NYC and Me IV: Columbia Homecoming

One of the other planned events of my weekend in NYC was my family’s attendance at Columbia’s Homecoming game against Princeton. My brother in law Kenny, father of Chelsea, had planned his trip to visit his daughter around Homecoming (and my visit to the City too), and my Mom and Dad, veterans of football games past, were happy to drive down from Amherst to join us all at the game.

My first week at Barnard, one of the many things I signed up to do during Orientation was join the Columbia University Marching Band. It seemed like a great way to meet people, play my clarinet, and attend football games. I’m sure somebody talked me into it, but either way, I became one of the Columbia blue-blazer-clad members of The Greatest Marching Band in the World, as we liked to call ourselves (and as our Columbia blue t-shirts shouted out). Not everyone in the band played what might be called a traditional instrument; members were just encouraged to play something that made a noise. The band’s moniker was a little pathetic, there was no effort to be a true “marching band” with any kind of organization; our most frequent formation was called “amoeba,” in which the members ran around in circles on the field in some crazy fashion, stopping wherever we were when the drum major blew his whistle. But it was great fun; the band’s program was a script of biting sarcasm directed at the opponent of the day, and the songs we played embellished the script. The program was rarely more than five minutes long, but playing in the band afforded me some road trips to Harvard and Yale, and lots of fun drinking with other members of the band.

During my years at Barnard, my Mom and Dad made more than one journey to Baker Field at 217th Street in Manhattan (at the tip of the island). Homecoming was also always an occasion for the Columbia University Glee Club, of which I was a member, to sing for returning alumni pre-game at the field. So between Glee Club and Marching Band, my parents have some wonderful memories of Homecoming. Which we would try to recreate for Chelsea that October day.

And it was a great day. The weather, at first threatening rain in the morning, turned out beautiful and sunny. Dad drove down to the City to pick up Mom (who had arrived a few days earlier), Kenny, Mac (a Thai exchange student with Kenny) and me, and we all had fun shopping for luncheon food in a NYC market I had found on Broadway and 90th Street – one of those markets where they cut up cheese for you to taste, and have fresh bread on the counter, and myriad prepared salads, in addition to the fresh fruit on the racks on the sidewalk, and everything-else-under-the-sun-you-could-ever-want-to-eat inside the store. I had discovered via the CU website that there was a fenced in “picnic” spot complete with picnic tables up at the field, so we were going to, in traditional Brose fashion, bring our lunch. After a morning or studying, Chelsea was going to take one of the free buses available to students from the campus up to the field – this turned out to take much longer than she had planned, simply because there were so many people headed up to the game (although one would have been hard-pressed to tell exactly where they all went once they got to the field; attendance at the game was not what I would call “hearty”).

Dad dropped us all off at the field, and went off to hunt for parking. Mom, Kenny, Mac and I headed for the picnic area and found an empty table to set up our lunch. Mom wandered off and found the table where students were giving picnic-goers bracelets that allowed one to pick up several glasses of free beer (but not all at once!) that were being dispensed at another table on the field. It appeared, after the game began and we were still in the luncheon area waiting for Chelsea, that our fellow picnic-goers were mainly recent alumni of the College, enjoying the free beer.

In the picnic area I ran into a fellow athlete, Rachel, who I had seen at an event the previous day on campus. Once we got to our seats, I saw one of the Trustees that I had formerly served with on the Barnard board. And right behind her were Ula and Carrie, my two CU Hall of Famers – Ula had received honors for her basketball and volleyball records two years ago at the Hall of Fame induction ceremony; Carrie received honors for her amazing javelin career at Columbia at the ceremony two days earlier. The three hour game gave me a chance to catch up with all of them, even one of my Glee Club alums, David, whose daughter was the drum major for the marching band, of all things!

The highlight of the afternoon (besides enjoying the remains of the tiramisu that Chelsea had brought, leftovers from our Friday evening dinner at Carmine’s on Times Square) was watching the Marching Band. Still crazy after all these years, the script for the show was as caustic as ever, and the music amazingly together (credit Nancy, the drum major!). There’s nothing like recreating a memory, and on this day, it was a success.