Here we are guys, all suited up in the latest high tech gear for a season of razzle dazzle football.
Our names appear in the paper below. It reports we won 5 of what looks like a 6-game season, and beat Ewing (52-6) !, Princeton (19-6), Trenton Catholic (12-7), Peddie (18-6), Hamilton High's Junior Varsity (12-0) and lost to Lambertville's Junior Varsity. Please take note of our coaches! When we moved on to Hamilton High the following year, our records suffered--a bit.
Again thanks to Eleanor Goldy Guear for this fine memorabilia.
And here is my humble contribution to those days on the footballl field in the 1950's:
Football in the 50’s
By
Robert Louis Chianese
Teenage Titans,
Eisenhower boys of the
Silent Generation,
slipping
through Normandy past Viet Nam—
loving the
clash of camaraderie.
I couldn’t bash
our crosstown rivals:
our fathers strut
in the same Mummer’s Band.
When Jack
charged carrying the ball,
I tackled then
lifted him—“Hi Jack!”
(our dads
worked at GM)—
a vaulting
embrace but no slam.
Coach yelled,
“Thataway Turk, get mad.
Tear his leg
off and beat him with it.”
Yeah right,
though Coach came
to the house when I got bruised,
recommended
“Maiden Water,” a jokey put down
it took an
hour to figure out.
He’d scream, “You’re
nicotine-ing in your pants!”
That much he
knew.
It would snow—we’d
frolic on white, a sliding derby,
holidays near,
no threat,
cleats pocking
the snow with silent prints,
crisp air
biting smoke-cleared lungs.
And so we
charged,
with the force
of snowflakes.
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