North of Montgomery

Now that I’m back working in a high school, Friday night football is part of my life again. It was a major part of my life as a player in high school, a high school coach for five years, an assistant principal for six years, and for three years as a Dad. For me, there’s just something about Friday nights in the fall, cooler weather, and the way the sun and the light look different in the sky. There’s just nothing else like it. 

Recently we had an away game in Tullahoma, a small town about an hour away. Small by my current standards, but a much bigger town than the one I grew up in and represented as a football player over thirty-five years ago. I chose to drive a two lane highway down to the game and avoid the interstate. The drive took me past farms and fields and through one-light towns, bringing back a flood of memories. Bus rides to Eclectic, Verbena, Marbury, Maplesville and other small communities dotted across Central Alabama.  Watching miles of cotton disappear through the school bus window. Riding in quiet with no music on the bus in the pre-Sony Walkman era.  Seeing the lights of the stadium in the distance. Pulling up into another small town like my own, lining off the bus and into a gym or locker room, and preparing for the only thing that mattered in our world.  

Now I’ve got a few hours to kill each Friday afternoon between the final school bell and kickoff. I find myself alone in my office, looking at old YouTube videos of Alabama-Auburn games, Army-Navy games, and searching for any old high school videos that some blessed soul has transferred from VHS. There aren’t any of my school that I can find, which is probably for the best. I know there are VHS tapes sitting in my parents attic if I want to be the one to seek that atonement. There is one video however, of my old high school field. It’s just a 360 degree panoramic view from the 50 yard line. The only audible sound is the wind. The grass is starting to fade, the leaves have left the trees behind the visitor’s side, and the light is simply perfection as the sunset highlights every cloud in the sky with shades of orange and pink.  

Watching these videos, I reflect on where I was, the people I was with, and where my friends and family might have been at the time.  I remember that I have a trove of shared memories with people that are no longer part of my life. And that these memories are thirty-plus years in the rear view mirror. But, new memories are being made every Friday night and for this generation, they will live forever on the internet.  My hope is that the memories and the experience of Friday night will live in some kid’s heart like they do mine.