The Weekly Screed (#541)

Playing (football) for Godot

by David Benjamin

CHICO, Calif. — As pilgrimages go, it wasn’t exactly the

sackcloth-and-ashes trek from the Tour Saint-Jacques to Santiago de

Compostela. We had a car, we didn’t have to wear rope sandals, and we

were only driving from Frisco to Chico.

But first, Oroville. These two towns are where Aaron Rodgers, Super

Bowl MVP, played football in obscurity before reaching the sport’s

pinnacle as quarterback of the NFL champion Green Bay Packers. Our

team. We were three cheeseheads, George from Appleton, me from Tomah.

And my wife Hotlips, from Tokyo actually, but dipped in cheddar and

stuffed with bratwurst since the days of Reggie White and LeRoy

Butler.

Oroville came first because all the hotels in Chico, for some reason,

were booked. So, we checked into the Comfort Inn and lunched next-door

at the Cornucopia. Our waitress, Shirley, was suffering from

coffee-pot elbow but gritted her teeth and pointed us (with her bad

arm) toward Rodgers’ first post-high school stop, Butte Community

College.

Ol’ BCC, when we got there, proved to be a teensy bit of a letdown.

For one thing, it was closed on Saturday — even the library.

Especially the library. We could tell it was closed because the

parking lot was bare, there were no evident humans, and the residence

halls were deathly still owing to the fact that there were no

residence halls.

We climbed out of the car and strolled toward the deserted stadium,

where we stood at midfield, picturing Aaron Rodgers leading the

Roadrunners to victory in eerie silence before absent throngs at

Closed-on-Weekends University. From the field, we got the grand view

of Butte College, whose architect was apparently responsible also for

some of America’s most picturesque medium-security penitentiaries. The

motif — blocky beige buildings with narrow window slits, clustered

behind chain-link fences and mounds of dirt — seemed the perfect

marriage of form and function. Butte was where you had to serve a

stretch if you screwed the pooch in high school.

We had come here hoping to buy Butte College gear — perhaps even a

Butte jersey embroidered with Rodgers’ name. But the bookstore, of

course, was closed on Saturday. Besides, clearly, Butte is not the

sort of college that would seek either profit or pride from the

success of an alumnus. Printing Aaron Rodgers merchandise would, we

realized, compromise Butte’s unique Samuel Beckett aura of penal

surrealism. So would, for that matter, erecting a sign that might say,

“Aaron Rodgers played here,” or gushily naming — in his honor — a

water cooler, or a first-aid kit. Not here. Not Butte.

As we left, we spotted signs of life — a local band of skinheads

conducting blunt force trauma practice on the quad — or what passed

for a quad. Besides the football field, it was the only patch of grass

in the valley.

As we headed toward Chico, we kept our eyes peeled for the big sign

that read: “CHICO! Proud Hometown of Aaron Rodgers, Super Bowl MVP.”

We figured there would be a sign because, 14 years before, we had made

a similar hajj to the hometown of a prior Packer Super Bowl hero. We

had taken turns photographing one another in front of Kiln,

Mississippi’s Brett Favre billboard (which is probably still there).

Chico, however, is way bigger than Kiln. We couldn’t find the sign.

We did find Chico’s downtown, which was lively and attractive, with a

flea market in the square. We lingered there briefly, dropping Aaron

Rodgers’ name and waiting to see people’s faces light up with local

pride. We would say, “We’re here, in Chico, because of Aaron Rodgers.”

“Who?”

“You know, Green Bay?”

“Which bay?”

“You know, the football team.”

“Football?”

“You know, the Super Bowl?”

“Super Bowl? Didn’t they already have that?”

These sorts of dialogs made us wish for a bar. We landed in Johnnie’s,

in Chico’s grandest hotel, where — here we go! — a bartender

recognized the name. He said, “Yeah, but around here we’re not that

much into football. We’re, like, more into stuff like skateboarding,

mountain biking, ultimate Frisbee, monster trucks. Y’know?”

It was from this local that we learned why the hotels were full.

People were flooding Chico for a big footrace connected with the

annual wildflower festival. Here was something a Wisconsin native

could appreciate — a crop-oriented bacchanal. Back home in Sun

Prairie, Warrens and Egg Harbor, we venerate corn on the cob,

cranberries, whitefish and the hops harvest. In Chico, it’s weeds.

The bartender gave us another reason why Chiconians seemed pretty

blasé about Aaron Rodgers. “It isn’t like he’s the first big

quarterback from these parts,” he said. “After all, Ricky Ray came

from around here. Y’know?”

We respectfully pretended, of course, that we knew. We uttered the

name in reverent tones. “Oh, well, Ricky Ray. We can see clearly now.

Yeah. Jeez, good ol’ Rick.”

Later, surreptitiously, Hotlips googled away and discovered that Ricky

Ray from Redding (not Chico) had had a cup of Gatorade with the New

York Jets before being ushered out of the NFL. He went on to glory

with the Edmonton Eskimos of the Canadian Football League, leaving a

legacy in Chico that puts Aaron Rodgers’ embryonic career in

Lilliputian perspective.

Slick, another bartender, confessed to an acquaintance with Rodgers.

He directed us to Pleasant Valley High. We learned, with dismay, that

Aaron Rodger’s high school was “The Home of the Vikings.” Vikings?

For a Packer fan, finding out that our Aaron used to be a Viking was

like James Dean, in “East of Eden,” discovering that his long-lost mom

was the Central Coast’s foremost whore.

True to Chico’s pathological passion for understatement (and respect

for Ricky Ray), there was no mural at PV High boasting of Aaron

Rodgers. Several past athletic heroes were enshrined on plaques

riveted to rocks. But they were all dead.

“Maybe we should kill him,” suggested Hotlips.

Although PV High was closed on Saturday, George found two apparent students.

“You kids go to school here?”

“No.”

“But you’ve heard of Aaron Rodgers?”

“Who?”

“Aaron Rodgers.”

“The football player?”

“Yes. The football player.”

“No.”

Our last gasp was the Chico Mall, and a place called Sports Fever.

Finally, there, we found faint spoor of Aaron Rodgers — a replica

jersey that commemorated, jointly, Rodgers 2010 Pro Bowl appearance

and his 2011 Super Bowl. It retailed for $75, but the clerk was

desperate to cut a deal. Imploringly — he led us to a rack of unsold

green-and-gold gear.

“My bleeping boss,” he said, “keeps yelling at me to unload all of

this bleeping Green Bay Packers crap.”

Out of pity, George bought a few scraps of Green Bay Packers crap.

As we drove back toward Johnnie’s to drown our lost weekend in a few

pints of the local microbrew (was it really called Ricky Ray Red

Rye?), I couldn’t clear from my head the haunting words of Gene

Pitney…

“… Why do people hurt us so?/ Only those in love would know/ What a

town without pity can do…”