One night, former Iowa Hawkeye football star Tyler Sash appeared on TV as a New York Giant. A couple of days later, The Des Moines Register ran an obituary for Doug Pinkham, age 83. A young man works on a new career in the big city, and an old man passes away at a care facility in Clear Lake. For a few of us, there’s a nostalgic connection.

Something about autumn seems like an invitation to sentiment, anyway, with the daylight dwindling and the leaves turning. Sometimes when I’m driving home on a perfect fall evening, I get the feeling, just for a moment, that I’m headed not for my current home, but for my first one. For an instant, it feels as if I’m going to pull up behind the house where I grew up, my parents will be there and supper will be ready.

Later, maybe I could ride around with future Belin McCormick attorney Bill Bartine and listen to his Iron Butterfly eight-track. The one where the tape reverses right in the middle of the “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” drum solo.

Or maybe it’s a Friday, and the black-and-gold home team has a football game just up the street – not at the new field, which has only been around for 30 years or so, but at the old one. It will feel like a dense throng of humanity, even though maybe it isn’t, and the smell of popcorn will fill the chilly air.

And then Tyler Sash’s dad, Mike, will dash for a few touchdowns, and once again Coach Doug Pinkham’s mighty West Marshall team will win.

I learned a lot about Pinkham’s life from his obituary, but it’s the moments witnessed firsthand that stick.

He was a no-nonsense guy, which is the kind of leader a lot of teenage boys need. As a kid, I remember watching the team practice and seeing Pinkham grab our big, tough fullback by the face mask and shout at him like a drill instructor. Holy cow, I thought; so this is what real life is going to be like.

Then I got to high school and became a very minor part of his team. One year, I was the quarterback for the scrubs – first-teamer Gary Gray is now in the athletic department at the University of Oregon – and ran plays while trying to decide whether I was more like Bart Starr or Johnny Unitas.

At the conclusion of one play, the coach inquired: “Pollock, do you ever get out of a trot?” So he might not have been comparing me to any National Football League player at all.

One night at halftime, Pinkham gave us his thoughts and asked for feedback. A lineman started to complain about a blocking problem, and the coach winged a clipboard right at the poor kid’s noggin.

You could say that Doug Pinkham took his work seriously.

He had less to worry about whenever Mike Sash carried the ball. In 1969, a small write-up in Sports Illustrated said that Sash “scored 16 touchdowns in his team’s first five games this season, five of them in one game, four in another. With Sash accounting for 108 points, the Trojans out-scored their opponents 212-58.”

This fall, led by a star running back, West Marshall is mighty again. Things change, and then they change back. It might be fun to go watch a game, but it certainly would not feel the same. I’m not exactly driving around with these kids, listening to eight-tracks.

Thomas Wolfe said you can’t go home again; the home you knew doesn’t exist anymore. But you can go there anytime you want in your memories, and when hopeful beginnings bump up against inevitable endings, the old days can be a hard place to avoid.

Jim Pollock is the managing editor of the Des Moines Business Record. He can be reached by email at jimpollock@bpcdm.com