11/15/2006 3:45:00 PM
Canton couple breaks from daily grind with Harvard roadtrip
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By ANDREW BRYAN FLACH
Staff Reporter
Tom and Diane Butchart like to do something crazy from time to time and they have a simple solution: leave suddenly, without respect to logic or reason and flee the daily grind of life.
Their latest roadtrip is to Cambridge, Mass., to attend the annual Harvard-Yale football game on Nov. 18. Since neither is a Yale or a Harvard grad, the trip seems completely bizarre, but they're prepared to play the part of sophisticated intellectuals.
Tom is an accountant, and Diane is a retired nurse who now manages rental property and acts as caretaker for Tom's mother as well as her own grandchildren. Amidst all this activity, things can become very hectic.
"From time to time you have to break away and do something ridiculous," said Diane.
Diane said her husband has, of late, enjoyed collecting collegiate sweat shirts. Of course, most of the time, he selects colleges with which he has some sort affiliation, such as his own alma mater, Ole Miss, or that of his son, but not so with this latest episode, she said.
About a week and a half ago, Diane opened a newly arrived box to find a sweatshirt marked with a logo none other than Harvard University. She laughed, wondering why on earth her husband would opt for school with which he had no connection. If he had one, she wanted one too, but it had to be another Ivy League institution.
"I was teasing, saying, 'Oh, you have a Harvard sweatshirt. I guess I need a Yale [sweatshirt],'" said Diane.
She said pretty soon, and for reasons unbeknownst to her, Tom was looking into attending a football game between the two schools. Shortly thereafter, the tickets were in the mail.
"Within 24 hours (of the sweatshirt's arrival), he was calling about ball games," she said. "Within three days, we were going to Boston."
Diane jokingly said the two of them plan to enter the school gates boldly, clad in their new attire, moving about as though they have an intellectual and academic right to be there.
"We're going to prance around in our sweat shirts like we are intelligent people," she said laughing.
While they are in Boston, the Butcharts, of Canton, will also visit the historic downtown area, including the Paul Revere House, and they will travel to the towns of Gloucester, famed for its fishermen, and Salem, where alleged witches were roasted alive.
Diane said she is in the process of preparing for the bitter temperatures of Massachusetts.
"I think this is probably the coldest place I will have been to," she said. "I'm looking for every article of clothing I can take with us."
Tom and Diane will be cheering for there respective "teams," as dictated by their sweat shirts. When asked where they would be sitting, Tom laughed. He said the seats don't particularly matter. It's the principle of the affair, the effort to find pleasure in simplicity that matters to him and his wife, not the quality of a football game.
"Actually, I think we're in the end zone," he explained with a slight chuckle. "We got terrible seats, but that's okay. It's not exactly a serious trip. This is just to do something different, something fun."
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