Approaching the top of the hill overlooking my hometown one Thursday evening, I saw the football lights blazing in a corner of town that had been dark and dormant for over 15 years. For a moment I felt a surge of nostalgia for all those Friday nights watching my older brother play football, when we brought our own thermos of hot chocolate and carried a large, butter-soaked paper grocery sack of popcorn. When it was my turn to be in high school, I was a football cheerleader standing on the gravel track surrounding the field. A track that now grows more weeds than cheers. I rode the waves of nostalgia as I bypassed my parents’ house to drive up the Football Road. There are houses along this road, but the football field lay at the end and was considered more important than any of those houses. So it was never the Harken Road or the Schipper Road, but the Football Road. The only action this field has felt in the last 16 years has been from middle schoolers and nocturnal, furry creatures. But now, seeing those lights as I crested the hill north of town, I was overjoyed that light and life had returned to Aplington, Iowa, my hometown.
Near the beginning of the movie Friday Night Lights, Coach Gary Gaines (played by Billy Bob Thornton) says to his football team, “We are in the business of protecting this town.” At first I thought this is a huge responsibility to place on the shoulders of these young athletes. Is a town’s vitality dependent upon a high school activity? Take a high school away and see what happens. My high school, as I knew it, died in 1992 when Aplington merged with Parkersburg, four miles to the east. Each town retained their elementary schools with the middle school remaining in Aplington and the high school moving to Parkersburg. Of course those of us who remembered the rivalry of the two towns couldn’t fathom how this merger would ever work. But what we really worried about in Aplington was that, without high school football and basketball games, and band concerts, and plays, the heart of the town would be ripped out. Now in 2008, with those football lights blazing, I felt a pulse slowly returning to the field, the school, the town. People once again loitered by the concession stand, fans sat in the stands, cars were parked up and down the Football Road.
I should explain here that for the 2008-2009 school year, the high school has returned to Aplington because of the devastating tornado that destroyed half of Parkersburg, including the high school. Although I was delighted to once again see people and cars and football lights, I was confused. Would the legendary Ed Thomas, coach of the Aplington-Parkersburg Falcons, hold a pre-game practice in Aplington? Thomas had vowed after the tornado pummeled the field that bears his name that all home games and practices would still be held there. With the help of numerous high school and professional football players, Coach Thomas was able to keep that promise. Maybe Coach Gary Gaines was right, the football team is “in the business of protecting this town.” And maybe they need to feel that responsibility as a way to re-pay the town for supporting them.
I later learned that the reason for the Thursday Night Lights in my hometown was for a powder puff football game. Not exactly the Mighty A-P Falcons or the Permian High Panthers, but for just a moment I got to feel that same surge of adrenalin that I used to get hearing the players grunt through their warm-ups, the marching band whirl through their pre-game show, and the fans buzz under their blankets for a night of entertainment and community.
My hometown, like most towns that lose their high school, didn’t die, but it took many years for it to find a new identity. In another year the football field and that corner of my hometown will once again become dark and dormant. I have to agree with what the character Don Billingsley said after he played his last game in Friday Night Lights, “I’m gonna miss the lights.”
Near the beginning of the movie Friday Night Lights, Coach Gary Gaines (played by Billy Bob Thornton) says to his football team, “We are in the business of protecting this town.” At first I thought this is a huge responsibility to place on the shoulders of these young athletes. Is a town’s vitality dependent upon a high school activity? Take a high school away and see what happens. My high school, as I knew it, died in 1992 when Aplington merged with Parkersburg, four miles to the east. Each town retained their elementary schools with the middle school remaining in Aplington and the high school moving to Parkersburg. Of course those of us who remembered the rivalry of the two towns couldn’t fathom how this merger would ever work. But what we really worried about in Aplington was that, without high school football and basketball games, and band concerts, and plays, the heart of the town would be ripped out. Now in 2008, with those football lights blazing, I felt a pulse slowly returning to the field, the school, the town. People once again loitered by the concession stand, fans sat in the stands, cars were parked up and down the Football Road.
I should explain here that for the 2008-2009 school year, the high school has returned to Aplington because of the devastating tornado that destroyed half of Parkersburg, including the high school. Although I was delighted to once again see people and cars and football lights, I was confused. Would the legendary Ed Thomas, coach of the Aplington-Parkersburg Falcons, hold a pre-game practice in Aplington? Thomas had vowed after the tornado pummeled the field that bears his name that all home games and practices would still be held there. With the help of numerous high school and professional football players, Coach Thomas was able to keep that promise. Maybe Coach Gary Gaines was right, the football team is “in the business of protecting this town.” And maybe they need to feel that responsibility as a way to re-pay the town for supporting them.
I later learned that the reason for the Thursday Night Lights in my hometown was for a powder puff football game. Not exactly the Mighty A-P Falcons or the Permian High Panthers, but for just a moment I got to feel that same surge of adrenalin that I used to get hearing the players grunt through their warm-ups, the marching band whirl through their pre-game show, and the fans buzz under their blankets for a night of entertainment and community.
My hometown, like most towns that lose their high school, didn’t die, but it took many years for it to find a new identity. In another year the football field and that corner of my hometown will once again become dark and dormant. I have to agree with what the character Don Billingsley said after he played his last game in Friday Night Lights, “I’m gonna miss the lights.”
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