Sep 3, 2026 07:54 AM
(This post was last modified: Sep 3, 2026 08:19 AM by Yazata.)
Nobunaga is a Japanese man who has lived in the United States for some time, mostly in Missouri I think. And he's an extraordinarily talented writer. He's aided by AI since he writes in Japanese and the AI translates his essays. Whether it's his own work (I think it is) or the AI, the products are often moving and beautiful. He has a real talent for capturing the unique and increasingly endangered culture of middle America. Kind of a middle aged Asian Freddy.
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In Nebraska I was told a number. I did not believe it. I have since checked it, and I still do not believe it.
The football stadium in Lincoln has sold every seat, for every home game, since November 3, 1962.
Every game. Not the good years. Every game. Through seasons the state would rather not discuss. Through blizzards. Through years when leaving early would have been reasonable, and nobody left.
I asked a man named Gary how two million people keep a promise for that long.
He said, "You buy the ticket."
I asked what if the team is bad.
"You buy the ticket."
I asked what if it is snowing.
He looked at me with real patience. "You buy the ticket."
Here is the part that undid me. The first game of the streak, in 1962, they lost. Thirty-six thousand people came out the week after the Cuban Missile Crisis ended, watched their team lose to Missouri, and came back for the next one anyway. And the next. It has not stopped.
The streak began with a loss. Nobody in Nebraska finds this ironic. They find it obvious.
This summer there was worry. Ticket sales were slow. People wrote articles asking whether it would finally end. I read them in a diner over a slice of pie I did not finish, and I confess I was afraid for a state I do not live in.
Then this week they announced the opener is sold out. Four hundred and eleven in a row.
In my land, a lord who kept his word for sixty years was written into the temple records.
Nebraska has kept its word since the Cuban Missile Crisis. There is no temple. There are eighty-five thousand people who bought the ticket.
Gary is going Saturday. It is not snowing. He would go if it were.
A promise is easy in a winning season.
Nebraska has kept one through every other kind.
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I drove forty miles across Texas and counted flags.
Sixty-one. I counted again on the way back and got sixty-three, because two had gone up while I was gone.
A car dealership had one the size of a house. A plumber's truck had one on each door. A porch. A bikini, at the lake. A mailbox. A coffin, being carried into a church, and then, at the gas station across the street, a hat.
In my country the flag belongs to the state. It flies on government buildings on holidays and is put away by a man with a key.
Here I could not find the man with the key.
The salesman at the dealership said the flag was theirs. The plumber said his was his. A woman on her porch said, "Honey, it's mine," in a tone that closed the subject.
Nobody had been issued one. Everybody had bought their own.
I bought one. A neighbor showed me the rules, which nobody had ever written down for him either. Up at dawn. Down at dusk, or lit. Never the ground. Folded thirteen times into a triangle. He did the folds with me four times until my hands knew them. He said, "There you go," and did not say why he knew.
I have folded it four hundred times since. There is a light I could buy. I have not bought the light.
In my country the flag belongs to the state.
In Texas it belongs to a plumber named Ray, and to the dealership, and to the woman on the porch, and to a bikini at the lake, and on holidays the state has to ask to borrow it.
They lend it gladly. They have sixty-three.
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In Nebraska I was told a number. I did not believe it. I have since checked it, and I still do not believe it.
The football stadium in Lincoln has sold every seat, for every home game, since November 3, 1962.
Every game. Not the good years. Every game. Through seasons the state would rather not discuss. Through blizzards. Through years when leaving early would have been reasonable, and nobody left.
I asked a man named Gary how two million people keep a promise for that long.
He said, "You buy the ticket."
I asked what if the team is bad.
"You buy the ticket."
I asked what if it is snowing.
He looked at me with real patience. "You buy the ticket."
Here is the part that undid me. The first game of the streak, in 1962, they lost. Thirty-six thousand people came out the week after the Cuban Missile Crisis ended, watched their team lose to Missouri, and came back for the next one anyway. And the next. It has not stopped.
The streak began with a loss. Nobody in Nebraska finds this ironic. They find it obvious.
This summer there was worry. Ticket sales were slow. People wrote articles asking whether it would finally end. I read them in a diner over a slice of pie I did not finish, and I confess I was afraid for a state I do not live in.
Then this week they announced the opener is sold out. Four hundred and eleven in a row.
In my land, a lord who kept his word for sixty years was written into the temple records.
Nebraska has kept its word since the Cuban Missile Crisis. There is no temple. There are eighty-five thousand people who bought the ticket.
Gary is going Saturday. It is not snowing. He would go if it were.
A promise is easy in a winning season.
Nebraska has kept one through every other kind.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I drove forty miles across Texas and counted flags.
Sixty-one. I counted again on the way back and got sixty-three, because two had gone up while I was gone.
A car dealership had one the size of a house. A plumber's truck had one on each door. A porch. A bikini, at the lake. A mailbox. A coffin, being carried into a church, and then, at the gas station across the street, a hat.
In my country the flag belongs to the state. It flies on government buildings on holidays and is put away by a man with a key.
Here I could not find the man with the key.
The salesman at the dealership said the flag was theirs. The plumber said his was his. A woman on her porch said, "Honey, it's mine," in a tone that closed the subject.
Nobody had been issued one. Everybody had bought their own.
I bought one. A neighbor showed me the rules, which nobody had ever written down for him either. Up at dawn. Down at dusk, or lit. Never the ground. Folded thirteen times into a triangle. He did the folds with me four times until my hands knew them. He said, "There you go," and did not say why he knew.
I have folded it four hundred times since. There is a light I could buy. I have not bought the light.
In my country the flag belongs to the state.
In Texas it belongs to a plumber named Ray, and to the dealership, and to the woman on the porch, and to a bikini at the lake, and on holidays the state has to ask to borrow it.
They lend it gladly. They have sixty-three.