*Out In The 1960s Be-Bop Night- Thanksgiving Football Rally, 1963- For Jimmy, Class Of 1966

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for American football on Thanksgiving. I knew when I Googled this search old Wikipedia would not let me down.

Markin, Class of 1964, comment:

Scene: Around and inside the old high school gym entrance on the Hunt street side the night before the big Thanksgiving Day football game against our cross town arch-rival in 1963. (Yes, that is the street with the Merit gas station, now Hess, on the corner.) And this is at a time before they built what is apparently an addition modeled on the office buildings across the street behind the MBTA stop and a tribute to “high” concrete construction, and lowest bidder imagination). But it could have been a scene from any one of a number of years in those days. 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 the names, to 2010 as well:

Sure the air is cold, you can see your breath making curls before your eyes no problem, and the night feels cold, cold as one would expect from a late November New England night. It is also starless, as the weather report is projecting rain for the big game. Damn, not, damn, because I am worried about, or care 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. No, this damn, is for the possibility that the muddy Veterans Stadium field will slow up our vaunted offensive attack. And good as it is 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, although now that I think of it there might be something to that here as well. I’ll have to check that out sometime but right now I am 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 is Class A Quincy against Class B North and we need 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 worked just find.)

Do I have to describe the physical aspects of the gym? Come on now this thing is any high school gym, any pubic high school gym, anywhere. Fold-away bleachers, fold-away 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. But enough. The important thing is that guys and gals, old and young, students and alumni and just plan townies are milling about waiting for the annual gathering of the Red Raider clan, those who have bled, bleed or want to bleed Raider red and even those oddballs that don't. This one stirs the blood of even the most detached denizen of the old town.

This night of nights, moreover, every unattached red-blooded boy student, in addition, is looking around, and looking around frantically in some cases, to see if that certain she has come for the festivities, and every unattached red-blooded girl student for that certain he. Don’t tell you didn’t take a peek, or at least a stealthy glance. Among this throng are a couple of fervent quasi-jock male students, one of them who is writing this entry the other, great track man Bill C., who is busy getting in his glances in, 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, in the hunt for those elusive shes. I do not see the certain she that I am looking for but, as was my style then, I have taken a couple of stealthy glances at some alternate prospects.

This is the final football game of our final football-watching season, as students anyway, as well so we have brought extra energy to the night’s performance. We are 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 monstrous goliaths of the gridiron. We fancy ourselves built for more "refined" pursuits like those just mentioned stealthy glances, and the like.

Finally, after much hubbub (and more coy and meaningful looks all around the place that one could reasonably shake a stick at) the rally begins, at first somewhat subdued due to the very recent trauma of the Kennedy assassination, the dastardly murder of one of our own, for the many green-tinged Irish partisans among the crowd, as well as the president. But everyone, seemingly, has tacitly agreed for this little window of time that the outside world and its horrors will not intrude. A few obligatory (and forgettable) speeches by somber and lackluster school administrators, headed by Principal Walsh, and their lackeys in student government and among the faculty stressing good sportsmanship and that old chestnut about it not mattering about victory but how you play the game drone away.

Of course, no self-respecting “true” Red Raider has anything but thoughts of mayhem and casting the cross-town rivals to the gates of hell in his or her heart so this speechifying is so much wasted wind. This “bummer”, obligatory or not, is followed with a little of this and that, mainly side show antics. People, amateurishly, twirling red and black things in the air, and the like. Boosters or Tri-Hi-Yi types for all I know. Certainly not the majorettes, who I will not hear a word against, and who certainly know how to twirl the right way. See, I am saving one of my sly, coy glances for one of them right now.

What every red-blooded senior boy, moreover, and probably others as well, is looking forward to is the cheer-leading to get things moving, led by the senior girls like the vivacious Roxanne G., the spunky Josie W., and the plucky Linda P.. They do not fail us with their flips, dips, and rah-rahs. Strangely, the band and its bevy of majorettes when it is their turn, with one exception, do not inspire that same kind of devotion, although no one can deny that some of those girls can twirl.

But all this spectacle is so much, too much, introduction. For what is wanted, what is demanded of the situation, up close and personal, is 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 has been excellent, marred only by a bitter lost to a bigger area team on their home field, and our team is 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 are introduced by Coach L.. Then come the drum roll of the senior starters, some of whom have been playing for an eternity it seems. Names like Tom K., Walt S., Lee M., Paul D., Joe Z., Don McN., Jim F., Charlie McD., Stevie C., "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”, Bill C., a behemoth of a run-over fullback , even by today’s standards. Yes, let him loose on that arch-rival's defense. Whoa. But something is missing. A sullen collective pout fills the room. After the intros are over the restless crowd needs an oral reassurance from their warriors that the enemy is done for. And as he ambles up to the microphone and says just a couple of words we get just that reassurance from “Bullwinkle” himself. That is all we need. Boys and girls, this one is in the bag. And as we head for the exits to dream our second-hand dreams of glory the band plays the school fight song to the tune of On Wisconsin. Yes, those were the days when boys and girls, young and old, wise or ignorance bled Raider red in the old town. Do they still do so today? And do they still make those furtive glances? I hope so.