Forty years ago today, my Nana took me to a football game.
Legion Field, Birmingham, Alabama, Polaroid SX-70 (2021)
It seemed like everyone loved football where I grew up. In the photos from back then my daddy and my uncles are wearing red sweatshirts with stampeding cartoon elephants, or gray t-shirts with a red A. My Nana and my aunt wore navy sweatshirts with an orange A.
If you wanted to go to the stadium where the teams played, you drove one way down a road; if you wanted to go to where we lived (just a mile or so from my grandparents), you went the other way.
Birmingham, Alabama, Polaroid SX-70 (2021)
I have my ticket from the game tucked into a little notebook, which is filled with the signatures of some of the people who played for the team with the crimson A. There have been many times I have tried to brush aside the veil of time and recall what it was like. Here are four things I remember:
The man next to us, silent most of the game, smoked a cigar.
It was so loud, so very loud.
Watching the mascots for the teams caper on the sidelines, pretend-fighting by cartoon animals, the elephant pulling the tail of the tiger.
My Nana pointing out what the lightbulbs on the scoreboard meant.
Then, of course, there was the big man on the sidelines; the one in the hat. I was little, very little, but I knew who he was, as surely as I knew my own family.
In the end, the team with the crimson A won.
Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Polaroid 600 with Impossible film (2014)
Long after the man on the sidelines died they built a statue of him at his school and I would drive to go see it. They built it in part because of that game my Nana took me to. Sometimes the students at the school would decorate the statue of the man, like with a red and white scarf when it was cold, or a sticker on his coat that would say “Delta Gamma Says Whip the Aggies” or whatever was going around that weekend.
The round sticker in the Polaroid above flared spectral white when I bounced a flash off it one dark night, but I remember what was printed on it. The sticker said “BEAT AUBURN.”
Sandusky, Alabama, Polaroid SX-70 (2019)
The Monday after the game I walked the block to my school, hand in hand with my little sister. On the weekends we would go to my Nana’s, same as we always would.
Forestdale, Alabama, Polaroid SX-70 (2019)
The newspapers the day after the game trumpeted the victory, and people made paintings about it, while a drink we liked cast three million bottles in red and white, featuring a great drawing of the big man in his hat, with a tough looking elephant bursting through a red A.
I still see the bottles now and then, and bought another one two weeks ago. Sometimes I’ll just pick one up and look at it, feeling the heft of the glass with its dark amber liquid in my hand, tracing the raised texture of the painting on the bottle, then place it back carefully upon the shelf.
Nana’s bedroom, Forestdale, Alabama, Polaroid 600 (2019)
The leaves still on the trees outside my window are golden now, save the deep matte green of the magnolia. I woke up as the rain pitter-pattered on the roof, and walked outside to get the paper. Then I made some coffee, a little too strong—I have the beginnings of a headache—and started sifting through these pictures. I think of that day my Nana took me to a football game. The two teams played again yesterday, as they always do this time of year.
I look at these pictures, and think of that day my Nana took me to a football game, and I am thankful.