at the rubber bowl still going strong

at the rubber bowl still going strong

fiction
edward w pritchard

One of the ninth grade students students at the junior high in Akron had been preaching at the school and the school system had to stop it or have a battle with the ACLU again. The boy's family objected and in a compromise the boy was allowed by the city to use the old football stadium now vacant, called the Rubber Bowl, a symbol of a bygone area of Akron's glory days to preach in.

The stadium is large, seating 42,000, cold and windy and everything is made of cement.

The student preacher was very excited and someday he will be an excellent evangelist for when he went to preview the site he would be preaching at he told his two friends he was with he would fill the stadium.

The appropriate night came and went and nearly 200 people mostly students showed up. The evangelist did a superb job and it was a remarkable initial foray for him into his chosen calling.

One of the two friends put the sermon the the evangelist gave on U tube. In confusion when students in India saw the name Akron, Ohio in the caption on the u tube video they assumed it was about Akron's favorite son the basketball prodigy [ see the blues singer who couldn't carry a tune and basketball prodigy same author]. Before a retraction was put on the u tube sight nearly 700,000 young people in India watched part of the service and sermon by the young preacher from Akron, Ohio.

Exuberant and unfazed by it all the young evangelist began to make plans to somehow talk to the basketball prodigy and tell him his message.