Bear Bryant Era Jersey

What my ultimate thrift store find can tell us about the late 60s and beyond

Happy New Year!

New Year’s doesn’t deliver quite the same excitement as the holiday a week prior, but there’s still enough traditions to go around to make it fun. We traveled this year, but our New Year’s Eve celebration at the EPS household is normally made up of snacks and a marathon of TV shows and movies with NYE scenes and themes. This usually includes some Friends and Frasier episodes, When Harry Met Sally and, although it only has a small NYE scene, Forrest Gump.

Eight years ago saw a particularly special screening of Gump as I was going back and forth emailing author Winston Groom, who wrote the book of the same title on which the 1994 film is based. Earlier that day I had discovered a burgundy football jersey, complete with three-quarter-length sleeves, from the late 1960s.. Through inspection and evaluation of the jersey Mr. Groom, who literally wrote the book on Alabama Football and I determined that, just like fictional Forrest, this very real football uniform was part of the Paul W. “Bear” Bryant Alabama Crimson Tide program.

I consider this jersey to be my ultimate thrift store find, and the process of investigating it as the beginning of my infatuation with analyzing irregular primary sources. It also should be mentioned that had it not been for the power that pop culture has over me and my household I would never have gone beyond thinking I picked up a neat old-looking football jersey for 50 cents. I have always enjoyed the Robert Zemeckis movie version of Forrest Gump, but absolutely love the book.

What analysis reveals about the late 60s and beyond

The late 1960s Alabama Crimson Tide jersey found at the Salvation Army Family Store in Portsmouth, NH on New Year’s Eve, 2014. It was priced at 99 cents, but since it was a holiday, everything was half off.