The News & Observer
http://www.newsobserver.com/sports/
August 14, 2011
Everybody knew me or my folks at the Piggly Wiggly.
The grocery store stood atop a steep hill in front of my house, and for years, my bicycle had to be walked up because my weak legs couldn't make the climb.
Walking was fine, because sometimes there were discarded drink bottles, clouded inside by rain flowing in red clay ditches.
The bottles were worth two cents at the store, where last week's high school football game was discussed by wives just like it was by the husbands at B.R.'s (or Mr. Bryan's), the service stations near the old school house where you could watch the community's only caution light blink.
Behind the store, someone once built a short-lived go-cart track, and we'd slip onto the track and ride our bicycles. It had a wooden overpass, a bridge that crossed nothing but dirt and stood about four feet tall.
We'd sit on top and swoop down, pedaling as fast as we could. We could go really fast, and there were no fire hydrants to avoid like there was at the smaller hill down the street from my home.
Many front wheels ended their round lives at that fire hydrant as we raced straight ahead and sometimes failed to make the curve.
The new First Citizens Bank, the third point of the hill's triangle with the Piggly Wiggly and Mr. Wilber's Phillips 66 gas station, opened one fall Friday night with a gala celebration.
There were lemon squares, peanuts and mints. Our pockets were stuffed with those provisions before we, along with most folks, left for THE game.
The mayor, whose son was my friend, drove. We sat in the backseat and ate most of our food before we got out of the city limits.
The mayor bought us popcorn and a drink before the kickoff. We turned the paper cups upside down and stomped them. Popping discarded cups was a service we provided free of charge with each drink purchase.
Unobserved amid our eating, popping of cups, exploring of the visiting bleachers, and general rough-housing, a high school football game was played. Its outcome is not recalled, and it had nothing to do with our enjoyment of the road adventure.
My friend was later paralyzed in a swimming pool accident. I should have visited him more. He was going to therapy the day he visited me at the hospital following the knee surgery that essentially ended my dream of playing sports. The knee would support most things, but not the day-after-day rigors of competitive sports.
But my friend showed me that I had no right to complain.
Sturdy knees are not prerequisites for all things, and I love to write.
In 1967, 15 years after my birth during what my un-air-conditioned mother repeatedly told me was the hottest summer ever, I received my first my byline.
That was about 10,000 stories ago.
The bank atop the steep hill is still there, but most folks follow the new road to the top.
My brother lives in the old home place, although he never rides his bike to the top. He rides no bicycle except for the one at the gym, and that bike can't go flying down a hill with a six-pack of soft drinks looped around each handle bar or smash into a fire hydrant.
The Piggly Wiggly is long gone, and Mr. Wilber's, where mother usually got $2 worth of gas and where a one-gallon glass apple vinegar jar would hold 35 cents worth, has been replaced by a fast-food place where you can buy a sandwich for about $7.
Through all the changes, though, my love for high school athletics -- and the feelings of community and for the hope for the future that come with them -- is unchanged.
The primary purpose of high school athletics in the United States is to develop better citizens. So much has changed, and yet that mission remains a noble cause.
tstevens@newsobserver.com or 919-829-8910
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