Swat those Bees! Sting those Bears!

Last night was the 98^th renewal of the annual football game between my alma mater, the Fairmont Senior High School Polar Bears of West Fairmont and the East Fairmont High School Bees. In a small town like Fairmont, this game is one of the highlights of the year, as it has been since the two schools started playing each other in 1921.

For a kid growing up here, the East-West football game was a really big deal. For about 40 years, the game was played on Veterans Day, November 11, at 1:00 in the afternoon. It didn’t matter if that date was a Monday, a Tuesday or a Friday. That’s when they played the game. (Sundays may have been an exception. I forget.) There was no school because of the holiday and people who had to work would take the day off to attend.  

The celebration started with the Veterans Day parade in the morning, say, around 10 a.m. or so. As I remember it, both schools would be well represented in the parade with their bands and floats and marchers and the like, making their way from Sixth Street Pharmacy through downtown Fairmont and across the Nickel Bridge to East Side where it dispersed on Merchant Street.

After the parade ended, we would walk a mile or so from downtown to 12^th Street where the East-West stadium is located and settle in for the game. My memory is a little fuzzy on the timing of this, but either before or after the game (or possibly both times) we diverted to the Poky Dot restaurant two blocks from the stadium to eat pizza and get jazzed up for the game.  

I participated in the parade twice. Once, as a freshman, I wore a beret and rode a bicycle as a member of the French Club. This was the year I discovered that the low level bridge across the Monongahela River did not have a solid floor. “Sacre bleu.” The bridge deck was a metal grid and you could see through it to the river below. I’m acrophobic and when I hit that bridge on a bicycle and looked down, I froze. I couldn’t move forward or backward. Fortunately, the sidewalk was made of solid material, so I was able to muster up enough courage to carry my bike over there and walk it the rest of the way across.

The second time, as a senior, I drove a friend’s Mustang convertible carrying the two East-West mascots sitting on the boot. In addition to the regular Polar Bear mascot, there was always someone dressed like an injured Bee with her arm in a sling, a crutch and bandages on her head. Chants of “Swat those Bees” from one side of the street were met with “Sting those Bears” from the other side as the parade made its way through town.

“East is least,” we shouted. “West is best.” We also had some crude cheers I’ll keep to myself and a mock alma mater that we’d rise and sing before the game. The trick was to get everyone from the other side to stand up with us, thinking it was the real thing…at least until we got to the part about the “old abandoned outhouse known as East Side High.” The song went downhill from there.

Other memories:

* On the negative side, my graduating class of 1967 was the first one in history to lose the East-West game all four years we were in school. I'm still mad about that. I believe the class of 1968 suffered the same fate the following year.

* On the plus side, there was always a big dance after the game called the “Bee-Bear Tear.” It was supposed to promote harmony between the schools, but I don’t remember it being all that harmonious. Our compensatory boast was, “We always lose the game but we always win the fight.” I was never in “the fight” – if it even took place – so I can’t speak to the veracity of that claim.

* The local newspaper would run story after story on game day with photos of the teams and the seniors and the cheerleaders and the bands and a roster for each team you could take with you to the stadium. It was the small town version of the Super Bowl and everybody who was anybody got involved.

Sadly, that all changed a few years ago when the state high school football calendar changed. Games start earlier now and the regular season ends before Veterans Day so the playoffs can start, which means the East-West game has to be played before then.

It’s too bad, too, because the East-West/Veterans Day celebration was one of the best things about living in this burg. When it ended, it made us all realize that nothing stays the same forever, and sometimes you just have to move on. I mean, the Poky Dot restaurant is still in business after all these years, but they don’t make that pizza any longer.

The newspaper isn't even printed here now. It's shipped down to Beckley, printed and sent back. That means there won't even be a story about the game until tomorrow, when most people will have ceased to care. Moving along. Next. Man. Up. And so it goes.

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For the record, Fairmont Senior leads the all-time series 63-28-7 and has won the past 11 contests in a row. Last night, we kicked their bumble bee asses to the tune of 64-7 (sweet!) and it could have been even worse if they hadn’t shortened the game and eventually let the clock run without any stoppages in the second half. I wish we had beaten them 164-7...or worse.

Also for the record, West Fairmont is now 10-0 and ranked first in the state heading into the Class AA playoffs while East Fairmont goes home with a record of 0-10. It doesn’t get any better than that, as far as I’m concerned. You see, when it comes to sports, I still think of East Siders as those bad guys who live on the wrong side of the river. "Swat those Bees. East is least."

And I guess I always will.