I’ve been to one high school football game since I graduated high school, and that was about 35 years ago. So we decided to try it.

It was hot – maybe 105 degrees – when we pulled into the dusty parking lot. Our host wanted us to partake in the whole experience, so we showed up early and visited the tailgaters camped up under the trees and smoke wafted from BBQ pits and seasoned pros sat around in the shade drinking sodas and water.

There was an old steel bridge over a dry creek bed and young folk stood on it and practiced cheers and chatted the way young folk do. The sun was beating down but it was cooler in the shade of the trees.

Everyone was friendly, and a nice man came up and offered us every sort of delectable meat and cold beverage, and I piled a plate high with a big link of sausage on a tortilla, several chicken wings, and a big chunk of pork rib with a side of potato salad… “Fresh. Homemade from Brookshires,” the man said.

It was a wonderful time and brought back so many memories of college tailgating.

The fact is I’ve avoided high school football since I left school, only returning once to a homecoming game a few years after I graduated. Everywhere else I lived I made the excuse that I wasn’t from there, it wasn’t my high school town, and if I didn’t have a connection to the team, how could I become a real fan?

Then something happened a week or so ago. A bunch of people told me I should watch this documentary series called “Welcome to Wrexham” about some Hollywood folk who bought a Welsh soccer (football) team and were trying to turn it around. I watched it, and it was so good that we started cheering for Wrexham. And as a West Texas boy, I didn’t particularly like soccer. Still don’t understand a sport that can end in a tie. Anyway, it was exciting and fun to root for these underdogs from some town we never heard of in Wales.

One day I told my wife… “If we can root for some Welsh soccer team, I guess you can be adopted into a fan base, right? If you want to? Not like the Walmart T-shirt fans who root for the Texas Longhorns, but that’s a story for another day.

We’ve lived in the area for 18 years and in Brownwood for almost 2, and we kind of felt left out of the spirit of local sports every fall and it was kind of sad.

So, I called my friend Steve McCrane and said, “I want you to take us to a Brownwood Lions game. I told him about Wrexham and if I can like some stupid Welsh soccer team and I don’t even know the rules, I can certainly learn to pull for the home team in our adopted city.

We’re strangers in a strange land, but it still felt sort of right.

Walking across the parking lot and up into the stadium, it felt fun and familiar, but different. Everything was smaller. I think everyone gets that feeling when you visit someone or someplace you’ve left behind, but it felt smaller for other reasons too, which I’ll explain.

At this point you’re expecting the “BACK IN MY DAY,” Old Man spiel where I tell you that back in my day we played with leather helmets, and our uniforms were made of flour sacks and barbed wire, and we rode horseback to the game, and practiced with porcupines instead of footballs, and if someone got hit and died we only stopped until they dragged the body off the field. Only that last part is true.

I played football in Odessa in the 80s. Not at the evil empire Mojo school, but across town, but still it was all bigger. The players were big, the bands were big, and the no one cared if you got killed, as long as you kept playing. Our concussion protocol was if you could name the President, you kept playing AND you passed all your classes that year.

I played in the last game at the old Barrett Stadium and in the first game ever at the newer, bigger, Ratliff stadium in 1983. We didn’t wear leather helmets, we had the nicest of everything and our stadium when it first opened sat over 19,000 people and it would fill up when we played Permian or Midland Lee. This was the “Friday Night Lights” days, and football was a professional sport in Odessa.

Maybe that’s why I couldn’t even think about going to a high school football game. But I’m so glad I did. The crowd was fun, engaged, and very welcoming. Despite the fact that it was hot and definitely not fall football weather. We were in the shade though, on the 54-yardline. Great seats. Football moms were wearing jerseys and screaming for their boys.

The bands were fantastic, the energy was electric, and from the beginning I was scared to death. I told Steven, “If for some reason Brownwood loses, I can’t write the article for Sunday, because it’s my first game and everyone will blame me, and I’ll be banned from the stadium.” I was only partly joking.

I was so glad when Brownwood turned it around after halftime and scored two touchdowns on the way to a great win. So, you might see me at home games. I’m going to save up money and try to get a Brownwood Lions hat and a Lions shirt that won’t show the barbecue sauce from the tailgate.

Thank you, Steven, for inviting us, and thank you Brownwood for making some interloping strangers feel welcome say that Brownwood Feels Like Home.

Go Lions!

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Michael Bunker is a local columnist for BrownwoodNews.com whose columns appear periodically on the website.