Many years ago the duo of John Lennon and Paul McCartney entertained us all with their Beatles hit, "Obladi Oblada." A repeated line of the song says that "life goes on." That fact is very true, not only in the world of Beatles songs.
Recently, I have found myself in more and more of a nostalgic mood. I think about days of my younger years and they always make me smile. Mainly because I have a tendency to remember mostly the happy details of my youth. I reckon that's the natural order of things. If you're going to go to the effort of remembering things, it's probably best to remember more of the happy details. That makes remembering a much more pleasant activity.
This morning, I was struck with the memory I had of going to football games in Gainesville with my family. My father was an alumnus of the University of Florida and each year, he had season tickets to the football games. On those occasions when I was blessed to have a ticket to the game to see the Gators play, it was always a special time. My mother would usually fry chicken and make pimento cheese early that Saturday morning. That would be the tail-gating fare before the game. We would get to the stadium early enough to enjoy a couple of pieces of fried chicken and a sandwich, along with sweet tea, for lunch. Most of the games at the University of Florida were played in the early afternoon. We would always park in the ROTC field on campus. Before heading to the stadium, it was important to make mental note of exactly where we were parked, just in case I got separated from my folks after the game. With my challenged sense of direction, you can imagine the importance of that detail.
Over the years, our Saturday game routine changed. Because of arthritic knees, my mother began to stay home rather than deal with climbing the steps of the stadium. That meant I would usually go to the games with my father and we would park at the medical center. This was a little longer walk, but it allowed for easier exit after the games. A few years later, the City of Gainesville began to offer bus service from the Oaks Mall to the stadium. This made parking much easier and pre-game "tailgating" moved to the food court inside the mall.
For a few years after my parents passed away, I was able to keep the season tickets and attend the games. Eventually, the price of renewing the seats and tickets became cost prohibitive and I had to stop buying the season tickets. That was a difficult decision to make. Now I watch the games on TV when I can. I still wear my orange and blue. I will get some fried chicken from the grocery store and have a drumstick with a pimento cheese sandwich. It's not quite the same, but as Lennon and McCartney said, "Life goes on."