Harry was an engineer and a jock. I never knew which came first, but he seemed to give equal credence to the values of each. As I was growing up, he seemed to spend equal amounts of energy trying to get me to be active, and trying to drill some common sense into me. Sometimes, the lessons doubled up on each other.
I guess those two threads wound back to his very early days. Miles City, the small eastern Montana town in which he grew up, was surrounded by hundreds of miles of range land, barely fit for cattle. Yet the local high school fielded teams in the classic American sports: football, basketball, and baseball. Apparently, if you went to the school you went out for the team. All of them.
He claimed to be a triple letterman there. Like many fathers, he was the strongest, smartest man I knew, who never made mistakes, always seemed to be in charge, and could throw anything he wanted. I especially loved his reverse curve (“screwball”) and the floater (knuckleball). I imagined him as a pitcher, quarterback, and point guard. Having skipped two years of elementary school, he graduated at 16, and went to the US Naval Academy under the sponsorship of Senator Burton K. Wheeler. Once again, he joined up on all three teams. But his career was cut short; he was mustered out after two years. He claimed his eyesight failed the exam, but I found it suspicious the ouster came after his first summer at sea. This was a man who got car sick in the rear seat, and wouldn’t ski unless the sun was shining, pleading “dizziness”.
His mal de mer didn’t stop him from trying out every new sport he came across. In my first two decades, I watched him take up and attempt to master golf, swimming, figure skating, downhill, then cross-country skiing. And he was always trying to point me in the same direction.
The Cleveland Browns were our football team – the closest pros to Cincinnati, as well as the powerhouse of the ‘50s. They were so strong under the tutelage of Ohio legend Paul Brown. At age 25, Brown started coaching at his high school alma mater, Massillon Washington, where In his nine years he posted an 80–8–2 record including a 35-game winning streak and six state championships. Not satisfied with glory at the high school level, he went on to Ohio State, giving them their first national championship in 1942. After the war, he proceeded to lay waste to the professional All-America Football Conference with his eponymous Browns.
Many of his high school and college players were either already playing pro ball in northeast Ohio, or followed him there in 1946. Nonpareil quarterback Otto Graham (in a youthful attempt at humor, I called him “Automobile Graham Cracker” – it never caught on), placekicker and two-way tackle (can you imagine?) Lou “The Toe” Groza, and Marion Motley, the first professional black player at running back, provided enough firepower to sweep the AAFC championships the four years the Browns were in the league, including an undefeated season in 1948. By 1950, the league folded in part due to the utter dominance of Paul Brown. He took his team, along with the San Francisco 49ers and the Baltimore Colts to the supposedly more powerful NFL. In their first year, they won that championship as well, along with two others in ’54 and ’55.
So this was the team my father and I would watch every Sunday, every fall, as I entered elementary school. Brewers were the prime sponsors of sports then as now. Cincinnati, a haven for German immigrants in the mid-19th century, boasted a number of stellar beers: Burger, Hudepohl, Schoenling, Weidmann’s. They vied every year to be the lead sponsor of the local nine, the Reds. But it was Carling, out of Cleveland, who saturated the airwaves during the football games with the jingle “Mable! Black Label! Carling Black Label Beer.”
I realise now that football on TV was a recent novelty in the mid-50s. It thoroughly absorbed Harry, and he tried to teach me the nuances of the game. For Christmas one year, I received shoulder pads, pants with hip and thigh protectors, a generic jersey (players names on the back came later), helmet, and ball.
After what may have been the final game of that season, Harry said, “Come on, let’s go out in the back yard and play some football.”
All Right! I could put on all my stuff, and get the chance to imitate the little guys I saw swirling around on that 17’ black and white screen. He pumped up the ball, gave it a few squeezes, and out we went.
I knew what to do. I immediately stood next to my father, and bent forward with my hands on my knees.
“What are you doing?” he said. “Why don’t you run over there and I’ll throw the ball to you.”
“But this is what the guys on TV are always doing!” I whined. If you’re six years old, and never played football, and had just watched the game on TV a few times, you’d probably do the same thing.
I was huddling.
My father laughed. Maybe he thought I was joking, or maybe he thought I was just being a kid. But if you look at the game without knowing what’s going on, maybe you’d also think the main purpose was to stand around and talk to each other.
My confusion was not limited to football. My father worked for General Electric at their suburban Evendale plant, making jet engines. An entire cadre of engineers, hundreds of them, had been transferred to this new factory from Lynn, MA, in 1950. Uprooted from their homes and neighborhoods, the group started holding annual Fourth of July Picnics.
“What are we going to do at this picnic?” I must have asked.
“Oh, we’ll probably have drinks and food like hot dogs. And your friend, Dickie Durand will be there.”
“What about games? Are we gonna play any games?”
“Sure, I guess they’ll have a badminton court set up…” Harry replied.
“OH GREAT, I LOVE to play badminen!” I shouted.
I must have been coming out of Kindergarten when I pulled another fast one on my father. A year before Davy Crockett had us all in coon-skin caps, Buffalo Bob and Howdy Doody (a puppet) were faux-cowboys on TV. Apparently, I had whined enough to get a plaid shirt and two-gun holster, just like Howdy had. I put that outfit on, and off we went to the picnic.
“WHEN ARE WE GONNA PLAY BADMINEN!” I screamed as soon as we got there.
My father took me over to a net and started talking about racquets and birdies and rules, and stuff.
One of Harry’s friends came over. He saw me in my cowboy outfit, and asked, “Hey Al, why are you dressed like that?”
I smiled up at him and said proudly, “I’m gonna play Bad Men!”