The lights of autumn

My gray Skechers are darkening slowly, six feet beneath the drumming umbrella. Little by little, they go from the color of ash to the color of coal as the rain soaks them, as sheets of water beat down from a leaden sky and the first Friday night lights of autumn pierce the gloom a good hour before official sunset.

High school football. Back again, come hell, high water or the celestial calendar, which says summer goes on for another month.

Nonsense. Summer is done. That was autumn out there, wearing water wings.

At Zollner Stadium, where I showed up just because, the rain came down before kickoff and then after it, and yet I stayed for a bit. I am out of the sportswriting biz for keeps these days, but these Friday nights still exert their pull. And so there I was at Zollner as a civilian and not a working stiff, my feet and eventually pretty much all of me getting soaked.

It was damn glorious.

Out there on the field, Wayne and Bishop Dwenger were churning 100 yards of sodden turf into mud lasagna, the Saints eventually prevailing 22-0 on a night when the conditions were the only real winners. Rain fell. The lights pierced it dimly. The Generals' white uniforms gradually turned the color of earth, and for a moment I felt a twinge of sympathy for my former brethren in the pressbox.

Nights like this were a bitch for trying to keep track of uniform numbers, I remembered. You pretty much wound up guessing who that was plunging into the line more times than you cared to admit.

Everything else, though ...

It's strange. You get away from it for awhile, and you forget some things. You forget the way the Dwenger players make their entrance, running through the gate single file and making a sharp right turn as they hit the sideline, a maneuver executed parade-ground crisp. You forget the way the ball looks as it tumbles out of the sky on a kickoff, forget the way the young man left back there all by his lonesome gathers it in, forget the muffled whump and thwack of contact as he churns his way upfield through shoals of grasping tacklers.

A football arcs through the twilight, skittering off the hands of a receiver who's been left wide open on a wheel route. A sure six goes with it, but the same receiver will get it back a few plays later.

Here comes the Wayne quarterback, weaving, darting, finding slivers of daylight in the murk. Here comes a Wayne running back, legs churning, pushing a pile of navy Dwenger shirts backward ... oops, out pops the wet football, in swoops one of the navy shirts to scoop it off the grass, there he is collapsing into the end zone for another six.

The Dwenger side of the field erupts. The extra point cartwheels through the uprights. One of the ballboys, blonde as butter and no bigger than a minute, goes tearing after it, then comes tearing past with it in his arms, delivering it breathlessly to a grinning Saints assistant.

"I'm the ballboy coach tonight," he says.

A few minutes later, off tears another kid after another football. His eyes are round and wide, like saucers. It's the thrill of his lifetime -- or will be until a few years down the road, when he's the one out there scooping up a fumble and collapsing into the end zone with it.

Close your eyes, and you can see that moment. You can see it clear as day.

Open your eyes, and there again is the Ballboy Coach.

He's watching the kid race away from him down the sideline. His grin is ten lanes wide.