Page 2 / T.J. SIMERS - In extreme time of need, a Husker Honk delivers
LINCOLN, Neb. -- One more day until USC leaves an entire state in depression, but now the frat boys from the University of Nebraska call to say they are running away scared.
They are pulling back their invitation to stay with them, and here I'm already dressed in my toga.
Frat boy, Saul Bakewell, claims he was misquoted when he says, "lucky you," after mentioning the toga party, which prompted me to tease the boys in print about toga parties finally making it to the state.
I've left the prairie impressed with the hardy stock of folks out there only to arrive in the big city to find the 4-H leaders of tomorrow going belly up at the first hint of a wisecrack from a sports writer.
It's a pretty good indication that their football-dressed peers are also going to fold at the first sign of a better team.
"They're probably just running away from you because the girls probably don't want to be seen with a Trojan," says Matt Huettner, the waiter at Lazlo's, but I couldn't possibly imagine going to a toga party without wearing my USC baseball cap.
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THIS PRESENTS a problem, though, arriving before the big game with no place to stay. It'd be no problem if stuck in Fordyce, Burwell, Norfolk or West Point -- the nice people way out there doing anything they could for a visitor since they don't get many.
Dan O'Gorman hears me say how much I enjoy "Dorothy Lynch" salad dressing, so he drives 60 miles to drop off a gallon for me to take home. His dad, Pat, packs along a rare 1970-71 Husker heirloom, and while I'm thinking of it, his mother, Fran, keeps all the brownies to herself.
Patti Knobbe offers to do my laundry in West Point, and until then I was wondering why Scott married her. Jason Sturek, the local sports editor, takes time out from his busy Little League schedule to give me the grand tour of the city, starting at the St. Francis Memorial Hospital parking garage.
"This is the biggest parking garage for any city of 3,500 people or less in Nebraska," Sturek says, and he takes no offense when I say I don't need to see anything else in town -- now that I've seen it all.
The Corn Cobs couldn't be nicer all week, and this after each one has taken calls and insults from folks, calling them nuts for spending any time with "that" writer from L.A.
