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

the solitude of the field house on that beautiful August
morning, it was hard to believe that anyone else did matter. But
the feeling was only temporary. In just about a week the team
would be officially unveiled to the public. And from that moment on, it would become the property of those so desperately
devoted to it.
    There were certain events in Odessa that had become timehonored traditions, essential elements in the biological clock of
the town. There was the annual downtown Christmas treelighting ceremony sponsored by one of the banks, when people
gathered on bleachers in front of the city hall and sipped free
hot chocolate while waiting for Santa to arrive on a flatbed
truck. There was the biennial Oil Show, which out-of-town
hookers always marked on their calendars in red because of the
tantalizing possibility of having thousands of out-of-towners
stuck in Odessa for what might possibly be the three longest
days of their lives.
    And, of course, in late August, there was the Permian booster
club's Watermelon Feed, when excitement and madness went
quickly into high gear.

     

CHAPTER 2

The
Watermelon
Feed
    THE FAITHFUL SAT ON LITTLE STOOLS OF ORANGE AND BLUE
under the merciless lights of the high school cafeteria, but the
Spartan setting didn't bother them a bit. Had the Watermelon
Feed been held inside the county jail, or on a sinking ship, or
on the side of a craggy mountain, they would still have flocked
to attend.
    Outside, the August night was sweetly cool and serene with
just a wisp of West Texas wind. Inside there was a teeming
sense of excitement, and also relief, for the waiting was basically
over; there would he no more sighs of longing, no more awkward groping to fill up the empty spaces of time with golf
games and thoroughly unsatisfying talk about baseball. Tonight, as in a beauty contest, the boys of Permian would come
before the crowd one by one so they could be checked out and
introduced. And after that, in less than two weeks, would come
the glorious start of the season on the first Friday night in
September.
    Each of those little stools in each of those rows, about four
hundred seats in all, was taken well before the scheduled starting time of seven-thirty. It didn't take long before the open area
at the back of the room had filled up with several hundred
other people who hardly minded standing as long as they were
inside. Finally it got so crowded that those who came didn't
even bother to try to get in, but stayed in the hallway and
watched with their faces pressed up against a long window, like out-of-luck shoppers peering into the bedlam of a once-in-alifetime sale.

    A concession stand in the corner did a brisk business in hats
and T-shirts and jackets and flags. Another one sold decals
and little good-luck charms. And each devotee, as he or she
walked in, carried a special program about as thick as a city
phone book.
    Many had their kids with them, for it was clear they thought
it was important for children to see this spectacle at a young age
so they could begin to understand what it all meant. A little boy
wore a T-shirt that said HOLD ON, MONO, I'M A COMIN'. And another had a towel and a flag emblazoned with the Moto rallying cry.
    People had come dressed up for the event. They weren't in
black tie or anything outlandish like that, but just in blackblack caps, black shirts, black pants, black jackets. Many others
went a step further. They had black key chains and black checkbook covers. If you went to their homes you might find black
toilet seats, or black seat cushions, or black phone book covers,
or black paper plates, or black clocks, or black felt on their pool
tables. To get to and from those homes, they might drive cars
with brake lights in the back windows that lit up with the word
MoJo every time they touched the pedals. And next to them in
those cars might be handmade black purses in the shape of a
football with the word MoJo inscribed