This installation of the Franklin Stove Blog is a departure from the usual format.

It’s fictional, based on accounts of actual events.

It might even be considered a ghost writ post.

This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is purely coincidental.

Hey, it’s me, Rose–the Spirit of the Crimson Tide.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld wrote that “true love is like ghosts, which everyone talks about and few have seen.”

My feelings for Estelle came as close to “true love” for me as anything in my short life. I’ll always wonder whether, if I had been able to bring Estelle home for Christmas in 1968, I would never have accidentally shot myself. 

I remember that Estelle was searching for me after the Christmas break in Tutwiler Hall, a place where I’d just begun to haunt. She’d bought me a present. I never found out what it was. When she found out about my “suicide,” her eyes welled with tears and her body shook as she sobbed uncontrollably. I wish I could have reached out to her, as my spectral form stood right next to her. I would’ve told her that what happened wasn’t really a suicide. It was just me being stupid and melodramatic. That was the beginning of my over fifty years of haunting Tutwiler Hall. 

Sometimes I think that many Bama fans love football, coaches and players as much as they love anything or anybody else. Since Bryant-Denny Stadium is likely to be my final home away from life, I guess I’ll be surrounded by people who are in “love.” Of course there will always be the Rolltards who only love winning.

I wonder how many relationships have perished due to football? Of course some fans who are couples come to games wearing garb that represents opposing teams. I guess they’ve worked out their differences? Their love of football and each other may even make their relationship stronger.

I remember hearing about a coach whose wife on one hot Spring Practice day dumped all of his worldly possessions on the side of the practice field. Some coaches, I suppose, are tempted into extra-marital forays. There are people who are attracted to coaches, like they are to politicians and religious figures, and holy wedlock isn’t a barrier to their amorous pursuits.

I remember reading in Freshman English a sonnet by Shakespeare. I committed it to memory.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds 

Admit impediments. Love is not love 

Which alters when it alteration finds, 

Or bends with the remover to remove. 

O no! it is an ever-fixed mark 

That looks on tempests and is never shaken; 

It is the star to every wand’ring bark, 

Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken. 

Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks 

Within his bending sickle’s compass come; 

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, 

But bears it out even to the edge of doom. 

If this be error and upon me prov’d, 

I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.

I may spend an eternity in Bryant-Denny stadium but I’ll always cherish my love