The Saga of the Football field

I have been watching the football field’s progress since Mother Nature decide she needed to change the terrain a little.  As you know, we had “monsoon” rains this spring that kept the football field, 1 baseball diamond and about half of the park where we play flooded for 2 months.

 

Part of this problem was man made when the “powers that Be” i.e…..City planners….. decided to “renovate” the parking lot yet again.  Every year they have done something to the parking lot to “improve” it….Yet they can not seem to do the most practical thing which would be put in a drainage system and pave it!  One year, they used this mulch/dirt mix…which created mud.  This year they came up with the ingenious idea of grading the lot,
Parking lot















putting down weed block paper and filling it in with 6 inches of loose gravel….which looked nice until any car, truck, SUV that drove into the lot got stuck in and had to be pushed, pulled or towed out of.  The other problem this created was the parking lot was now higher than than the football field, so every time it rains, the water runs down hill into the football field and baseball diamond.
So the Football league had to figure out what they wanted to do.  The City didn’t want to put any more money into the project as the past projects were costly, though ineffective.  The only solution would be to turn the field sideways so games could be played and leaving the goal posts in place with hopes next year the grounds would recover.


This turned out to at least provide a place to play the games.  We haven’t had any “monsoons” since the season began in July at the conditioning so the field has remained dry enough to play on….so far.  The down side to it is there would be no Field goals scored this season with no goal posts to Kick through. It also would pose a new problem; no place on one side of the field for bleachers because of the hill so all the bleachers would be on the side of the field where the spectators would have their backs to the scoreboard.
Well, someone decided to do something about the field.  They have begun work to improve the field destroyed by standing water.  One day I went to football practice and here is what we saw;

Several days later; it looked like this:

I would hope that one of these days they will seed it with some kind of fast growing heavy traffic grass seed.  We’ll see….As for the parking lot, well that’s another story.  If they had not put the weed block down, the traffic alone would act as a compacting tool and constant traffic would compact the rocks….but that’s not going to happen this year.  People have resorted to parking anywhere but in the rocks if possible….they park in the grass, on the shoulders of the road or across the street.
This week, we had some visitors to our games….

I think this guy showed up on Saturday hoping to find a free meal.  The temperatures were above 97 degrees(36c) and maybe he was hoping people would be dropping from the heat….
 
and there were a few things you don’t see everyday. I wasn’t quick enough to get a picture of the policeman chasing a dog with his car down the wrong side of the highway; or of when he got out of the car to run after him….which was really kind of funny.  But I did get a picture of this;


We have Amish that live in town. They come to the Farmer’s markets and sell their goods and they shop in some of the local stores.  I couldn’t believe my eyes the first time I went to the grocery and saw one of their buggies with the horse tied to the light pole…Or when I woke up to Horse sounds outside my window on the street where I lived.
But back to my football banners…

short second banner

We had a game last evening against the Hurricanes and we won 14 to 0. We have another game this weekend. This one will be a little harder….we play the team that won the Championship last year and is undefeated so far this year…..my Oldest grandson’s old team the Rising Park Razorbacks.  If  our boys played as well Saturday as they did last night, we should do okay.  But they need to pay attention, block and RUN!!!  They need to keep their heads and their hearts in the game….
So for now…..
Hugs and Love to all!