A Victory Cigar for Dr Andy Holt
Today, I placed a cigar on the portrait of my grandfather, Andrew D. Holt, that hangs in my office. I felt that he needed to join in the celebration of Tennessee’s recent defeat of Alabama in football; this was, after all, the man who taught me that the last two words of the National Anthem are “Go Vols!” I was with him, and Grandmom, and Dad, for the Alabama game in 1982. It was another end to a long streak of losses, and like Saturday, people poured onto the field and the goalposts came down. I remember us cheering vociferously, but we didn’t have cigars. And I think I know why.
The victory cigar tradition originated during Grandad’s presidency, apparently a kind of open secret in both locker rooms. It began in 1961, and in the years before he retired, the Vols lit only three stogies. I’m guessing he’d never have brandished one publicly, but even in private he might have thought twice, owing to an event in his youth that he loved to recount.
Born in 1904, Grandad grew up on a farm in Milan, Tennessee, where his chores included milking the cows. This afforded him an opportunity, sometime in the 1910s (I was never clear on exactly how old he was at the time), to give smoking a try. He could never have experimented with tobacco in public, from what I know of his devoutly Methodist mother, and buying a cigar would have been risky in any case. So he improvised.
Before going to the milking shed one morning, he ground some coffee beans, distributed the grounds liberally in a bit of newspaper, and rolled it into a makeshift cigar. As he sat down with the cows, he lit his creation and took a long drag. I’m guessing that the smoking experience was an immediate letdown, but worse was to follow. It turns out that a newsprint and coffee ground cigar creates a lot of smoke, and that smoke started to seep out of the shed — and his older sister Irene (universally known as Ibu) saw it.
Convinced that the shed was on fire, Ibu raced in to rescue her baby brother. Opening the door, she found her brother not on fire, but smoking, and you can imagine how this triggered her sisterly instincts. Simultaneously relieved and steaming, she immediately reported the infraction to their father, who told her he’d take care of it. He made his way through the coffee and newspaper haze to the shed, and closed the door.
“Don’t tell your sister I didn’t whup you,” he told Grandad, wisely realizing that inhaling from this dubious cigar was doubtless punishment enough.
Cigar or no, Grandad would have loved Saturday’s dramatic game, would’ve been gracious in victory, and would have been wearing his trademark Big Orange blazer the following week as he gave the National Anthem its proper coda yet again. I wore my orange tie in his honor today, and assembled a few items in my office in celebration.
But please don’t mention the cigar to Ibu.
