The Charlotte News

Friday, January 2, 1942

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: So, we are sad to report that the Blue Devils fell victim in the Rose Bowl to the Beavers in an upset, 20 to 16, as rain threatened and sprinkles fell in Duke Stadium. The Blue Devils tied twice but never led, it having been 7-0 at the end of the first quarter, 7-7 at halftime, 20-14 at the end of the third quarter, with a safety scored by Duke in the fourth period to produce the final tally. On paper, the teams came out fairly even, Duke out-rushing the Beavers by a 3:2 ratio while the Beavers out-passed the Devils 3 to 1. But the Beavers recovered two more rain-slickened fumbles than did the loose-fingered Devils and had twice as many interceptions. Perhaps therein lay the outcome of the tale.

The crowd, at 56,000, was substantially larger than that of either the Cotton Bowl or the Orange Bowl. Only the Sugar Bowl, with 73,000, outshone it.

It was Duke's second straight loss in the Rose Bowl, having lost in 1939 by a score of 7 to 3 to the Trojans of Southern California. You know who was in attendance at that one.

Also in sports, be sure not to miss Monday's upcoming bout between salty one-eyed Sailor Barto Hill and the Masked Black Panther, sure to be a crowd pleaser, along with the main attraction, Abe Yourist and Cowboy Ray Clements, those two always being a pleasure to watch grapple on the mats. And, you kids stop booing the Masked man. That isn't sporting at all. For you ladies, there is a special women's bout, Gladys of Birmingham versus Elvira of Tennessee, promising to be a real post-holiday eye-opener.

By the way, someone was inquiring as to where it was that we stopped in to see that uninformed philistine, the storekeeper who hadn't a clue of the changed locale for the Rose Bowl and, instead of answering our simple query, stared blankly when we interposed to him the question as to how many people he had observed passing through to the Rose Bowl yesterday morning. So, to answer the question, that, of course, occurred during our stopover in Efland, about the time the rubber gave out on the tires, necessitating the sparking on the rims back from whence we came.

In other news, the Japanese took Manila and Cavite as General MacArthur's forces fell back onto Corregidor and the Bataan Peninsula, establishing a narrow front through the jungles south of Manila westward to the coast, thus attempting to offset the superior numbers of Japanese. Meanwhile, the Japanese closed to within 190 miles of Singapore on the Malay Peninsula.

And, the Fuehrer, miraculously in celerious recovery from his nervous breakdown, rushed back to the Russian front to establish his field command near Smolensk, 150 miles from the battle lines, attempting to halt the retreat of his chicken-livered, jackbooted band of criminal swine, headed, except for the pistol to their heads insisting to the contrary, as fast as their tender feet would carry them back to Berlin. Meanwhile, the Russians smashed the German front at Mozhaisk, 57 miles from Moscow.

Whether the Fuehrer's sudden and dramatic return to mental acuity had any ameliorative effect on his troops, over whom he now assumed personal command, we shall have to wait and see. Regardless, the fellow delivering Nazi propaganda on the radio, "Okay", admonishing Americans against bad things ahead from the Axis, so catastrophic that he hesitated to wish a Happy New Year, gave Charlotteans, reports the editorial column, a New Year's boisterous round of laughter, derisive of Okay's presumption of gravity and credit.

We hesitate to add the obvious, but it would appear that the listeners were okay and Okay wasn't--which reminds us of this.

The quoted excerpt from Thomas Wolfe's Of Time and the River poetically tells of the thousand lights. A poetic excerpt from the book had appeared once before, on the book-page following a piece by Cash of October 16, 1938, shortly after a brief ode to Wolfe upon the occasion of his death September 15.

And another page reports of life aboard a British submarine, long periods of ennui interspersed by occasional frenetic activity, as the subs patrolled the surface by night, the depths by day, of the North Sea German supply lanes between Norway and the Bay of Biscay.

Well, we're going to go now and busy ourselves filling out the tediously circuitous application for a couple of those 172 tires allotted to the country for January, to replace the ones we burned up yesterday trying to get to the Rose Bowl game.

By the way, despite the rubber deficiency of our tires, we did get to catch a fleeting glimpse of the Rose Parade and it was sure good, too. We watched it all from The Ivy Room over a cup of coffee. There were many lovely floats, bigger even than the Christmas parade back just after Thanksgiving. This page tells of how the Durhamites were hard on the trail of permanently establishing the Rose Bowl in Durham, taking it away from submarine-beset Pasadena, one of the little offsetting perquisites of war, you might say. We don't believe that quite worked out for Durham. Maybe if the parade had been a little longer. Or if it hadn't rained. Or, maybe if you know who had shown up and thrown up the V sign.

But, Churchill had gone to Canada and was back in Washington for continued consultations on the Allied war strategy and therefore had no time to explore this American recreational activity.

In any event, what it all was, of course, was football. At least nobody ever used it to call in a nuclear strike, at least not yet.

"Dam the Ducks." Okay, that looks good. You can put the cards down now.

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