It’s that time of year again. The time when the leaves begin to get a hint of color and the streets of K-town are flooded with enough orange to out fit every deer hunter in the Northern hemisphere for three lifetimes.
It’s that time when every non student in the Fort locks his or her windows and just hunkers down, awaiting the madness to end as Orange Football Insanity burns and boils in the blood of the hardcore fan.
It’s always kind of hard to explain to a non-Knoxvillian the ins and outs of the game day transformation of consciousness. You always come off as feeling a little silly, if not absurd, trying to get it into someones' head that "yes, these 200,000 people are legally insane for approximately 10 hrs prior and 10 hours after a Tennessee Home game."
I realized just how absurd it was while sitting on the patio at the
Downtown Grille & Brewery just after dark on a Saturday night with a few traveling friends of mine. I suddenly became aware that they hadn’t experienced game night in Tennessee before, as indicated by their staring at every piece of orange that came by the sidewalk with an inquisitive look. Before I could explain how the night would progress, I turned and asked the gentleman behind me the score. Once given the fact that Tennessee was kicking the snot out of Callie, I turned to my friend and laid it all out for him.
“We’re getting ready to see people of every race religion, profession, socio-economic disposition, age, and inclination come storming in a stream into every bar within two miles. Once they get there, they’re gonna start getting extremely inebriated immediately. After approximately 45 minutes to an hour, we will begin to hear spontaneous yelling, whooping, hollering, and the occasional glass breaking. This will build for thirty or so minutes until spontaneous verses of Rocky Top can be heard erupting among the more boisterous in the crowd.”
It was at that moment that I realized that this was the same crowd that I would be playing my music for in approximately 30 minutes. This realization did not come without its doubts. For one, the demographic of any bar on game day shifts dramatically to include people that normally do not get out. You’ve got the older set that use game day as a really good excuse to drag the orange out the closet and use it to tie one on. These people are not necessarily accustomed to the bar scene and see it much in the same light as the few times a year that they get to go to Gatlinburg or Dollywood.
This can pose a problem when trying to entertain them. When you’re used to the Grand Ole Opry on Tues nights and to top it off you just left Neyland Stadium, being entertained by an Appalachian blues band could be a stretch. I didn't worry too much about it though, as soon as I heard the victory boom of the fireworks. I started to get a little tear in my eye as thoughts of all the times spent with family around the tube on game day and the overwhelming feeling that through this simple game there was some glue that tied us together as Tennesseans.
I turned to my visiting friends and said, “We’ve got thirty minutes until this place is going to get crazy.” I just sat back and calmly waited on the patio as the stream of people steadily increased, as did the ratio of orange to any other color. The Downtown Grille slowly filled to capacity and showtime crept steadily nearer. Instead of clenching up at the sight of so many people that are not what you would call your typical ‘Cornbred Kid’, I started to realize the true meaning of the game day experience:
It’s Democratic in nature, that all these people from all these different walks of life have converged at this one place and time for the sole purpose of celebrating life. The hipsters were sitting next to the young neo bohemian romantics who were sitting with the boys from the frat house down the street who were sitting next to a 45 year old engineer from Jefferson City with his wife Edna who looks like she probably sells Tupperware in her spare time. As absurd as that cornucopia of people may seem, there is a beautiful quality to a group as diverse as that. I don’t think any other single event can do this. It is a true Knoxville oddity that one can’t appreciate until it’s experienced.
I turned to the crowd with a new found sense of belonging, sat down in the cock pit of my Tie fighter (a.k.a. Wilma, the 66 Wurlitzer), and closed my eyes as the boys behind me broke into a saxophone led UT band version of Rocky Top--complete with pedal steel and drums. The place went wild. I distinctly heard glass breaking. I saw Mrs. Edna, the Tupperware lady from Jefferson City dancing out of the corner of my eye. I chocked it up to the beginning of another beautiful musical experience in the strange social experiment known as the K-town Underground.
Comments
Nice article. I've always been very harsh regarding Vol fans, but you have changed my perspective. I think you are absolutely right in figuring, that for some of these fans, this is a BIG night out for them.
Posted by: Debra Dylan | September 21, 2006 10:44 AM