As part of our ongoing celebration of the magazine’s fiftieth year in print, this month’s Dog-Eared Page is an essay previously published in The Sun.
— Ed.
It was that part of fall when leaves are not yet crisp and the evening air is still warm enough to bring folks out to the sidewalk cafes and taco joints of Bloomington, Indiana. I was in town as a guest of the Indiana University writing program, and I had just gone out to dinner with my friend Ross Gay, who teaches there. It was football season, and in a college town, depending on who you ask, that’s either a raucously fun time of colorful school spirit, or a version of hell until just after Thanksgiving. For me it was a little of both, the latter only because I’m a die-hard Ohio State fan, and Ross loves to give me grief about that.
