It Always Pays to Order Ahead
Back in my wild and woolly daze of the 1970s spent in the college town of that state university somewhere in the general vicinity of the geographical center of the state that will go nameless, I fell in with a merry if deranged band of ne-er do wells (or is it ne-ers do well?). Single and in our 20s, we had more fun than the law allows, much of it while playing a game we invented called Cozmik Croquet. I say invented, but truly we just bastardized the standard back-yard variety of the sport by using larger wickets (we were into gratification), more liberal rules on number of shots accumulated (that gratification thing again) and a defining method of stroking the ball that had the croqueteer drop down on his/her knees and thrust the ball along the greensward with the top of the mallet head.
When Crag T. Perry introduced the stroke one day, I started to question its legality. But not having a rule book handy, I didn’t have a legal leg to stand on. Well as fate would have it, Crag T. made the shot, an especially impressive play of knocking his ball off my ball through a wicket and into Moose Pulley’s ball—thus amassing three strokes in one fell swoop. And we weren’t about to let Crag T. beat us with the cozmik stroke, so we all adopted it as well.
Always on the look out for an excuse to have a party, we began organizing (to use the term loosely) these tournaments that in time would attract so many combatants we had to cut the registration off at 96 participants in order to have any chance to crown a champion by day’s end. More often than not the semifinals and finals were illuminated by the lights of cars that had been pulled up to ring the greensward. After awarding the top finishers and the coveted trophy for best-dressed (fights were known to break out over the selection), we repaired to some lucky local establishment for the Post Tournament Banquet. Somehow we always made it home.
What brought all this tomfoolery to mind today was our incredible run of gorgeous, beautiful weather we had for the first five or six years of Cozmik Croquet. It was pretty much always bright and sunny and what rain that did fall invariably passed through in time for the madness and mayhem to ensue. One foundering father of the sport, Rico Cavatinni, explained that in his duties as a news reporter for a Triangle media outlet that will go nameless to avert litigation, he knew the guy at the National Weather Service office in Raleigh, and that he never failed to order the pretty days months in advance before the weddings, garden parties and church picnics reserved them all.
In that spirit, I want to applaud Wake Forest’s prescience for not scheduling a basketball game this weekend. Instead of having to slip and slide my way to some arena—risking life and limb—I’m able to hang out in the comfort of our house and enjoy the snow storm that has blanketed the Triad. I have nowhere to go, so let it snow. Thanks Dino.
Just let the roads clear by Tuesday night’s home game against Miami.