Tiger Woods

[Jonathan Lighter]

Budd [sic] Schulberg ran the Watts Writers Workshop.  He wrote _On the Waterfront_ , _What Makes Sammy Run_, and the underrated _The Harder They Fall_, possibly America's finest prizefighting novel.

JL

Harrold Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Harrold Wilson Gray
Subject: Re: Tiger Woods
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On Sep 1, 2005, at 10:55 PM, sagehen wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: sagehen
> Subject: Re: Tiger Woods
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> --------
>
> Wilson Gray writes:
>> I've just heard one of our loocal newsreaders describe Tiger Woods as
>> "looking _tan_." It reminded me of the time that a black student
>> walked barefooted into the student center at Washintoon U. in St,
>> Louis, moving a white student to quote, "Blessings on thee, little
>> man! / Barefoot boy with CHEEK!" stopping himself before finishing the
>> line with "... of tan!"
>
> -----------
> Might also have been thinking of /Barefoot Boy with Cheek/, a humorous
> book
> by Max Shulman that came out in the '40s. [Was Barefoot Boy one of
> Jas
> Whitcomb Riley's? I remember having to memorize it in grade school,
> but
> can't now call up any more lines.]
> A. Murie
>

Yeah, I remember that book. It spawned a television series that, in
turn, spawned Gilligan's Island. Budd Shulman ran the Watts Writers
Workshop. I'm sure that the poem is one of Riley's. Once upon a time,
it was something that everybody knew. Anyhow, i'm pretty sure that it
was what's now known as being "P.C."- this was in the 'Fifties - that
stopped the speaker in his metaphorical tracks. He didn't want to bring
up the question of color to a person of color.

-Wilson Gray

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