"Sports". The word today makes me want to roll my eyes.
Grown men staring glassy-eyed at a TV screen, watching millionaires with dreadlocks high-five each other; or worse.
In our house, growing up, my Dad had one sports love and that was football. He watched Ohio State on Saturday and the Falcons on Sunday. When the game was on, there was nothing that would separate him from his green naugahyde reclining chair. Each summer in August, before football season started, he would grill hamburgers and afterward we would play football in our front yard. This sounds great except that it was only my Dad, me, my brother and my sister who played, so you had two people playing against two people in a very small mobile home front-yard that had no grass, but plenty of thick oak roots to trip over.
I got to the point that I hated sports with a passion. The sound of a stadium crowd and an announcer coming from a TV made me want to cringe. Monday Night Football meant that there were three days in a row where I had to avoid the living room for a large chunk of the day. I just couldn't sit there and watch other people play games for three hours. I didn 't mind playing baseball with my friends, but spectator sports was something that I had no desire for, whatsoever.
In 1978, when I was 13, my Dad changed jobs and started working for a small corporation. In the fall of that year, his CEO purchased season passes for an unusual sport for Georgia at the time; ice hockey. When the Atlanta Flames became a team in the early seventies, most people laughed and nearly everyone said that no-one would go to see them play. Hockey was a sport for Canada, not for the deep-south. After all, we already had college football and stock-car racing, which were very much like, (and come to think of it, are still very much like), a form of religion here.
The CEO rarely used his hockey passes and so one day he asked my Dad if he wanted to use them for an upcoming game. My father, not wanting to look un-appreciative, said 'sure'. When he told us that night that we would be going to a hockey game, it was kind of like saying that we were going on a trip to the moon. To me it was just more sports, only now I wouldn't be able to turn it off.
The Omni, clad in the strange brown stuff.
We ate dinner quickly and headed for Atlanta in the old Mercury station wagon. Two hours later, we arrived at the OMNI Coliseum, which was probably one of the ugliest sports venues ever built. It was clad in a strange brown metal that was designed to rust on purpose. The idea was that, as the rust expanded in each joint, the building would 'seal itself ', forming a strong, watertight shell that would last for 50 years. Unfortunatley, the rust never stopped, like it was supposed to, and soon there were gaping holes in the building in some places that had to be constantly repaired. On top of that, when rainwater came off the rusty metal, it stained the concrete all around the building, making the sidewalks look like they were made out of red-clay.
We walked inside and passed through the turnstiles, handing our swanky season passes to the ticket-taker. Along the corridors inside of the building there were numerous vendors selling everything from t-shirts to hockey sticks and pucks, all emblazoned with the Flames logo. We found our portal and made our way through the tunnel to the arena. When we exited the portal and came out into the brightly-lit, cavernous interior of the OMNI, sports began to take on a new meaning for me.
Thousands of seats, filled with thousands of people filled the inside of the building. At the bottom was a huge, white ice rink surrounded by pale-blue glass partitions. The enormous room was surprisingly cold, and even though it was a balmy October in Georgia, everyone was wearing sweaters or coats. Many people were wearing hockey jerseys with the flaming "A" on the front.
We made our way down to our seats; five prime seats on the third row up, very close to center ice. The opposing teams' penalty box was almost within reach. Before the game there was fanfare, cheering and music, something I didn't expect. This was not a boring TV show with droning announcers.
For the next two and half hours we watched as the game passed back and forth in front of us, sometimes so fast that you couldn't keep track of who had the puck, or where it even was at the moment. Once in a while someone would get loudly checked into the boards right in front of us, and the walls would shake and the glass would wobble and my Mom would let out a yelp, and then quickly cover her mouth.
I found out that hockey fans were a very vocal bunch. On each side of us were people screaming at players on the opposing team, or sometimes even at ones on our team. They would call into question many things about their physical skills and sometimes even question their gender. This was all part of the experience, and it was something that I had never experienced before. I think I sat there and grinned for the entire game. This was the only ice hockey team with a Confederate soldier waving a rebel flag for a mascot. The "Flames" of the Atlanta Flames were representative of the burning of Atlanta during the Civil War, and it's reconstruction.
A goal for Atlanta was an earth-shattering event. People jumped from their seats, horns went off, lights came on, music played; it was unbelievable. By the end of the game I found myself leaping to my feet with the rest of the crowd and cheering or sneering at specific players as they went by.
Sitting next to me was a man with a particular dislike for a guy on the opposing team named Wilson. Every time this player skated by, my seat-neighbor shouted an angry, "Wilson's a wimp!" at the top of his lungs. He would then look at me and grin. Once as my newfound friend was chewing an enormous mouthful of hot-dog, Wilson came skating by. Unable to say anything, I shouted, "Wilson's a wimp!" for him. He smiled and patted me on the back as the rest of his party laughed. I turned and grinned at my Dad, but he didn't grin back. I cleared my throat, turned back to the game, and sunk a little lower in my seat.
When the game was over I didn't want to leave that place. My Dad, sensing my newfound zeal for hockey, let me pick something out to buy and I got a bright red Atlanta Flames t-shirt that I began to wear almost daily. From that point on I was hooked, and every week I asked if the CEO was going to use his tickets. I got a Flames schedule and memorized when every home game would be.
Maybe it was my enthusiasm, but my Dad began to really get into the games as well. For the next two years during the 1978-79, and 1979-80 seasons, we went to as many games as we could. Names like Tom Lysiak and Dan Bouchard became common subjects for discussion in our home. I never got tired of going and always looked forward to it as if it were the first time all over again. What's more, it gave me and my Dad something in common that he didn't have with my other siblings, (who never went along).
In 1980, the Flames announced that they were moving to Calgary Alberta for the 1980-81season. This was a hard blow, I think as much for my Dad as it was for me. We really never found anything to replace that bond afterward.
At least not until 2003, when he became a Christian.
.
.
In our house, growing up, my Dad had one sports love and that was football. He watched Ohio State on Saturday and the Falcons on Sunday. When the game was on, there was nothing that would separate him from his green naugahyde reclining chair. Each summer in August, before football season started, he would grill hamburgers and afterward we would play football in our front yard. This sounds great except that it was only my Dad, me, my brother and my sister who played, so you had two people playing against two people in a very small mobile home front-yard that had no grass, but plenty of thick oak roots to trip over.
I got to the point that I hated sports with a passion. The sound of a stadium crowd and an announcer coming from a TV made me want to cringe. Monday Night Football meant that there were three days in a row where I had to avoid the living room for a large chunk of the day. I just couldn't sit there and watch other people play games for three hours. I didn 't mind playing baseball with my friends, but spectator sports was something that I had no desire for, whatsoever.
In 1978, when I was 13, my Dad changed jobs and started working for a small corporation. In the fall of that year, his CEO purchased season passes for an unusual sport for Georgia at the time; ice hockey. When the Atlanta Flames became a team in the early seventies, most people laughed and nearly everyone said that no-one would go to see them play. Hockey was a sport for Canada, not for the deep-south. After all, we already had college football and stock-car racing, which were very much like, (and come to think of it, are still very much like), a form of religion here.
The CEO rarely used his hockey passes and so one day he asked my Dad if he wanted to use them for an upcoming game. My father, not wanting to look un-appreciative, said 'sure'. When he told us that night that we would be going to a hockey game, it was kind of like saying that we were going on a trip to the moon. To me it was just more sports, only now I wouldn't be able to turn it off.
We ate dinner quickly and headed for Atlanta in the old Mercury station wagon. Two hours later, we arrived at the OMNI Coliseum, which was probably one of the ugliest sports venues ever built. It was clad in a strange brown metal that was designed to rust on purpose. The idea was that, as the rust expanded in each joint, the building would 'seal itself ', forming a strong, watertight shell that would last for 50 years. Unfortunatley, the rust never stopped, like it was supposed to, and soon there were gaping holes in the building in some places that had to be constantly repaired. On top of that, when rainwater came off the rusty metal, it stained the concrete all around the building, making the sidewalks look like they were made out of red-clay.
We walked inside and passed through the turnstiles, handing our swanky season passes to the ticket-taker. Along the corridors inside of the building there were numerous vendors selling everything from t-shirts to hockey sticks and pucks, all emblazoned with the Flames logo. We found our portal and made our way through the tunnel to the arena. When we exited the portal and came out into the brightly-lit, cavernous interior of the OMNI, sports began to take on a new meaning for me.
Thousands of seats, filled with thousands of people filled the inside of the building. At the bottom was a huge, white ice rink surrounded by pale-blue glass partitions. The enormous room was surprisingly cold, and even though it was a balmy October in Georgia, everyone was wearing sweaters or coats. Many people were wearing hockey jerseys with the flaming "A" on the front.
We made our way down to our seats; five prime seats on the third row up, very close to center ice. The opposing teams' penalty box was almost within reach. Before the game there was fanfare, cheering and music, something I didn't expect. This was not a boring TV show with droning announcers.
For the next two and half hours we watched as the game passed back and forth in front of us, sometimes so fast that you couldn't keep track of who had the puck, or where it even was at the moment. Once in a while someone would get loudly checked into the boards right in front of us, and the walls would shake and the glass would wobble and my Mom would let out a yelp, and then quickly cover her mouth.
I found out that hockey fans were a very vocal bunch. On each side of us were people screaming at players on the opposing team, or sometimes even at ones on our team. They would call into question many things about their physical skills and sometimes even question their gender. This was all part of the experience, and it was something that I had never experienced before. I think I sat there and grinned for the entire game. This was the only ice hockey team with a Confederate soldier waving a rebel flag for a mascot. The "Flames" of the Atlanta Flames were representative of the burning of Atlanta during the Civil War, and it's reconstruction.
A goal for Atlanta was an earth-shattering event. People jumped from their seats, horns went off, lights came on, music played; it was unbelievable. By the end of the game I found myself leaping to my feet with the rest of the crowd and cheering or sneering at specific players as they went by.
Sitting next to me was a man with a particular dislike for a guy on the opposing team named Wilson. Every time this player skated by, my seat-neighbor shouted an angry, "Wilson's a wimp!" at the top of his lungs. He would then look at me and grin. Once as my newfound friend was chewing an enormous mouthful of hot-dog, Wilson came skating by. Unable to say anything, I shouted, "Wilson's a wimp!" for him. He smiled and patted me on the back as the rest of his party laughed. I turned and grinned at my Dad, but he didn't grin back. I cleared my throat, turned back to the game, and sunk a little lower in my seat.
When the game was over I didn't want to leave that place. My Dad, sensing my newfound zeal for hockey, let me pick something out to buy and I got a bright red Atlanta Flames t-shirt that I began to wear almost daily. From that point on I was hooked, and every week I asked if the CEO was going to use his tickets. I got a Flames schedule and memorized when every home game would be.
Maybe it was my enthusiasm, but my Dad began to really get into the games as well. For the next two years during the 1978-79, and 1979-80 seasons, we went to as many games as we could. Names like Tom Lysiak and Dan Bouchard became common subjects for discussion in our home. I never got tired of going and always looked forward to it as if it were the first time all over again. What's more, it gave me and my Dad something in common that he didn't have with my other siblings, (who never went along).
In 1980, the Flames announced that they were moving to Calgary Alberta for the 1980-81season. This was a hard blow, I think as much for my Dad as it was for me. We really never found anything to replace that bond afterward.
At least not until 2003, when he became a Christian.
.
.
