EDITOR’S CORNER
I’ve always wondered what it would be like to fly over Texas in a small plane on a Friday night in the fall.
Not over the eye-piercing megawatts of Houston or Dallas or Austin, but out away from the millions in the metropoli, say, from Jasper—salute to the late, great Willis Webb—all the way to Big Spring—salute to the great, and very much with us, Tumbleweed Smith.
I know what I would see. Literally thousands of glittering bright lights denoting hundreds of small towns.
Because that’s where a great percentage of Texas small town residents gather every Friday night, at their football stadiums.
In case you hadn’t noticed, Rockdale opened its football season on Friday. Oh, you knew?
You don’t need me to explain Texas and football because you are here, but I’ve actually had a couple of occasions to try and explain it to nice but clueless Yank—uh other people.
Unfortunately, these explanations were not on a weekend. The best way to explain Texas (and the entire South’s) relation with football to someone is to just take them to a game.
That’s what happened to a British intellectual doing a television series on America. Finally, somebody just took him to a game.
Poor guy didn’t know it was not just a game, it was Alabama-Auburn. Footage he used was, to his credit, of him standing there, crowd roaring, bands thundering and him stammering: “I, I, I think I want to cry. It’s so magnificent. I don’t think I can explain it.”
Let me take a shot at it.
We all need things which bring us together, build communities, provide us with a sense of purpose. Sociologists would call these “shared values” and they’re important in forming society.
When you get to small towns in Texas those shared values take on a very personal level, because those athletes and band members and cheerleaders you are watching aren’t someone you only know by reputation, they are your own sons and daughters.
(I know a family which went to football games primarily because their daughter was the one who packed the band instruments in the travel trailer. And you know what? They were proud of her. And should have been.)
Sports get rapped sometimes and sometimes they deserve it. Sure, I’ve seen towns, including this one, torn apart over issues involving sports, and that was sad and disheartening.
But I’ve seen much more of the other side, of a town being brought together. Remember two years ago when the Tigers won a state football championship?
Didn’t it feel great to know that, at least for a few weeks, we were all on the same page, all wanting the same thing. Turned out we got it.
But beyond that, look around you in the stands of any home game, no matter how the team is doing.
There are people who don’t look like you, don’t think like you, don’t pray like you, don’t dress like you, may not even speak like you.
Together. Passionately together. There’s something to be said for that.
Now, I was born at night, but it wasn’t last night. I know the feeling usually only lasts until you get to the parking lot.
But at least it gives us a glimpse of how we really should feel all the time about living in a community.
Of course, if you could take wing from the home stands and fly across the field to the visitor bleachers you would find exactly the same kind of passion shared by a community that is Not Rockdale, pulling for their own Lions or Tigers or Bears, oh my. And so they should.
I’ll bet if you were up in that little plane with me on a Friday night, you might catch a sense of it, floating up from under all those thousands of stadium lights, spread out seemingly forever beneath us like jewels on a swath of black velvet.
It’s Friday night in Texas. And, yes, the British dude got it right. It’s magnificent.
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