By Danny Johnson
Hard to imagine the word regret coming within seven miles of the words Indiana University Football right now. There was some regret found today for me. Regret. Anger. Betrayal. Longing. No, were weren’t studying Shakespeare. That would be where the freshman English classes are right now. My sophomores have been studying Guy de Maupassant’s short story The Necklace for the last few days. In the story, a lady loses a necklace that was loaned to her. She doesn’t do the smart thing and admit she lost it from the upscale lady she borrowed it from. She decides to replace it. For the next ten years, after the lady and her husband take out exorbitant loans, the couple work like dogs to pay back the money they procured to buy a diamond necklace replacement. The original necklace, we painfully find out, was paste. Faux diamonds. Worth a pittance of what the tired couple paid and toiled over for ten years. Guy de Maupassant was famous for short stories that ended with twists and turns. As I was thinking about asking my students if they had ever lost anything, something I lost a long time ago came back to haunt me once again.
On the smartboard today was a picture from 1925. This was a picture from the first designated Oaken Bucket Football Game between the Indiana Hoosiers and the Purdue Boilermakers. A hundred years later, Indiana University Football is on the precipice of winning the school’s first National Championship. Today I told the students about the treasure I lost in 1981. A treasure that was first presented at the first Oaken Bucket Game on November 21, 1925.
Miss Maude. That is what we called her. She was my nextdoor neighbor. She was the town librarian. She was a historian. She turned me on to Paper Lion by George Plimpton when I was ten. Writing started to just mean more to me at a young age. Miss Maude was my friend. Miss Maude was a student at Indiana University in 1925.
I could have very well been wearing this shirt the day Maude called our house and asked me to walk across Cross Street, our houses were on adjacent corners of Cross and Jackson. Miss Maude said she had something for me. I ran. If Miss Maude was calling, it had to be good. It was.
Sitting at Maude’s kitchen table, I waited and squirmed I am sure. Keeping still was not my forte when I was young. My grandfather often said I reminded him of a “worm in hot ashes”. Somehow I was okay with the worm part. The hot ashes were what offended me. Anyway, here comes Maude from her bedroom back to the kitchen with a case of some sort.
Maude sat down next to me. She opened up the case. “I have a few things I want you to have.” She then proceeded to hand me three different items. These things had been given to her on November 21, 1925 at the first Indiana-Purdue Oaken Bucket Game. She was there.
There was a metal football that could fit in the palm of your hand. It was more oblong and shaped like a rugby ball.
There was a red button about 3 and half inches in diameter with “INDIANA” across it at a slight diagonal from upper left to lower right.
There was a commemorative two-part ornamental metal piece that was made to pin also. This was THE ITEM. The metal had a print of the stadium and writing that indicated the date and the occasion. This was one of the most impressive things I have ever seen. I have yet to find its likeness in a search engine. I know it is rare.
In 1979, we moved from 204 Jackson Street in Brownstown to an outpost in the middle of nowhere. My Mayberry was gone. Leaving my friends behind, including Maude, was a hard thing to deal with.
On a fall day in 1981, I gathered the three treasured items that Maude had given me. They were always on my dresser in a plastic Indiana stadium cup that once teemed of Sprite at an IU Football game. I placed these three items in a paper lunch sack. They were to be props for a speech that I was making about the Old Oaken Bucket Game. When the speech was finished and the bell rang, I placed the lunch sack with my treasures in my locker. To this day, students at North Harrison don’t have locks on their lockers. We trust each other. We always have.
When lunch was over that day, I opened my locker to grab my math book for my next class. My lunch sack and the items from the first Oaken Bucket Game in 1925 were gone. This was not a good afternoon for me. These items have been but a memory ever since. Someone knew. Someone knew what I had and how valuable these things were. I never imagined someone stealing them from me. They did.
Each time I watch Purdue come into Bloomington for the Old Oaken Bucket game, like the last one in 2024 that Tim Brando and Devin Gardner called in the snow, I hurt just a little bit.
Seeing the current Indiana Hoosiers playing for the National Championship 100 years later has opened that wound all over again. An Indiana victory over the Miami Hurricanes will certainly help me cope with the pain. Go IU!