Despite the Game, the Day Was Well-Orchestrated

No thanks to the Denver Broncos, but it turned out to be a Super Sunday after all.

American culture’s great new religious holiday had arrived under a cloud. Weeks before, unknowingly, I had agreed to speak for the American Field Service at 2 p.m. that day in Torrance High School Auditorium. The service is a group that supports exchange students in this country and abroad.

Too late I discovered that my scheduled talk would coincide exactly with the kickoff of the Super Bowl. I phoned the woman who had talked me into it.

“Do you realize,” I asked her, “that your program is on Super Sunday?”

“I know it now,” she said dismally.

That was before the Rams and the 49ers met in the playoffs. I told her that if the Rams won, and went on to the Super Bowl, nobody would show up for my talk. Certainly not any men.

She said, “I just hope the Rams lose.”

I considered that grossly unpatriotic, even though the Rams are from Anaheim, not Los Angeles. But I felt the same way.

Fortunately, the Rams didn’t make it. I was agreeably surprised to see about 250 people in my audience, including quite a few men. After the introduction, I took the microphone at precisely 2:18 p.m., by my watch. That was the advertised kickoff time.

I went boldly on. I excused the men, but nobody got up and left. I had taken the Broncos and 14 points. I offered to make the same bet with anyone in the audience. I got no takers.

When it was over my wife and I drove to our older son’s home, in Mar Vista. We were scheduled to attend the Master Chorale at the Music Center that evening with him and his family.

Incredibly, it was still halftime when we arrived. The game was a blowout. The 49ers were leading, 27-3. I watched the second half with diminishing interest as Denver quarterback John Elway threw two interceptions and fumbled and otherwise failed to distinguish himself.

We dined on lox and bagels. My wife and I had won a Super Sunday home-delivered deli lunch, but had had it delivered to our son’s home instead because of my conflicting commitment.

At 6 we left for the Music Center in two cars--our son, his wife, and their three children--Alison, 12, Casey, 9, and Trevor, 7. I wasn’t too sure how the children would behave. Trevor is a caution. Just the day before he had smashed his nose on a tree limb.

Before the concert we were guests of Bill Mann, a friend of my son’s, in The Founders room. We were all on our good behavior, as I always am under that portrait of Dorothy Buffum Chandler. I didn’t even wander into the women’s restroom by mistake, as I had on two previous occasions.

The concert was splendid. John Currie conducted the Sinfonia Orchestra with great style, and the choral work was magnificent. They opened with Pergolesi’s “Magnificat,” then sang Morten Lauridsen’s “Mid-Winter Songs on Poems by Robert Graves.” I noticed that my granddaughter was following the words on her program:

“She then, like snow in a dark night,

“Fell secretly. And the world waked.”

Her brothers were exemplary. At intermission they had Cokes in The Founders. When we returned to the auditorium Trevor said, “They took away the piano.” He had been paying closer attention than we had.

Near the end of Haydn’s “Mass in Time of War” our son’s friend spirited the two older children out of the auditorium and took them backstage. I kept my fingers crossed. Suddenly we heard a crash. It was definitely backstage. “Oh, my!” my wife sighed. “I hope that wasn’t Casey.” That was probably a sexist remark, since it implied that boys are more likely to crash into things than girls. But I myself suspected that Casey had banged into the piano.

After the curtain calls, the children were returned to us in time for the reception in the Grand Hall, where Maestro Currie appeared, resplendent in tails, and also Lauridsen, the young composer, euphoric over the performance of his music. There had been a crash backstage, but Casey was innocent.

So it was a Super Sunday. But there was no joy in Denver; mighty Elway had struck out.