It's Football Time in Tennessee

I saw in the paper where Loudon's first game is August 25th and the Volunteers start playing on September 2nd. I have always loved Loudon and Tennessee football.

The internet has allowed me to check the score of Loudon games for the past fifteen years or so. Late each Friday night I'll check the News Sentinal website for the scores. Up until the past few years, I could sometimes pick up an audio stream of the games over the internet. You can do that now, but there is a charge for it. Before the internet, every time I called my Mom or visited Loudon I always checked up on the football team. One of these days I'm going to time my visit and actually go to a game. I haven't been in a lot of years. Part of me is a little apprehensive of who I might recognize, but a bigger part of me is apprehensive about not recognizing anyone.

Whenever I think of Tennessee football I think of two things. When I was something like 12 or 13, I used to meet up with a bunch of other kids down at Bacon's Creamery and go to the Tennessee home games to sell ice cream sandwiches. I can't remember how much we charged for them, fifty cents I guess, but it was an all day job and hard work. I remember one game, I think it was Alabama but I'm not positive, but it was so cold that the stands were almost empty and the people that were there laughed when we tried to sell them ice cream. Anyway, we stopped trying to sell anything after half time and sat on the 50 yard line and watched the second half from the best seats in the house.

The second thing was John Ward. Armed Forces radio carries football games in season, and they used to just pipe in the home team's broadcast. Let me tell you something, when you're hunkered down in a hole or on some bleak and desolate island somewhere in the world that seems light years away from your family and friends and the game on the radio is Tennessee, when John Ward's voice boomed across the radio with, "It's football time in Tennessee!"; well, if that didn't put a big lump in your throat, there's something wrong.