Old Dawg Trey Davis braved the ghost of past fracture and teetered down the basement staircase of his all-too-distant relative.

“Ace, you down here?” he called to his nephew, as if he’d be able to hear a response anyway. But a dim lit bulb drew him downward, then the hint of what sounded like “Uuunnnnkkkk” from around the furnace where he turned the corner toward …

Poor Dawg Trey’s knees buckled the instant his limbic system sensed a bright comet, a bowling ball, surging straight toward his nose.

From all fours on the concrete, the shocked old man blurted, “You sonuva brother f**” — but Ace’s hearty laughter pealed sharply off the walls. From the face-level crawl space hatch, his shiny bald skull had startled his uncle, who soon recovered to distinguish a full head in the light of a lamp clamped to a floor joist.

“You did that on purpose, didn’t you,” Trey accused the mercurial, middle-aged mensch.

“Now Uncle Trey,” Ace returned, “You’re the guy who just walked into my house without so much as a telegram, you ole wheezer, how are ya?”

It had been a few years.

What Does This Have To Do With The Browns?

I’m getting there. Promise. In the meantime, here are a couple of those previous Ace/Trey diatribes dialogues.

OK Then, But We’re Not Getting Any Younger

And neither is Trey. Ace started calling him the Superannuated Sage of Sarcasm dozens of quarterbacks back.

See, Trey’s vintage Browns fan’s passion remains unabated, dotty as he might be getting. To him, the Rabbit was Ray Renfro before there was a Travis Benjamin.

It was that long-shared interest in the Browns — and Trey’s pent-up need to voice his underappreciated observations to one of the singular few who had once tolerated them — that brought him into Ace’s house unannounced.

“Ya, how’d you get in here anyway?”

Trey smiled. “Old dawg, old tricks.”

But what the septuagenarian forgot was the date. February 2. Winter’s midpoint between solstice and equinox.

Emerging from his hole down below, Ace, in that unfinished basement space where his Browns collections and writings had lain fallow, had caught a thoroughly inured Browns fan utterly unawares.

See, Ace’s pate was fleshly shaved, er, freshly saved, anyway, different than Trey or his limbic system had ever seen. His crawl had aimed to retrieve his Browns memorabilia and books, thus reclaiming Passion writ large after a so long period treating the sting of piss in his eyes.

In other words, too long a story for a blog post, but enough to make this extra point:

Wouldn’t That Imply You Made A Point In the First Place?

Ignore Rogue Sub-headitor please.

And that point is this: Ace too was surprised, horribly so. In his uncle’s sudden appearance, in the fright and stumble and instinctual verbal volley, Ace feared he had seen his own shadow. An out-of-time vision of his own being even more dried up, frail, and lonely. More winter, more bleakness, blankness.

It was too scary to countenance without subconscious cover of laughter persisting until he at last grasped what had brought Old Dawg Trey Davis here, now.

He was not a shadow, not at all. More an echo.

Calling out, calling back.

True. Faithful.

The Browns were out, darker than hell.

The Browns are back.

Ace can deal with that just fine, he thanks you very much, knowing he’s so, so far from alone.