Friday night moon light.

Rice Lake raised monies though their booster organizations to put in a new artificial turf field and bleachers this summer, outside their high school. The boys' soccer team broke it in last week with two home games, but last night the community turned out to see the Warriors football team win under the lights, and the Pisces or Full Corn Moon.

I biked up in time for the second half -- the field looks great! -- and watched them mostly grind it out with running and short pass plays. Everybody looked like they were enjoying themselves -- I would love to get a count sometime of how many people, the young ones especially, are watching the game, and how many are pursuing their own interests in the autumn air, chasing each other and hollering out, glad to be part of the festivities.

My high school played Saturday afternoon games, and those can be enjoyable in the autumn sunshine too. But there's something about the crisp night air, watching the boys stepping up into their roles on the field, cheering on the home team, and just hoping for somebody to put together some exciting plays ...

A new field invokes pride; a new season inspires goals and dreams. These are the things communities can feed on, no matter where they are: Go Team!

How easily we forget what this all feels like. How it smells, too, the aroma of popcorn mixing with bug spray and, when the students begin their promenade up and down the field-level sidewalks and through the shadows out behind the bleachers, great, competing clouds of dime-store cologne and perfume as well.

Who cares that the games aren't always crisply played, or that the concept of instant replay is in the mind of the beholder alone? This is high school football, back at full buzz for another unfathomable season. From now until December, at fields lit on every corner of our county, it makes teenage stars feel like grownups and graying alumni feel like kids.