PAINTING THE TOWN RED AND BLUE

Can you hear it? Can you smell it? Well, once again it’s Spirit Week in our fair town. Homecoming is Friday and Tornado Spirit is in the air! The high school kids got a head start last week, painting up windows of Main Street businesses whose kindly owners, god love ’em, were willing to risk having their store fronts turned into red and blue nightmares. “Nuke 'Em!” “Blow Away the Cats!” “Go Big Red!”

I just happened to be cruising downtown on my trusty 1975 Schwinn 3-speed, also known as Big Red, at the same time the teenage Picassos were at work. Two or three girls wielded paint sticks at the participating businesses, surrounded by large posses of “do-nothings” who just stood around doing, well, nothing. Okay, I take that back. The girl do-nothings were giggling and the boy do-nothings were pushing each other around, in a friendly, male bonding-type of way. These are the same ones who all rushed out the door after supper telling Mom, “I can’t do my homework (or chores) tonight because I have to help paint windows for Spirit Week, and I won’t be allowed to graduate and go on to college if I don’t show up to help.”

But we’ve all probably been there at least once during our high school days when some activity of monumental importance could not be completed without our own participation. I was a Pep Club hotshot once upon a time and devoted more hours creating posters for games than I ever spent studying, which was possibly the reason why I bombed Algebra I and Spanish II and never dared enroll in Physics. If there had been a course titled "Wasting Time Making Yellowjacket Posters," I would have been at the head of the class.

“Cage the Cubs,” “Sting the Bluestreaks,” “Chop Down the Cherries” (in the days before Cherryvale wisely changed its mascot to the Chargers), “Tame the Wildcats.” I had what I thought were clever little sayings for them all. Each new game week, my band of terrorists, also known as the poster committee, would arm ourselves with masking tape and plaster our spirited messages all over the three floors of the Fredonia High School hallways. I’m sure at least 25 percent of USD 484’s overall budget was devoted to Pep Club “posterage” back in the 1960s. Maybe more.

So, when the old Flaming Bore pedaled her creaky bike past those window-painting Spirit Patrols last week, it was sure difficult resisting the temptation to apply the failing brakes on Big Red and call out to those kids, “Hey, there! Do you need some help?” Old spirits never die.