Stadium Clean-up

I did not grow up a sports fan.  I had every opportunity to do so, as my formative years were spent in Norman, Oklahoma.  During the late 70s, Barry Switzer & his OU Sooners charged their way to victory each week, practically in my backyard.  OU paraphernalia decorated houses, cars, pets, Christmas trees, and so much more.  The dulcet tones of “Boomer Sooner” rang out across the land in all its big brass glory.  Campus Corner was a hot spot of shopping, dining, & cruising.  (And features still today the dearly beloved Greek House on the northwest corner of Jenkins and Boyd just at the edge of campus.  Our family makes annual treks home to the Sooner state, ostensibly to visit my mom and siblings, but honestly it’s the gyros that call the loudest.  Wow!  Good thing my mom doesn’t read this blog…oh wait…)

It would be difficult to pinpoint exactly where I got off the train to football fandom…well, difficult for some.  I, on the other hand, know only too well where my love-of-the-game derailed before it ever really got on track to begin with.  The year was 1975.  Our family had moved from the breezy mountains of the Pacific Northwest to a land of red clay, eggs frying on random sidewalks, & more insects per square inch than I’d ever thought possible.  And in the midst of this new world, I was introduced to a little thing our fellow church-goers liked to call “Stadium Clean-up.” 

Every other week that hot, hot fall we got to volunteer with other members of our congregation to clean up the OU stadium following the home game, thus raising money to sustain our church budgetary needs.  Cast off corn chips, half-eaten hot dogs, and a plethora of popcorn strewn about the bleachers and down the never-ending concrete steps awaited us at the Owen Memorial Stadium in the waning light of day.  The fresh baked pavement marinated in soda left my sneakers sticking to anything & everything as I trudged to my cleaning assignment de jour. 

Discarded cigar & cigarette butts floating in the dregs of stale beer and abandoned in the sun, paled by comparison to the innocuous looking Styrofoam Cups of Horror.  Hiding within their non-biodegradable exteriors pooled the tobacco-laced spit of football enthusiasts sufficiently considerate to expectorate their “chaw” somewhere besides the floor, but not so much so as to properly dispose of the receptacle itself.  I often worked a scraper, pulling the litter from under the bleachers for the broom brigade to sweep up.  That’s when they’d get you.  Hit one of those Styro-bombs and walk away bespeckled by the dark umber spittle of local sports fans.  Go Team!

Stadium Clean-up endured through the ensuing 8 years of my life.  As a direct result I do not smoke.  I do not drink.  And I do not chew tobacco.  I make my kids pick up their messes when we are out at public places and events.  The Super Bowl is pending and our annual party will commence.  There will be food, friends, fans, and frenzy in front of the big screen t.v.  And I?  I will watch Anne of Green Gables on the small screen upstairs with a few other conscientious objectors, basting the buffalo wings and re-filling the dip.  A fine time will be had by all.  Once again, at the close of combat, I will step in and clean up after the football game.  But among the paper plates and plastic forks sure to be left lying about in the party's wake, there will be no Styrofoam.