Ubi sunt* at Juffer Fieldhouse

Okay, there's a story here, so let me unpack it. That's me. The earphones, like the sweaty neck of the shirt, suggest I've been working out, something Barbara and I do almost daily at the Rowenhorst Center, Northwestern College. 

Big deal. There's more. In the bottom left corner, barely visible, is a hero of mine, ye olde Pres of Dordt College, the Rev. B. J. Haan. Trust me, it's him. My daughter gave me the t-shirt some time ago; she knew I'd love it, more--far more--than some fancy one that says "Hawkeyes" or even "Green Bay Packers."   Here 'tis. You really have to see it. 

This isn't just "B. J. Haan"; it's B. J. Haan in front of a church. He looks like a barnstorming, circuit-riding evangelist, which he wasn't, even though the photographer--from Time magazine--thought he was. That's right--Time and Life circa 1947, when this young firebrand preached up a storm of such magnitude that it blew the movie theater right out of town, which brought him and Sioux Center some momentary fame--and some guffaws. Imagine! --this man in this pose on the cover of Life magazine!

For me at least, it's a famous portrait, if for no other reason than nothing from or about Sioux Center, Iowa, has been on the cover of a national magazine since. 

B. J. went on to establish a brand-new college amidst broad Sioux County cornfields of Iowa's northwest corner and become its first president. Some 20 years later, he hired me to teach English, a position I stayed at or in for almost forty years. 

For some time, quite reverently, I wore my daughter's thoughtful gift only around the house--I mean, how could I profane it with the kind of sweat I can still work up? But when it became clear it was getting little use, I added it to the gym-shirt closet and decided it--and he--was going to get a workout. It's just a t-shirt, nothing sacred, nothing Rome-ish.

However, to my haunted mind, the idea of wearing a BJ t-shirt to Northwestern College, Dordt's most foul rival, seemed well, profane. I told my giggling self I'd be lucky if some Raider PE guy didn't pull me off the ellipticals and hang me out to dry.   

No matter--I pulled it on for a workout.

The parking lot was full. Strange. There had to be something going on, so we parked near Juffer Fieldhouse and went in on the other side of the gym. Place was so full we had to squeeze our way through all the people, not just football players but a crowd of parents. I'd never seen so many people in the place. We had stumbled into the middle of the very first football practice. The players had just arrived. I'm guessing the coach had made sure parents were invited.

Honestly, I have no idea what they were doing, but whatever it was involved their smart phones. The grassy infield was covered with ball players, each of them looking at their phones and carrying out some kind of on-line workout ritual in a kind of reverence. Neither the kids nor their moms and dads were saying a thing. It was as if me and BJ had entered some villainous holy temple, all the earth in silence. 

And there he was on my chest. We made our way through the observant crowd toward the entrance to the gym, walked through the silence like reprobates storming out of church. Seemed deeply impious. 

But that's me, at the top of the page, in a selfie that's supposed to bear witness to our transgression, as if it were, in fact, the profanation I'm claiming it to be. 

It wasn't. Even as we picked our way through the crowd, it struck me that no one in that crowded practice facility, not one of them had any idea whose visage adorned my t-shirt. Furthermore, I told myself that at a college twenty minutes northwest of this one, had I walked through the football team assembled on their practice field, no one would have recognized the old preacher either, nor would anyone have known the story of how it was this prairie prophet had run the theater right out of Dodge City.

No one there at Juffer Fieldhouse--a hundred people at least--had a clue who this guy on my chest was, the preacher in a swallow-tail suit, holding forth on the abominations of Hollywood. 

No one knew. No one cared. I'm guessing few of them had ever heard of Life magazine.

Sometimes, no matter how hard an old guy works staying youthful, the job is downright impossible. Oh, woe and woe and woe. 

_____________________ 

*Ubi sunt is a literary trope that "expresses a sense of loss, as well as a mourning or lament for lost things," a frame of mind that frequently obsesses old men.