“We’ll check em at dawn” says Steven Perhach after we had set his three traps in the Middle Brook woods.  To do so I would have to skip Sunday school at the Methodist Church.

 

            Steven had no such dilemma.  His family had attended Saturday mass at the Russian orthodox church in South Bound Brook.  They and other Soviet immigrants had settled in central Jersey for proximity to the only American seminary for their native religion.  Their strange church calendar had other perks for fifth grade boys besides Saturday services.  One New Year’s day Steven and I had dragged my family’s Christmas tree from the curbside down to his house since their’s wasn’t until January 7.  The other benefit was finishing church early in the weekend leaving the rest for the woods.

 

            My mother had also clung to her religion despite leaving it in eastern Kentucky for an unsaved husband in New Jersey.   During the week she sang snitches from old hymns like “Surely Goodness and Mercy” while doing the wash or cooking.  Sunday was her day of the Lord even if Dad had to work on trucks to make ends meet for our large family.  But come Hell or high water, probably both in a town called Bound Brook, the young’uns were going to Sunday school. 

 

            Knowing there’s no reasoning with religion, I wear my clothes to bed and sneak out before dawn humming the Rolling Stones lyric “It’s just your nineteenth nervous breakdown”.  Steven emerges at first light and we hop his back fence onto the trail to the brook.  A crow calls from somewhere in the mist as we cross the Union Avenue bridge into the Bridgewater woods and are engulfed by a chilly fog. 

 

            The first trap is hidden in the haze above the rock wall, its steel jaws nearly catching us as we crisscross the bank before stumbling upon it.  There is nothing in it, not even the raw hamburger we had set out for bait.  Trap number two is easier to find behind a fat tree growing up out of the ditch.  It holds the huge hand of a sycamore leaf.  Our last trap down below a burrow near the old dirt slide grips a grisly paw with three remaining toes.  Glancing around nervously, we quickly pull out the trap and scamper home.  

 

Mom beats me there, just back from church.  Her sermon begins and ends with “All right mister, no Sunday School, no Pop Warner.”   I’m moping under her rose bush when my big brother Alan, the former Bound Brook High School quarterback, point guard and shortstop drives up to take me to the game.

 

“What are you doing under there?” Alan asks.

 

“She won’t let me play” I bawl.

 

He pauses and then roars “Get in there and suit up, now!”

 

PHOTO: Pop Warner

 

            The first snap slips through my fingers and I have to pounce on it, making it second and twelve.  The second snap bounces off my palms but is recovered by our center Richie Jeskulski so it’s third and thirteen.  The third snap squirts past my hands and is scooped up by the halfback Terry Johnson who is hit for a five yard loss.  Now it’s fourth down and eighteen yards to go for a first down so the coach signals time out.  Calling me over, he sprays some pine tar into my palms and says “Quarterback sneak on tap.”  

 

I walk up behind Jeskulski, place my hands between his legs, and think “God help me hold it.”  Then I tap him in the groin to signal the surprise snap.  The football hits my hands and sticks so I take off up the middle, cutting outside past the safety for a nineteen yard gain and first down.  An hour and three touchdowns later Alan shakes me by the shoulder pads, looks me in the eye, and asks “How’s that for Sunday school, Dave?”