Homecomings

 Went to the alma mater's homecoming football game last night because an old friend asked me to sit in on their radio broadcast, and I was reminded again how the theorists and slide-rule boys got it all wrong. Turns out time travel does exist.

I know this because as I was walking into John Young Field at New Haven High School (long may its purple-and-gold live!), I happened to glance over at a huddle of kids chatting away. One of the girls was wearing ... well, not bell-bottoms, exactly, but pretty close.

And the weirdest thing happened.

For a second or two -- maybe not even that -- it was 1971 again. I could feel it. All the sounds and smells of those days (not to say the insecurities of scrawny teenage me) rippled past like a hurrying breeze, and then were gone.

Now, I don't know if that had anything to do with the fact it was homecoming again, and '71 is the first homecoming I remember. But '71 was stuck in my head for the rest of the evening.

First thing I ever wrote for publication was about the '71 homecoming, for one thing.

I was a newbie on the staff of the school paper (the New Haven Herald, long may it ... publish) because my best friend Kevin Leininger, who grew up to be a journalist of some renown here in the Fort, convinced me I'd be good at it. I joke to this day I've never  forgiven him for setting me on the path to less than fabulous riches.

Anyway, they sent me out to do a color piece on homecoming, and so I basically just roamed around all night collecting impressions. The theme was rain, because that's what it did that night. So I wrote about crepe paper melting in the rain on homecoming floats, and the homecoming queen and her court looking like drowned princesses in the rain, and the football team slogging its way through the rain to a rare victory.

Beat newly-formed Wayne High School that night, as I recall. All I remember about the Generals is they ran out of the single wing -- a formation so archaic it was almost new again, and therefore effective if executed properly.

I told that story on the radio last night, even though the only thing about it that was relevant was the football team, as in '71, didn't win very often. In fact, the 2024 Bulldogs hadn't won at all until last night, when they pounded the gunk our of equally winless Bellmont, 50-9.

Other than that, there wasn't much to tie '24 to '71. The weather, for one thing, was gorgeous, clear and windless and awesomely mild for early October. The field was  immaculate state-of-the-art artificial turf, not a churn of slick mud and grass. And the head coach was not old-school John Becker, but 27-year-old rookie Vance Shearer.

Friday was his first victory as a head coach. So of course he got the ritual Gatorade bath.

If the players had done that to John Becker back in '71, they'd have been running gassers on Monday until they were tripping on their tongues.

Or not, on second thought. Because perhaps things weren't as old school as I remember from 53 years distance.

Time travel notwithstanding.