Football Game
I went to the Iowa-Wisconsin football game with my father and a group of businessmen from Spencer, who call themselves "The Flying Hawks". Our plane landed in Madison at 10 a.m., and a friend of mine and his girlfriend were there to greet us. My friend teaches at the University of Wisconsin. We went to a tavern-restaurant and had something to eat and then walked to the football stadium. It was Homecoming in Madison, and the day was pleasant, and the streets were full of fans drinking beer and buying pennants and overcrowding the streets. I walked with my friend's girlfriend, and she told me that she was a Jewish professor in the English department of the University and that she came to Madison via Columbia University. I told her that somewhere in the murky waters of my father's ancestors, my great-grandfather perhaps, a Jew had penetrated our family. I wasn't embarrassed at having Jewish blood but I told her that my father probably was. She liked my father and began to walk and speak to him, and my friend walked with me. At the game she sat with my father, and I sat with my friend and drank whisky. The Flying Hawks were drunk and making obscene vestures to the Wisconsin fans who sat behind us. A fight broke out between a Spencer doctor and a Wisconsin fan, and the doctor got his lip cut. I thought the Iowa fans were obnoxious, and I was embarrassed to be sitting in the same section with them. Iowa lost the game, and we slowly walked back to the car, and my friend drove as to the airport. My friend and his girlfriend thanked my father for taking them to the game, and they left. The Flying Hawks poured into the airport and among load cheers and hideous backslapping; we boarded the Plane and flew back to Spencer.