It is that Time of The Year

It is amazing to me how one smell, one song, or one word can take you back to one moment in your life. One of those things can bring a time or memory back to life that you thought you had forgotten. It seems that the dew falls harder in the late summer months and mix that with fresh cut grass there is only one memory that pops in your head as a boy. Football Season! I was never much of a football player growing up, but I tried. I grew up playing in the yard with my J.C. Penny Hutch pads with my cousins and those were some pretty intense games. The Hutch equipment couldn't stand up to much pad popping though. The shoulder pads were nothing more than packing plastic or Styrofoam that you pack a package to get ready to mail. The helmet was made of a small layer of plastic with straps on the inside that looked like belts making an x on the inside to cushion the impact of head on collisions. The face mask on the helmet was so small it would make any kicker on any football team scared to wear. The lower pads such as hip pads, knee pads, and butt pads were about as strong as the shoulder pads, all they did was just slow you down. Our uniforms never matched when we played each other because we always asked Santa for our favorite teams jerseys. I remember Russ one year got a Ohio State set. We made fun of him for Santa's mistake. We had one cheerleader at the time, it was Russ's younger sister. She did most of the cheering for both teams and alot of time drew more attention to her from the crowd than the game would. We drew big crowds young and old from our little community of Horseshoe to watch these epic battles. I still don't understand how a game of two on two drew such a crowd, but they did. It would be thirty to forty people sitting on picnic benches and lawn chairs oooing and aahing at some of the skills we as eight years old had. Looking back at the video now that my Aunt has brings a good laugh. I think back and I can smell the grass, I am catching that twenty yard pass for a touch down, I am wiping that grass off my face that a real face mask would have blocked after getting drilled into the turf, I am stopping a run in the backfield to a loud roar of people most of which have passed now. I am there. I am reliving it again in my mind.

As I got older I moved on from professional yard ball to junior high football. I know it is hard to believe, but I wasn't very big. I may have been five foot and I may have weighed a Benjamen. Summer practice was no fun for this pro yard ball player. The only time we played in the yard was when we scheduled it and when it was not hot or the cracks in the yard were only two inches wide or smaller. I was amazed at the difference in my old Hutch pads and the one I received from the school. I got a real helmet with a real face mask, real shoulder pads, and real lower body pads. They weren't as good as the ones received by the really good players. They got bike helmets. You could pump those up with air to add more protection. I wanted so bad a pump up helmet, but never got it. Those August days were hot and sticky. We had a new coach in town and he was a tough one and he wanted to make an impression on us as young men. We had a total of thirteen players, (talk about "Iron Man" football), on the squad which was a huge upgrade from the two I was used to playing with. He would run us until we would puke our guts up. The "Junction Boys" thought they had it tough. Most of us had grown accustomed to the heat because we had been working on farms most of the summer. The only difference between football and work was at work if you got thirsty you drank, but at football if you asked for water the whole team ran gassers and puked some more while you watched. Repayment for asking for water came from the team in the "bull in the ring". By the end of summer workouts we prayed for school to start.

School started and so did the season. The first game was a jamboree with other teams. I guess you could call it a glorified practice hitting other people besides our own teammates. We had a pep rally to get everyone fired up about the upcoming battle. More than one cheerleader was new also. We as a team needed more than a few cheers to get our team going. I told you earlier there were thirteen of us on the team. It takes eleven to play a game of football. I and a boy who couldn't even be a good water boy sat on the sidelines that night and watched the first massacre. After the game we shook hands and I ran into my older cousin who played for the opposing squad. Did I mention my older, bigger, meaner, stronger by a mile cousin? He told me I better be glad I wasn't in there because he would have killed me. He would always beat up us younger kids at family get togethers, so I knew I didn't want to tussle with him. We got beat the first game by twenty by our rival Central Holmes. Now really twenty doesn't sound like to bad of a losing difference but,it was only one quarter of football. In a jamboree you only play one quarter per so called practice game. So now how does twenty sound? What if we would have played all four quarters? That's right it adds up to eighty points they would have scored to our zero. That was not the shot in the gut though. We lost our starting tailback that practice game to a broken collar bone. So that left a big decision to the coach. It was me or the boy who thought the jock strap went on the head under the helmet for extra protection to start next game. He tried on a few of his teammates jock protection straps on his head until he figured out what was going on when he ran through the gym with one on his head and the coach caught him. He told the coach he had taken a pretty serious lick in practice and wanted some extra protection for his brain. After the coach laughed a little he told him what was going on with the little joke from the team, but back to the story. Hard decision huh? Jock strap boy or the little engine that couldn't (me). He chose jock strap boy. Nah! Just kidding! I lined up on the first kick off against Carroll Academy and peared across the line at men. These were not boys like on our squad. I think I saw a mustache on the guy lined up across from me. It may have just been mud, but all I know is it was intimidating. The ball was kicked to about the thirty by our kicker and it was on. I ran as hard as I could to the ball like I was taught to do in practice. The only difference was here there was a receiving squad on the other side and they were taught to block for their return man. We just kicked off to a return man in practice because we didn't have enough for a team to practice against. I remember taking off and going towards the ball. That's it. That's all I remember. Mustache boy pounded me! Pounded me right into the Bermuda. I saw stars, I saw moons, and I even think I saw Jesus. I hurt all over.My brother told me after the game later that night that it hurt him on the sidelines the lick was so hard. He still talks and laughs about the hit. The squares inside my face mask were each had a perfect square of turf stuck in them. I am there. I think back and I remember the smell of the grass in my face mask. I remember how I hurt.

The first game of the year brought on the squad of Central Holmes who we had previously lost to by twenty in the jamboree and who my cousin played for. Game plans were in place after a hard week of practice of corrections from the jamboree. I should have known how bad we were from the way the game started that night. Every school during pre-game runs through a sign as they run onto the field. We made it through the sign with no problem. The after is what we had the problem with. A couple of guys made it through the sign and the lead guy fell down. That lead guys was me. I tripped everybody on the team. It looked like the perfect strike in bowling. The whole team went down except for jock strap boy and he just kept on running. I guess payback came back to us for the humiliation we put him through. The laughter in the stands roared as we all lay on the found in front of the goal post. Kickoff was non eventful as I just kinda ran down field and pushed a couple of boys around. I had been assigned to play right tackle. The right tackle blocks the defensive end on the right side. We broke the huddle for the first offensive series of the game and there he was. #73 Plain as day! That is all i could see was the number seventy-three unless I looked up and I mean straight up and there he was Kevin, my cousin who had warned me the previous week he was gonna get me on the field when we played each other. We lined up and I was so nervous the ref called a false start my body was shaking so much. We lined up again after the five yard penalty and the ball was snapped this time with no yellow flag and Kevin planted me face first into the grass. He let the runner run right by him as he lay on top of me and whispered in my ear hole of my helmet "Hope you like it down here, because that's where you gonna be all night".He didn't plant me every time though. He would sometimes throw me out of the way and kill our quarterback or running back. Whoever was possessing the ball at that moment. After three quarters of this beating before leaving the sidelines the coach told me " Rocky if you don't block yo man I am gonna put you in the backfield running the ball". I told him " Coach that's fine what play do you want me to run?" Let somebody else take that beating I was thinking. He didn't find it amusing. After taking another quarter of more blistering hits and power drives into the ground I took matter into my own hands. I would get the better of my older cousin just once before this game was over. As the clock ticked down to the last few seconds and we were still trying to to get one score before the end I hit Kevin with all my might. I bounced right off of him and he came back at me and I turned to brace for the hit and he drove me right into the ground. I don't mean just the grass. He drove my helmet and face mask through the grass and into the dirt. I had inches of grass and dirt in my helmet. He picked me up as the horn sounded and shook my hand and put his hand on my shoulder pad and told me I played a good game. He said he enjoyed it. I was thinking, I bet you did. I can smell that grass. I am there still walking or limping off that field with my cousin. I can still hear him laughing about the beating he had given me.

We lost Kevin a few years back, but anytime I smell that fresh cut grass fragrance I think of him and football and eating a lot of grass and inhaling a lot of grass my first year of football. We went on after that game to become pretty close. He told me later on he had a lot of respect for me for never giving up that night. I sure had a lot for him.