But we had enough friends in the neighborhood to provide escape mechanisms via sports. In those days kids would show up outside the house and shouting something I cannot quite remember (Oh Jerry! Oh Ronnie!, something like that) which was enough to alert us that they wanted us to come out and play. It was usually a game of baseball or touch football which we played right in the street or sometimes in the next door vacant lot.
I remember really liking football to the point of studying books on the subject and imagining myself as another Knut Rockne. I longed to be a running back and was quite good at it, despite my small size. When I was in junior high school, I actually was able to play in some games of the 9th grade junior varsity football team, mostly sitting on the bench, but then actually playing in the very last game of the season.
I remember having problems with the helmet. My head was too small for the standard edition of the helmet so I provided my own that fit much better but it looked a bit strange since the spray-painted color was not exactly the same as the others.
In one practice game I managed to tackle Ted Dworkowski, our best half-back, and it seemed like he dragged me 100 yards to the goal line. I saw him recently at a 50-year high school reunion and told him about that tackling incident and he had a few good laughs over it.
Playing football in the street, especially tackle, was rough on the body. I once made a flying tackle but ended up scraping my chin on the pavement which required a visit to Dr. Adler (who had recently moved his office from Buffalo into Kenmore) and more than several stitches to close the cut.
There is always that “last game of childhood football” and I think this was it. It was towards the end of the summer and fall was coming in. Some of the older kids were leaving the neighborhood. For whatever reasons, it became that actual “last football game” of my childhood.