Friday Night Lights

Another six-hour drive up to camp tonight. I really don't find that difficult to do, and I don't mind that kind of ride as long as you're actually moving and not sitting in traffic. Tonight was OK. Very little slow-downs and nice, clear weather.

On a trip that long, you've got to have the radio, especially when flying solo like I did tonight. Sometimes I'm in the mood for talk, sometimes for music and occasionally for sports. I like to mix it up. This was a Friday night, and knowing that it was football Friday at the high schools, I decided to tune in some of the local play-by-play on those. If you’ve never listened to them, you should. They can be a real treat. I doubt that most of the announcers you hear are even paid. They’re in it for the love of the game and their local team. Any real talent they might have is mostly accidental.

It didn’t take much work on the AM dial before I came to my first game. This was South Haven versus Comstock. I picked it up just before the half and listened to Vince and Larry describing the action which was very lopsided in favor of South Haven. It was also Homecoming for them, and so I understood why they chose the Comstock game to do it. My guess is that little Comstock probably “visits” a lot of homecoming games every year!

Vince did a fair job calling the action. Larry was another story. He handled most of the “color”, but I think he did a lot of number spotting and clock watching! Somehow though, he got the coveted interview with Alicia (Homecoming Queen) at the halftime festivities. That was even funnier than his football work as he “fumbled” through a compliment on her gown, and some other pertinent questions.

Moving at 75 mph, it doesn’t take long to run out of signal on these small town football games. They typically broadcast with about as much power as my microwave oven. So with Larry and Alicia fading into the background static, I spun the dial.

Next up was Muskegon – Hudsonville. Now here was a game! 26-24 Muskegon, midway through the third, and the Hudsonville Eagles trying to upset. The guys covering this game were doing a pretty fair job also; Bob and another guy, whom I never did get a name on. Just as the Big Red (isn’t that a gum?) of Muskegon were starting to get their act together, I lost the signal. Figures!

I found one last game, this one between Grand Rapids Southern Christian and Ottawa Hills. This was real comedy. The two announcers had to be students at Southern Christian working for extra credit. There were hilarious. They used first names for most of their players; “Josh breaks right, gets another three yards and steps out of bounds!”. They forgot to study the Ottawa roster at all, and so they called the numbers, and then there was an 8-second pause while the found his name. But they were having a good time anyway.

I love listening to these games. The people are real. The fun is real. This is pure American ritual. When I tune in and hear all of the crowd noises, the marching band’s slaughter of some show tune, and the announcer’s genuine enthusiasm for this little game, it instantly takes me back many years to the Friday nights I used to spend at the games, and sometimes it sounds like nothing has changed.

I never played. I was a late-bloomer, and I would have been killed at my size in the 11th grade. But I loved the game, the crisp October nights, my crazy buddies, tons of junk food and a couple of special girls I recall very fondly. In retrospect, not a care in the world. Those were, are still are, “the days”; still appearing every autumn Friday night in a small town near you or right on your AM dial.