Homecoming
Every small town is uniquely the same: a brotherhood of local farmers having coffee, one or two auto repair shops, a rodeo where singles hang out, and football games. Most around here have a speed limit of 25, allowing me to admire the magnificently resilient tabernacles and old city halls. It’s a physical reminder to slow life down and let the culture season you.
Montpelier Idaho is a large city of two-thousand and has a movie theater, so it must be metropolitan, although their marquee displayed only one movie title. I put on my “goin’ out clothes” (footwear other than the flip flops) and into town I went.
My outing nearly cost me two tickets, as I was only half of their quota for showing a movie. I loitered around town, window shopped the second auto shop and a dozen abandoned storefronts, and finally we’d met quota. Ticket, popcorn and drink got me in under fifteen bucks.
Curtains for doors and creaky floors preserved the 1926 live theatre’s charm. I wondered what acting troupes had been here before. What emotions were felt in these seats by previous patrons, arriving on horseback for a night of entertainment.
Tonight is homecoming for the local high school. My last attended high school football game was likely in high school, and that attendance wasn’t voluntary. I was in marching band for two of the three years, drumline, the coolest section of all.
High school band: Trip down memory lane
I was an incoming sophomore and initiation into band was big. We were made to wear wet diapers then they wrapped us in cellophane with layers of shaving cream, Nair lathered on our legs and finally handcuffed together. We looked like human little Debbie cakes.
Our friend Sean couldn’t be initiated because he’d broken both arms in a vacuum cleaner accident that summer, so we upped the ante for the delayed event. In front of 400 band members and chaperones, Sean performed the only striptease I’ve officially witnessed. He got down to the black bow tie and leopard print underwear, ‘borrowed from a fellow band member’, when my mother suddenly, horrifyingly, hops onto the dance floor and flashes her matching leopard print (Also ‘borrowed’ from same said band member). Mom was wearing one of my best friend’s leopard undies…
Tonight’s game felt like a family cookout at a fairgrounds. Kids everywhere playing football up and down the hills like billy goats. One student was raising money for the E sports Club, which is a club for online game play. I overheard him stating they don’t play any online games because they don’t have working computers. That earned him my first donation. Later, getting desperate, coupled with the fact he’s a six-year veteran of cross country running while sitting next to a concession stand, led to him calling out “You can spend five bucks on candy,” with gravel in his voice, “Or you can gamble with me”. That earned my second donation.
