>Anybody else too unAmerican and/or unmanly to watch the Stupor Bowl
tonight


Well, I spent a delightful Sunday afternoon working outside in freezing
weather on the temporary saw shed where a water wheel restoration project
will commence next week, but this lovely comment above brings forth
childhood memories from Ithaca and Cornell when Ivy League Football was
still national news and Cornell Pre Med student Hillery Shillay was All
American Quarterback.   It was then my father taught me the culture of
football as a religious/patriotic experience.

Every Monday night after a Cornell game, there would be a gathering of
football aficionados in the Elks Hall, a large fine old style meeting room
on the top floor of a downtown office building.   My father, a proud Cornell
grad of '32 who attended every football game of his university career as
librarian of the marching band (a lover of music who met the ROTC
requirements by being in the band handing out music sheets and learning how
to march even though he was tone deaf), would go off after supper on those
Mondays to see the official 8 mm black and white films of the game with all
the other super fans in town.   The Cornell coach gave a running commentary
to the silent films, well not so silent because of the old projector
sprockets clacking away, and every play of importance was reversed and run
again and again until the coach had finished his discussion to the packed
hall of the joy or grief happening on the screen.   The films were rushed in
time for those important Monday night showings even when the games were out
of town.   One awful weekend snow storm slowed traffic so much that the
dedicated manly crowd had to wait in the hall for 5 long midnight hours
until the film finally arrived from the Saturday game with Harvard in Boston
(Father had some serious explaining to do when he finally got home that
night!).

My dad always came home from those evenings very late and very happy and
smelling the deep stink of a room with many cigars.   Each season, he would
take us to a couple of games in the stadium, and the events were like
pilgrimages to places of high spiritual worship.   The power of the 20,000
person group spirit and the fine brass band music and the cold fresh air
made all the pageantry of the game quite splendid, and it was backed up with
the notion of importance that only Cornell can give to itself and its
followers, not at all unlike any other religion.

All through childhood, those Monday nights were always a mystery to me and
our family because of the special intensity and inner personal pleasure my
father exuded before and after his private night out, accompanied by the
smell of cigars that he didn't smoke except at places off by himself.
Then, one year as I became a teenager, he invited me to come along to see
the films, and without realizing it until reflection today, that was the
moment of passage into manhood in our families personal culture.   All the
men gathered in that large hall were absolutely dedicated to football
excellence and nuance, and to the comradery of peers.   Father enjoyed
pointing out to me the (locally) famous ones such as the Judge and Police
Chief and Professors and Radio Host, and introduced me to some of them with
pride in his voice, proud to introduce his son and proud of knowing all
these people to introduce his son to.   There too I saw the little round
swarthy man who was always hanging around the little room (a bookmaker I now
realize) at the back of the State Street Smoke Shop where my father always
smiled a special boyish manly smile as he entered to get his news paper, and
sometimes a special shoe shine, and always to ask for the empty cigar boxes
he brought home for us to use in craft projects.

That special night, when I too came home smelling of cigars after having
shook the hands of the Police Chief and the bookie, was his way of admitting
me into the manly world where there were no mothers present, the home of
Football, intense loyalty and patriotism.

cp in bc

--
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