The brilliant hues of autumn are starting to appear, chill mornings, leaves fluttering in the breeze, even at my advancing age, these signs mean one thing—football season. I’m not much for tailgating and about the only football game I watch is the Super Bowl but I still want to slap a helmet on my balding dome and go out there and start banging heads. It’s been over six decades since I’ve had a helmet on but I still get the urge. I tried discussing this with Telly, my current canine companion, but I’m afraid he doesn’t understand football. The ball, for one thing, is too big to fit in his mouth. He does like the fact that you run with the ball and try not to get caught. He does this with his tennis ball daily and likes having me try to catch him but can’t understand why all those other people on the field are needed. He rapidly lost interest and curled up on his comfy pillow for a short nap. Following his example I settled into my recliner for a short trip back through times long ago in my mental time machine.
I remember my first day of football practice. One hundred and twenty six pounds of romping stomping freshman manhood, I reported to the field house at the far end of the football field. It smelled of sweat, liniment and other manly aromas. I joined the line at the equipment room, gave my name, rank and serial number, was labeled Junior Varsity and given an armful of stuff and staggered into the locker room and picked out a locker at the far end near the toilets where the J.V. players dwelled. We were told to suit up. A lot of the stuff in the pile I had been given was unfamiliar to me. I figured out the socks and the jock but put the hip pads on backward at first. A step or two and I figured out that it would be hard to run and reversed them. The shoulder pads were no problem since they had laces in the front. The pads were made out of some sort of fiberboard with stitched cotton pads. I pulled on the pants, they were supposed to end at my knees but extended half way down my shins. I had enough room for another kid in them with me. I tied up the well worn shoes with the spikes on them, pulled on my jersey, grabbed my helmet and ran onto the field. The coach had us do exercises to warm up and then started teaching us basic football moves. He demonstrated the three point stance and then told us to put our helmets on and assume the stance. My helmet looked like the one Knute Rockne wore in the old football movies I had watched. It was a steel pot on the top and something like papier mache sides with a leather strap that had seen better days. Battered and beaten, it was the stuff of my warrior dreams of gridiron glory. The only difficulty it presented was that it was about twenty sizes too big. I got down in my three point stance and it slid so far down over my face that I couldn’t see the kid in his three point stance facing me. We then had try outs to see what position we might be best at. We ran by Coach, he handed the ball off to us, we were supposed to spin and run. I spun, my helmet kept going straight and I wound up with my nose stuck through the ear hole. Coach almost hurt himself laughing and took pity on this skinny freshman and sent me back into the field house with the manager to find a helmet that fit better. At this point Telly awoke and asked to go for a walk, bringing my ponder and the start of my athletic career to a halt, he truly is my best friend.
Thought for the week—The latest survey shows that three out of four people make up 75% of the population.
Until next week, may you and yours be happy and well.
Whittle12124@yahoo.com
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