SANDY — So they're putting a soccer stadium in Steve Brown's farm.

Actually, that's not technically correct. The farm never was Steve's. It belonged to his dad and mom, Reed and Grace; he and his brothers Mark and Paul and sisters Annette and Claudia were raised there, along with a variety of crops, animals and weeds.

My twin brother Dee and I spent a fair bit of time at the Browns because we lived just up the street and Steve was a cool guy to hang out with, which means he would do stuff. Like start up his grandfather Enoch's old black Mercury — which my brother managed to back into the side of the shed — and drive his tractors and build rafts that never quite floated in the canal and ride his pigs and get an order of curly fries next door at the Center Drive-In and shoot baskets on a court with a dirt floor as hard as cement until it rained.

Basically anything other than work.

My favorite memory of Steve, and arguably his finest moment in life, was the day we were in his chicken coop and somebody started scooping a lot of what you would call "excrement" into a plastic cup. The mixture of a variety of sloshy material was topped off with some kind of liquid that came, I believe, from a cow. I think Harald Olafsson was there, and my brother, and Steve. Anyway, a collective $5 was offered to anyone who would drink it, and Steve, who is now an orthodontist, did.

At our most creative, we invented a game called Hole Ball (all rights reserved), where the object was to land a tennis ball into round chicken roosting holes. We staged the first world Hole Ball championships. I think it's safe to say that when it was invented in the 1960s, Hole Ball was more popular in Sandy than soccer.

A Hole Ball stadium we could have believed.

Soccer? Not a chance.

---

But real life, as they say, is stranger than unreal life. Turn the clock forward four decades, and the old Brown farm, which the Browns sold several years ago, is now the end-all for Real Salt Lake's proposed jewel of a soccer stadium. If all goes as scheduled, by this time two years from now, soccer pros will be slicing scissor kicks toward what was once the Brown's barn.

I attended Wednesday's press conference in Sandy to verify that it was all true. Some things you have to see with your own eyes.

Across the street from the proposed stadium, the governor, the leader of the Senate, the leader of the House, two mayors, the head of Major League Soccer and the owner of Real Salt Lake all stood and praised the site as "beautiful," "fabulous" and "a soccer mecca."

The old Brown place. Who'd have known.

Afterward, I walked around the block. On the west side of State Street, people will soon enough be scalping tickets on the same corner where Dee and I used to fold newspapers for our paper route. (Our dog, Pokey, got nailed there once attempting to cross the street, clipped in the back by a truck. He went spinning across State Street like a top. But he lived five years after that, with no noticeable limp).

I continued north and walked down the lane to the old Brown farm. The houses are still there, the fields are still there, the shed and chicken coops are still there.

But they won't be for long, so I stopped at the spot where Steve Brown drank that legendary barnyard cocktail and offered a silent toast. Something tells me the soccer club will not erect a monument to the feat, even though they should.

---

Lee Benson's column runs Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Please send e-mail to benson@desnews.com and faxes to 801-237-2527.