Most father-son books are about much younger men. Partly what makes this one unique is that it is penned by a 60-year-old who rebonds with his 95-year-old father by spending a season together attending Ole Miss (University of Mississippi) football games. It was a way to bridge decades in which the two had spent little time together and to relive some of the life lessons Stuart Stevens, a TV writer and former political campaign strategist and media consultant, had learned at his father’s side in the South in the 1960s.
Here’s an excerpt from The Last Season:
“When I was growing up in Mississippi, football, particularly college football, loomed so large it reduced most endeavors to vaguely silly pursuits, a variation of racewalking or croquet.
“I thought of the simple rituals my dad and I had developed going to games together, losing ourselves in their pleasures. What did it mean that the first memory I had of holding my father’s hand was going to the Ole Miss-Arkansas game at Jackson Memorial Stadium? It was a rickety old stadium not that far from our house. The parking lot was filled with insane Arkansas fans yelling, ‘Woo Pig Sooie!’ I was terrified. Everyone seemed to know my father. He was wearing a sport coat and a hat, sort of like the one that Bear Bryant would later make famous. I was nine years old. When we got to the steps, he offered to carry me, but I wanted to walk because only little kids were carried. So we walked, slowly.
“Years later, I found the ticket stubs in the back of a drawer in my childhood room. I still remember the score: Ole Miss 16, Arkansas 0."
