We were unwinding after having taken in some of the sights in Denver over the weekend. We boarded the capital city\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s light rail toward our destination, which is about as close to the center of town as one can get.<\/p>\n
Benji, our youngest son, and his family put us up for the night in a 24-story apartment house that places Ben a short block from where he works. And what is that work? Doing computers or something. What else does anyone his age do for a living nowadays?<\/p>\n
It was a fine reunion, as we got together with our oldest son, Stan Adam, his wife and two young daughters. They came from a bit farther away: Denmark, as it was their turn to head west.<\/p>\n
Around 9:30 p.m., we were the only rail passengers \u00c2\u00ad\u00e2\u20ac\u201d until groups of noisy young adults boarded and sat in the car we had occupied. I enjoyed listening in on their chats. It seemed that each one increased his or her volume to make a point. Remember: In today\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s society, the louder and more emphatic you are, the more veracity your comments carry.<\/p>\n
We found the 12 to 15 boarders to be intelligent, well informed, respectful of one another \u00c2\u00ad\u00e2\u20ac\u201d and strongly opinionated. But before revealing more of their speech contributions, let me stress that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m constantly assessing others, wondering whether these Denver college students speak the way we do in Las Vegas. Except for the fact that any point of contention meant that one or two \u00e2\u20ac\u201d or several of them \u00c2\u00ad\u00e2\u20ac\u201d increased their volume to help them slap on the exclamation point.<\/p>\n
I tuned in to the group discussion because one of them had mentioned the Oakland (soon to be Las Vegas, Nevada) Raiders, in the context of the coming football season. Let me also stress that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s heresy if someone says anything unkind about my Raiders, who sometimes even manage to beat their intra-conference rivals.<\/p>\n
A longtime Raider fan, I was asked by one of my sons why I backed our car into the driveway of a motel we stayed at while in Denver some 20 years ago. Well, it turns out that right next to our car was another car with an Oakland Raider license plate frame that had practically been wrenched out of place. Apparently it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s quite all right to use this kind of welcome, as long as the cars belong to the other team\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fans. So we backed in our car and suffered no damage, no Mile-High greeting card.<\/p>\n
Surprisingly, my sons are free to follow teams of their choice. Stan has no favorite; Diego likes the Tennessee Titans and Ben is a Giants fan. Why am I a Raider fan? Because many of us, in the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dc60s marveled at the skills of Highlands Cowboys running back Carl Garrett. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the one who beat out O.J. Simpson as Rookie of the Year in a Sporting News poll. Teamed with Las Vegas\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 own Ben Cortez, the Cowboy backfield was formidable.<\/p>\n
Regrettably, years later Garrett served time in prison after being convicted of a sex crime.<\/p>\n
But Garrett or not, I have always loved the Oakland Raiders. On the opening page of my personal laptop, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an image of a Raider sweatshirt with the words: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153God first; family second; Oakland Raiders third.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
A former Highlands student and Luna Community College employee, Tom Herrera, once said he believed I would root for the Raiders even if they became the Ayatollah Khomeini Raiders.<\/p>\n
Tom is correct.<\/p>\n
The college crew that hopped our train chose the one topic \u00c2\u00ad\u00e2\u20ac\u201d the Oakland Raiders \u00e2\u20ac\u201d that cemented my attention. In their let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s-see-who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s-the-loudest manner, they dared criticize the team I love. And, obviously being Denver students, they said only nice things about Oakland\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s biggest rivals.<\/p>\n
Being outnumbered, we Trujillos obviously listened in but didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t chip in. It was nevertheless interesting to feel and hear the vitriol the Denverites spewed.<\/p>\n
One of them, a shirtless young man with wall-to-wall tattoos, corrected a young lady\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s pronunciation of the team from Oakland. She had said \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Raiders,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d but the tattooed male pronounced it \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Rrrraiders,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d making the repeated consonants sound like a primeval roar. Soon anybody\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mention of the great team from the Bay Area came with an exaggerated repetition of the letter \u00e2\u20ac\u0153r,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d but not intended as a compliment.<\/p>\n
It was a long train ride whose sole topic was the fierce rivalry between the two West Coast Conference teams. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d either never known, or maybe I had forgotten incidents in which fans had been beaten up by the other team\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s supporters, just for wearing a jacket or jersey representing the other side. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s happened both ways, often in the parking lot, long after the game has been settled.<\/p>\n
The tattooed youth referred to incidents that occurred long before he had been born.<\/p>\n
My son Ben asked later if I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d join him at an upcoming Bronco-Raider game. How much, Ben? \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Oh, I think we could get some pretty good tickets for about $250 apiece,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he answered. Could that be true? I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have the energy or desire to check ticket prices, possibly because paying that much to watch a game we could catch on TV seems obscene. Yet a number of Las Vegas acquaintances have shelled out big bucks to watch the Dallas Cowboys or Arizona Cardinals. I choose to remain uninformed as to the prices people pay to augment the salaries of those multi-millionaires of the turf.<\/p>\n
As the train ride ended, at Lincoln Station, miles from our starting point, one of the students apologized to us \u00e2\u20ac\u0153for making so much noise on the train and talking only about football.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
I replied that I had enjoyed every word of it, but the way I said that might have also implied that I would soon be in Mile High Stadium, cheering on \u00e2\u20ac\u201d the Broncos.<\/p>\n
And that, dear readers, is not going to happen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We were unwinding after having taken in some of the sights in Denver over the weekend. We boarded the capital city\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s light rail toward our destination, which is about as close to the center of town as one can get. Benji, our youngest son, and his family put us up for the night in a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1652"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1652"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1652\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1653,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1652\/revisions\/1653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}