Opinion

Bleacher Blues

Thursday, November 2, 2006

As I watched the crowded stadium of red garbed folk at the Chiefs game last Sunday, I began to have a backache as I remembered all the hours I have spent sitting in bleachers somewhere.

My high school years were during World War II and in Washington, D.C., there was a perpetual brownout so that school activities were limited to afternoon hours. Our high school had a football field in front of the main part of the school. I usually stayed after school on Fridays to watch the football games from the concrete bleachers built into the side of the hill where the school stood. However, my favorite weeks were when my club had the opportunity to sell the candy bars to the crowd. We didn't have a concession stand, but walked up and down the aisles hawking our wares. That day I didn't have to sit in a row to be part of the crowd.

In college I sometimes didn't have the cash to go to the football games in the stadium at the University of Missouri. But I tried to go to many of the basketball games. Jimmie White, who lived in the rooming house next door to our boarding house, was on the team. He wasn't a starter, but he did play some, so we girls tried to support him.

Then after the war, when Lester and I each had graduated and he became a Vocational Agriculture teacher, my bleacher sitting really began. In Elkland, Missouri, the small school where he first began teaching, basketball was king. A teacher would lose all respect if he or she did not attend every Tuesday and Friday night game. Since we were young and childless we were also often chosen to ride the school bus with the Pep Squad to the away games. It was fun and I was young enough that the bleachers didn't seem all that hard.

When Lester became a County Extension Agent and our children began coming, I had a brief reprieve from the bleachers. Instead I spent many hours in folding chairs, rural schools' pupil's seats or restaurant chairs as I accompanied Lester to 4-H meetings and other events.

Later when he became a minister and our children reached school age, again we had to support our town's team, as well as the teams our own children were members of. The hardest bleachers were at track meets where we sat for hours between the races or events our child was in. They started afterschool when it was usually warm. By the time the final race that our son was usually in, the temperature had dropped 15 or 20 degrees as we huddled together on the cold bleachers.

I remember the early days when the crowd and Pep clubs were instructed to be courteous, especially when a player was trying to make a free throw. Now I watch as crowds behind the basket are furnished materials to wave around to distract the vision of the shooter. I remember when cheerleaders wore pleated skirts and modest colorful tops. I remember when basketball players' shorts were that -- short -- and did not flop around their knees. I remember when I was young enough that I could sit through a B-Team game before the A-Team game and still be able to walk naturally after the games were over.

Now that I am again a Soccer Mom while in my 80s I again am sitting in the bleachers while our great-granddaughter is the manager for a team. Oh, My aching back!