A Small Town Thursday Night 8/27/2023

By: Jennifer Richardson Holt

There is just something about the start of high school football in a small southern town. This is a time of year that is full of reminiscence for me.  I suppose this is mostly caused by the fact that the school that my daughter attends is the same one I attended so every event and every happening takes me immediately back to my days there.  Her tales remind me of my own tales, but I don’t for a minute think that this experience is unique to me. I dare say that all across the rural South there are entire communities living this same experience.  We watch as people varying degrees younger than ourselves rekindle memories of a bygone era that isn’t so bygone.  And that may be the joy of it, at its core this is a season that hasn’t changed much over the years.  It hasn’t become foreign with the progression of time and technology. It still is all about those same base emotions that we can easily remember.

I started thinking about it this past week. It was the day of the first game.  It came oddly on a Thursday, which seems to be the standard every year for some reason that no one has yet to be able to explain to me.  But in line that morning waiting to drop my daughter off at school I saw them coming. In a gradual trickle from the high school building and the parking lot were teenagers. Some of them looked like grown adults and some looked like they had escaped from the elementary school and wandered to the wrong campus.  There were the obvious football players with their jerseys on.  That’s the funny thing about high school football players though, they fall in that same category of some muscular young men and some skinny little boys being swallowed by a jersey.  That’s always made me smile to see those in jerseys who look like babies. But then after I smile, I worry because they may be soon playing against some of those who look like men.  Bless them, I know puberty hasn’t yet shined its full light upon them, but I don’t see how they don’t snap like twigs at practice much less in full game competition.

But back to the morning gathering, they were all heading out to where I’ve seen them gather before. Chairs and nearby picnic tables were being moved closer though I knew they’d all likely stand anyway. The adult that was welcoming them is one that I have known since he was knee-high to a grasshopper.  This still strikes me as infinitely weird that I know people who are very definitely adults but who I have known since they were mere toddlers. I can say the same for the coach of the football team. I remember him playing at 3 years old and that is a very strange thing to be able to visualize of a head football coach.  But the leader of this meeting is now a pastor, and he was welcoming all these students for a gameday devotion before the start of class. 

I could see the excitement on those kids’ faces. I could almost smell it. You could imagine all the emotion in the guts behind those jerseys.  For some of those guys this would be their last first game and they were filled with a mixture of sadness and the elation of the senior year.  There were those that were facing their first game ever which brings all sorts of questions that have all sorts of answers; some thrilling, some concerning.  The expectation was palpable in the whole group.  This is the beginning of some of the best times of their lives.  Clearly, they’ll remember it for quite some time since I am remembering it myself and it’s been eons since I’ve been in school. 

I looked at that group and grinned fondly at them. We all knew it was a big day for the whole community. And a big day it was.  Due to excessive heat, they pushed the game to an even later hour. So, on a Thursday night, that was still very hot, a tiny town that is in fact so tiny it doesn’t technically exist since its address is in another town because we don’t have a post office of our own, the population probably quadrupled.  Around that small football field that is surrounded by woods and hay fields, there was not a speck of ground to be found that didn’t have a car parked on it.  They were all coming out to see the game.  The home team played their archrival from a city. It’s a small city yes, but this became a battle of the country boys and the city boys from across the river.  It was a matter of bragging rights.  That only fueled the fires of the community.  The fact that it was a weeknight, the game was starting late, it was ridiculously hot, and everyone was going to be miserable getting up the next day was a non-issue.  There was too much anticipation and too much fun to be had. Even my daughter came home from school that day with school-colored bows in her hair she bought at the spirit store and with an award for showing the most spirit at the pep rally.  Technically she said she was the most, and I quote, “spiritual” at the pep rally but, I knew what she meant.

I’ve heard the school was filled with the walking dead on Friday morning.  Everyone was suffering not just from minimal amounts of sleep but also from the hangover of the intoxication of winning. And win we did in the biggest sense of the word. The country boys put quite the whipping on the city boys.  I admit it, I stayed up later than I should have watching the game.  I dozed off at one point, and when I woke up the score was outrageous. I might have slept a bit more soundly knowing my alma mater was beating our rivals and beating them soundly. And of course, there were all the memories that danced about in my head, and I knew that just down the road, between the woods and a hay field, countless more were being made.