THE BUGMUNCH -- Nation/World
Husker fan in Florida won't wear
Nebraska clothes outside home
AUBURNDALE, FLA. -- A 76-year-old Nebraska fan living in Central Florida said Monday that he’s taken to only wearing his team’s colors in the safety of his condo.
“I just get tired of all the hooey about Bowden-this, Hurricanes that,” said Clayton Glaubke. “I moved here from Ord to relax after a rather successful career in the farm implement business, if I do say so myself, not to listen to a bunch of guff about my favorite football team.”
Of course, Glaubke said, “this has taken some doing.”
Turns out, some 70 percent of Glaubke’s wardrobe was red, white or red and white both and featured the Huskers logo, the letters NU, a Blackshirts logo or a stylized sketch of Bob Devaney floating over Memorial Stadium.
“At the golf course here, some punk-nosed kid saw my red and white plaid pants and club covers shaped like Tom Osborne’s head, and the brat told me I should walk the back nine -- that using a cart would mean ‘moving too fast,’ that I should stick to a ‘prehistoric ground game,’” Glaubke said. “Judas Priest, I had half a mind to use my nine-iron on him. That would have fixed him.”
Glaubke’s wife, Viola, warned him against it, wagging her finger and using the same tone she often used when insisting Clayton couldn’t where a feed cap to church.
“She reminded me I pay good money to play at that darn hoity-toity club. She said I’d be trading scarlet and cream for prison orange -- ha! -- ‘and at your age,’ she said. That woman - I swear if she hadn’t given birth to my seven kids and cooked me chicken fried steak and eggs every morning for 53 years, why I’d, I’d -- I’m kidding, of course. She’s a fine woman, yes sir.
“Anywho, later, the same little jerk, who was wearing a Miami T-shirt, some dumb stork in a sailor hat on the front, he called out that I’d hooked my tee shot ‘a la Byron Bennett.’ I thought, what is this? Colorado? I sure do miss my buddies at the Ord Country Club, that’s for dang sure.”
A string of other incidents followed.
When the Glaubkes went to the local Red Lobster for their anniversary, for example, Clayton wore his best tie - the one with tiny Blackshirts skulls-and-crossbones stitched on it. The waitress told the Farwell native he should consider holding the surf from his surf-and-turf special and avoiding sour cream on his potato.
“Like, stick to the turf and a plain potato,” she said, popping her gum. “We call that the Solich special.”
Even the senior center provided little refuge. Glaubke once showed up in a Herbie Husker cardigan, only to get laughed out of a checkers tournament.
“First, this skinny fella from Tallahassee beats me, all the while talking about how my strategy’s too obvious - ‘run right, run left, run to the middle, punt,’ the fella says,” Glaubke recalled. “Then, I was double-eliminated and Herman - this is my next door neighbor, mind you - tells me I shouldn’t have gone for two.
“Why, Herman laughed so hard he almost lost his teeth. Kept snorting and saying I lasted as long in the checkers tournament as Trev Alberts did in the NFL. Herman, who sold insurance if that tells you anything, thought that was a real knee-slapper. I told him he was probably one of those Florida voters who couldn’t figure out his ballot. Ha. Yessir, that fixed him.”
To find peace, Glaubke said he often spent his evenings watching videotapes of the Frank Solich show taped by his youngest son Larry.
“Until last season,” Glaubke said. “It got so bad I couldn’t stomach them. And that Herman from next door? -- always calling me up wanting to grouse about the Husker score, offering to bet me a Grand Slam breakfast at Denny’s that that Lord kid couldn’t throw for more than 50 yards in a game.
“Herman, he says the best player we ever had was Frazier and that’s cause he was from Florida. I told him I was pretty sure Frazier went to Omaha Central.”
In the end a frustrated Glaubke moved all of his red and white memorabilia, including a helmet-shaped lamp signed by I.M. Hipp and a red leather armchair, into his den, which he keeps locked.
“Don’t tell the boys in the Ord Elks Club, but I’m afraid Viola’s gonna throw it all out,” Glaubke grumbled. “She says it’s ‘high time to get with it.’ Ha, never. She says, ‘when in Rome, when in Rome.’ Ha, I say. She says, ‘the triple-option is as dead as Coach Devaney,’ and ‘even Coach Osborne would use a four-wide receiver package more were he not in Congress these days.’
“Bah. Can you believe that? The mouth on that woman. Golly, if the ladies in her old church group could hear her now or see her gallivanting around doing that … that … tomahawk chop. Well, she should just show s’more respect for that great man Bob Devaney, rest his soul.”
Glaubke sighed and sipped his lemonade. Then he chuckled.
“You know what I told Herman? You know what I told him? I asked him, where was that big fella, ol Warren What’s-his-name, when young Corey Schlesinger was galloping into the end zone in 1995? Ha. Now Schlesinger, that was a football player. From Columbus, as I recall. Not some sissy place like Orlando or Tampa, but Columbus -- Columbus, Nebraska. I sure fixed ol’ Herman’s wagon, you can bet.”