***A 50^th Anniversary Of Sorts -Out In The 1960s Be-Bop Night- Thanksgiving Football Rally, 1963- For A Brother Who Did Not Make It, Jimmy J., North Adamsville Class Of 1966

Peter Paul Markin North Adamsville High School- Class of 1964 comment:

Make no mistake, despite the lightly- dusted change of names and places to protect the innocent, and the guilty too now that I think about the matter, this honor sketch is about our old town, no question.

Scene: Around and inside the old North Adamsville High School gym entrance on the Hunt Street side the night before the big Thanksgiving Day football game against our cross- town arch-rival Adamsville High in 1963. For those who are not familiar with North Adamsville or who through the ravages of time, too much booze, too many drugs, or too many, well just too many Hunt Street is the street that had the Merit gas station, now Hess, on the corner. A place where we filled up, we who owned such treasures, that dream 1957 Chevy that had everybody turning their heads, every girl, or more likely our father’s Plymouth on pretty please loan, just be careful with the damn thing and, yes, fill ‘em up before you bring it home, home by midnight, no later and no arguments.

The street itself is fairly non-descript, filled, like most streets in the Atlantic section with double and triple-decker houses, mostly two unlike kindred, Irish kindred, Dorchester (Dot, okay) and South Boston (Jesus, Southie, okay) and small lot single family houses, cottages really all packed closely together against the unimproved land behind the street. Houses representing, those small lot cottages too closely packed together representing, that nagging hunger of our parents to have a small piece of the American pie after the turmoils of the want-filled Great Depression 1930s. And after slogging through World War II during the heart of the 1940s, short-cutting their youth, carrying a rifle on the shoulder, or home fires waiting, waiting for Johnny and Jimmy to come back, come back in one piece, please. And their broods, their spawn (nice word, huh), like their brethren on Billings Road , Faxon Road, Hancock Street, East Squantum Street, Young Street, Newbury Street, the seven tree-named streets, the five ocean- signified streets, fill, over-fill, the four grades of the high school that the baby-boomer explosion, their explosions, has created. That motley will be well-represented this pre-game rally night. No question.

[By the way thinking about that Atlantic section of the old townevery grandmother, every second or third generation resident grandmother, calling, no, cursing, under their breathe cursing the place, cursing “one-horse Atlantic” from the days when one needed to “go up the Downs” to get family provisions and services, or go without.]

Of course the time of which I speak is a time before they built what is apparently, that apparently due to many years away from the old school and not up on changes until recently, a significant addition to the school on that side of the building modeled on the office buildings across the street behind the MBTA stop and a tribute to “high” concrete construction, and lowest bidder imagination. Then though only a recently constructed new gym, an American Standard gym, also reflecting concrete construction and lowest bidder imagination, anchored that part of the building.

This night the spawn (still nice, huh) I spoke of, a generous proportion of them seniors taking one last memory home before the deluge of a candid world hits them come June. Others too are present some at some ghostly sufferance from lowly and despised frosh, barely passable sophomores, and presentable juniors, some of their parents taking a minute out from festive next day preparations. More, a gentle sprinkling of teachers, mostly teachers who had half a heart and maybe tossed a kind word once. the hard-assed don’t mix with the rabble that sit before them day after day, a motley of alumni recent and ancient, ancient seemingly from founder Adams’ time. More still a selection of the town waywards looking for warmth before a warm furnace-fueled gym for a couple of hours usually closed against the night, and some boosters, alumni or not, who have for their own reasons decided to cast their fates and bleed red and black like true Red Raiders whatever high school they might have graduated from before landing in old North Adamsville. All are milling in the front door of the gym waiting to purchase booster tickets, pompoms, red and black naturally to be waved, endlessly waved that evening at the slightest prompting, three for a dollar raffle tickets to support some senior class project, most likely that trip to Mexico that Miss Pratt was trying to put together, in the foyer inside making stealthy preliminary observations about who and who was not present, and with whom if present, or the forlorn, the luckless or just plain woe-begotten are already in the bleachers trying to put on a brave front against the hard fact, the hard school social fact that they do not fit in.

And that is our scene in those long last moments before the annual rally is to begin. But, frankly, it could have been a scene from any one of a number of years in those days. A time when the social cohesion of the whole North Adamsville village glued the community around a common ritual, a rite of passage if you like. A time when the denizens of the Dublin Grille over on Sagamore Street (or the Irish Pub on Billings Road, Guido’s on Atlantic Avenue, Patty’s Pub on Wollaston Boulevard, I know, I know Adamsville Shore Drive, Bruno’s on East Squantum it was all the same except the locations), mostly working-class Irishmen and a scattering of Italians abandoned their cherished bar stools and cozy booths, including my father and other kindred, and hiked the five blocks to the high school to root the latest edition of the gridiron's goliaths on. A time too when such endeavors as football (and fast cars, “watching the submarine races” with your honey down at Adamsville Beach, HoJo’s ice cream, Fourth of July celebrations, your first drink of alcohol) were cultural ornaments of that second or third generation of immigrants, European immigrants. And I am willing to bet six-two-and-even with cold hard cash gathered from my local ATM against all takers that this story “speaks”, except for the names, to those who dwell in the town today as well. Listen up:

Sure the air was cold, you could see your breath making curls before your eyes no problem, and the night felt cold, cold as one would expect from a late November New England night. I could too as I joined the mob trying to run the gauntlet in the foyer and see what is what, see what they evening may bring, stealthy observation bring. A mass of humanity was moving, bundled up against the weathers, toward that gym entrance front door quickly from automobiles parked helter-skelter on the several streets adjacent to the high school. Others have short- haul walked from the tree-named streets, maybe the ocean-named streets too probably quicker that night than driving except for those who will meander down toward frosty Adamsville Beach after the rally to join the other fogged-windowed cars to do, well to do in case there are grandkids around, okay. Still others took that old fume -filled Eastern Mass bus that never seemed to show on time, never when you were in a hurry or it was cold, cold like that night and waiting in some half-baked lean-too for shelter froze the toes.

It was also starless, as the weather report was projecting rain, maybe freezing rain if the temperature dipped for the big game. Damn, not, damn, because I was worried about, or cared about a little rain. I’ve seen and done many things in a late November New England winter rain, and December and January rains too, for that matter. Faced gales coming out of hell Bay of Fundy around Maine shorelines, watched, watched in horror, and candidly fear, as double-seawalls could not hold Mother Nature back when a big blow came through Marblehead Neck one time, got drowned, soaked to the bone, in pelting rain Newport, really Block Island so a little sleet would not have bothered me then. No, this damn, was for the possibility that the muddy Veterans Stadium field would slow up our vaunted offensive attack. And good as that attack was guided by Tim Riley and rambling wreck Bullwinkle (no further name need be given for that moniker says it all about the rambling wreck who thrilled us with his dogged forward, ever forward slashes and thrusts against mere mortals and who is rightly immortalized in the old school’s hall of fame), a little rain, and a little mud, can be the great equalizer.

This after all is class struggle. No, not the kind that you might have heard old Karl Marx and his boys talk about, you know the workers who produce whatever needs to be produced and the bosses grabbing a big share, a big wad of dough, from that production, although now that I think of it there might be something to that theory here as well. I’ll have to check that out sometime but just then I was worried, worried to perdition, about the battle of the titans on the gridiron, rain-soaked granite grey day or not. See, this particular class struggle was Class A (more boys) Adamsville against Class B (fewer boys) North and we needed every advantage against this bigger school. (Yes, I know for those younger readers that today’s Massachusetts high schools are gathered in a bewildering number of divisions and sub-divisions for some purpose that escapes me but when football was played for keeps and honor simpler designations like A and B worked just fine.)

Do I have to describe the physical aspects of the gym? Come on now this thing is any high school gym, any public high school gym, anywhere. Foldaway bleachers, foldaway divider (to separate boys for girls in gym class, if you can believe that), waxed and polished floors made of sturdy wood, don’t ask me what kind (oak, maybe) with various sets of lines for its other uses as a basketball or volleyball court. If you have not been in a high school gym in a while or you want to invoke memory lane check out the school dance scene in the baby-boomer coming -of –age- in- the-early- 1960s classic film, American Graffiti, where you will see what I mean. (Yeah, I know car-crazed, souped-up hot-rod valley boys and girls Modesto was not our pristine ocean-swell shoreline borrow your father’s car, some Nash Rambler or something, with the usual caveats about fueling the thing up, not crashing the thing into some wall and bring it home early but the gyms were the same, the dreams were the same, and the awkward boy-girl-dance thing, jesus, you know that was the same, and maybe still is.)

That should do it on the architecture of the gym. I will not, I swear I will not, go on and on like some latter day Marcel Proust about the decorations that festooned the walls and rafters, except they were strewn hither and yon throughout the gym. A few hand-make posters seemingly drawn by somebody’s younger brother or sister before nap time urging Go Raiders, Beat Adamsville, or some team member designated by shirt number to do those things. But mainly the place was filled with black and red little cheap crepe throw-away banners. Not just black and red though Red Raider black and red, black signifying who knows what but red, blood red signifying that we bled Raider red, or we had better that night.

The most important thing though was that guys and gals, old and young, students and alumni and just plan townies were milling about waiting for the annual gathering of the Red Raider clan, those who had bled, have bled, bleed or wanted to bleed Raider red, and even those oddballs that didn’t. This upcoming battle, as always, stirred the blood of even the most detached denizen of the old town. That night of nights, moreover, every unattached red-blooded boy student, in addition to performing his patriotic duty, was looking around, and looking around frantically in some cases, to see if that certain she had come for the festivities, and every unattached red-blooded girl student, ditto on the duty, for that certain he. Don’t tell you didn’t take a peek, or at least give a stealthy glance.

Among this throng are a couple of fervent quasi-jock male students, one of them who is writing this sketch, the other, great track man, Bill Brady, was busy getting in his glances, both members of the Class of 1964, with a vested interest in seeing their football-playing fellow classmates pummel the cross- town rival. And also, in the interest of full disclosure, were both in the hunt for those elusive shes. I did not see the certain she that I was looking for, that classmate Dora, a girl as crazy for politics, history, modern literature, and poetry, yes, poetry what of it, who had told me earlier in the day before the close of school for the first long weekend of the year that she would come, if she could, and who I often dreamed of then. But, as was my perfidious nature then, I had also taken a couple of stealthy glances at some alternate prospects.

This, the final football game of our final football-watching season, as students anyway, had us bringing extra energy to our night’s performance, including purchase of those tacky crepe pompom shakers. Jesus, all because some girl Bill was interested in was on the Boosters Club table as we came in. We were on the prowl and ready to do everything in our power to bring home victory. ....Well, almost everything except donning a football uniform to face the opposing monstrous goliaths of the gridiron. We fancied ourselves built for more "refined" pursuits like running around the streets of the old town in shorts in all weathers almost getting run over by irate drivers and sidewalk walkers as trackmen, those just mentioned stealthy glances, and that sort of thing.

Finally, after much hubbub (and, as I observed the scene, more coy and meaningful looks all around the place than one could reasonably shake a stick at) the rally began. At first somewhat subdued due to the very recent trauma of the Kennedy assassination, the dastardly murder of one of our own, Jack, down in cowboy wild west heathen Texas, especially for the many green-tinged Irish partisans among the crowd. I had been particularly hard-hit since I had walked the streets of the old town putting campaign literature in every doorway and had bought, bought heavily into the fresh green dream of a “newer world” that his election had heralded. We all remember where we were that previous week, and although we have forgotten much some fifty years later not that.  Most of us were in class when the announcement that the President had been mortally wounded was made over the P.A. system. We had lost some of our innocent, and, worse, that promise for the young heralded by his election, that making and doing good in the world, whether you bought into the New Frontier or not seemed an unlikely promise. But everyone, including me, seemingly, had tacitly agreed that for that little window of time the outside world and its horrors would not intrude.

A few obligatory (and forgettable) speeches by somber and lackluster school administrators, headed by Mr. Jim Walsh, and their lackeys in student government and among the faculty uniformly stressed good sportsmanship and that old chestnut about it not mattering about victory but how you played the game droned away. Of course, no self-respecting “true” Red Raider had anything but thoughts of mayhem, maybe murder too if it could have been gotten away with, and of casting the cross-town rivals to the gates of hell in his or her heart so this speechifying was so much wasted wind. This “bummer” prelude, obligatory or not, was followed with a little of this and that, mainly side show antics. People, amateurishly, taking the floor and twirling red and black things in the air, and the like. Boosters or Tri-Hi-Yi types for all I knew. Certainly they were not in the same league as the majorettes, who I would not hear a word against, and who certainly know how to twirl the right way. See, I was saving one of my sly, coy glances for one of them just then, sweet Rita Givens.

What every red-blooded senior boy, moreover, and probably others as well, was looking forward to by then was the cheer-leading to get things moving led by the senior girls like the vivacious Ruth Goward, the spunky Jenny Weinfeld, and the plucky Laura Pratt. They did not fail us with their flips, dips, double something stuff, gymnastic stuff that I don’t remember the names of except I couldn’t do in gym class, not even close, and hearty rah-rahs. Strangely, the band, a motley of brass-players, drummers and clangers led by that bevy of majorettes when it was their turn, with one exception and you know the exception, did not inspire that same kind of devotion, although no one can deny that some of those girls could twirl.

But all this spectacle was so much, too much, introduction. For what was wanted, what was demanded of the situation, up close and personal, was a view of the Goliaths that will run over the cross- town arch-rival the next day. A chance to yell ourselves silly. The season had been excellent, marred only by a bitter lost to a bigger area team on their home field, and our team was highly regarded by lukewarm fans and sports nuts alike.

Naturally, in the spirit, if not the letter of high school athletic ethos, the back-ups and non-seniors were introduced first by Coach Lion. Then came the drum roll of the senior starters, some of whom had been playing for an eternity it seemed. Names like guiding hand Tim Riley, speedy Will Simmons, husky Len Munson, beefy Peter Duchamp, steady Jack Zona, reliable Dick McNally, redoubtable ( don’t ask him what that means, please) Jeff Fallon, wily Carl McDonald, dingbat Stewart Chase, mad dog "Woj" (Jesus, don’t forget him. I don't need that kind of madness coming down on my face, even now.), and on and on.

Oh, yes and “Bullwinkle,” a behemoth of a run-over fullback, a night train wreaking havoc over many a solid defensive line even by today’s standards. Yes, let him loose on that arch-rival's defense. Whoa. But something was missing. A sullen collective pout filled the room. After the intros were over the suddenly restless crowd needed verbal reassurances from their warriors that the enemy was done for. And as he ambled up to the microphone and said just a couple of words we got just that reassurance from “Bullwinkle” himself. He grunted the words “Victory over Adamsville.” That was all we needed. Boys and girls, this one was in the bag. And as we shortly thereafter headed for the exits to dream our second-hand dreams of glory the band, a little less subdued then, played the school fight song, On North Adamsville to the well-known tune of On Wisconsin.

Yes, those were the days when boys and girls, the young and old, the wise or ignorance bled Raider red in the old town. Do they still do so today? And do they still make those furtive glances at certain hes and shes? I hope so.