Hearty fall greetings!
The sentiment’s a bit late but, as usual, so is that proper fall feeling here in LA. En route to the Bay Area recently, I had to be relieved that the temperature was only in the 80’s rather than the triple digits I drove through only days before…
Nope. My personal herald of the fall season remains the return of college football! I love hunkering down on a lazy Saturday to keep an eye on game after game – especially if my California Golden Bears are playing! I even hang out for those Dr. Pepper “Fansville” ads as so much of their passionate silliness, I totally get!
Sadly though, a recent “Fansville” installment hit too close to home…
It featured a young couple’s parting ways as their classic rivalry teams are realigned into other conferences. It didn’t tickle me as usual because that’s what’s happened to Cal’s conference. Team by team, PAC-12 members have jumped ship (lured by more revenue, I believe) – my Bears among the most recent – and only two teams remain.
Now I know the demise of what was touted as “The Conference of Champions” doesn’t affect everybody out there – but for anyone with cherished traditions, be they in sport or elsewhere, maybe they can relate to my regret at the close of an era…
As I trudge down this stony path from denial to acceptance, I’ll handle it as I usually do – by retreating from reality for a time. If Dr. Pepper has its “Fansville”, I’m gonna create my own football-mad haven – and I’m gonna call it “Amysville”.
Come and hang out for just a little!
Kinda like the Force (as I expect I’ve said), a love of sports – especially college football – runs strong in my family! So generations have lived happily here in Amysville – if contentiously, at times. It must be said that battles for dinner table bragging rights among Cal Bears, Wisconsin Badgers and Oregon State Beavers were known to get epic, but it was all in good fun! Um –
Mostly in good fun.
With all due respect to the pros, Amysville is mainly a high school and college football kinda town. Over a century ago, Grandpa Jack played high school football. And taking after his namesake, my older brother Jack played in the local Pop Warner program. Jack’s excitement about playing quarterback even took over his dreams one night – he sleepwalked into the living room, imagining himself on the sidelines of a game, to ask Dad what play he should run next. Without looking up from the evening paper, Dad replied:
“Go long, son. All the way back to bed.”
But football hasn’t been a preoccupation strictly for the men of Amysville. As a little girl, I rushed and passed with Jack and my other big brother, Rich, in the backyard – they kindly made up for the six and eight years’ age difference between us by playing on their knees. We all attended El Cerrito High School right down the street and, along with the folks, were die-hard Gaucho football fans!
Mum sure did inherit a zeal for supporting her favorite teams – all the way back to her days at Chicago’s Calumet High School! She also went to football games at alma mater, Grinnell College, in Iowa – even sticking it out along with Dad through a game where the winds were so gusty that kick-offs might have been measured in negative yards! And after getting her Masters from the University of Wisconsin, Mum remained a stalwart Badger fan for all the rest of her days.
Before Jack and I both became Bears, the whole family attended football games at Cal where Dad was a professor. After keeping score in the programs and buying his little sis blue and gold pom-poms to cheer with, Rich would go on to attend Oregon State as Dad had, and break the no-pro mold by becoming a rabid Seattle Seahawks fan. (Seahawks were fine – but Ducks? Never Ducks.)
In the “contentious” column, Rich could prove a ferocious adversary when his Beavs played my Bears – particularly in basketball. Our usual game wager involved my making him meatloaf with Mum’s family recipe if Cal lost – and in the Ralph Miller era, I made a lotta meatloaf…
I’ll miss rooting together as a family for the pride of the PAC-12 – and, fierce as they could be, I’ll honestly miss those intra-conference rivalries as well.
But hey! Since Amysville is only imagined anyway, why not turn it into my absolute ideal town? Okay, so first – some Camelot-y type laws by which football shall be governed here:
On arriving at an Amysville game, if your assigned seat is in the middle of a row, no one else will have sat down yet between it and you. All bags of peanuts lobbed by Amysville vendors are cleanly caught and never ricochet into other fans’ faces. And if a receiving team returns a kick all the way for an epic touchdown, no one is in the restroom when it happens!
While I’m at it, let’s also make a few historical corrections:
At my first Cal football rally, I don’t make the freshman mistake of sitting right down in front where the enormous bonfire will be lit – and where I’ll have to wonder if eyebrows can grow back. In Amysville, the much-beloved, sweater-clad Cal mascot, Oski, never has and never will confuse and traumatize children by drinking water via a straw through a hole in his “eye”. And most importantly, in 1982 when my Bears pull off a miraculous victory over archrival Stanford by executing “The Play” – a maneuver which takes four seconds, five laterals (all legal, thank you) and a marching band – I am in attendance and do not choose that weekend to visit a friend at UC Davis…
So there it is – a town that for one brief shining moment is known as Amysville! I realize I’ll have to leave its comforting borders and enter a world where who knows who’ll be in the Rose Bowl, where other grand old football match-ups have disappeared on a chilly fall breeze, and where I bet I’ll have to get used to watching more games at 9 in the morning (necessarily relying on its being Happy Hour somewhere).
To make the reason for these changes easier to swallow, maybe I’ll keep pretending that like in Amysville, gains of true importance aren’t financial but only of the kind that give our teams first downs. And what the heck – maybe I’ll linger here just a moment more to celebrate the love of football that does run so strong in my family and has given me so much! I have it. My grandfather, father, mother and brothers had it. And generations coming along have it too. I’ll enjoy the game for how it’s always connected me to kin and community and at its best offered a fine, fun and sometimes unforgettable example of what people who strive as a team and give their very best can do!
From my Amysville porch – where Sandy Berman’s calling the Gauchos’ play-by-play, and Joe Starkey’s hoarse and joyous cry that “The Bears! The Bears have won!” still echo in my ears – I raise a glass in toast:
To feats and fans past! And to those that even in a strange, new and realigned world, I’ll have to trust are out there yet to come.
Cheers!
Here’s a little video (I hope…) of Mum’s watching a Wisconsin vs Ohio St. game, and proving she was both a serious and savvy fan:
TESSEROLOGY 
Love this Amy! In my own bit of Ramonasville imagining, I won’t leave the last Cal v. USC game at Memorial stadium at halftime and miss the nail biter of a second half.
Ramonaaaaaa!!! Thank you! Oh wow…that was a heck of a game. And maybe in Ramonasville, you could swing it so Cal wins..? 😃
Being from the other side of The Pond, I have no understanding whatsoever of ‘Football’. It remains a complete mystery. 🙂
Have to own I don’t quite get all of the nuances of the game, myself – but I sure do enjoy it!
Whereas I instinctively always understood cricket but I’m sure it must be a total mystery to you.
I’ll confirm that, cricket-wise, you are absolutely right! At age 10 and 12 though, my brothers were introduced to a cricket match when we lived in Australia! Afraid their takeaways were pretty much that there was lots of beer consumption and whistling at some woman named Sheila… 😉
With all due forever congrats to your Bears on The Play, my heart still goes out to my fellow marching band trombonist.
Hey, didn’t know you played trombone! Well, at least he’s got a place in history – but I’m sure he didn’t see that coming. I mean he REALLY didn’t see that coming! 😃
To Karen Z: Gary Tyrell is fine now. I see him a lot at Snodfart tailgates. He knows he’s a part of an unforgettable moment in history.
Great to know, Arne – thanks! (And “Snodfart” was a new one to me!)
Wow! What great serendipity to get this extra inside scoop. Thank you, and glad that he okay. : )
Another enjoyable blog Amy. As usual it triggered some long buried memories of the past that perhaps you might enjoy.
I remember riding Bart back home from somewhere South of Berkeley with my good friend Joe Nemeth. Back in those days (the early 80s) we went all over the place on BART. One of the places we went to was Tri-City the world’s largest sporting goods store in Fremont. We also went to San Francisco to enjoy countless events including the laser light show of the dark side of the Moon at the Morrison planetarium, Star Trek conventions at the Hyatt regency and the 50th anniversary of the Bay bridge opening.
Getting back on BART traveling north back to El Cerrito from some adventure our train pulled into Berkeley Station. Most of the time Bart was pretty boring as we were underground and had nothing to do other than play footsie and see if we could outrage some old lady into thinking we were gay. (Forgive me for being a foolish, naive teenager. Well there goes any hope of a political career for me!) What was usually a routine predictable arrival was anything but. Usually the impulsive and impatient people outside on the platform would line up at the spots where they expected the trains doors to be so they could get in first and find a good seat. Depending on how courteous or big they were, sometimes they would step to the side and let the exiting passengers out first before rushing in. Other times they might push in and the exiting passengers would part and desperately try to get out before the doors would close. This incident slightly resembles the latter.
Our boring uneventful ride home was suddenly interrupted by loud noises like an out of control mob. Before the train even stopped we saw a huge crowd of people jumping and whooping and embracing each other. The doors opened and the enthusiastic crowd surged in screaming things like “the bears won! the bears won the big game! it was the most fantastic finish in history!” It wasn’t until I got home and turned on the news and was blown away by the endless amazing repeats of “the play”.
I was well acquainted with the rivalry between Cal and Stanford by then along with the pregame shenanigans pulled by the opposing students. One time I remember one evening looking up on the hill in Berkeley where there was a large letter C for Cal painted on the hill and seeing a large letter S for Stanford in red Christmas lights blinking over the C. Shortly after the big game with “the play” I remember seeing on the news that Stanford students had mass produced and distributed a false version of The Daily Californian newspaper all over campus one night. The paper said something like the pac-10 reversed their decision and awarded the victory to Stanford. Cal Coach Joe Kapp was seen crying like a baby. Of course it was totally false but quite a prank pulled off by some sore losers with a lot of money.
Okay I’m done. That’s all I remember of that. Thanks again Amy!
Thanks for sharing YOUR take and experience on the play, Mike! The aftermath of that game was pretty wild. I was out of town, myself, but I did get back to Berkeley in time for the parties! I also saved a copy of that fake “Daily Cal” – have to own it was a brilliant post-Play prank and I met students who fell for it!
In my family the only sport ever watched was show jumping! But my husband loved watching golf and football; my older son and grandson inherited the love of football and have a season ticket for their local team. My other son can’t stand football! The best part of sport to me is when a local team with amateur players suddenly get to play against the big players.
Wow, show jumping – didn’t see that coming! Had the pleasure of watching a dressage competition live once – really enjoyed it except no one ever even did “the wave”… 😉 Part of the fun of sport is seeing what grabs people and how it varies. Thanks for sharing your sporting experiences! 🏈
I was pony mad when I was a child and could have been a show jumper if I happened to have had a horse and more than few riding lessons! Luckily my granddaughter loves riding and is jumping – a foot high so far!
Wow, good for her! I went through a “horse phase” as a little girl but it only amounted to reading books about horses like “Misty” and “Stormy”. Good luck to your granddaughter!
Thanks, yes I loved my pony books and knew all the bits of harness and the children never seemed to have to go to school or see their parents!
Yes, Misty and Stormy just seemed to connect with us more than grown-ups, didn’t they? 😃