BRANFORD, PA — The 47-inch Sanyo mounted above the bar at American Legion Post 219 went dark at 6:43 p.m. Sunday, twelve minutes into the most-watched broadcast in American television, leaving 31 members and guests dependent on the spoken account of Carl Wendt, 76, who has been told twice already that he is two plays behind.
Post Commander Ray Dellinger confirmed the television had been "making the noise" since before Christmas and that a replacement had been discussed at the November meeting, the December meeting, and again at the meeting where they decided not to discuss it.
Wendt, seated at the bar in the only chair with a clean sightline to the small portable radio Mrs. Lillian Hoffer brought in from her Buick, is delivering the game in the careful unhurried cadence of a man who once worked in commercial insurance. "He threw it," Wendt said at 6:51. "I think it was caught."
A motion to drive to the Lowe’s in Stroudsburg for a replacement set was raised at 6:56 and tabled when it was pointed out that the Lowe’s in Stroudsburg closes at six on Sundays, and also that nobody currently in the building was in a condition to operate a motor vehicle.
Phones were considered. Three members attempted to stream the game on the Post’s Wi-Fi, which is password-protected with a password Ray’s late wife wrote on an index card sometime in 2017 and which has not been seen since the funeral.
At 7:12 a man named Walter, who had walked the half-mile from his daughter’s house to verify what he’d heard over the police scanner, arrived at the front door and was immediately met by four members asking him the score. Walter, who does not follow football, said he believed someone was ahead.
By the start of the second quarter a kind of order had settled in. Wendt called the action. Hoffer’s radio supplied the underlying audio at roughly half a beat’s delay. A retired math teacher named Doug kept score on the back of a placemat using a system only Doug understands. The room cheered, when it cheered, with the soft lag of a long-distance phone call.
Asked about the halftime show, which has been promoted for six weeks as a cultural event approaching the moon landing, Dellinger said the Post had no plans to attempt it. "We’ll just sit for a while," he said. "It’s a good time to use the restroom."
As of press time, Wendt had described what he believed to be a punt, and Doug had stopped writing things down.