]

*** So there’s this thing I just wrote about finding a profile (from the Nov. 30, 1989 edition of The Birmingham News, part of the paper’s buildup to that year’s historic Iron Bowl) on the girl actually named WarEagle, the girl I thought about after a random Twitter search last May led me to a girl who had pretended to be named “War Eagle.”

Alabama fans brag on their houndstoothed army of Bryant namesakes, but the Bear was, technically a person. As I wrote then, with the feminized semi-exception of Tyde (brother of named-after-him-befor-he-had-even-coached-a-game Saban) Witt, I thought Tiger and WarEagle White’s parents were in a league of child-naming-devotion all their own.

Because one Bama dad wanted free tickets, I may have been wrong.

From the December 1, 1989 (yes, very next day – note shirt: it doesn’t matter where they play) edition of The Birmingham News:

Dad "was hoping he'd get free (football) tickets."

For more content celebrating the 20th anniversary of Bama’s first visit to the Plains, visit The War Eagle Reader’s 20 Years collection.

– [JDH - 7:45 a.m.]

]]> http://www.thewareaglereader.com/2009/11/the-daily-believer-11-23-09/feed/ 7 http://www.thewareaglereader.com/2009/11/the-legend-of-wareagle-and-tiger/ http://www.thewareaglereader.com/2009/11/the-legend-of-wareagle-and-tiger/#comments Sat, 21 Nov 2009 20:43:00 +0000 Jeremy Henderson http://www.thewareaglereader.com/?p=6517

It's true. And it's beautiful. And, tragically, WarEagle went to Georgia. Anyone know about Tiger?

Back in May, I ended a quick little something I wrote on Sara Burson – an Auburn alumna who tinkered with her George Washington University commencement name card in order to graduate (Masters in Tourism Administration) as “Sara War Eagle Burson” – by contemplating Vestavia’s legendary White sisters, my former classmates.

At the time, the only evidence I had to back up my claim that there existed in the world a beautiful girl actually named WarEagle, and another beautiful girl named Tiger, and that they were sisters, was a comment on a message board.

Thanks to the glut of feature section fan profiles leading up to the ’89 Iron Bowl, I now have a lot more.

From the Nov. 30, 1989 edition of The Birmingham News:

For more content celebrating the 20th anniversary of Bama’s first visit to the Plains, visit The War Eagle Reader’s 20 Years collection.

…

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* Pat Dye builds a fence in Jordan-Hare, 1991
* Toomer’s Corner after Punt, Bama, Punt
* Bo and Me
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* TWER interviews Stephen Enloe, the Emotional Agronomist
* Bama police keep vigil over Bear Bryant statue
* De La Soul’s DJ Maseo says he’d lend talent to pregame if ‘conducive’
* Barrett Trotter knows when to hold’em
* Bear Bryant’s lost year at Auburn
* The Ron Swanson Pyramid of Auburn
* The Auburn plaque in 1984′s Tank
* War Drobe Eagle: The Auburn shirt in Cannonball Run

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Legion Field, 1 p.m. Dec. 2, 1989.

I wasn’t at the game Auburn people remember as “The First Time Ever.” I was an 11-year-old sitting in front of a television in Calera, Ala. But I remember how excited Auburn people were many months earlier when Steve Sloan and Bill Curry did the honorable thing and agreed to come to Jordan-Hare Stadium. I wasn’t old enough to have lived the history that made it so special. Rather, I looked on a tad bewildered, with a child’s sense of fair play: Auburn should play its home games wherever it pleases, no fuss. By kickoff, I was more stoked about the SEC title on the line with 8-2 Auburn playing 10-0 Alabama than about the location. Since then, I’ve had a little more seasoning in the Auburn family, and I retroactively retort: “Who the hell is Alabama to dictate where Auburn plays its home games?” They can’t. Or at least they couldn’t any more. That is the significance of December 2, 1989.

I’ve never cared much to debate whether Legion Field was really a split-ticket venue. I can’t compare the atmosphere to the campus games, either, because the only Tide-Tiger matchup I attended at Legion Field was the last: a less-than-memorable Alabama home game (and victory) in 1998. It’s a subjective comparison anyway. Birmingham has no Toomer’s Corner, Denny Chimes or tailgates on the quad; and the bands – both of them outstanding – warmed up in the parking lot rather than on campus lawns beneath generations-old oaks. Yet the campuses cannot boast shotgun houses selling mouthwatering barbecue plates; and neither Jordan-Hare nor Bryant-Denny evokes memories of Punt, Bama, Punt or Kenny Stabler’s run through the mud, the Van Tiffin kick or the Lawyer Tillman reverse.

What I do know: Legion Field was always more of a home to the University of Alabama than it ever was to Auburn University, even in a time when the Tigers regularly wore blue home jerseys at what was then the state’s largest stadium. This reality wasn’t even debatable by the peak of Pat Dye’s tenure. Jordan-Hare had grown to a capacity of 85,214 – more than Legion Field – and Auburn had long since stopped hosting Tennessee or anyone else in the Magic City. Alabama, meanwhile, still played several games annually on the west side, just paces from a Paul Bryant monument that remains today along Graymont Avenue. The Crimson Tide kept playing Auburn and Tennessee in Birmingham several years after the Tigers took their half of the rivalry to Lee County.

Coach Dye went over the top comparing the 1989 game to the Berlin Wall’s collapse just weeks before. But the sentiment was – and is – there. Auburn is the consummate underdog in the rivalry. More Red Sox-Yankees (pre-2004 World Series) or Dewey vs. Truman than David-and-Goliath. Big picture underdogs, you might say, occupying the driver’s seat at various points but never shedding the “little guy” status, always cognizant of the orange-and-blue chip on your shoulder, even in victory.

We’re reminded of it in many ways, both painful and comical. When media parrot Alabama’s claim to 12 national titles, with no context about the subjectivity, creativity and Cracker Jacks boxes involved. The “cow college” reference. The schoolchildren who, in their innocence (or perhaps their parents’ ignorance), reveal on “Alabama-Auburn Day” that they don’t even know Auburn is also located in their home state. The haughty assurances in 2004 that an undefeated “Alabama would never be left out” of a national championship game – no matter that USC and Oklahoma, that season’s wire-to-wire Nos. 1 and 2, sit alongside the Tide in the top tier of college football’s perception-driven pecking order. When Alabama faithful refer to “the university” or, if they’re from anywhere near Evergreen, “thuh YOO-nuh-VUH-suh-tee,” as if there is no other. When the Mobile Press-Register splashes anything named Nick or Julio on its front page several days a week because, the editor says, it sells papers. When the newspapers print ad nauseum that Alabama’s recruiting classes are “ranked No. 1,” again morphing a defensible but debatable Crimson claim into objective, indisputable fact. (Kudos to the few reporters, most of them Auburn beat writers, who attribute recruiting rankings while noting variation among the many sources.)

Yet those burdens and annoyances aside, there’s something missing from the list. Wearing the home blue at Legion Field? Making the trip up U.S. 280 every year to play your arch-rival? Never again. In fact, Legion Field isn’t in the equation at all. Barely a decade passed after Auburn’s move before the mercantile class in Tuscaloosa – aided by the city of Birmingham’s neglect of its venerable stadium – convinced the UA administration that an expanded Bryant-Denny Stadium was the proper venue for all Alabama home games. The Tide in 2000 made the series a true home-and-home.

A University of Alabama System trustee – also a mover in state politics – told me once that he refused to come to the game when it’s played in Auburn. He is “a purist,” you see. The game belongs in the “Football Capitol of the South,” that moniker that once graced the facing of the Legion Field upper deck, a seating section that no longer stands at all. He said Auburn “had to take the game to campus” to sell more season tickets in that gargantuan stadium. Auburn couldn’t survive any other way, he said.

My Tuscaloosa friend and I found common ground when he told me he could no longer call the game “The Iron Bowl.” I’m not sure what he calls it. I refer to “the Alabama game,” just as I talk of “the Georgia game” or “the LSU game.” Now, of course it’s not just another game when there’s Crimson on the other sideline and the Million Dollar Band plays in the background. The point is that they come to our house every two years, with the next occasion just days away, and there’s no need to dress it up in garb from a bygone era whose end Auburn people marked almost as emancipation.

Smart money says the 2009 Tigers will not derail an undefeated Alabama team as Reggie, Quentin and the gang did 20 years ago. There’s no shared SEC crown if somehow they do. But that’s not the only measure of our little get-together on Nov. 27. Even if Alabama is victorious, they will have won a game played on our terms, on our turf. They’ll have gotten on their buses, in their cars and pointed them toward Auburn. They will shop from Auburn merchants, eat in Auburn restaurants and tailgate in the shadows of Auburn edifices. They will hear the bells of Samford tower. And they will watch War Eagle VII take flight. More importantly, we will do the same for a game against them.

Their power brokers, their deepest pockets won’t be in skyboxes or club seats unless at our invitation. They’ll be tucked instead in the northeast end zone or the upper reaches of those additions we were so “desperate” to fill, the visitors section of a stadium named for Ralph Jordan and Cliff Hare, our standard bearers, names from our history books. No monument to their rightfully revered coach. Nary a seat controlled by the Birmingham Parks & Recreation Board, whose sizable block never counted as part of the alleged split. No bus ride home for our players when it’s done. And, if he’s stayed true to his defiant word, I know a former Alabama trustee who won’t be there at all. Of course, if he really wants to display his “purist” bona fides, he can’t attend the game at their place either. Ever.

It’ll happen all for the 10^th time, perhaps still new enough to feel strange to them, plenty established to be right, even customary for us. We’ve gone from “the way it should be” to “the way it is.” That’s the significance of December 2, 1989. Call it “the Auburn game.” Call it “the Alabama game.” Call it “The Iron Bowl” if you must. I call it equality. I call it respect. When I see the University of Alabama on Pat Dye Field, I call it victory. It won’t be long, probably sooner than most Crimson loyalists can contemplate, before the scoreboard will again read the same way.

Bill Barrow graduated from Auburn University in 2000 with a bachelor’s degree in journalism. He resides in New Orleans, where he writes for The Times-Picayune.

Photo by Mike Goodson, from the book A Tiger Walk to Victory.

For more content celebrating the 20th anniversary of Bama’s first visit to the Plains, visit The War Eagle Reader’s 20 Years collection.

Photo by Kent Williams, from the book Tiger Walk to Victory.

Do you have any photos from the day Bama first came to Auburn? Any stories?

Send them to us at photos@thewareaglereader.com.

Behold:

…

…

1 Corinthians 1:20.

…

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* Erotic Auburn Beer Stein
* Pat Dye buying sunglasses
* Muhammad Al on the Haley Center concourse
* Playboy in Auburn, 1989
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* 78 never-before-seen photos of the Kopper Kettle explosion of 1978
* Rare candids of Pat Sullivan at the 1971 Heisman banquet
* G.I. Joe’s Auburn’s connection

Like us on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter.

…

Keep Reading:

* Lutzenkirchen vs. The Pounder
* Ad for a Wet T-shirt Contest at Nichol’s Alley
* Pat Dye buying sunglasses
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* 78 never-before-seen photos of the Kopper Kettle explosion of 1978
* Rare candids of Pat Sullivan at the 1971 Heisman banquet
* G.I. Joe’s Auburn’s connection
* The Great Bo Jackson A-Day Race of 1984
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* Best reaction to being named Miss Homecoming ever
* “Buck Fama” graffiti seen in Auburn after “Punt Bama Punt”

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