You know how when a school has used their bus for 10 or 15 years and pretty much run it into the ground, then they sell it an auction? Then some aspiring rock band or church youth camp buys it for $500 and paints it white and splashes their name and logo on it and they drive it for another five years? Well, after they are done with it and it’s held together by baling wire and duct tape, that’s when the Shindler School District buys it from them for $250. Smart folks those school board members are.
So that’s how it came to be that we loaded all our gear into the cream-colored bus with “Little Disciples Bible Academy - Repent or Go to Hell” sketched in purple lettering on both sides and a giant purple image of Jesus’ face painted on the hood. It didn’t exactly strike fear into the opposing team when we pulled into their parking lot, but we are about the only team that other fans genuflect in front of. So we got that going for us.
Our bus driver is Elton Johns. He always says he’s one letter away from being famous. Elton is a retired truck driver. He’s 82 and lives with his mom who is 99. Elton once told me he hasn’t renewed his driver’s license since he got out of the penitentiary 15 years ago. Apparently our school board isn’t big on background checks.
The good thing, the only good thing, about our bus and small team is that we each get our own seat. The Dutch boys sit in the back seats, and Crash and I sit in front of them. From there, Crash holds court like Socrates. He randomly offers bits of wisdom, historical facts about the places we pass, and motivational tidbits he’s gleaned from the Internet.
Today, on this short trip, he claimed that Rowena was the birthplace of Greta Van Susteren of FOX News fame. I was pretty sure he meant Mami Van Doren, but not being big on Dutch history, I wasn’t about to argue - didn’t want to throw off his karma.
In fact, as we pulled into Rowena, I noticed a sign saying “Birthplace of Mami Van Doren.” But a little revisionist history never hurt anybody.
***
Rumor had it that tonight recruiters from the University of Minnesota and Iowa were on hand to see Rowena linebacker Gotfreid Johnson in action. Most everyone just calls him “Got,” since Gotfreid doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. The Rabbit cheering section was even wearing white t-shirts with black lettering saying: “Got Got?”
Gotfreid was built like a hay bale – as if a round baler had run over him and he came out the back end with his head sticking out one side of the bale and two legs out the other side. Yet he is fast and outrageously strong. Gotfried can bench press 280 and that’s not just country legend. I’ve seen it. Heck, everybody’s seen it because Rowena actually has a weight bench on their sidelines, where some teams might have an exercise bike, and during pregame and at halftime Gotfreid pompously pumps iron in front of the cheering crowd. It’s pretty obnoxious, but to our credit, nobody can out-obnoxious Crash.
So it was that the team captains gathered at midfield for the coin toss. Dutch, Old Dutch, Crash and myself represented the Snapping Turtles and Gotfreid, Boyd Jensen and Carter Ott represented the Rabbits. We all knew each other well. In fact, on any other day we’d be considered friends. Some mix of us at one time or another had hunted, canoed or chased girls together on weekends or during the summer. But none of that mattered now.
Big Dutch called “heads.” The coin came up tails. Big Dutch dropped a string of profanities and before the game had even started we received an unsportsmanlike conduct flag. Rowena deferred, so we’d get the ball first and the referee signaled such. Then Crash started talking.
“Hey, Got,” he hollered just as Gotfried started to turn away. He turned back.
“What, Crash?”
“Did you see the Gophers and Hawkeyes scouts here to watch me?”
“They ain’t here to see you, geek. They’re here to see me.”
“Ya think? Apparently you don’t read. They’ve already got all their linebackers signed for next season. They’ve moved on to the juniors now – for the next year, ya know.”
“That’s a bunch of crap. They’re here to see me.” Got tapped his fists against the pair of “4”s on his jersey.
“Sorry dude. The Gophers coach texted me last night. Told me so.”
“They text you?”
“Sure. Don’t they you? They said you’re a helluva rusher, but you can’t play pass defense. And they need that when they play the Ohio States of the world.”
“Bull.” His face was turning an angry red.
“No bull, Got. Sorry. Seems they don’t think you can even handle one of the Dutch twins here, so how you gonna handle Michigan State’s wideouts?”
“Well I’ll show them!” Gotfreid hollered, spun back toward his sidelines and stormed off.
Crash turned to me and grinned. “I just made your day a lot easier.”
“But not ours,” the Dutchies said.
“Don’t worry,” Crash said as we jogged off. “He can’t cover you both. I’ll throw it to whichever one of you he’s not covering, and since he’s not rushing me, I’ll have all day back there to throw you a perfect spiral.”
“Perfect spiral,” Old Dutch chuckled. “Ya, right.”
“Don’t worry boys. Game is good as over. We’re going to the Dome.”
The way he said it, I didn’t doubt him. Neither did the Dutchies. Crash had that way about him.
***
The game went pretty much as Crash called it. Gotfreid fell for Crash’s lies and his imaginary conversations with the college recruiters and decided to forego the pass rush that had made him famous. Instead, Got chased the Dutch boys around the field like a lost puppy – a big puppy. Crash had gotten into his head like a tumor.
The scouts later lamented the fact that Got never rushed the passer, never recorded a sack, didn’t even try. They labeled him a head case, over-rated, and vowed never to believe the Rowena coach again if he told them he had a “can’t-miss” prospect. Got eventually earned an online degree in criminal justice from Phoenix University - his Big 10 and possible NFL career ruined by a trash-talking geek from Shindler during a coin flip. I feel a little guilty about it. Crash does not.
We scored on our first drive as Crash went four-for-four passing, hitting Old Dutch on each one, as Got chased the younger Dutch harmlessly around the field. Sophomore tailback Bobby Buffer capped the drive with a 4-yard touchdown run up the middle.
In the second quarter Crash connected on two scoring bombs with Dutch and we led 21-0 at halftime.
I think Coach had prepared to give us a rah-rah-win-one-for-the-Gipper halftime speech, but was caught off guard by our big lead and at a rare loss for words. He stood before us in the locker room and scratched his chin.
“Hmm,” he finally said. “You’re doing pretty good out there.”
He took off his cap and scratched his head for an uncomfortably long time before continuing. “Let’s do the same thing again.”
We all looked at Crash. He shrugged his shoulders and said: “Okay.”
It was all very business-like, right up Crash’s alley. So we did just what Coach ordered, went out in the second half and scored another 21 points, held them to none and left Shindler with an anti-climactic 42-0 win.
But to say it was anti-climactic is not to suggest we didn’t jump around like fools when the final horn sounded. We tumbled into the Little Disciples Bible Academy bus and rocked it the 20 miles home like it had never been rocked before.
We were going to the Dome!
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