The Year Without Football

This Saturday, August 8^th, the quiet town of Pine Village should have been bursting with people. There would have been town wide garage sales, kids selling lemonade, families lining the streets with blankets and chairs waiting for the parade to start, and the smell of burgers wafting through the air. All of these leading to the main event, local boys decked out in vintage black and orange jerseys, ready to take on the away team in a historical vintage football game.

Last year, over a thousand people gathered around the football field, located behind Pine Village Elementary School, to watch the old fashioned game and cheer on the locals! It was a sight to behold in the sleepy town of three hundred!

This year, planning for the second annual game got off to great start, but sadly all festivities were cancelled about a month ago due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The cancellation of sports and festivities in rural communities across the nation seems like such a crazy unreal thing to happen, but it happened back in 1918 to the original Villagers too. In 1918, Pine Village football came to a grinding halt as the players fought in World War I and all of America suffered from the Spanish Influenza, a byproduct of the war that killed thousands of Americans. That year, not one game was played, the field was left barren, and everyone wondered whether the Villagers would ever take the field again.

Now, over one hundred years later, we are all wondering the same thing that those Warren County people were wondering back then. Will things get back to normal? When will we be able to resume our festivals and small town traditions? Will the vintage football game be a thing of the past, or will we revive it again in the coming year?

I leave you with this excerpt from Robert Carr, the nephew of Pine Village football player, John Carr, who says of a parade revived again in 1918, “Such visiting there was, with friends they hadn’t seen in months and months… The two town doctors were very much on view… They all floated about, inquiring into the health of all.”

They went on to have their celebration and parade, and a year later, the Villagers took the field again! The hope and prayer of the Pine Village Football Committee is that this time next year, those of us who have social distanced for months, those of us who have missed out on opportunities, sports, and fun events, will be back together visiting, celebrating, and socializing once again! God bless!