More fading away

 Woke up this morning to an inch or so of fluffy white stuff on the grass and rooftops and trees, and right off I thought of Bud Grant. Ol' Coach Granite Face woulda been ready to line up and get after it on a day like this.

The legendary Minnesota Vikings coach died the other day at the age of 95, and it is a testament to his eternal old-man-ness that most of us thought Bud was 95 back when he coached the Purple People Eaters in the '60s. So it was kind of a shock to realize he was still with us.

You think of Bud, you think of big parkas and frozen turf and cold breath chuffing out of facemasks like venting steam. You think of Bill Brown and Dave Osborne going off-tackle like a hammer and chisel, no dancing and ballerina twirls for them, no, sir. You think of Fran Tarkenton running around back there like a chicken sans head, probably just to stay warm.

And, of course, you think of the People Eaters: Carl Eller and Jim Marshall and Gary Larsen and Alan Page, the quarterback-devouring judge.

You think of mean, industrial Man Football, when you think of Bud Grant's Vikings. And if you're an individual of a certain age, like me, you think one other thing: “Welp. There goes my childhood, fading away bit by bit.”

This is merely nature doing what nature does when the years start to pile up, but the more they do the more the deaths of certain individuals look like Burma-Shave signs, speaking of things gone. You ... Left ... Your Childhood ... A Ways Back, or something like that.

In the last few days two of those signposts popped up, and irony swaddled them. Bud Grant of the Vikings died; a few days earlier, Otis Taylor of the Kansas City Chiefs went. Those two will forever be joined because of Super Bowl IV, when Bud's Vikings lost to the Chiefs and Taylor, the rangy prototype-of-the-future wide receiver, delivered the kill shot on a 46-yard touchdown pass from Len Dawson.

Now both men are gone, and Len Dawson, too. And Super Bowl IV becomes more and more an artifact from a time long past.

Longer every day, of course. That's how this works.