I had been home for the weekend and heard that the construction on Memorial Stadium was finally complete. As I drove in to Lincoln on the newly-elevated Normal Boulevard, I was shocked at what I saw. Up ahead to the northwest on the Lincoln skyline, I saw the capitol building towering above its surroundings as usual. However, behind it a bit to the left, I saw what was once a fairly tasteful stadium, now an enormous monstrosity. Rising above the capitol, even with the effects of perspective, Memorial Stadium now resembled some hideous creature out of a science fiction movie more than an athletic facility. In a rough rectangular shape, each corner of the stadium featured a 15-story tall tower. On the eastern face of the stadium was a row of 10-story tall columns. Above the columns were two swooping concrete "things", which looked like menacing eyebrows above the "teeth" represented by the columns. Architectural intricacies finished up the face created by the eastern facade. The overall effect of doom-and-gloom presented by this reconstruction reminded me of a combination of the Battersea Power Station in London and armageddon (though I had never witnessed the end of the world). I had to admit, though, that I loved it. It was most certainly intimidating, but I didn't so much care about that aspect. I was more amazed that a building could have so much human quality to it. Driving in to Lincoln, people would now have the feeling that they were being watched by this huge creature.
I wanted to see it in the dark, so that night I went out and drove to the stadium. The lighting made the place look even more menacing, giving you the feeling that you didn't even have to go inside for it to eat you up. All around the base of the building were huge buttresses, echoing the swooping futuristic style of the "eyebrows" (and nothing like the gothic buttresses that spawned them). Each buttress came out from the outer walls about 50 feet, and at the end of the buttress stood a bronze statue of some important figure from the history of Lincoln. On the vertical face of each buttress would be a plaque telling a bit about the statue above. The statue directly in front of me was of a Lord Link O'Brien. According to the plaque, he came from a presigious Irish family. In the early 1800s, his father and mother moved to Ulverston in northwest England. After Link graduated from University, he travelled to America to start a family. He founded a community he called Lancaster, named after a cathedral city southeast of his home. After he died, the citizens of Lancaster changed the name to Linkland in his honour. Eventually the name evolved to Lincoln. I was amazed after reading this, because I had never realised the history of the name of Lincoln. I said to myself that I'd have to write my friend Liz from Ulverston and tell her about that.
As I continued to walk around the stadium, I saw two homeless men sitting on a mattress outside of an off-license liquor store. One man said "Pardon me..." but before I could finish, I said "I'm sorry but I don't have any change." He said "No, I don't want change, I wanted to ask you if you had any tic-tacs." I had three tic-tacs and gave them to him. He told me that in that off-license store, the owner would give this homeless man a piece of new wrapped candy for every piece of unwrapped candy that he brought in. The homeless man discovered that if he took in one piece of candy with several tic-tacs, the owner of the store would just glance at how many things were in his hand and give him that many of the real candy. He said that he usually tried to take in unwrapped Worther's butterscotch candy, because apparently they looked more like tic-tacs than most candy. So he went on to say that with one Worther's original and these three tic-tacs, he would be able to get four wrapped Worther's originals.