Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream by H G Bissinger

Author:H G Bissinger
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781446449776
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2011-05-31T04:40:15+00:00

II

A week after the game, Republican presidential candidate George Bush came to the Midland-Odessa area for a campaign appearance. The scene on the tarmac at the airport wasn’t as feverish as the one at the parking lot of Ratliff Stadium, where Permian fans had been lined up for two nights to buy tickets. Some things, after all, would always be more important than others. But it did have the aura of a Friday morning pep rally.

Shortly before noon the parking lot outside the south terminal was filled with people carrying cardboard signs that read MIDLAND LOVES BUSH or MOJO LOVES BUSH. There were little boys dressed in white shirts and blue ties, and high school girls wearing lovely red velvet dresses with white shoes. There were baby strollers decorated with American flags. And there was a whole bus full of kids from Midland Baptist Temple School, the girls in red dress uniforms that went to the knee and the boys in blue ties and red cardigan sleeveless sweaters that made them look grandfatherly. There was a smattering of people in cowboy hats, and a man in a PHILLIPS 66 cap, and another man who wore a military-style cap that said BRAZOS VALLEY WAR GAMES. When he took it off during the rally to put on a free one that said BUSH/QUAYLE 88, he didn’t look any different.

Cheerleaders from Midland High milled about in their uniforms, which made them look a little like old-fashioned movie ushers, and in the middle of it all sat a red Mercedes convertible with a paper sign taped to the side: LEE HOMECOMING DUCHESSES WELCOME HOME GEORGE AND BARBARA BUSH.

There were almost no blacks or Hispanics in the audience. There were no signs of poverty, no signs of homeless-ness, no signs of drug abuse, no signs of the social fissures that were tearing apart America’s urban centers to the east and west. The country was perfect and unblemished on this day. As the crowd eagerly awaited the arrival of Air Force II, it snacked on the free hot dogs and cups of Coke that were neatly laid out on long picnic tables sprinkled with brimming bowls of mustard and onions. Everything was neat and orderly. Everything you could have wanted was there.

As the time drew near, the Midland High and Midland Lee bands moved past a fence onto the runway. The Midland High band played “Deep in the Heart of Texas,” then “Come a Little Bit Closer” to the accompaniment of hundreds of little American flags bobbing up and down. The cheerleaders erupted into a spontaneous little cheer of “Midland High, yeah, Midland High!” and then Air Force II came into view.

“There he is, the next president of the United States!” said the emcee of the rally. “Let’s go! We want George! We want George!”

“We want George! We want George!”

“Come on, West Texas, louder!”

“We want George! We want George!”

The excitement was in part due to Bush’s being something of a native son. After his graduation from

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.