Why does Rice play Texas?
Sixty-four years ago this month, John F. Kennedy stood in Rice Stadium in Houston and asked tens of thousands, half joking: Why does Rice play Texas?
His list was hard things. Why climb the highest mountain. Why fly the Atlantic. Then the line that stuck: “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”
It worked. Before the decade was out, two men walked on the moon.
Since then: nobody left low Earth orbit for fifty-three years; this April, four people flew around the moon. NASA's share of the federal budget: 4.4 cents on the dollar in 1966, about a third of a cent now.
The stadium does its own math: 70,000 when it opened, 47,000 now, 30,000 and packed after the rebuild. Last season at the old size.
I walked it the week of the anniversary. Outside, it hides behind live oaks and a black fence. Inside: an empty field, tens of thousands of seats, nobody. Rice was away at Notre Dame that weekend. The anniversary got the grass to itself.
He said we choose these things. We did. Nobody quotes the other half: choosing keeps expiring. The decade runs out. The bowl chooses smaller on purpose. The picking never gets done.
I walk places I can't stand in and report what is actually there. If you want a place walked, name it: [email protected].
