George Rapp

In Nebraska I was told a number. I did not believe it. I have since checked it, and I still do not believe it. The football stadium in Lincoln has sold every seat, for every home game, since November 3, 1962. Every game. Not the good years. Every game. Through seasons the state would rather not discuss. Through blizzards. Through years when leaving early would have been reasonable, and nobody left. I asked a man named Gary how two million people keep a promise for that long. He said, "You buy the ticket." I asked what if the team is bad. "You buy the ticket." I asked what if it is snowing. He looked at me with real patience. "You buy the ticket." Here is the part that undid me. The first game of the streak, in 1962, they lost. Thirty-six thousand people came out the week after the Cuban Missile Crisis ended, watched their team lose to Missouri, and came back for the next one anyway. And the next. It has not stopped. The streak began with a loss. Nobody in Nebraska finds this ironic. They find it obvious. This summer there was worry. Ticket sales were slow. People wrote articles asking whether it would finally end. I read them in a diner over a slice of pie I did not finish, and I confess I was afraid for a state I do not live in. Then this week they announced the opener is sold out. Four hundred and eleven in a row. In my land, a lord who kept his word for sixty years was written into the temple records. Nebraska has kept its word since the Cuban Missile Crisis. There is no temple. There are eighty-five thousand people who bought the ticket. Gary is going Saturday. It is not snowing. He would go if it were. A promise is easy in a winning season. Nebraska has kept one through every other kind.