LISTEN UP: Here’s a good accompaniment to our current full moon.
Ann Reed of West Corydon Street called Monday night to tell us,
“We’ve been hearing coyotes. I mean every night. Outside you can
hear then constantly.”

They are so persistent, she said, they had woken her up her
several times a night for the preceding few nights. “They are just
yipping, yipping and yipping.”

THOSE COLORS: Could we have perhaps inadvertently sparked a
school feud between Port Allegany and Smethport?

Lori Chase of Port Allegany takes exception to an RTS item on
Tuesday in which a 2003 Smethport grad had hoped to “clarify” that
Smethport’s colors are orange and black, and Port Allegany’s, black
and orange.

Lori writes, “Learning that Port Allegany’s colors are ‘black
and orange’ probably comes as a surprise to the generations of PAHS
students who learned the last few lines of our Alma Mater:

” ‘We will own the lily slender

Nor honor shall it lack

While Port High stands defender

Of the Orange and the Black.’

“As previously noted, the alma mater and colors were ‘borrowed’
from Princeton long ago. The original song, titled – what else? –
‘The Orange And The Black,’ was written in the late 1880s.

“Over in Potter County, Galeton High School did the same;
they’ve rewritten most of the words (while keeping the last two
lines intact) but they remain the Tigers to this day. One wonders
if the late, lamented Limestone Tigers were also part of the
trend.

“A similar practice continues today, as many local high school
bands have adopted college fight songs as their own: you’ll hear
‘On Wisconsin’ (rechristened ‘On To Victory’) played after every
Gator score, and I believe Coudersport still uses ‘Hail To The
Victors.’

“How long has this been going on? Here in Port, references to
the colors can be found in the very first edition of the ‘Tiger
Lily’ (the PAHS yearbook), published in 1913.

“On to the mascot: References to the ‘Gators’ didn’t begin to
appear until the early 1930s. Legend has it that a local scribe,
watching the Port High squad slog around on their sloppy field
(which wasn’t far from the Allegheny River) decided they should be
called the Gators because they played in a swamp.

“The home turf’s location has changed twice since then, but
obviously, the name stuck.”