WOWZAH!
That ball game on Friday had folks in the crowd looking for animals proceeding, two-by-two, toward the exits somewhere out by the end zones. Whooee ! Haven’t seen a ballgame that wet in SOME time. There was no rainbow, but we were certainly going to survive–eventually. Dark as the inside of a goat (old Groucho Marx joke : ”Books are man’s best friend, outside of a dog; inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.”)because of the cloud cover, most of the time, raining or not. Giant stadium, all of the modern conveniences…but no dome. Man, it was wet. Marching Pride members wore their raincoats and no plumes on their hats–would have had to be mallard duck feathers to survive the evening, that’s for sure.
The bus ride up to the venue was no summer picnic either…rain on, rain off, turnpike, freeway, commercial district, residential, parking, parking, parking. Parma City Schools has a ton of buses (Clean, my driver told me; she looked) parked all over the back of the visitors’ side, in addition to special-purpose vehicles of several different flavors. Makes one think of how lucky we country bumpkins have it in some aspects of the education process.
I spent as much time as I could up in the press box very , very high up in the home stands–part of second quarter, quite a bit of third quarter–heck it was warm and DRY there, why not. It was kind of hazardous getting all of the way up there and all of the way back down in the pouring rain but I was up for the challenge. There was one dude from the Normandy staff in there, as some sort of coaching position, who probably could have been heard down on the field without his electronic apparatus. He did not think much of anybody’s play–ours or theirs–and he let it be known to all and sundry within earshot. Not that his opinion mattered much at the finish. So, the game went on–well-lit, by the way–sloshing back-and-forth, with the G-Men taking an early lead and holding on to it (PAT kicker, Hannah Timmons put the icing on that, by the way), to finish up the contest at 20 to 12 and that was all there was…except an equally wet ride home. Saturday night at the Solon Band Bash was quite a bit different. The Marching Pride looked and sounded great, as usual–one of the smallest bands there too–and WAY drier than on Friday. The deep purple clouds looming before the show cleared; the temperature dropped, the stars came out. It was a beautiful evening. More to come–Aurora Band Show on the calendar next.
Mark your calendars. Tune up your ears. Enjoy the music. We could skip the moisture.
