THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 29, 1996 TAG: 9609280017
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J5 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: MARGARET EDDS
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: 78 lines
So, Arthur Ashe is on Monument Avenue.
Women are about to be at VMI.
``No Smoking'' signs have infiltrated the Southside.
And political candidates trolling for cash are more likely to cast their nets in the boardrooms of McLean Towers East and Fairfax Executive Suites West than along Main Street, Richmond.
The millennium approaches.
My personal indication that it's a new day in Ol' Virginny is none of the above. I came on the truth unawares a few weeks ago in a setting that is still the state's most revered repository of wisdom, Charlottesville. Some things, as Thornton Wilder knew, are eternal.
My fount of learning was not the library. It was the football stadium. And the epiphany came not at the moment that Tiki Barber ran for his second touchdown of the day to cement the University of Virginia's blowout of Maryland - even though such romps could certainly qualify for the list of things-that-never-were, but-now-are.
No, the moment of reckoning came well after the victorious hordes had wandered away to the Boar's Head Inn or the DKE house. Waiting for my husband, the sportswriter, to finish up, I sat idly in the stands, surveying the post-game debris of popcorn containers, peanut shells and coke cups.
And then the realization hit me.
Coke cups?
William Styron introduced me to University of Virginia football games, circa the 1940s, in his writings. Who could forget the boozy haze through which Milton Loftis moved as he futilely searched the football crowd for his daughter in Styron's first novel, Lie Down In Darkness?
``They drank,'' Styron wrote, ``they'' seeming to encompass not only Loftis but the whole swimming mass of humanity squeezed into the stadium. ``It was all very convivial. . . . He told her of his troubles between the halves, when the tumult subsided except for brief sheeplike cries from the student section. A bottle bounced down behind them from tier to tier and finally shattered beneath their feet.''
And so on and so forth to Page 210. ``He bought a hotdog and an Eskimo Pie and refused drinks, in silver flasks which floated up to him out of the confusion, three times.''
When it came to game-day paraphernalia, pint bottles clearly were as de rigueur as orange and blue pennants or chrysanthemum corsages. Decades of Virginia football-goers could attest to the deep insight contained in Styron's summary statement:
``Virginia had been defeated, but who cared?''
I know for a fact that things hadn't changed much by the 1980s. The last time I did stadium duty after a Virginia game, I sat in awe of the scene. There were more bottles and beer cans than gum wrappers. Surely, I remember thinking, the clerks at every ABC store in town loved football Saturdays.
Sold out, they were home raking leaves.
Sometime, somewhere along the way, things shifted. Maybe it was Nancy Reagan just saying no. Maybe it was raising the drinking age. Probably it was the fact that, finally, thanks to Coach George Welsh things were going on down below that made focusing worthwhile.
But about three years ago, athletic officials say, the ``no alcoholic beverages'' rules started being enforced. Coolers and containers were banned. Flasks were drained at the gate. And the security guards got way more skilled at detecting suspicious bumps and bulges.
At first there was some angst. One couple tried to smuggle liquor in via their baby's bottles. True story. Others resorted to binoculars cases and what not. But eventually, custom bowed.
Now, here is what I would most like to share with those who lament the passing of the old Virginia ways. True, all this change would have ruined Styron's scene. But the football game I attended? It was better than in Milton Loftis' day, it truly was. It was better even than in the 1980s.
The sky was blue, the air was clear, and though I am not so naive as to think this was universally true, a high percentage of the minds seemed to be also.
So take heart, Old Virginia-philes. Yes, it is a new day. Tradition crumbles. But we will all endure.
And as the cleanup crews at the University of Virginia football stadium can testify, we will probably be better for it.
MEMO: Ms. Edds is an editorial writer for The Virginian-Pilot. by CNB