EL PASO — Ask El Paso old-timers about their fondest memories of downtown, and they will almost certainly mention the alligators.
But to start Mr. Fireman sought to ask some of the canny old-timers about the secrets of their backwoods hooch-making up in the fabled mountain turnings of remote Appalachia.
Still others engage in anthropology, interviewing a handful of old-timers about the children's games they played, the curses they uttered ("You should grow like an onion with your head in the ground!") or homespun remedies (urinate on a cut finger and wrap it in a spider web).
The site has done much to change the way that sports fans interact with the past; our happiest vicarious moments no longer live fuzzily in the mind, or in the yarns spun by old-timers about the greatness of some leather-helmeted football player from the thirties.
On a recent visit, when I asked one craggy Stowe old-timer about Stowe Mountain Lodge, the centerpiece 139-room luxury condo-hotel, he shrugged.
Smith took a two-month leave from the Westwood stacks to poke through filing cabinets, unlock dusty storage rooms and interview Disney old-timers about long-gone colleagues and half-forgotten projects.
True, there have been some beautiful relationships grow out of the rooms but ask an old-timer about the '13th Step'.
You can find out about Old Timer's Day and other Yankees promotions on the YES Network.
Old timers talk about the spirit of the fringe.
"Hey, old timer!" he shouted.
