Objet d'Art
Found this gem while at Mom's on Saturday.We moved to Rock Island IL in January of 1976. I remember football practice starting in the blasting heat of summer, so this is sometime in the summer of 76. I'm twelve years old.
This picture looks to have been taken during an afternoon practice. I don't remember our team name, but the colors are Green Bay Packers colors. When the coach was handing out jerseys, nobody else wanted number fifteen. I was shocked and pleased then that I was able to grab it, it of course being Bart Starr's number. I didn't play quarterback, though.
I remember riding around on somebody's bicycle before practice one day, and somebody threw a helmet at the bike. I crashed in a heap on top of the bike, my face jamming into broken spokes of the front wheel, jabbing and cutting my cheek.
And I chipped a tooth, turned out. I discovered and spit out what I thought was a bit of rock or food or something, and then realized it was a chip off the tip of my left upper canine.
I scanned the picture and the resulting file was like a megabyte or something. I cropped it, reduced the color depth, and then saved the jpeg with high compression. This file now is all of 7K, which I think now is too small, although it does sort of have an antique-y quality to it. But I think I'll work on it again and repost. In the meantime, though, enjoy.
posted by 4mastjack @ 9:01 AM
2 comments
2 Comments:
What a brilliant photo. You should have kept that hairdo. It worked for Keith Partridge.
Good ol' Bart Starr. My brother Andrew collected football cards back in the early 1970s, and he was one of the biggies. I recall that he also had these football stamp albums which were the same size as the cards, only they folded out. I guess you got a football "stamp," a sticker of a player, in each pack.
We played football with pads and helmets back in elementary school. Andrew had an old Redskin helmit with the spear on the side, but that didn't have very good padding. It was more of a decoration. He later used a white one that was probably handed down from an older neighbor kid. I had a mustard-yellow Redskins helmet with the big red R on the side, in a white circle. It had plenty of padding. We also wore shoulder pads and knee pads. We thought we were hot stuff.
We didn't play in any sort of a league, just with our neighborhood pals and some guys from school. We'd gather at Jamestown in Arlington, on one of the big fields, and square off. I remember how hot it was inside that helmet, and how difficult it was to see on the rare occasions that I had to run with the ball, or catch it. I probably looked like a bobblehead. I had a chin strap, but it didn't seem to do much good. And I was so slow. The defenders were always quicker.
My dad always wanted me to go out for baseball teams. I did once, and was cut in the second or third round. It was painful. Andrew was more coordinated and talented in that way. I rooted for him, instead, while eating a multi-colored snow cone. Nowadays we no longer play football -- both of my shoulders are shot for some reason -- but we're still mighty competetive in Wiffle ball.
So, I'm wondering, Ed, how many years did you play football? And were you any good? You sure looked the part.
Photo Credit:
Utterly unknown, although I'll go as far as to say that I think it was taken with my first camera, a 110. I don't remember much more about the camera even, not even basic stuff like who manufactured it. I think it had a built-in flash, but it may have even used flash cubes on top. Who knows? Anyway, the picture's mine now.
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