Originally I wrote this for our neighborhood newsletter in 2007. So here it is again. Bubba is holding the chicken, then Tony I think, and Oscar who still lives nearby. I don’t remember who the gentleman on the left with the 22 t-shirt is.
The Big Game
The game was already in progress when I stepped out into my front yard. It was taking place in the side yard of the fourplex next door. Bubba (James) and his cousin Tony were playing for the championship.
I watched this game for a couple of minutes trying to figure out the rules. It involved Tony or Bubba either kicking or throwing the ball to each other, making contact, and then the person with the ball tried to break away and go to one end of the field or the other. If you made it to your goal you scored 2 points. There were four downs until the other guy had to kickoff to his opponent.
The sidewalk next to the apartment building, consisting of some cracked concrete slabs, was a foul line. If you did something illegal, like touch the hands of your opponent when he was tackling you, that was a foul for which you got a strike. 4 strikes and you lose the game no matter what the score. Eventually Bubba’s sneakers came off and marked the foul line near the fence by my house.
Tony yelled “Hey mister, can you watch our game?” which I did and was drafted into being the referee of the game. As the referee my main duty was to make sure that they didn’t do any tackles involving arms around the neck and I was supposed to make sure that they didn’t go over the foul lines. I wasn’t a very good referee but I did keep the neck tackles to a minimum.
After a while Bubba’a cat Leo, and his 3 year old sister somehow became part of the game. Leo’s job was to lay in a pothole about midfield and look like the orange and white cat that he was while all of this running and tackling was going on around him.
Once in a while they would declare that they had fouled or the that the other had fouled them. In that case there was “an injury on the play”. Bubba was up to about 4 strikes or fouls when the rules changed to 5 strikes to lose the game.
Bubba’s sister’s involvment in the game was to ride around on Bubba’s back while he tried to tackle Tony, but there was another injury on the play since Bubba stepped on a rock with his bare feet. Bubba’s little sister was more interested in the grass seed head that she harvested from the fence line and eventually disappeared towards the alley goal line spinning and dancing in her shiny leopard print dress.
Tony asked me “does this look like college football?”.
I responded “Well… Not quite” but it was time for the next play. There was some dispute where Bubba suddenly got a touch down and went from 2 points to 6 points winning the game. But Tony wasn’t having any of that so they decided to start a new game. After a couple of plays in the new game Bubba’s older sister came out and told Tony that his mother was calling for him.
They wanted me to referee another game the following night. I said that I would have to see because I had other things that I needed to do and gave them a possible maybe. It was getting dark out, and Tony left Bubba saying “love ya’ cousin, see you later”, and Bubba echoed that.
Toad Aweigh 