Chinese Home Cooking (Silverton Style)
January 28, 2012
Buckets and Buckets of The White Stuff
February 10, 2012
The following essay was written back in November, but I’m putting it on the blog today because this is Super Bowl weekend.
Word Count: 816
The Great College
Alma mater Football Bet
There really isn’t a single person who knows me that will dispute the fact that I’m extremely eccentric. Growing up in a small town where you’ve got a voracious appetite for comic book collecting, coupled with massive amounts of sugar consumption tends to do that to a person. But what some may not know is that the four sisters I grew up with in Silverton are just as quirky too. In fact, some might even say more so.
A classic example of this is the ongoing bet two of my sisters have concerning their respective alma maters. The older one attended Fort Lewis College in Durango, while the baby of the family carried out a portion of her studies at Mesa State College in Grand Junction. Both relatively small schools with football programs that carry out an annual game between them. Coincidentally, my sister’s bet on the match-up has turned
into a heated rivalry of epic proportions. If FLC beats Mesa, the Grand Junction college grad pays the Durango grad the astronomical sum of $1.00. If the outcome of the game is reversed, the FLC supporter pays the Mesa supporter that same amount. One sister referring to her rival’s alma mater as Fort Losers, while the other one calls her sister’s alma mater M.U.C.
The bet makes the sibling dispute between Cain & Abel look like a gentile tea party. This situation also has both parties paying off their respective losses on the bet by taking another subtle dig at their opponent. Nothing quite like a variation on the “keeping your eye on the price” theme.
The actual genesis of this bet is even in dispute. Both sisters agree that the bet came about because of a stolen playbook. In the late ‘70’s misguided legend has it that Mesa stole the playbook from FLC. As a result, the Fort Lewis supporter boldly claimed at a previously sedate family function that this was the only way Table College could beat Harvard-on-the-Hill. That started the bet and the exact year it began is where the disagreement pops up.
One sister claiming the bet began in the late 80’s, the other claims it started in the early 90’s. This being an extremely contentious issue of earth shattering proportions. But then as we all know, “The Devil is in the Details,” concerning these non-trivial matters.
Neither sister has ever paid off their losses with an
actual $1.00 bill. Hard economic times has nothing whatsoever to
do with this, extreme pride having everything to do with it.
So how exactly does one pay off a $1.00 bet without actually giving money to their opponent? This is where creativity comes into the mix, and over the years examples have become rampant. These include paying off the bet by sending $.10 checks to your rival. One a month until the bet is paid off.
Other pay-offs have included food coupons equaling $1.00, the Groucho Marx fake rubber check scam, a $1.00 bill cut into a million confetti sized pieces and placed in a snow globe, a sand dollar echinoid, a $1.00 gift certificate to their alma mater’s college book store, a blue and yellow Nerf football with 100 Dum-Dum lollipops stuck in its seams, and an ode to global recycling by sending your opponent aluminum pop tops equaling $1.00.
The loser one year gushes about her most famous pay-off, a diorama of her alma mater’s playing field. Consisting of Peeps marshmallow candies representing the combatants and their cheerleaders. Using Blue, green, pink, and yellow figurines to illustrate severe carnage on the field. Her Peeps of course mercilessly beating up on the other side’s Peeps in a bloody massacre rivaling the barbaric sack jobs of ancient Rome.
This year in anticipation of her team losing (at least
that’s what the younger sister claims) my older sister visited
Las Vegas in March and purchased 100 M & M candies. She then had them arranged to say her alma mater rules.
Over the years I’ve more or less kept a stoic vigil on the sidelines. Being a graduate of the People’s Republic of Boulder, I’ve become indifferent as to who exactly wins the bet from one year to the next. Both sisters know quite intimately about my extreme strangeness, and neither one of them wants to gum things up by getting my advice concerning their pay-off.
Unfortunately, the bet may come to an end in the near future. Due in part to the fact that it’s become an arm of the university system, enrollment at Mesa has reached 8,000 students, while Fort Lewis has remained the same at roughly 4,000. Someday they could be playing in separate leagues and the annual game might not even occur. Until that day theoretically takes place the bet will continue. So will the creative, and infinitely bizarre pay-offs.
