rigid rails are groaning, straining.
whistle chanting -
belching,
panting.
golden rays of ashen sunlight.
cinders falling,
blocking daylight.
sooty blackness blinding eyesight.
maples, oaks, and quaking aspens
passing fleetly,
swaying
sweetly.
rocking gently, tired, i'm sleeping.
yellow light is brightly beaming.
rattling, crawling,
perchance i'm dreaming.
The center snapped the ball with a loud BAP into Tarkenton’s hands. Pads exploded in sound, spit, and blood as colossal men all around him flung themselves into each other, the Fearsome Foursome pushing with all their might to reach him as he dropped back to pass. He held the ball tightly with both hands as he took five, six, seven, eight steps back. Scanning from left to right, from right to left, he spotted Joe Morrison in the left flat. Cocking his arm, he threw a tight spiral that caught Morrison right between the numbers. Morrison grabbed it and scampered for a pick-up of 16 yards before being abruptly tackled.
“Tarkenton with another great pass!” the radio shrieked. Charlie could hear the bellicose roar of the Yankee Stadium crowd in the background as he picked himself up off of the freshly fallen snow. “Tarkenton is picking this Rams team apart!”
This was the first winter Charlie and his family lived in the company house on North Hillside Avenue. A cracker box three-bedroom on a quarter-acre lot, it was owned by the Hercules Powder Company plant up the street. Charlie’s dad got transferred there from a small town in upstate New York just before Charlie turned eight. That was early last spring. Now it was 8 months later, in the middle of winter, and Charlie had become a compact 9-year-old with colossal sports aspirations.
“The line held together pretty well that time, Frank,” Chip Cipolla, the Giants’ long-time radio announcer said, “but they don’t call him Fran the Scram for nothing. Eventually he’ll take off like a Chinese rocket.”
Earlier that morning, as his kid brother watched complacently out the round window drawing, little pictures with his finger in the breath-induced fog, Charlie made large piles of snow just to the left of the tin-roof garage. All about hip-deep, Charlie took great care as he piled handful after handful in the same place he’d stood with his siblings two months earlier while their mom took pictures of them in their Halloween costumes. After finishing two or three piles, Charlie’s mom called him in and offered him a cup of hot chocolate, which he slurped just cautiously enough to avoid burning his tongue. Wrapping his fingers tightly around the Smokey Bear mug, he shook the hoarfrost from his soul and warmed his innards.
A day or two after his family moved, Charlie uneasily anticipated his first day in his new school. Somewhat of a timid boy, Charlie worried a lot about it. But his mom assured him that everything would be fine. “Listen, honey,” she said in her naturally reassuring way. “I moved when I was 15, and I know it’s not fun. But I made friends, and so will you. I promise.”
“I know,” Charlie muttered, halfheartedly.
His mom usually knew exactly how to make Charlie feel better. Her formative years were spent in a small town in which everyone knew everyone else. She’d cared for lots of small animals and learned the healer’s art. Then her dad, a state road foreman, took a new job in the big city and they moved far away from that idyllic setting.
“Oh, come on,” she teased. “It will all work out. Trust me.”
But nothing would soothe Charlie today. He put his hands in his pockets and hung his head as he headed out the door and started the one-block walk. Other kids were ahead of him, and some others behind, talking, laughing, one girl even singing.
Charlie walked alone.
“Good morning, class,” said Mr. Catcavage, Charlie’s new teacher. A huge, hulking man of six feet four and two-eighty with hazel eyes, a full shock of brown hair, and a physique made perfect by free weights in his garage, he was the love interest of every grade school girl at Jefferson Elementary. “We’ve got a new student today,” he said. “His name is Charlie, and I want you all to make him feel welcome in our class.”
Charlie sat in the last seat of his row. Every kid in the class turned in their desk and looked at him blankly. Charlie looked at each face, nervous to his core, and smiled.
But none of them smiled back.
Tarkenton knelt in the snow and called the next play in the huddle. “Ok, we’ve got ‘em,” he said. “We’re going to run I-Right 26 Power, ok? I-Right 26 Power on one, ready, BREAK!” All of the other Giants clapped as one and ran toward the line. Tarkenton could hear the snow that had turned to sleet hitting his shoulder pads as he lined up behind center. “Four-Eighty-Seven!” he shouted, “Four-Eighty-Seven! Set! Hut!” Again, the ball instantly slapped into his hands, making them sting just a little. It was a pain he’d learned to love. Fading back, he abruptly handed the ball to Tucker Fredrickson who jumped effortlessly over the line and landed on his back in the deepening snow. It was now at least two feet deep.
“Fredrickson gets the first down!” yelled Cipolla. “It will be first and ten Giants on the Rams 26-yard line!”
During recess that first day, Charlie walked out into the blazing sun. “It must be 95 in the shade,” he thought, wiping his brow, and looking around at the kids shouting and screaming as they played kickball or played tag.
“Hey, meat!” someone shouted from his right, above the din.
Charlie blinked as the sun sent shining stilettos into his eyes. Squinting, he turned with his hand on his forehead like the brim of a baseball cap. A huge kid with a yellow t-shirt and black shorts was looking straight at him, tossing a football thoughtlessly into the air. He was flanked on three sides by sneering toadies, each with his hands on his hips and blowing bubbles with his gum. Yellow Shirt sported ten thousand freckles on his cheeks and nose, and he was almost twice as big as Charlie.
All four of them were non-smilers.
“You wanna throw the football, meat?” Yellow Shirt yelled.
Charlie played one year of Pop Warner football in the Mitey-Mites division back in New York, and he was actually pretty good. Despite being the smallest kid in his class and the bowed shape of his legs, he was fast - really fast – and he could cut on a dime. Some of his teammates started calling him The Galloping Ghost. Charlie liked it. Consequently, football became everything he thought about. But on this day, there was no interest, so he shook his head, turned without a word, and went back into the building. Yellow Shirt threw the football to the ground and swore.
The small, black transistor radio sat on the rabbit hutch Charlie’s dad made behind the garage that Autumn. They’d kept two rabbits in the hutch for a while until Charlie’s mom went out one day and only found clumps of fur. They never found out what got those rabbits, and Charlie didn’t really want to know. Today the hutch was filled with snow, and Charlie pushed some of it off so he had somewhere to put the radio.
“Tarkenton comes to the line again facing third and six from the Rams’ twenty-two,” Cipolla bellowed, like this game meant something. The Giants, perennial losers, were in last place again this year, but to his credit, Cipolla always tried to make it sound like the Super Bowl. “Fredrickson’s the lone setback. He’s got Morrison in the right slot and Homer Jones out to the left. There’s the snap! Tarkenton drops back! Merlin Olsen has him! NO! Tarkenton escapes and runs toward the left sideline. Fred Dryer is there, and Tarkenton is…WAIT! He got free!! Tarkenton circles and runs back the other way! He’s got Jones at the 10 and fires! Jones makes the catch and falls to the nine! First down, Giants!!”
Later that first day, Charlie stood toward the back of the line of boys who were doing timed wind sprints during gym class. The boys in front of him were joking around, slapping each other on the back, and laughing. Charlie closed his eyes halfway and lowered his head, letting out a long, deep sigh.
He longed for that type of friendship again. He had plenty of friends in New York, friends he’d known most of his life. But they were there, and Charlie was here.
He tried to remember his mom’s words from that morning, but as he took a step forward, Charlie felt someone lightly push him on his right shoulder. Raising his head and turning, he saw Yellow Shirt behind him, laughing. “Hey, meat!” he crowed. “Why wouldn’t you throw the football with me? You too good for me?”
Charlie turned back toward the front of the line and hung his head.
“I don’t think he wants to play, man,” one of the sycophants chortled.
“What’sa matter, sissy boy?” Yellow Shirt chuckled.
Charlie felt the ire rise first in his shoulders. It was always thus. It started there and crept - slowly sometimes - into his neck, up his cheeks and through the top of his head. His lips tightened and his fists clenched almost involuntarily. But the sensation didn’t last long today. It never did, but it always felt like an achingly hot wasabi sprinting through his blood. Charlie sighed and stared at the floor.
Until.
A small tap in the middle of his back let Charlie know that Yellow Shirt had just spit on him.
“Thirty seconds left in the 4th quarter, the Giants down by 5 and a first down at the nine!” Cipolla sounded a little guttural today, Charlie thought, but still in fine voice. “Tarkenton fades back! Everyone is covered! Tarkenton scrambles, fakes to Jones in the corner and lunges for the goal line! TOUCHDOWN, GIANTS! TOUCHDOWN GIANTS!! With seven seconds left, the Giants lead by one!”
Opening his eyes widely, Charlie turned to face his challenger. “What’er YOU gonna do?” Yellow Shirt taunted, as he pushed Charlie to the floor. “Stay down there, meat! I’m warning you! DO NOT GET UP!!”
If Charlie’s dad had taught him anything it’s that champions never stay down, but instead they always rise to the occasion.
So, deliberately, and slowly, Charlie rose until he stood nose-to-chin with Yellow Shirt. “Don’t do that,” he said, “and don’t call me meat.”
Yellow Shirt snorted, displaying buttery teeth that matched his shirt. “And you gonna stop me, meeeeaaaaatttt?”
Almost instinctively, the ire rose again. This time, however, effortlessly, and dangerously closer to the denouement. Before he knew it, Charlie’s fist crashed into Yellow Shirt’s cheek, causing spit and blood to sail carelessly across the gym floor like a crimson summer sprinkle. Yellow Shirt hit the floor like a sack of old, rotten potatoes, and didn’t wake up until the gym teacher arrived and put a smashed packet of smelling salts under his nose.
“Honey!” Charlie’s mom shouted out the back door. “It’s almost time for the game to start!”
Since the day Charlie first played football, his mom kept statistics and newspaper clippings of the Giants. She was a Giants fan from long ago. But more importantly, to her at least, she knew Charlie was, too.
“Ok, mom!” he said as he raised his hand and waved. “Thanks!”
Charlie threw the ball in the air and caught it before leaping one last time and landing in his piles of snow.
His offensive line.
His touchdown.
“It’s an unbelievable come-from-behind victory for the Giants!” he boomed, as the cheer of the crowd roared from the back of his throat. “It’s a story for the ages!”
Charlie picked himself up and dusted the snow from his trousers. Walking to the rabbit hutch, he grabbed the broken radio and headed inside after another tough-fought battle.
“How’d your game turn out this week, honey?” his mom asked as she took the kettle off the stove and poured his hot chocolate, adding three marshmallows as a special treat.
“The Giants win again, mom!” Charlie boasted.
“The Giants win again!”
It was the summer of 1973, and I was only 15-years old. A pretty stupid 15, at that. Donnie and I had just piled into my dad’s Olds ’98 on our way to our first church Youth Conference at Randolph Macon College near Richmond. That’s me in the passenger seat. Donnie’s in the back.
I’d met Donnie the first Sunday after my family moved from New Jersey, and he was also in Mrs. Pollet’s 7th grade class with me. We’d been fast friends ever since. Not that this has anything to do with the story, but it does introduce you to Donnie. He’ll play an important role throughout this story.
As I was saying, we were on our way to our first Youth Conference. I’d looked forward to this day for at least two or three years, ever since girls stopped being icky monsters. From what I’d gathered from my older friends who had been in previous years, Youth Conference was full of them. Girls, that is.
I’d never had a real girlfriend, being a dopey kid for the entirety of my existence. I’d mouth-kissed Iris Gerard when I was five, but I don’t think that counts. This conference, I hoped, would change all that.
After arriving in the late morning, Donnie and I went straight to registration, fully expecting to meet our wives.
Yea, that didn’t happen.
Who we did meet was a middle-aged guy, probably about 25, who gave us our name tags, the keys to our assigned room, and a hard time when we told him we wanted to meet some girls. I think we used the word “chicks”.
“You won’t meet any girls wearing those bellbottoms,” he said.
Donnie and I just looked at each other and laughed. What did he know? He was old and bellbottoms were cool. Every girl knew that. They’d be around forever!
Before we knew it it was time for lunch, so we wandered over to the campus cafeteria to grab a bite. That’s when this story really begins because that’s when I saw her for the first time. Long, dark, and wavy hair that kissed her shoulders. Brown eyes (my favorite) that played ballads on my heartstrings. Best of all, she was wearing bellbottoms. Take that, old guy!!
The only problem, and it was a big problem at that time in my life, was that I’d never talked to a girl before. I mean, other than my sister and her dumb friends. And surely not one as truly beautiful as this.
What was a budding Casanova to do? Should I walk over real cool and talk to one of her friends? Should I use the big ignore? Should I just catch her eye, smile, and wink? What would Tyrone Powers or one of those swashbucklers do?
Getting an idea of why I’d never had a girlfriend?
I had no clue what to do, so this hopeful did the only thing he could do. He asked Donnie to go over and talk to her.
The chicken way out? Yea. Yea it was. Without doubt. But at that age it’s the only card I held. Not too different from the hand I play today, but that’s another story altogether.
Donnie and I hemmed and hawed about it for a bit, and by the time we decided it was his duty as a wingman, she was gone.
Newman!
I didn’t see her the rest of that day, but our plan came to realization the next morning at breakfast. We already had the strategy in place, so as soon as we saw her, Donnie went over and fulfilled his responsibilities. He stayed over at her table for what I thought was a REALLY long time. There was plenty of rubber-necking and feminine giggling. All of her friends had to steal a peak at the would-be suitor.
When Donnie finally returned it was with good news. “She said she’s got classes this morning, but she’ll meet you at the campus pool at 3 o’clock,” he said.
“What? Really?” I replied between gasps for air. “You’re…you’re being serious?”
“Yea, of course,” he answered as he rolled his eyes, a slight note of exasperation in his voice. “There was one other thing.”
“Yea, yea?” I blurted out impatiently. “Come on, man! Let’s have it!”
Donnie took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I can’t believe I’m saying this. She thinks you’re, uh, cute.”
That’s when it hit me.
I knew nothing about talking to girls.
In my head I was saying, “How hard could this be?” But the trembling in my fingers and knees was telling me this was a big mistake.
I should have listened to the joints.
The rest of that morning was spent in one-hour classes about scripture study, Church history, and classic books, all of which went in one ear and right out the other without finding terra firma. All I could think about was…all I could think about was…uhhhh. Hmmmm.
I leaned over in the 11 o’clock class and whispered in Donnie’s ear. “Dude, what was her name?”
“Who?” he questioned.
I looked at him as seriously as I could and shrugged my shoulders, holding my hands like I was asking for a handout.
“Oooohhh, her,” he said amusedly, shaking his head. “I don’t know. I didn’t ask her.”
I scrunched my eyebrows unbelievingly. “You didn’t ask her?” I shot back with just a trace of shock. “What the heck, man? Why didn’t you ask her? Don’t you think I’m going to need that?”
“Gentlemen!” said the instructor, loudly.
After he stopped looking at us, Donnie said softly, “I just didn’t think about it.”
Now you know one reason why Donnie had never had a girlfriend, either.
Lunch came and went and instead of getting closer, that three o’clock hour got further and further away, like watching a Goofy wristwatch. Time was going backwards. Three o’clock just would not come.
And then it did.
And I was terrified.
It was 2:30pm when Donnie suggested we mosey on over to the pool.
What? Now? You mean, go over, and meet this girl? What will I say? What will we talk about? Who invented liquid soap and why? All pertinent questions that popped into my head a half hour before tee time. I was not prepared. I’d left my golf bag at home.
“I don’t know what I’m going to say or anything,” I squawked at Donnie. “I don’t even know her name!”
“Relax, man!” he replied. “it’s going to be fine. Just ask her what her name is. That will get the ball rolling. See what a favor I did by not asking?”
I looked at the ground to be able to concentrate and the five-watt bulb in my head flashed on. Donnie was right! It was perfect! All I had to do to start a conversation was ask her her name.
Ok, I thought, I can actually do this! I’ve got one question for her and that will start the rest of my life with her!
Arriving at the pool, we pushed open the door and walked semi-confidently inside. She was sitting on the bleachers looking even more beautiful than I remembered. She hadn’t seen me yet, so I did one last breath-check, and with trembling hands, I looked at Donnie for some strength. Anything, man. Just a good word like, “You can do this” or “Go get ‘em tiger” or something like that.
Donnie winked at me and said, “Don’t screw up!”
Thanks, bud.
To this day I don’t know how I mustered the strength to walk up the bleacher steps toward her, but I did it. It’s something I’ve thought about for a long time, and I’m quite proud of it. At least once in my life I was strong. Stupid, but strong.
She looked at me and smiled as I walked over to where she was sitting. I could barely take the ten or so steps it took to get there, but I did it. And I smiled while doing it. Oh, yea! Casanova move on over.
When I reached her, I smiled and stuck out my hand, hoping she’d grab it and we’d have our first physical contact. All I had to do was ask her what her name was. Only it didn’t come out that way.
“Hi,” I said. “What’s my name?”
You IDIOT!!
What are you DOING?
Play like you’re dead!
Have a heart attack!!
Do something!
Anything! Don’t just stand there!!
Only, I did.
And it was ok.
She laughed and thought it was cute.
She grabbed my hand and pulled me down next to her on the bleachers. I stared into those hauntingly gorgeous eyes for about an hour and fell madly and inextricably in love. It seemed like 5 seconds. This was the most fantastic girl who’d ever been created.
When it came time to go to dinner we parted and went our separate ways, but not before sharing telephone numbers and addresses.
Turns out that she lived in Roanoke, which was only about 35 minutes from my house. We actually dated (I use that term very loosely) for about a year and a half. My dad had weekly meetings in Roanoke about a half mile from her house. So, every Thursday night I’d ride along, and she and I would visit while he was busy. We’d go over to the ice cream shop or go see a movie or something like that, always walking because we were both too young to drive. Sometimes we just sat around and talked. It took me about six months to kiss her, and even that was a mistake. I tried to kiss her on the cheek, and she turned her head at just that instant. Wham bang, right on the jaw! Iris Gerard, eat your heart out!
As I said, this lasted for about a year and a half. Then, one Thursday I went up with dad and walked over to her house. I knocked on the door and her brother answered. He told me that she’d moved to West Virginia to live with her grandmother. She just unceremoniously left town and I never saw her again. I never found out why she left, either. To this very day I don’t know.
Several years ago, I tried to look her up on Facebook, just to reconnect and answer that one nagging question. But I’ve never found her, and that question is still there.
And that’s ok. I’m happily and inseparably married to the love of my life with three beautiful kids, and those halcyon days are a speck in the rear-view mirror.
But they still bring a smile to my face when I look back, and sometimes I laugh. I hope I’m not as big a dope as I was back then. My wife would probably tell you otherwise. And so would my kids.
But I’m happy, and that’s all that matters.
And by the way, her name was Kathy.
