Friday In A Small Town

My wife and another lady were selling magnets for a PTO fundraiser at the bank's Customer Appreciation Day. People who may or may not have accounts at the bank show up to eat free hot dogs cooked by the men who run the bank. An old man hobbles over to her card table. In the box are the paw-shaped magnets. Our school mascot is a tiger. The magnets say "Tiger Pride" on them.

"Tiger Pride? They don't have much to be proud of," the old man says. The football team has barely broken a dozen points so far this year.

"There's other things, too. Basketball, track," my wife says.

"Well, nothing as important as football," the old man says.

We all stand up and look past the south goal posts at the flag hoisted to the top of a polished pole that sits atop a pedestal that, if I remember correctly (it's been many years since I've read it), has a brass plaque that honors the community's veterans of World War I. The marching band plays the national anthem and the school song. The football team runs around behind the band and plows through a banner that, in keeping with the evolution of society, is no longer paper and made each Friday before a game, but made once out of heavy material and the edges velcroed together so it can be used over and over again without having to expend the effort required to make a paper banner every time one is called for.

We kick off. The other team returns the ball eighty yards or so for a touchdown within the first seventeen seconds. The short, stout boy with the ball runs past us. One of the coaches is screaming already. Instead of an extra point, the other team tries for a two-point conversion and succeeds. Don't want to despair too early. Don't want to expect them to do badly and have that expectation met. Three touchdowns for the visitors by the first quarter and five by the end of the half. Only one for our team by the end of the game and the extra point goes wide.

Our boys come by for money to get a bottle of pop and the girls want a paw print painted on their faces. We talk to my wife's cousin for a while. He's a youth minister at the Baptist Church. His dad has cancer but looks great, plays golf every day, and will go back to work soon. People I know go by in front of us. Some I know names for, some I only know their face.

It's dark now, but still warm. Not football weather yet. Pleasant. Plenty of advice from the stands on what needs to be done. Better defense. Just catch the ball and run it. Don't fumble the snap.

The game ends. Thank you for coming and supporting your Tigers. The Baptist Church invites you to the fifth quarter. The band files past us and we wait for the kids to find us. We walk back out to the van. The paw-print magnet on the back says "Tiger Pride."