the dirty golden bears

We had a very busy labor day weekend.

Months ago, word was spread around my various college alumni email lists that the Aggies would be playing Cal Berkeley this month in football, which was exciting because our football teams aren't in the same conference and haven't met in over 70 years. It was also exciting because the last time Davis was scheduled to play a hot-shot Pac-10 conference team who severely outmatched us (Stanford in 2005), we won. I missed that game because I had not quite 1 year-old twins at home, but I didn't want to miss this one.

I bought 3 tickets long ago, in June I think it was, seating us in the official Aggie rooting section and planning to take John and Erin. Too much time just sitting for the twins, I imagined, so they stayed with a babysitter and the 3 of us made the long drive to Berkeley.


In the shadow of the famous clock tower the Aggies had set up a pretty large pre-game gathering area, with clothing for sale, food and drink and alumni organization tents. We didn't arrive early enough to take advantage of most of that. We quickly grabbed some lunch and met up with some alumni friends for a little while, and then it was time to head to the stadium.



Gunrock the mustang and the Aggie Band-uh lead the way.

And the stadium was a pretty impressive sight.

We were seated among several sections of all Aggie fans, and our seats were just above the Band and dance team.

It was a nice warm, clear day and everyone was in good spirits. And then the game started. Cal made first down after first down and seemed to score on every possession. At the half it was 35 - 0. Strange as might seem to someone else, I don't have any pictures of the actual football game, because there wasn't anything photo-worthy. I had no intention of documenting the Cal players jumping over our players as they went to tackle them. I had no intention of documenting their many touchdowns, and I had no intention of documenting our incomplete passing.

But at half-time the Band-uh looked good.




Of course Cal has a great Band also, and after every score they played their fight song, "Golden Bear", for which we have alternate lyrics:
The dirty Golden Bear,
Is losing all his hair,
His teeth are out,
He's got the gout,
He don't know what it's all about,
His eyes are made of glass,
He's losing all his class,
So take your G-D- teddy bear and shove him up your golden ***

Thinking of the lyrics while their Band played made me smile.

Erin seemed to have a good time. She hadn't been to a football game before so she had a lot of questions about the rules, and why we weren't playing better. The final score was 52-3. "How much did you pay for these tickets?" John asked me repeatedly. "Well, THAT was money well spent."

Of course, as a student and Band member, I went to every single football and basketball game, home and away, and it was always fun to cheer for the Aggies. John can't really relate to any of this, John's University didn't even have a football team. John would probably say that he's not so sure that mine has one either.