Card Game

If you visit this site frequently, you know the moderator is a diehard University of Louisville fan. It goes back to childhood, more specifically to 1955-56 when he began following U of L basketball and football.

Cotton Top was 12 years old, living in an orphanage (the kids hated the word orphanage and preferred to call it a children’s home because many of their parents were still living but dirt poor) when he became a fan. His cousin’s family lived in Louisville, and Cotton Top knew he would go there after high school  The “home” was in Versailles, 12 miles from Lexington.

He took a great interest in everything Louisville, even paying for subscriptions to The Louisville Times during football and basketball seasons, keeping meticulous scrapbooks.  Between Sunday school and church, he slipped down to the corner drug store to get the Courier-Journal’s Sunday editions. During the early years, he also clung to every word of the stoic George Walsh or the zany Ed Kallay calling the games on WHAS or WAVE radio. He adopted UofL, helping him to escape some of the realities of the orphanage.

As a Cards’ fan living in Wildcat country, Cotton Top was often a target at the orphanage. Had to step outside a few times to physically debate the issue. The orphanage’s activities director even got in on the act at times, loudly proclaiming at one point that the University of Louisville would never win a national basketball championship or be any good in football.

Many years later, as an adult, Cotton Top would travel to Indianapolis and see UofL win a national basketball championship, and then again in Dallas six years later, this time with his 9-year-old son. He would also see the football team become a top 10 football team and win a BCS Orange Bowl in Miami. He would see the beginnings of a dramatic new basketball arena in downtown Louisville and the expansion of the football stadium to over 55,000 seats.

Among Cotton Top’s biggest regrets is never having gotten back in touch with the orphanage’s activities director to make him eat his words before he went to his eternal damnation. Another minor irritation is that the reason people nicknamed him Cotton Top didn’t exist any more.