A few years ago in the back yard on a late-summer Thursday evening, I heard Friday night.
It was a tuba.
A tuba in early September means only one thing. Football.
We lived at a wiffle ball complex that we used as our house then, about a mile west of Lee Hedges Stadium in Shreveport. I guess a tuba’s voice carries at least that far.
I got back into my truck and drove toward the sound.
In the old days, autumn Friday nights meant prep football. While they still do, now there are more teams and fewer stadiums and we share, so Friday night sometimes comes early. Like on Thursday.
This is a good thing. Like hitting the Daily Double at the track. Only instead of the Daily Double, it’s the Nightly Double.
So basically we don’t have to worry about anything on a Thursday or Friday night for the next three months. We have stadium options. If you’re in Webster or Lincoln or Claiborne parishes and have a stadium or two to yourself, that’s fine too: you know you can drive to a game or, if nothing else, read about it Friday morning.
It’s a beautiful thing, how fall football takes care of you that way.
You can also hit a freshman game on a Tuesday; surely some other grade plays on Mondays or Wednesdays.
If you’re a prep football fan, your dance card’s full. By season’s end, it’ll be time to Christmas shop, and we’ll have practically sleepwalked all the way into the New Year.
Ain’t life grand?
That Thursday night I heard the first tuba of the season, I went looking for it and found it, right there at Lee Hedges as I’d figured. It was hooked onto a high schooler who could not fully appreciate, at that moment, just how lucky such a deal is. Every time I pay a light bill or a house note, I’m reminded how carefree high school was, how sweet it was to be washed along in that magical time of youthful ignorance and innocence.
What a deal.
Football nights in high school.
Dance lines. Pep squads. Friends with painted faces. Cornerbacks. Teachers. Parents. Programs. Popcorn.
The Tuba Corp.
Coaches sitting around watching, scouting, sweating, calling each other Coach, a music all its own.
’Murica! You go to ANY of these things EVER and you can practically feel the pulled hamstrings and turf toes and illegal procedure penalties hanging in the autumn air.
Green grass. White stripes. Striped shirts and whistles. Yellow flags. Orange cones. A brown ball.
School colors.
And for a thousand reasons, we just all go out there and watch children play and cheer and march and grow.
The same things lead up to any of these nights, too. A pep rally. A wrapped ankle. A painted run-through sign — although there’s a 50-percent chance in these modern times that the sign will be canvas held together in its middle by Velcro so the spirit squads can use it over and over again. (I miss the paper sign and the thought of a couple of kids designing and painting a new one week after week. Old school.)
Your football team runs under the goalpost and through the sign, Velcro or paper, and it parts in the middle, like the Red Sea did for Moses and the Israelites before That Big Road Game all those years ago.
Glory.
Happy Almost Autumn, Happy Jamboree this week, and Happy Season Opener soon. There’s something about those nights and stadiums and ballparks and seeing it all over and over and over again, for the first time.
Contact Teddy at teddy@latech.edu