
{"id":813,"date":"2007-08-30T05:37:42","date_gmt":"2007-08-30T13:37:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/2007\/08\/30\/what-would-cat-baby-say\/"},"modified":"2007-08-30T05:40:57","modified_gmt":"2007-08-30T13:40:57","slug":"what-would-cat-baby-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/2007\/08\/30\/what-would-cat-baby-say\/","title":{"rendered":"What would Cat Baby say?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/08\/cat-baby.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/08\/cat-baby.jpg\" height=\"318\" width=\"250\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<em>A 26-year-old George \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Cat Baby\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Cannada leads the CHHS football team onto Carrboro\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Lions\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Park field in 1963. Photo by Jock Lauterer\u00c2\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong><em>By Jock Lauterer<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Cat Baby would have loved the return of high school football to Carrboro.<\/p>\n<p>That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s right, Friday night\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s inaugural football game at the new Carrboro High School off Smith Level Road was not the first high school football game played in Carrboro.<\/p>\n<p>Not by a long shot. Back in my day, the downtown Chapel Hill High School, located at the site of today\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s University Square, had no football field of its own. We had to truck across town to venerable old Lions\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Park off Fidelity Street in Carrboro for our \u00e2\u20ac\u0153home\u00e2\u20ac\u009d games.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>An apartment complex now occupies the site of that Spartan athletic venue, as I remember it: a humble field and simple bleachers ringed by a corregated iron fence.<\/p>\n<p>But it was home to the Wildcats, and, to return to the theme, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Cat Baby\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u201d the ubiquitous town character, unquenchable Chapel Hill High School sports fan and veteran newspaper boy, George Cannada.<\/p>\n<p>Cat Baby may not have been the brightest bulb in the box, but what he lacked in mental firepower he made up for with loyalty, steadfastness and his own brand of humor.<\/p>\n<p>How Cat Baby got his handle, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d have to ask local historian extraordinaire Bland Simpson to be sure. Maybe it had to do with the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dc50s pop expression of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153cool cat.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Or maybe it came from the Wildcats\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 team name, shortened to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Cats.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d And since George was the quintessential CHHS fan, perhaps it was he who made the linguistic leap. He said \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Cat Baby\u00e2\u20ac\u009d all the time, so that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what we called him.<\/p>\n<p>Who really knows? What every Chapel Hill High School kid from our era does know is that the sound of Caaaaaaaaaaat! could only come from one person.<\/p>\n<p>And that evolved into Caaaaaaaat Baaabbeeeee!<\/p>\n<p>And then, Whattaya say, Cat Baby!<\/p>\n<p>This eponymous greeting was invariably issued from a generous mouth half-filled with \u00e2\u20ac\u0153chawin\u00e2\u20ac\u009d tobacco or a cigar, and a merry look on the big man\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s face.<\/p>\n<p>If you saw the ad from Cliff\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Meat Market and Fortress Fencing on page 4 of last week\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s CHS special section, either you \u00e2\u20ac\u0153got\u00e2\u20ac\u009d that message, or perhaps you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re just now beginning to understand why a simple paperboy could become a local legend.<\/p>\n<p>(Check out Cat Baby\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s framed photo hanging over the bar at the Carolina Coffee Shop). Or ask Chapel Hill natives of a certain age to regale you with a Cat Baby story; I think we all have at least one.<\/p>\n<p>In any event, before he died at age 58 in 1993, George Cannada left his indelible mark on this community.<\/p>\n<p>For now, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll stick to the high school football theme, because that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the subject of the week: How Cat Baby would have loved a new high school in his hometown of Carrboro!<\/p>\n<p>Back in the early \u00e2\u20ac\u02dc60s, we Chapel Hill Wildcats had no real mascot, no live growling wildcat on a chain nor any furry foamy critter look-alike prancing around the sidelines. The fact is, we didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t need a mascot like that.<\/p>\n<p>We had Cat Baby!<\/p>\n<p>And Cat Baby\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s crowning moment of joy, a ritual that would send us students into paroxysms of laughter and glee, would occur at the opening of every football game.<\/p>\n<p>You know the drill: the band plays the fight song; the team bursts onto the field, fronted by the cheerleaders\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n<p>But all this must be led by the team\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mascot. UNC has Rameses.<\/p>\n<p>Dook has its Blue Devil. But for CHHS, we had, you guessed it, CAT BABY.<\/p>\n<p>Running for all he was worth, head thrown back, generous button-busting stomach stuck out like a ship\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s prow carving the waters, arms and legs pumping like pistons, running out in front of his team. What a sight.<\/p>\n<p>I wonder if I wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t the only old poop out there at Friday\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s night football game at the new Carrboro High School imagining that I could see the merry ghost of George Cannada leading the way as the Jaguars took the field. Maybe a new generation will pick up his salutation for a school cheer.<\/p>\n<p>Whaaaaddddaaaya Saaaay Caaaaaaaat Baaaaaaabbbbby!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A 26-year-old George \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Cat Baby\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Cannada leads the CHHS football team onto Carrboro\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Lions\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Park field in 1963. Photo by Jock Lauterer\u00c2\u00a0 By Jock Lauterer Cat Baby would have loved the return of high school football to Carrboro. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s right, Friday night\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s inaugural football game at the new Carrboro High School off Smith Level Road&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/813\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}