One More Time, Charlie Brown

When I was in junior high school - which was, interestingly enough (as there things go), within walking distance of where I live now, in my sunset years, on the very edge of the American side of the vast Pacific Ocean; and to say, in the days when I had my whole life ahead of me - I was on the ‘C class 6-man touch football team.  For those of you who don’t know these things, that’s not ‘C’ as in a classroom grade; it has to do, mostly, with one’s size.  I was one of the little guys, and on into my high school sports career as well.  There, in both basketball and track; but in junior high I played touch football as well as those other sports.  

I remember it all well.  I lived in northern Long Beach at the time, and to get down to the sports field where we played our intra-city games on a late Saturday morning - a large open-air arena called Hamilton Bowl, with a number of playing fields - I had to bicycle over Signal Hill (the site at the time of a large number of oil derricks, and exposed pumps patiently pumping out their riches like horses ploughing a subterranean field)(1) and then coast down the other side almost all the way to the Bowl.  It was a good bit of exercise - and challenge - to ‘warm me up’ for the coming encounter on the field of battle, with the teams of the other schools in our city.  

I was both a half-back and the center of the team; ‘center’ as in centering the ball to our quarterback, the real star of the team.  And though I enjoyed being a halfback more than the center, I was good enough at the latter ’job’ to become, in my last year of junior high, the winner of the All-City Competition for that position, if I do say so for myself, ahem.  But I preferred running with the ball, or racing out and cutting sharply for a pass.(2)

But the specific memory that I want to touch on in this particular memoir is the time that they let me kick off after we had made a touchdown.  I had never done that before; but hey, what does at take? The feeling of ‘I can do this’.  So, both teams lined up, and one of our guys held the ball in place.  (This was well before the days of Lucy and Charlie Brown, so no sweat there.)  And I ran up to it, at first slowly and then a couple of quick steps at the end, concentrating on it like it was an enemy of a sort -    

and I hit it sweetly.  And it sailed, and sailed, high and beautifully, like an omen in the sky; to the point where we were almost on them before it landed in some poor guy’s arms, who, basically, never knew what hit him.

I would like to hit the ball one more time, sweet like that.

Before it’s too late.

—

(1) In those days.  Nowadays the derricks themselves have gone,made way for residential areas; and there are a few of the ‘horse pumps’ scattered here and there, more as museum pieces than as working pumps.

   Sic transit the gloria days.  Signal Hill was well-known for its oil reserves in the mid-1900s, even giving its name to one retail company.  Back in the days before rte ‘Arcos’ and ‘Amcos’ and such highfalutin’ names of this day.

   But I digress.  (But it is my blog.  Of A Life.)

(2) I was a fast runner, too; placing third in the 50-yard dash and second in the 100 in the All-City Competition in my last, ninth-grade year there.  And our team won the 440 relay.  But to continue.