The 1987 Uniforms

found on the fence after the game. one button short. they always are.

I do not follow football. I want that on the record before anybody on the board starts. But I read the parish paper in Le Marais Perdu, and the paper has started printing something about the high school band that I cannot stop thinking about.

The band's uniforms were new in 1987. The paper has now said so three times. It says it the way you mention a relative who is not well.

So I went to the library and pulled the Muskrats' records. It took two afternoons. The librarian was very kind and asked me twice if I was a parent. Here is what I found.

In the fall of 1987, the band marched in brand-new uniforms, green and gold, and the Muskrats went eight and two and won every home game they played under the lights.

Every season since, the band has marched in those same uniforms, and every season since, the Muskrats have not won a home game under the lights. Not one. Thirty-eight seasons. They have won on the road. They have won a Saturday afternoon game the year the lights were broken. They have not won at home, after dark, with that band in those uniforms in the stands.

DocFenwick points out that small schools lose a lot of football games, and that a thirty-eight-season home losing streak would have made the news. I have pointed out to Doc that it did not make the news, which is my point.

Here is my read. Those uniforms were blessed, or cursed, or simply used up, in 1987. Whatever they had, they spent it that season, and every Friday since that band has been marching on empty, and the team can feel it.

And now the school is raising money for new uniforms. A pumpkin patch on the lawn in October, every dollar to the band. The paper prints this like a fundraiser. I am telling you it is a cure.

Buy a pumpkin. Buy two. I am not saying it will fix anything. I am saying there are boys on that field who have never once heard their own stadium cheer after dark, and that is a thing a town ought to want to fix, curse or no curse.

I relay. You decide.

In Truth and Terror.
— Beau