The 501:
Bleachers. Where would we be without them? They are a necessary evil.
They’ve been around a long time. I’m thinking of the Colosseum in Rome – not exactly what you’d call bleachers but close. Did spectators take seat cushions with them to those grand spectacles? All that stone seating looks like it could use some padding. If I’d lived in ancient Rome back when it wasn’t ancient, I would have positioned myself at a Colosseum entrance and hawked pillows to the masses. “Buy my pillow,” I would have shouted. If that sales pitch sounds all too familiar, you’ve seen the My Pillow guy on TV. If you’ve been spared, go to mypillow. com. You may even want to buy one. We digress.
As for bleachers, maybe you’ve wondered where they got the name? The term is as American as baseball and dates from the 1880s, when baseball fans watched the game seated on stairstep-style stands of horizontal boards bleached by the sun. I looked it up.
Some of us have a hate-hate relationship with bleachers. “Run the bleachers” was the only thing the coach could say that was worse than “Run (insert number here) laps.” Those bleachers made laps seem like a walk in the park.
What vibrant young person immersed in sports ever would imagine that bleachers would be a prime factor in his or her exercise routine many decades later? I didn’t.
Have children and it happens. I skipped “have children” and went straight to grandchildren. For several years, I had a respite from bleachers – not that I never went to a homecoming football game at my rural high school alma mater, but seating at those games was a comfortable lawn chair in the back of a pickup truck. Rural has its advantages.
Now, my husband and I scale serious bleachers regularly for soccer, baseball and football. My heart goes out to the elderly – my term for people older than us.
At least someone invented stadium seats somewhere along the way. Maybe the Romans. Or maybe, as previously suggested, they just used cushions.
If you’re sitting in the Colosseum and you lean back, you end up in the sandal space of the person one row above you. Did the Romans invent stadium etiquette? More likely they borrowed their rules from the Greeks.
Regular seats in the Colosseum were 40 centimeters wide with 70 centimeters of leg room. What a trove of trivia, the internet!
Either way, here’s to finding the perfect stadium seat. My husband has one he likes. I’m still shopping. Academy is out.
If Academy is named for Plato’s place of teaching, why am I not surprised they have no stadium seats? Raphael’s famous fresco of Plato’s School of Athens shows a bunch of guys, including Plato, all in need of stadium seats.
My favorite is Diogenes, prominently sprawled on the steps. He’s famous for carrying a lantern in search of an honest man.
If you see me with a lantern, I’m just looking for a good stadium seat.
A former reporter for “The Childress Index,” Hanaba Munn Welch was inspired to name her column for historic Engine 501 and sum up her weekly thoughts in exactly 501 words and dashes. Farm life often inspires her writing. Sometimes, she even writes about trains.
WELCH
