Write Field

In farm country across the land, the local high school is a focus of attention. In many small towns it’s the center of social activity. During autumn, if you have a child who is a football player, your focus is on more than the harvest.

It was surprising how my view of the game changed when our last player graduated. Get out and support your local school — but remember, it’s all about kids playing a game.

Football From the Sidelines

I finally went out this year

To a hometown football game.

With no one from our family playing

It isn’t quite the same.

The lights are just as bright out there,

The grass is just as green.

The numbers on the uniforms

Are ones that I have seen.

But I had to get a program

To find out who was who.

Which kid had taken over

Old number forty-two.

The last names for the most part

Didn’t seem so awful new.

And now and then a first name

Held a memory or two.

The band played loud, we stood

bare headed,

In the cool night air.

I thought a moment of some folks

Who couldn’t join us there.

Then the game got started.

We’d yell for one more yard.

We’d holler, “That’s a good job,

You boys are playing hard.”

I soon began to notice

Some changes in the game.

I’m not talking about the lines or ball,

The rules are still the same.

But the coaching seems a lot more fair.

He plays the kids he should.

Not just those kids from other grades,

That never will be good.

It seems the refs got smarter,

Their calls make much more sense.

Or maybe it’s my feelings

That aren’t now quite so intense.

It seems that I am more relaxed

Without a child out there.

No matter how this game turns out,

Life seems much more fair.

David Kragnes farms near Felton, Minn., and is a former chairman of American Crystal Sugar Company.