Until the
Bell Rings

This column, it deals with joining my first grade daughter for lunch at Pomona Elementary, was written way back in 1981. True at the time of publication Denver’s I-25, then known as the Valley Highway ran past now demolished Mile High Stadium but some things have been here, gone and now returned.  The week before this appeared Secretary of the Interior James Watt and Aspen crooner, actor, activist John Denver had addressed Club 20. (They had opposite views of how our neck of the woods should deal with Energy’s impact on the West.)  This was another time in our local history when “Oil Shale is just around the corne”)  

Today some of the first graders I dined at Pomona are schoolteachers, oil field workers, full time moms, doctors, lawyers and captains of industry.  And almost to a person they are parents.  Their children today still fill me with as much hope for the future as their parents did decades ago. 

September 27, 1981 

Last week I sat down and broke bread with the future leaders of our country.  While Club 20 was listening to James Watt, John Denver and others, I had lunch with my youngest daughter’s first grade class. 

I wanted to go, I really did, because they were having lasagna.  The fact my wife gave me a choice of attending lunch or painting the house was not a factor in my decision.  Well not much of a factor. 

The visit got off to a rocky start as I stood in the lunch line.  All those wide eyes staring upward implored that I do something nonchalant and cool, like starting a conversation. 

“How did your morning go?” I asked my daughter. 

“Shhh!.  Can’t you read the sign right beside you that says no talking out loud?” she whispered. 

So much for being cool. 

Humbled, I followed her through the serving line speaking only to the cook, in a very low voice, requesting a cup of coffee and inquiring as to where I should deposit my lunch ticket.  Still, I must admit to liking the standing in line part.  A collection of first-graders offers the only opportunity in my life to tower over anybody.  I pretended to be Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. 

My tray filled, I followed my daughter to her table.  We sat across from a group of boys in her class.  Later she told her mother she had planned for me to sit there because she knew “I probably wanted to talk football with the boys.”  Indeed, that’s what they talked about. 

“Who’s your favorite team? I s’pose it’s the Philadelphia Eagles,” challenged the young man across the table before I had a chance to sit down. 

The Eagles had been on the tube the night before, but I had never felt any emotional commitment to their cause in years past.  You really don’t meet a lot of Eagle fans here in the Intermountain West. 

Since my questioner was wearing a Bronco T-shirt and an orange Bronco belt and had a Bronco helmet beside him.  I immediately figured that discretion was the better part of valor and volunteered the Denver footballers were indeed my favorites. 

“Mine too,” he replied. 

“Well,” I asked, “why the interest in the Eagles?  Are you from the East?” 

“No,” he said, “but they must be a good team.  They were ahead when I went to bed.” 

From now on that’s how I’m going to root for the Broncos.  When they’re ahead, go to bed.  It will give me a whole new perspective. 

A youngster down the table volunteered that he had been to a ‘real” Bronco game in Denver, not one you saw on television.  I asked if it was fun.  He replied that it was OK until the game started, but the seats were too farm from the bathroom and he couldn’t go by himself and his Dad got made if he wanted to go while the Broncos were playing.  But, he added, the seats were neat because he could see all the trucks going down the highway by the field.  

My daughter then volunteered that I had once played football, but no one was too impressed once they determined that it hadn’t been for the Broncos. 

“Do you guys play football?”  I asked.  “No” they all played soccer. 

The conversation took a new tack as the various soccer teams would be playing the next morning and there was much conjecture on whose team was going to “whap” whose team and just how bad the “whapping” was going to be. 

Soccer seems to be the favorite sport of the first grade, and I must admit that I admired their attitude.  No one could remember the name of his or her coach or the score of the previous Saturday’s game.  The only real facts they could recall was that it was fun and whether they were the “whapee” or the “whapper” 

One young man offered that he had seen me running while he was riding in the family station wagon.  He said he, too, liked to run.  “Do you think you could whap me?” I asked. “You don’t whap people in a race,” came the reply.  “Just in soccer.” 

The future of Horizon Drive, the energy impact on the Grand Valley and inflation were the furthest things from their minds. Well, inflation must be a factor as I heard a girl on my side of the table tell a friend that she was going to get a new lunchbox at Target and it was going to cost eighty thousand dollars.  She probably should wait till they go on sale, I though, but bit my tongue.  I’d already put my foot in my mouth enough for one day. 

Anytime you are convinced the world is going to hell in a hand-basket, I recommend you have lunch with a group of first-graders.  It will give a whole new perspective on what’s important. 

As we were finishing our lasagna, I inquired how much time they had to play before class started.  The guesstimates ranged from 15 minutes to an hour and a half. 

As the speculation continued, my friend in the Bronco shirt brought the conversation to a halt with, “It don’t matter how much time we got.  We got till the bell rings.”  As in life.