come up in buses specially laid on, sat huddled on the visitors' bleachers in the blaring early September heat, looking blank. In the dressing room, Coach Puffer, looking stunned and pallid, suggested we get down on our knees and pray for guidance in the weeks to come. I knew then that the hurting had not ended but was just beginning.
We got down on our knees, aching, bruised and battered, wanting nothing but to get into the shower and start washing that loser smell off ourselves, and listened as Coach Puffer explained the situation to God in a ten-minute peroration that ended with a promise that we would do our part if He would do His.
The next week, we practised three hours a day (instead of the customary ninety minutes to two hours) under the broiling sun. I tumbled into bed nights and dreamed of his bellowing voice: "Hit that sucker! Hit! HIT!"
I ran windsprints until I began to feel that my legs were going to undergo spontaneous decomposition (at the same instant my lungs burst into flames, probably). Lenny Barongg, one of our tailbacks, had a mild sunstroke and was mercifully - for him, at least - excused for the rest of the week.
So I saw Arnie, and he came over and took dinner with my folks and Ellie and me on Thursday or Friday nights, he checked out a ballgame or two with us on Sunday afternoons, but beyond that I lost sight of him almost completely. I was too busy hauling my aches and pains to class, to practice, then home to my room to do my assignments.
Going back to my football woes - I think the worst thing was the way people looked at me, and Lenny, and the rest of the team, in the hallways. Now that 'school spirit' business is mostly a lot of bullshit made up by school administrators who remember having a helluva time at the Saturday-aftemoon gridiron contests of their youth but have conveniently forgotten that a lot of it resulted from being drunk, horny, or both. If you had held a rally in favour of legalizing marijuana, you would have seen some school spirit. But about football, basketball, and track, most of the student body didn't give a shit. They were too busy trying to get into college or someone's pants or trouble. Business as usual.
All the same, you get used to being a winner - you start to take it for granted. Libertyville had been fielding killer football teams for a long time; the last time the school had had a losing record - at least, before my senior year - was twelve years before, in 1966. So in the week after the loss of Luneburg, while there was no weeping and gnashing of teeth, there were hurt, puzzled looks in the hall and some booing at the regular Friday afternoon rally at the end of period seven. The boos made Coach Puffer turn nearly purple, and he invited those 'poor sports and fair-weather friends' to turn out Saturday afternoon to watch the comeback of the century.
I don't know if the poor sports and fair-weather friends turned out or not, but I was there. We were at home, and our opponents were t e Ridge Rock Bears. Now Ridge Rock is a mining town, and while the kids going to Ridge Rock High are hicks, they are not soft hicks. They are mean, ugly, touch hicks. The year before, Libertyville's football team had barely edged them out for the regional title, and one of the local sports commentators had said it wasn't because Libertyville had a better team but because it had more warm bodies to draw on. Coach Puffer had hit the ceiling over that, too I, I can tell you,
This, however, was the Bears' year. They steamrollered us. Fred Dann went out of the game with a concussion in the first period. In the second period, Norman Aleppo got a ride to the Libertyville Community Hospital with a broken arm. And in the last period, the Bears scored three consecutive touchdowns, two on punt returns. The final score was 40-6. All false modesty aside, I'll tell you that I scored the six. But I won't put realism aside with the modesty: I was lucky.
So . . . another week of hell on the practice field. Another week of Coach yelling Hit that sucker. One day we practised for nearly four hours, and when Lenny suggested to Coach that