Jim Harp reported for football practice along with several other freshmen. It was an exciting day for most of the boys. There was hope of making the team in a year or two and they were willing to practice with the bigger boys to learn the skills necessary to play the game. I’m sure that Jim had the same hopes and ambition. But there was one difference in Jim that that set him apart in the minds of football fans and others. He was the younger brother of Red Harp the team’s star quarterback of the recent past.

Red had been a better than average player. He could do everything a quarterback was expected to do. He was a triple-threat player, able to run, pass, and kick. He could run like the wind and evade tacklers like no one else on the team. Red’s most memorable play resulted from a mistake. His team had the ball on its own two- yard line. It was an obvious punting situation. Red was standing only a yard from the in-bounds line ready to punt when the pass from the center missed its target and Red had to step to one side to catch the ball. It was too late for him to reposition himself and kick the ball. Red managed to avoid the opposing linemen and head up field where he faked his way past linebackers then outran the safety. The touchdown resulted from a 109-yard run, a conference record.

Jim turned out to be a good football player but never equaled his brother as a player. I’ve wondered if the shadow of his brother somehow affected his attitude and his game.

I have known brothers who seemed to fight each other nearly all the time. They seemed to never get along. But on the other hand if either saw his brother in trouble he was always there to defend him. Is that what they mean by brotherly love?

I had a brother but he didn’t seem like a brother. He was born when I was twelve years old and we had little in common. I knew him as a baby. He was a pretty little fellow. By the time he started to school I was off at college and had little contact with him while he was growing up. He married very young and soon moved to California. I lost track of him for many years. It was only when my sister settled Daddy’s estate that we got together after the long absence. I’m thankful that we finally got acquainted, even if in our old age. He died only a couple years later. I’d liked to have known him better.

Evidently the word brother can induce many different images in the minds of people and it doesn’t always involve a blood relationship. The term “Big Brother” as portrayed in Huxley’s book “1984” where Big Brother is everywhere comes to mind. He is always watching so that there is no privacy and no originality of thought. “Just do as I say and you’ll be taken care of.”

Of course Big Brother was a fictional character created in the mind of the author of the book. Maybe so, but an awareness of our government’s action in recent days makes one think that he is much closer to reality than most people believe. A few examples may be in order.

Congress passed a law banning the sale of incandescent light bulbs after a certain date. Instead those little curly fluorescents made with mercury are all right, until you break one. Who do you call to clean up the hazard?

There are those in government who want to limit the maximum a company can pay an employee in addition to the minimum.

They want to restrict the car you can drive, have a bureaucrat determine your health care, and on and on, and on.

The President has even proposed a “smart meter’’ for each house to remind us dummies that the shower is taking too long, or that the thermostat in set too high or too low, or maybe it’s time to go to bed. I guess we are all dummies.

Add to these examples all the freedoms we have lost through restrictions and taxes and Big Brother seems very close indeed.

The concept of brother can bring thoughts of many things from love to competition to serfdom.

AFTERWORD: If you have never seen the movie “Oh Brother Where Are’t Thou” then do so. You will enjoy it.