Autumn is here, and with the cool nights and falling leaves comes the collision of two pursuits. All year long I know it’s coming as I toil at work, while away the hours staring down holes in the ice, and watch the ups and downs of Twins baseball. Then, like a cold wind in my face, fall is here, and suddenly I feel like an astronaut with two girlfriends.
Johnnie football and hunting make me wish, at times, for a simpler life. But my polyamory with these two sports will not let me go. Oh, it’s not so difficult in September. Most early St. John’s football games have been played in temperatures hot enough to give Al Gore prizes and drive John Gagliardi to the shade of the press box. Those guilt-free Saturdays of sipping a pre-game koolaid in shorts and a t-shirt are as relaxing and pleasurable as life can get. But October comes and, like a buck in rut, I get the urge to drive a couple of hundred miles to the other side of the Laurentian Divide and tromp around in the glorious northern Minnesota woods.
Technology has made things easier. The internet will never invade my northern Shangri-la, and we are far out of range of The Bear, but the cell phone does now allow a jackpine savage to keep in touch. Last Saturday, as the pre-game bevvies were tossed back at Patrick’s in St. Peter and the Johnnies trounced the Gusties at Hollingsworth, I was kept informed of events through calls and text messages from Franckrickard and Touchdown Tommy. And under my hunting jacket, of course, I was wearing my lucky “pink” St. John’s victory shirt.
Like the assassination of JFK and the first step on the moon, every Johnnie fan remembers where he was for 409. Me? I was sitting in a deer stand with my son, Willie. Freezing our tails off, I heard the last exciting minutes of the broadcast over my cell phone. On the other end of the line was my friend Louis, who was holding his cell phone up to his computer speakers in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.
