A few weeks ago, while peering out the window of a coffee shop, I witnessed one of the most remarkable scenes I have seen in years – a football game. I know, it’s January, that’s all we see. Well, this wasn’t the Bears, Packers or Eagles. The two teams playing this day had no names, the players no uniforms and, as far as I could tell, I was the only person who seemed to have any interest in the game at all. A handful of kids were playing flag football. “Flag” is a charitable term. The players had simply tucked a swatch of cloth under each side of their belts. The equipment was a football and the end zones were marked by two trees at one end and a backpack and bicycle at the other. There were no referees, no parents cheering or coaching or businesses sponsoring. No, this was neighborhood football the way I used to play it, when no one told us when to start or stop, or paid much attention to us at all.
I am a baby boomer and during the 1950's and 60’s, I was rarely without a football, baseball glove or basketball. I was not alone. Throughout that era, kids playing “disorganized” sports could be spotted everywhere because, well, there were a lot us, outside almost all of the time, playing ball or re-saving the Alamo. It wasn't only that we didn't have 500 TV channels or the internet to keep us occupied inside; our parents actually kicked us out in the morning and suggested we stay out until the street lights came on or we broke an arm. Between the years 1946 and 1964, the baby boom years, 75.8 million boomers were born and everywhere you looked kids were playing pick-up games or throwing a ball against a garage door or through a neighbor's window.
Boomers today represent 28% of the U.S. population. But in 1964, we represented about 40%. More than a third of the population was under 19 years old! And we were all outside and, by today's standards, in constant danger. We didn't wear helmets. Our jungle gyms were not padded. Cuts, cracked heads and broken parts were the norm.
My brother Gil sent me a picture a few weeks ago of himself, our friend Johnny and me on one of those never ending early fall days. I wore a holster with six shooters and carried a football. My brother wore a coonskin cap with a rifle over one shoulder and a baseball bat over the other and Johnny wore a hockey mask and carried two logs which would soon be either first and second base, or end zone markers. Life was glorious – for us, though not always easy on parents.
During one game, my brother fell flat in a prickly bush while chasing a fly ball and let out a horrific scream. The ball field emptied as we ran to Gil, sprawled out awkwardly with a one-inch thorn sticking in the white of his right eye. I steadied myself and not knowing any better, just pulled the thorn out. We all jumped as enough blood flowed from Gil's eye to generate another common happening, the mass run to Mom.
On the way we gathered about ten more curious kids and when we arrived, my mother was already on the front porch waiting, as were mothers up and down the block, each alerted by our collective screaming. As was typical, the first kid to arrive had only heard of the actual accident by loose word of mouth along the way. "Gil poked his eye out!" Terry bellowed and my mother tore into the crowd and grabbed my brother to look into his eye. Of course the bleeding had stopped and my mother could not even tell which eye had been poked. Believing Gil was to be half blinded for life and discovering nothing of the sort led to a familiar finale, my mother's threat to actually blind both of us. Not wanting that, we all tore back to the ball park. And so it went.
Every day in those years these damaged kid brigades would rush through the streets of America toward already stressed out mothers. At the end of each day, when Dads came home and asked "How was your day?" mothers could rarely convey the extent of their trauma. "Your son came home with an eye poked out," my mother would say and when Dad laughed and said, "Let's see her, son," she knew that no one would ever really understand. If the Surgeon General had discovered in the 1960's what we know today, that drinking during pregnancy is a bad practice, I’m sure he would have been largely ignored.
So for me, when I saw that group of kids playing football without supervision, sponsorship or scruples, it brought back very fond memories of a simpler life. But here’s a challenge for fellow boomers. Try explaining how great life was, 50 years ago, to your ten year old grandchildren; life before cell phones, Twitter or Guitar Hero. You may receive the same fraudulent excuses to do homework I hear. In fact, you may get much the same reaction we had when our grandparents tried to tell us how terrific life was in 1910.
