***Of This And That In The Old North Adamsville Neighborhood-In Search Of….. Fast Runners

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

For those who have been following this series about the old days in my old home town of North Adamsville, particularly the high school day as the 50^th anniversary of my graduation creeps up, will notice that recently I have been doing sketches based on my reaction to various private e-mails sent to me by fellow classmates via the class website. Also classmates have placed messages on the Message Forum page when they have something they want to share generally like health issues, new family arrivals or trips down memory lane on any number of subjects from old time athletic prowess to reflections on growing up in the old home town. Thus I have been forced to take on the tough tasks of sending kisses to raging grandmothers, talking up old flames with guys I used to hang around the corners with, remembering those long ago searches for the heart of Saturday night, getting wistful about elementary school daydreams, taking up the cudgels for be-bop lost boys and the like. These responses are no accident as I have of late been avidly perusing the personal profiles of various members of the North Adamsville Class of 1964 website as fellow classmates have come on to the site and lost their shyness about telling their life stories (or have increased their computer technology capacities, not an unimportant consideration for the generation of ’68, a generation on the cusp of the computer revolution and so not necessarily as computer savvy as the average eight-year old today).

Some stuff is interesting to a point, you know, including those endless tales about the doings and not doings of the grandchildren, odd hobbies and other ventures taken up in retirement and so on although not worthy of me making a little off-hand commentary on. Some other stuff is either too sensitive or too risqué to publish on a family-friendly site. Some stuff, some stuff about the old days and what did, or did not, happened to, or between, fellow classmates, you know the boy-girl thing (other now acceptable relationships were below the radar then) has naturally perked my interest.

Other stuff defies simple classification as is the case here when Jack Ferguson regaled us all on the Message Forum page with his exploits (or rather exploit) in the ninth grade when he, from what I can gather from his profile page, had his “fifteen minutes of fame” in taking on all-comers winning the coveted junior high school city championship in the quarter mile (the longest distance ninth grade boys were allowed to run on the track then so you can imagine if there had been girls’ track which there was not how far they could run, maybe about eight yards). Jack gave us a blow by blow description of his run worthy of Chariots Of Fire.

I like to give every man and woman their due and so I followed along as he battled the contenders finally pulling an all-out eyes closed sprint to win by about five yards. Of course Jack did not run as a member of the ninth grade from North Adamsville High but since he lived further away he attended junior high arch-rival Adamsville Central which unlike Adamsville North had a ninth grade component. Those from Central would not join us, some of them anyway, until tenth grade. All of this to point out that while I like to give every man and women their due Jack’s victory is not one I could share in. See, my money, not real money, okay so let us say my hopes were riding on my North teammate and old running around town corner boy, Brad Badger. Brad was the guy who Jack beat out by those five yards after Brad had been leading the race from the start. In the interest of full disclosure I was in that race that day and finished maybe sixth. See that short distance was not my thing, long distances were but Brad was a speed merchant back then. Hell he should have won. In any case here an e-mail Brad sent Jack in response to his post:                

 

“Jack-I meant to write to you about that ninth grade victory of yours in the 440 up at Veterans Stadium during the spring of 1961 when you competed for Central. I was there that day and ran in that race that you won. I was leading from the start but you were like the wind coming up on me at the end. Short powerful strides and gone. I am glad I didn’t run against you in the early season dual meet where I won the 220. The guy you beat in that dual meet race between North and Central if he is the blond guy directly behind me in the class picture of the track team that you mentioned is Mike Brewer who won the South Shore ninth grade cross-country race in the fall of 1960 beating maybe a hundred guys. He, as you may remember, went on to be the primo gymnast in our class and school after you left for Florida.

Here is a funny story- you are indirectly the reason that my good friend Frank Jackman favored running cross-country in the fall and the longer distances in indoor and outdoor track. He had trained for that quarter mile race (finishing sixth I think) and finally figured that he was no speedster at least not enough to compete in the shorter races. He had a pretty good career at those distances. I believe that you are right as you mentioned that our North coach in ninth grade was Mr. Horton, a real cut-up in class but by-the-book on the track. Regards Brad Badger”