Ode to High School Football
We always sit in the same general area of the bleachers. I bring the girls in with me since my wife is helping get the concession stand set up. They're frying funnel cakes and pretzels (have you ever had a big pretzel fried crispy on the outside and served with cheese to dip it in?) The line is always four or five people deep outside their stand. The girls and I sit down on the south end of the bleachers three rows up from the front. The bright, aluminum bleachers extend from about the 20-yard line on one end of the field to the 20-yard line on the other. The sun is going down and stringy, patchy clouds sit in the east and reflect the red-orange glow of the evening. The breeze is perfect. The massive lights are on and the bugs are already gathering around the glow. As it gets darker, bats come out to eat all the bugs around the lights.
More people stream onto the bleachers while we wait for my parents to get there. A few minutes before the game is ready to start, the band marches onto the south end of the field in time to the rapping of a single snare drum, beating out a rhythm (brrrr-ump...brrrr-ump... brrrr-ump-ump-ump). At 7:00, the band marches into position, covering about a quarter of the football field and the drum major waves her arms for the band to get ready. The instruments come up and everyone stands, takes off their hats, and faces the American flag flying on a pole whose base is a monument to the veterans of World War I. The band plays the national anthem and everyone stands in silence, watching the flag waver in a slight breeze, the backdrop being the sky at sunset. We can't have an official prayer over the loudspeaker any more because the ACLU has decided for us that we shouldn't do that. So we thumb our noses at the ACLU every Friday night we have a home game because we have a "student-lead activity". One of the high school students prays over the loudspeaker instead of a local pastor.
The sun is getting lower and has almost set. The eastern sky is a very deep, dark blue as the other team kicks off. Our Tigers play hard and make several good plays. One of the boys that my son has played with on the basketball team is also a running back. He's very fast and can weave in and out very well. He makes several touchdowns for us. It's great to see him succeed like that. He and four or five of his siblings live with their grandparents, who raise them. Their mother is in jail and I don't know that their father is involved with the family at all.
Our hometown boys wins the football game. All 66 kids on the team, the various coaches, and about 100 parents and friends meet in the middle of the football field after the game. The kids kneel down, helmets off, and the coach walks around, bent over, slapping shoulder pads and yelling words of encouragement and the entire team yells back in unison. It takes us a little while to round up the kids. My wife helps clean up the concession stand so I take a couple kids with me. The rest want to stay and run around on the field with some of their friends from school.
That's a Friday night in the Midwest in the fall. I was never much of a football fan. I still don't watch it on television. But I do like to experience this bit of Americana on Friday nights. I give up a lot to live in a small town on purpose. I don't have the highest-paying job I could. I don't have the fancy stuff I could have if I lived in the city and chased a bigger paycheck and a more prestigious job. But the little things in life that have meaning are more important to me than that other stuff. I hope I can teach my kids to enjoy those little things in life rather than trying to chase down something that fades away when you grab it.
