COLUMN: Memories of little things mean the most

From Jeff Wieland's "Peanuts and Cracker Jacks," Fall '95 "You're going to get to go to the Palestra," he told me when I first announced I was going to go to Penn. Then he began to get sentimental, and my father is by no stretch of the imagination a sentimental man. "I saw the best basketball I've ever seen in the Palestra," he continued, his eyes glowing with an exuberance I have rarely seen in them. "Big 5 basketball is like no other basketball in the world. I remember my friends and I would walk down 33rd Street for the games. The place would be packed all the way up into the corners. It seemed like every game would go down to the wire. You can't really describe it in words. I have some great memories." Memories. It occurs to me now that I have never explained why I chose to call my column Peanuts and Cracker Jacks, though it may seem self-explanatory. A friend of mine said the meaning was obvious -- Peanuts and Cracker Jacks indicates that the pieces I write are mixed tidbits, which in a sense is true. But it explicitly comes from a memory of sitting at my first Phillies' game as a kid and feeling the crunching and crackling of broken peanut shells and popcorn on the soles of my sneakers. It is a memory akin to my father's sensation of being in the crowded Palestra 25 years ago, and my eyes still light up just as my father's did when I recall it. For me, the essence of sports is captured in those fleeting sensations I will never forget. As the year draws to a close and I sit down to type my final column, it is an appropriate time for reflection. I am now nearly at the midpoint of my college career, and as I look back on the past two years, it is only now that I realize just how many of those sensations I have collected in such a short time. And I realize when the time comes to tell my children about my memories of Penn sports, there will be plenty to tell. I will tell them about Jerome Allen's final game at the Palestra when I watched arguably the finest basketball player ever to don a Quakers' uniform burst into unimpeded tears, while his coach stood nearby struggling valiantly not to do the same. I will tell them about the special Zamboni collecting thousands of pieces of soggy toast from the Franklin Field track in an October downpour while thousands of soggy student spectators cheered it on. I will tell them about how my fingers would freeze in place as I sat on tiny aluminum bleachers in College Park, Md., and tried desperately and unsuccessfully to type a Penn-Maryland field hockey article. I will tell them how I reached up and for a split second hung on the Franklin Field goalposts before they were torn down and sent into the Schuylkill River. Of course, I will tell them all about the records. They will know I never saw Penn lose an Ivy League basketball or football game in my first two years of college. They will know about the unprecedented dominance and NCAA Tournament appearances. And they will know all of the numbers and factoids if I bother to look them up. But the real memories will be in those flashes of sensation. My hand stretching across the chalky white paint of the goalpost. My fingers fumbling across the tiny plastic keys of a portable computer. The lump in my throat as I watched the tears roll down Jerome's face. My father doesn't remember the scores of the games he saw in the Palestra 25 years ago. But he remembers what it felt like to be there. He remembers the electricity, the indescribable feeling. And I will too. Jeff Wieland is a College sophomore from Aptos, Calif., and a sports writer for The Daily Pennsylvanian. This was the final edition of Peanuts and Cracker Jacks.

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