Waco Is Warm, Sal Is Planning Something, and Ray Wants to Know About the Plant
Cleveland State55
Baylor14
- Game
- 2029 Week 4
- Site
- Away
- Result
- Win
- Record
- 4-0
Vikings 55, Baylor 14. In Waco. Four and oh!
Forty-one points of daylight against a Big 12 team in their building. I watched at Sal’s, who keeps the little TV on during Saturday hours, and here’s what worried me: Sal was too happy. He cheered our touchdowns. He brought me coffee. He gave me even sideburns again.
Then, as I was leaving, I noticed something behind the register. A cardboard tube. The kind you mail a poster in. With an Athens return address. I said, “Sal, what’s in the tube?” He said, “Nothing, Mick.” I said, “Sal.” He said, “It’s a new pennant. Bigger. It’s for later.” Then he smiled at me in a way I didn’t like at all.
You’ll remember Sal took down his old pennant after we beat Ohio for the Big 12 last December. He’s been pennant-free for nine months. And now there’s a bigger one in a tube behind the register, waiting. Folks, I’ve been in that chair twenty-nine years, and I know a man who’s been told something by his family down in Athens.
Four and oh. I’m not worried. I’m a little worried.
Four pierogi.
Forty-one points in Waco. The Vikings are four and oh, outscoring opponents by an average of almost forty a game, which I’d describe as “rude, but legal.”
I called my father Sunday. He’s seventy-seven now. It was a mixed day; he knew me, didn’t know the score, and asked three times whether Teresa “had the plant.” I’d told him, weeks ago, that she has a real plant and I have a fake one, and that’s apparently the detail that stuck. Out of everything. The plant. I said, “Yes, Dad, she has the plant.” He said, “Good. Keep it alive, Kenny. That’s the test.” My mother got on the phone afterward and said he’s been watching game tape again, the old ones, from when he was young. “He seems happy in there,” she said. I believe her. I hope it’s true.
The plant is doing well. I water it Tuesdays. I’m taking the test seriously.
The Doom Model still has the Miami (OH) game flagged in red. It also has a new tab called “Ohio.” I didn’t make it. It made itself.
Back and forth
Sal’s got a pennant in a tube, Kenny.
Then Athens knows something. Bridget’s been quiet. Have you noticed?
Your dad asked about the plant?
Three times. I’m watering it every Tuesday. I’m not failing that test.
Forty-one points in Waco, a pennant waiting in a tube from Athens, and a plant in Ohio City that Ken has been told, by the highest authority he knows, to keep alive.
Split Decision is fiction. Mickey Bridges, Ken Hogmanes and The Lakefront Ledger are invented; the games and scores are not.