1398 Husking

Recently the University of Washington Huskies made it to the post-season Holiday Bowl. Holiday Bowl¾sounds like it’s filled with chestnuts or something doesn’t it? Freshly roasted from the fire.
I remember when I first heard the term chestnuts. I was in first grade, listening to a Christmas carol about Jack Frost nipping at the air, and my older and more worldly brother shared with me the slang term for certain physiological accouterments that males have in a lower area. Chestnuts suddenly sounded very strange. Especially roasting ones.
I had nightmares for a week.
In any event, the Huskies are going to play a really tough team at the Holiday bowl, The University of Nebraska Cornhuskers.
Now there’s a name to inspire terror.
A mild Midwest cornhusker against a vicious Husky sled-dog? Mascot-wise, the one sounds much more animalistic than the other. But that’s only to folks who don’t understand the grueling muscle-straining labor associated with the practice of husking.
Our few little exposures a year at the shank of summer ill inform us about what it takes to husk ears of corn over and over and over again. That kind of persistence can pay off in a football game. It is interesting, however, that both the Huskies and the Cornhuskers have the syllable “husk” figure so prominently in their names.
I like the word husk. Like dusk, but handier somehow. Husky voices are dark and sultry. Husky-sized clothing was what my brother got to buy. I was always stuck with slim. Neither one of us was fat or skinny.
Still, I think it’s great the Cornhuskers can take a food-oriented profession and make a football mascot out of it. I just hope there’s never a team called the Chestnut-Roasters.
I still have holiday nightmares.
America, ya gotta love it.