Dear Friends,

“I would rather sit in my room on a chair of broken glass watching paint dry than spend time with you!” Sister yelled these words as she slammed the door on my eight year old face. She was wearing a purple Hypercolor t-shirt that had turned pink along the outline of her bronchi and trachea, such was the fervor and heat of the words shot out her mouth. The verbal punches bruised my heart, turning it those same colors.

Sister never liked me. Did she want me dead? I do not think so. Did she ever buy me a Christmas gift with her own money? Not while I was a child. To say that she hated me, at times, would not be untruthful. To say that she loved me would be the informal fallacy of begging the question.

Was the discord a product of the Divorce, wherein I found favor in the breast of Mother while she favored father’s paternalism and wealth? Or did the seed of this disposition find soil much earlier, a primordial sibling rivalry in the image of Cain and Abel?

By the time I was ten, Sister was a student at Vanderbilt. Her boyfriend, a Country Day graduate, landed at Auburn. Mother’s fury for that relationship was irrational. She justified her hatred because, “He goes to some podunk school in the middle of Alabama.” That was my view of Auburn until May of 2020.

For generations, rich, not very intelligent New Orleanians have sent their children to state schools not in Louisiana. Nell Nolan’s articles are replete with such examples among the Brahmin of New Orleans. How few are the Uptown Newman and Country Day graduates who end up at LSU. Meanwhile, families are happy to pay two or three times the costs for out-of-state tuition at Ole Miss, Auburn, Alabama, and Georgia. One does not see Mississippi State in this consortium of state schools, probably because everyone knows it is a cow school, nor do we see the University of Florida, likely because if the kid had those smarts, he would have gone to a proper university like Vanderbilt or Emory.

You see the same phenomenon in other parts of the South, where upward professionals go the way of the Mercedes C class when a Toyota Camry is far superior and significantly less in cost. So many people have focus on brands, tags, titles, and perceived appearances rather than substance. Our world has become plastic and we have jettisoned class for expediency and Christianity for entertainment and sports. Friends, I wish I could go on today, but Pentecost Sunday and watching the service has knocked the wind from my sail, or perhaps it is this oppressive heat.

The otherness of Auburn never appealed to me until recently. As my journey of Auburn and its environs closes on my fingertips and only lives in my mind, I wanted to share one or two final top ten lists. This time, it is with the Top 10 signs of Auburn, AL. Below are links to other Auburn writings.

TulaneLSU's Top 10 staircases of Auburn University
TulaneLSU's Top 10 trees of Auburn University
TulaneLSU’s Top 10 flowers of Auburn University
TulaneLSU's Top 10 pizzas of Auburn, AL
TulaneLSU's guide to Goodwater, AL
TulaneLSU's vacation to Tuskegee, AL
TulaneLSU's Top 10 signs of Ashland, AL
TulaneLSU's review of The Hotel at Auburn University
TulaneLSU's hike of Cave Creek Trail in Cheaha, AL
TulaneLSU’s Top 10 sculptures in the Auburn University Museum’s sculpture garden
TulaneLSU's Top 10 churches of Auburn and Opelika, AL

10. The Locker Room