Here’s a portion of a delightful article by the one and only Clyde Bolton that proves Jay Jacobs knows where the bodies are buried.
From the Friday, December 17, 1982 edition of The Birmingham News:
ORLANDO, Fla — Jay Jacobs is a big, malevolent offensive tackle who wants to be a funeral director.
(There will now be a one-minute delay while you make up your own jokes. You dig?)
OK, is everyone back?
“It’s not repulsive to me at all,” said Jacobs, an Auburn Tiger who hopes to be in on the burial of Boston College in the Tangerine Bowl Saturday night, “and it shouldn’t be to anyone who has any intelligence about it.”
Jacob’s grandfather, the late M. R. (Pat) Sanders, operated a funeral home in LaFayette for years, and Jay was exposed to the business for so long that he took it for granted.
And, kids will be kids.
“Oh, a friend and I played some games occasionally,” Jacobs said, grinning mischievously. “They had a garage where they parked the hearses and kept vaults. We’d move the vaults around and make hideouts. My sister and her friends were younger, and we’d scare them — when we could get them to come in there.”
Jacobs grew up in West Point, Ga. some 30 miles from LaFayette. “I’d go over there in the summer and help my grandfather in the funeral home,” he said. “It was illegal for me to help in embalming, but I’d haul flowers and move caskets.”
“One time when I was 14 he was sick, and I made the 10 or 12 phone calls necessary to arrange a funeral. I called the vault company, the people who were to dig the grace, the people who were to put up the headstone, etc. He was real proud of me, and I was proud of myself.”
Jacobs said he is interested in becoming both an embalmer and a funeral director. “If you were a funeral director and came up short of an embalmer one day, you’d have to go get somebody else if you couldn’t do it,” he explained. “It doesn’t take much time. You serve an apprenticeship and go to embalming school. The young man who is running my grandfather’s funeral home now went to school one year.”
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What a ridiculous and amazing story. Love it.
That was the first Bowl game I ever went to.
Ah, the old Tangerine Bowl. Some guy named “Bo” vs. some other guy named “Flutie.” Wonder whatever became of those two?
First Bowl Game I ever attended as well. I was in the AU Marching Band–had a great time, although the Tangerine Bowl sold the Band’s seats by mistake and they had to put up some makeshift bleachers on the field just behind the end zone. One of my best memories from that trip is the parade at Disney World. We were behind a wooden gate and the gate opens up and the announcer says, “Ladies and gentlemen, Disney World proudly presents the Auburn University Marching Band.” Still get goosebumps thinking about it.
Ah…my first bowl game too! Brings back memories!