Friday Night Lights

Ahhh, a sunny, breezy Friday afternoon. Not a bad day, considering it's our “second” Friday this week – hubby and I both felt like yesterday was Friday! Even with the sunny warm weather, there's still a feel of fall in the air.

Fridays during school were always fun. We looked forward to the two days away from school, even though we expected a little heavier homework on the weekends. But during the fall and winter, Fridays were sports days. If we had a home game, that meant the smell of yeasty doughnuts cooking in the basement Home Ec room. If it was an away game, we could likely look forward to getting out of school early. I hated it later on when the state said we couldn't get out early on game days – we were just trying to get kids home so they could eat, change, and be back for the team bus. We had a couple of really long bus routes.

Our fall softball games were fun. There were a few bleachers, usually left for the grownups. We kids would scatter along the grass on the first-base side of the field. People would also park along both sides of that street, and some would watch from their cars. The younger kids would play, the adolescents would flirt around with one another. The younger high schoolers tried to act more grownup, and the juniors and seniors would likely be working the concession stand.

Once I got into junior high, it was really important to be part of the crowd and attend those home games. I don't remember getting to do it much before then – we always had that “ten miles to town” drive. But, bless my folks, they understood that once I hit junior high it was important to be part of everything.

Softball season was only a few weeks long – it seems like we were done with that by the end of September. There were eight schools in our conference, so it didn't take too long for each school to make the rounds, then we finished off with the conference tournament. Then we had a short break until basketball season started.

I remember very clearly one Friday night in September 1966 when I enjoyed a softball game a little too much to suit my dad. My grandfather had passed away early that morning, and the rest of the family was at the funeral home both Friday and Saturday nights - the funeral was on Sunday. I was 13 and had just started 8^th grade – plus, I'd just buried my other grandfather that June. So I'd had enough of funeral homes! I walked from the funeral home up to the school for the softball game, then went back to the funeral home when the games were over. Dad wasn't too happy with me.

Basketball season started in November (maybe October for junior high) and finished up with tournaments in February. The concession stand was open during the junior high games, so the juniors and seniors spent a lot of time in the school lunchroom serving up doughnuts, pop, and candy. It helped my transportation situation a lot when we moved into my grandmother's house – next door to the school, no less! - in November of my junior year. That made me one of the go-to people to open up the concession stand and work the pre-game time. I always enjoyed it, so it wasn't a problem.

My folks took me to the basketball games as well before we got moved into town. I remember a time or two we started to the game but turned around at the blacktop and went back home because it had started snowing. There was no way we wanted to be stuck in town if it snowed!! I would feel like I had missed a major social event.

Once my kids got into junior high, I could still enjoy fall Friday nights because they were playing in the marching band. So I had a good excuse to head to the football field and be part of the Friday night local sports crowd. Even as a grownup it was a fun social event.