Auburn is holding a contest for the best memory of rolling the Toomer’s Oaks.
Pat Dye probably won’t win.
“I never have been but to one Toomer’s Corner rolling and that was when when we beat Alabama in ’82,” Dye says. “I didn’t get there until about 11:30 p.m. and people were still having a good time.”
Did he toss a roll?
“No, I just rode through it. They were having a big time.”
Despite his lack of participation in Toomer’s celebrations, Dye has definite ideas about what should happen to the oaks. Cutting them down isn’t one of them.
“If it was left up to me… I would find a place on campus for those oaks to be moved and preserved,” he wrote in the Dye-Gest earlier this month. “I would build a pavilion and display them there. It wouldn’t have to be a real big building, just large enough to cover the two oaks and keep them out of the weather.”
He’s also against turning them into souvenirs.
“I hate the idea of taking the wood and cutting it up and making trinkets out of it and stuff. That doesn’t appeal to me at all, but preserving them forever does.”
Related: Pat Dye on the neonatal recruitment of Prince William: ‘He looks like a split end to me.’
THE WAR EAGLE READER NEEDS YOUR HELP.
…
Keep Reading:
* Rare candids of Pat Sullivan at the 1971 Heisman banquet
* That time Green Day played an Auburn house show
* The G.I. Joe from Auburn
* I Survived the Kopper Kettle Explosion and all I got was this T-shirt
* Auburn football worth millions more than Bama football, says Wall Street Journal
Like us on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter. Want to advertise?
He says that, but if he were in charge we’d find the oaks at the bottom of lake martin 30 years later and he’d claim to have no idea how it happened.