Monday Night Memory

We were driving the other day back from a waterpark and drove by a farm that had hardy mums for sale. That immediately brought me back to my elementary school days, when my dad was a teacher and a football coach and a wrestling coach. He was darn good at all three, too.

When my dad was a sophmore football coach, us kids got indoctrination into the world of high school homecoming. Not sure what Homecoming meant at that point, except it meant high school kids went crazy on our house. One year, I was leaving to go to school on what I would guess was the Friday morning of Homecoming, because I couldn't get out the front door. It was plastered with a huge poster that covered the whole door, something like, "Go J-Hawks" written across it. Probably in addition to that there was also painting on the sidewalk, I would guess. This would have been sometime between 1976 and 1983. I'm not sure of my age.

Not necessarily the same year, but the reason that I suddenly remembered mums, was that my mother has told me she loves mums. She told me this probably once a year when she got her coach's wife corsage. I always thought they were very nice. It was large white mum, with a blue pipecleaner U on it and a tiny gold football charm hanging out of the middle. It had blue, red, white and maybe gold ribbons behind it. We kids went with Mom to the football game, and I remember her wearing it on the outside of her jacket in the cold football weather. We did a lot of running up and down the bleachers and a lot less watching the actual football game. I may have seen the Homecoming courts, but they don't really stick into my head. If you haven't guessed, the school colors were blue and white with red as an accent.

The elementary schools got into the swing of things. One assignment for school before Homecoming week was to come up with a miniature float design and put it on a shoebox. Mine was a large J-Hawk (the mascot), holding a large wooden horse, with a little blue and red football player coming out of a door in the side of the horse. The title of the mini-float was "Beware of J-Hawks bearing gifts." Ah, a history geek even back then. I think I might have won a prize or something for it, but I can't be sure. Funny how some things fade from the memory.

And in case you don't get that quote, brush up on your ancient history here.

(If I can find a picture of the float, I'll scan it in and paste it here.)