As promised, I was able to borrow a copy of Pat Summerall's autobiography, "On and Off the Air". The nights of drunken debauchery were not as exciting as I'd hoped, but that was okay, his life story was interesting.
Pat was born with a club foot and his right leg twisted backwards. A doctor was able to correct it, and thought he would be okay to walk once he got older but probably not ever run or play sports. Pat defied the odds, playing all kinds of sports as a kid and a teenager, he loved all of it.
He ended up playing football for a few teams, including the New York Giants when they had both Tom Landry and Vince Lombardi as assistant coaches. When he retired from football he took up broadcasting and was paired with Tom Brookshier. The two of them were great friends as well as drinking buddies until CBS split them up and put Pat with Coach Madden. Eventually his family and friends held an intervention and convinced Pat to go to the Betty Ford clinic for his alcoholism. Pat went and never drank again.
Due to his years of alcohol abuse, Pat ended up needing a liver transplant and lived for another ten years. He sounded like a humble, grateful man at the end and I'm glad he got the chance to turn his life around.
I've read "
Outlander" before but a friend at work who loved the show just started reading the books and after talking with her about them it made me nostalgic to go back and reread them. I took advantage of the long, rainy weekend and tucked in with book one.
The year is 1945 and Claire Randall, a nurse who served on the battlefields of France during WWII, and her husband, Frank, are vacationing in Scotland before Frank takes up a position at Oxford. They were apart during the war and they're trying to reconnect. While looking at some flowers at Craigh na Dun (a rock formation like Stonehenge), Claire falls through a portal back in time to 1743.
A band of Scottish Highlanders rescue her from Captain Black Jack Randall, an ancestor of her husband, and take her under their protection. As part of being kept from Black Jack's murderous hands, she ends up marrying Jamie Fraser. At first for convenience, since she's determined to get back to the stones and go to her own time, but she and Jamie fall in love and she decides to stay.
And yes, I know I have a million library books (not to mention all the ones I own) that I haven't read yet but there's no point fighting it. I've learned over the years 😊
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