By Dick Brooks
For Capital Region Independent Media
It’s now officially autumn.
The signs are easy to spot even if you don’t have a calendar — leaves are falling, the geese are heading south, the morning air is starting to get that little fresh bite to it and the screeching of car tires trying to avoid the abundant squirrel population fills the air.
The roadkill numbers attest to the fact that these easily confused rodents don’t know which way to run. Watching a squirrel with a nut in the middle of the road is kind of like watching a political press conference on TV. All kinds of bobbing and weaving with a panicked look in the eye.
Nature is shifting into high gear. There’s a restless feeling starting to make itself felt. Got to get ready, winter’s coming. It’s there in the animal world, it shows up in our world also.
People are doing their version of the fall frenzy, too. So many things still to get done. I had plans for things to do that still need doing. Painting some of the trim, a section of gutter on the garage roof, a pile of limbs that need to be cut up — got to get them done while the weather’s still good. The gardens need to be readied for their winter sleep, there’s pruning to be done, so much to do, so little time. I guess I better stay out of the road!
The fall also means football. I love football, I still have the urge to slap on the old helmet and sneak onto the end of the bench during one of the local high school games in the hope that the coach won’t notice the bald head or mustache and send me in. I’d probably do well, especially if I didn’t have to run or bend over very far. I’d like to try it one more time.
Driving past the field during practice brought back all kinds of memories. I could still identify with the second stringers. They’re the ones on the sidelines, even during practice. They always have a confused, not very confident look about them. I would have liked to have been able to tell them that we all start out as second stringers and that the studly hero types on the first string once stood where they are.
I remembered back to my first day of football practice. We stood in line in the equipment room and were loaded up with our gear. I didn’t recognize half of it. In the days before Pop Warner, we played football in the hayfield with no equipment, relying on Mother Nature’s natural calcium deposits to protect what brains we had.
The equipment we were given in high school wasn’t the first string stuff. My first helmet looked like the one I had seen in a 1930’s movie about Knute Rockne. It had papier mache sides and a steel pan for the top and it was about 12 sizes too big. With it buckled up to the last hole, it was still so loose that when I bent over, it slipped down so far that I couldn’t see. Worse yet, a sudden turn left me looking through the ear hole, a look that wasn’t going to win me a fair cheerleader.
I figured out the shoulder pads but made a big mistake with the hip pads. Logic told me that the piece that curved down should go in the front since that was one area I was really interested in protecting. Logic was wrong. Coach McGuire noticed the difficulty I was having running, figured out the problem, whispered the solution into my helmet ear hole, which thankfully didn’t have my nose stuck in it at the time, and sent me to the locker room on a trumped up mission to solve the problem. I loved Coach McGuire!
I got better, the equipment got better and I built the memories that exist to this very day.
Send me in Coach, I’m ready!
Thought for the week — The trouble with life is there’s no background music.
Until next week, may you and yours be happy and well.
Reach columnist Dick Brooks at whittle12124@yahoo.com.
