“Hut one, hut two, hike” I shout to no one in particular at halftime of the Bound Brook Crusaders high school football game at LaMonte Field.

 

Before the game I had climbed the home team bleachers with my father and two of my siblings.  Dad stands on the top bench chain smoking in his truck driving greens.  Bobby jumps off the back to play with his thirteen-year-old friends.  Karla scampers down through the scaffolding to scrounge under the bleachers.  I sit next to Dad and watch the players in their red and white uniforms warming up by pushing a two man blocking sled across the practice field.  Once the game starts I occasionally glimpse my brother Alan’s number nineteen among the jumble of players.  Mostly I watch the crows circling over the sunny south slope of First Watchung Mountain beyond the field and think of the other game earlier that week.

 

 

 

My first grade gym teacher shouted “Someday you’ll be better than Alan Beatty” across the blacktop after I return the opening kickoff for a touchdown.   He had just set up our first touch football game on the LaMonte School playground.  What he didn’t know was that I was really running from Richie Jeskulski.  He’s a tall and tough kid from the neighborhood who had given me my second taste of football violence the weekend before by slamming my nose into the ground with a spinning tackle in Stanley Brownell’s backyard. 

Mr. Gramicelli is a red-haired little man and former all-state wrestler for Bound Brook High School where he had been a couple of years ahead of my brother Alan.  He had just initiated school yard football by making me captain of one team and Jeskulski the other.  Richie’s first pick is Joe D so I take Stanley Brownell.  Next he nabs Enzo Izzo so I counter with big Kenny Sella.  Then it’s back and forth until all the first grade boys are split.  All, that is, except Stephen Perhach who can neither punt, pass, nor kick, much less run.  I take him so the game can get started. 

Claiming the quarterback position to stay out of Jeskulski’s grasp, all I can see when I drop back to pass is a scramble of boys.  Richie is equally inept as the other quarterback so the game is tied at one touchdown when Sammy Gram calls out “Time for one more play.”   In our huddle Kenny says “Hit me over the middle, I’ll take it in.”  I counter “Nah, Jeskulski’s waiting so you and Stan head right and nobody will be with Perhach on the left.”  The screen play unfolds beautifully with the defenders following Brownell and Sella to one side of the field, leaving Stephen all alone on the other.  The ball hits his hands, pops up toward the goal line, and lands in his soft fingers as the bell rings.  Jeskulski yells “Shit, see you guys down the Park.”

 

 

 

            At halftime of the BBHS game a crow caws from up on the scoreboard as I run over to the practice field and line up in a three point stance in front of the blocking sled, leaning onto one hand with my red Keds planted.  The magic word hike launches me head first into the padded metal post.  When I come to the sky is spinning and there’s a sharp pain at the top of my neck.  Nausea sets in as I stumble back to the stands to lie down on the wooden bench next to my father.  He lights up a Chesterfield as Bobby sings “Big girls, they don’t cry-y-y”, a Four Seasons song popular in 1964.  I don’t even stir when Karla calls up “David, I found a five dollar bill, let’s go to the snack stand.”

 

After the game my father and brothers drive us downtown to Efingers, steering me past the hanging bucks and mounted eel to the football section.  I wobble past stacks of shoulder pads and helmets to baseball where I pick a black and orange Baltimore Orioles cap.  Two weeks later my sixth birthday present is a red and white football uniform. 

 

 

PHOTO: First Grade Footballers