THE SMALL TOWN of prairie grove, arkansas, population 4,000, is on a roll. At least, its high school football team is, having won thirteen games in a row, now only two more wins away from a state championship.
There are towns all over american with about four thousand people or so, thousands of such towns, they all have high school football teams, and every one of them would love to be in the situation prairie grove is currently.
To win fifteen games in a row, in any anything, let alone american high school football, is a lot of very hard work. Colleges don't play that many gaimes. Professionals barely play that many games. But with so many towns in the 4A category, all wanting to have a chance at the trophy, the championship playoffs are enormous, something like a 32 team draw. The whole town is wired.
Even if you've only been following the prairie grove football team this season, you fell as if you've been doing it your whole life, and that its never going to end. When it does end, you will feel either profound pain, or enraputred exualtation.
Either way, it will all seem somehow to have been a dream, but you will remember it forever. Everybody should have something like this at least once in his or her life; a project so important, so incredible, so beautiful that you just want to throw yourself into it, and forget all else for a time.
What a wonderful world it would be if we all saw our own lives, all of them, in this light.
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