BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE

THE FOUR HORSEMAN OF NOTRE DAME

 The Four Horsemen of Notre Dame comprised a group 
of American football players at the University 
of Notre Dame under coach Knute Rockne. They were the backfield of Notre Dame's 1924 football team. 
The players that made up this group were Harry Stuhldreher, Don Miller, Jim Crowley, and Elmer 
Layden.[1]
  In 1924, a nickname coined by sportswriter 
Grantland Rice and the actions of a student 
publicity aide transformed the Notre Dame 
backfield of Stuhldreher, Crowley, Miller, and 
Layden into one of the most noted groups of 
collegiate athletes in football history, 
the Four Horsemen of Notre Dame.[

    from Wikipedia
 
 
 FOOTBALL
  
  Blocking is  something you have to make 
yourself do. Catching is natural; but it 
isn’t natural for a civilized man to run 
around hitting people. Besides, it hurts.
  
    Lance Alworth
  
  
If a man watches three football games 
in a row, he should be declared 
legally dead.
  
       Emma Bomback
 
  
Football is not a contact sport. It’s 
a collision sport. Dancing is a 
good example of a contact sport.
  
                      Duffy Daugherty
  
  
 Football –a sport that bears the same relation 
to education that bullfighting does to 
agriculture.
  
    Elbert Hubbard
  
  
  
 I love to hit people, and I admit it – blockers
 as well as ball carriers. Defensive football 
players are innate hitters. It’s a joy to me. 
I tell people it’s how I work off my daily 
hostilities. During the week I’m as gentle as 
anybody. Sunday is my time to hit.
  
 Dave Robinson. Green Bay Packers’ player/ (1969)
  
 Asking about the secret to the (ALABAMA’S) 
Tide’s success is like asking an elephant 
for his secret of squashing bugs. They have 
the best coach and the players. There is no 
second sentence.
  
 Michael Rosenberg. Sports Illustrated 
(October 20,2017)
  
  
  He (BUNNY LARKIN)  would line up all the 
candidates for the Carlisle football team, 
show them a football, and in a few words he 
would explain to them how the game was to be 
played. Said Bully Larkin: “When  white man 
has ball get him. When Indian has the ball, 
knock down white man.”
  
 Bill Stern. Bill Stern’s Favorite Football Stories.
  
“I have two weapons. My legs, my arms, 
and my brains.”
  
      Michael Vick (Atlanta Falcons 
Quarterback, 2006)
  
 If you’re going to be a champion, you 
must be willing to pay a greater price 
than your opponent 
will ever pay.
  
 Bud Wilkinson
  
**
FAIRS

I saw at Southwark, at St. Margaret’s Faire, 
monkies and asses dance and do other feats 
of activity on a rope; they were gallantly 
clad a la mode, went upright, saluted the 
company, bowing and pulling off their hats;
 they saluted one another with as good a 
grace as if instructed by a dancing master. 
They turned heels over heads with a basket 
having eggs in it, without breaking any; 
also with lighted candles in their hands 
and on their heads without extinguishing 
them, and with vessels of water, without 
spilling a drop. I also saw an Italian 
wench dance and perform all tricks on ye 
tight rope to admiration; all the court 
went to see her.
  
 John Evelyn, in his diary (September 11, 1660)
  
  
 To Southwark Fair, very dirty, and there 
saw…Jacob Hall’s dancing on the rope, 
where I saw such action as I never saw 
before, and mightily worth seeing…
  
 Samuel Pepys, in his diary 
(September 21,1668)
    ***
 
To THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW 
 Dear Editors:
     Although I love some books much more than 
some people, I believe I was not the only Book 
Review reader who was shocked by Geoff Dyer's 
confession to his wife that he'll "just never 
love another human being as much as I love my books.'
 Does he have children?
      I do believe,however, that Mr. Dyer 
dislikes change. Human beings change; books do not. 
Our perceptions, rereadings, and interpretations 
of books change. Don Quixote is one book for a 
college-age student. It will be a completely 
different book when read by that same student 
some 40 years later.
       Dyer and I may also share a sense of 
disappointment that Dante did not create a 
special circle of Hell for persons who borrow 
books but do not return them.
  
 Sincerely,
 Louis Phillips

   **

 Long live the circus with its sandy ring, its 
prideless palfreys, its jovial clowns, its 
gracefulness, its robustness, its mockery, 
its rides, its mimicry, its trapeze at the top, 
its carpet at the bottom, its somersault, its 
gibberish, its acrobatic prowess and the mystery 
of its morals.     
               Le Couriere francais     
  

ON AUTOGRAPHS & H.ALLEN SMITH AT 
PARAMOUNT PICTURES

"Smith found other ways to amuse
himself during his stay with us.
He spent one afternoon at the 
studio's main gate with an autograph
book and a pen. Each time one of our
stars passed in and out he'd approach
the performer, open the book,
write his own autograph, tear out the
sheet, hand it over, and say, "There
you are. Thanks very much for asking."

B.G. DeSylva in his introduction to
Lost in the Wild Horse Latitudes
by H.Allen Smith (NY:Doubleday, Doran &
Company,1944)
**


 AUTOGRAPH HUNTING
  
     Autograph hunting is the most 
unattractive manifestation of sex-starved 
curiosity.

 Sir Laurence Olivier
  
   

 
 
 
 ACADEMY AWARDS
  
 …the Dorset coast – or, as it is occasionally 
and inadequately known, the Jurassic Coast. 
The crumbing cliffs along it, dating from 
the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous periods, 
are a happy hunting ground for anyone seeking 
the fossilized remains of ancient creatures. 
The nearest American equivalent would be the 
Academy Awards
  
 Anthony Lake , reviewing Ammonite in
 The New Yorker (November 16, 2020)
    
 **
 BEATLES (THE)  
  
     When reporters at their first press 
conference asked the cheeky Brits to sing 
a song, John Lennon set them straight: 
“We need money first.”  
   Time. Visions of the 1960s.