Uncle Duke Dodges Big Ernie

The summer I entered high school, I was 5’8” and weighed 128 pounds. Additionally, I was slow afoot and not especially strong. Physically unremarkable at best. And there were no other indicators that I would make any sort of mark as a football player. Even I could see that.

But I had a kind of personal understanding that I had a destiny to fulfill.  It was an obsession I had held for a number of years by then. I knew, I KNEW, that I wanted to play football. And I truly knew that I had some abilities that nobody knew about. That I would be good at it. Unaccountably good.

 In my dreams, I could see myself in the Purple and White, St. Joe Prep’s colors, floating from sideline to sideline, dominating the opposition. Steamrolling the enemy. Why, I was going to be a defensive terror. A juggernaut of the first order.

It should be recounted that I was bullied as a kid. So I had a belly full of anger I was aching to dispense. There was an enormous chip on my shoulder that I was aching to channel into something intense. Something aggressive. Something praise-worthy, something respectable and completely legal. And football, I recognized, was IT.

                  I was convinced that I was going to be A Force. A fearsome presence, with a baleful stare, who would create mayhem on a football field. The opposition would know my reputation and fear me as they might fear a heat seeking missile—with a powerful payload. “Oh crap,” they would say, having just caught a pass across the middle, “here comes No. 60!” I was locked and loaded and intent on burying my helmet in their chests. I confess I wanted to hurt them and had no fear of hurting myself in the process. I could hear the crowd roar and call my name.

It was helpful that I also knew with absolute certitude that I would grow to be 6’3” or so, and maybe 230 pounds. In a year or two. This of course ignored my own genetic history which would have told me, had I bothered to consult it, that I had likely already maxed out my height and weight. I chose though to ignore hereditary science in favor of my 14-year-old, wish-based intuition. I would will myself to be 6’3”. I would eat myself to 200+ pounds. Five meals a day. My mother would help. It was only a matter of time.

But I’m getting ahead of my story. At 14, all I really knew about football was that I would be good at it. There were, I sort of realized, steps to take to get there. Such as how to put on a uniform, get in a football stance, learn the plays, block and tackle and such. Also trying out for a team and making it.

I had sidestepped the awkwardness of the latter by just showing up on the first day of varsity practice. It was Monday, August 13, 1962, 8:00 AM—two weeks before school actually started. I had hitchhiked 20 miles to get there.

The general protocol was that freshmen would, on the day that school actually began, September 1^st or so, sign up for the freshmen/JV team and then tryout for one of those teams. 

For the varsity, there were generally invitations to try out. I had not consulted anyone prior to showing up and had certainly not been invited. I think I just saw this time and date printed somewhere, perhaps in the local newspaper. If one wanted to be a football player, I surmised, one showed up on the first day of practice. Show up first. Ask questions later.

On that first day of practice, I got there about an hour and a half early, way before anybody else, to figure out how to put on my uniform. The week before, I had bought a pair of the cheapest and ugliest black, high-topped football cleats that was available in the Football World. Also the stiffest. I laced them up, then figured out how to put on hip pads, shoulder pads, etc., and strapped them on. Then I put on the helmet with the cool face mask and the purple stripe down the middle. My head wallowed around in it, but I didn’t care. I buckled the chin strap and walked out on the practice field. I knew no one. Nor did I know what was expected of me. I recall it was already about 90°.

I cannot adequately describe that first week. I’m not sure if it was the pain, the exhaustion or the humiliation that was the worst. But taken together, they wore me down to nothing.

Even at just 128 pounds, I typically lost 12-15 pounds during the 2½ hour morning practice. Not so much in the afternoon or evening practices. This was to be expected because water was not allowed on the field and I was sweating like a boar hog. “Water makes you weak,” we were told. The argument was that we were supposed to discipline ourselves to get along without it.

In those days, denying pain and overcoming physical discomfort were at the heart of the training required to play football. Sprains were all fixable with enough athletic tape, and any bones not actually broken were considered minor injuries. And concussions were frequent and humorous occurrences with the rubber-legged wobbling around and all. They were known as ‘getting your bell rung’. The protocol was that as soon as you could remember your name and figure out which huddle you belonged in, you were considered fit to play. I am sure there were guys who died, but nobody I knew.

There were always guys throwing up around me. Mostly from dehydration, I would guess. The sound of retching was pretty much part of the background noise of our football practices, along with the whistles and the hollering. It added considerable to the Day in Hell ambience.

The blisters on my feet were the size of silver dollars. My forearms and shins were one continuous bruise. And I was the slowest and least regarded som-bitch on the field. The scrubbiest of the scrubs. “Big ‘un”, the head coach called me. He had no idea what my real name was.

The drill that perhaps combined my pain and humiliation in the most profound way was ‘tackling practice’. In this exercise there were two lines--the tackl-er and the tackl-ee. The tackl-ee cradled the football and ran full-speed toward the tackl-er whose mission it was to slam his helmet and shoulder pads into the midriff of the tackl-ee, pick him up on their shoulder, carry them backwards a few yards and then drive them down as forcefully as possible into the ground.

This was a particularly gruesome and painful and mortifying drill for me. As the tackl-er I would invariably get run over, then try to grab a leg and just hang on. The coach would just shake his head and blow the whistle. As the tackl-ee, I would get blasted, picked up and pile drove back onto that hard, hard practice field. Pain and humiliation bundled. “Can I have some more, please Coach?”

When the two lines formed, I would invariably count bodies in the other line to see who I would match up with. This particular day I did the math and saw that Ernie Donahue had drawn my number. Or the other way around. ‘BIG ERNIE’. A senior. 185 pounds of sinew and bone. A four-year starter, All-Conference the last two years. Ernie Donahue was a feared tackler. I had drawn him once before and could still feel my chest caving, the air being expunged from my lungs when he landed on top of me.

And I knew I would receive no sympathy from Ernie. Compassion was not a virtue on the football field. One did not curry favor with the coaching staff by showing mercy out there. Consequently, it was Big Ernie’s job to piledrive my scrawny ass into the unyielding clay. The rules were understood.

I was next in line when Roger DiSilvester, who was behind me, tapped me on the shoulder. “Hey kid, you want me to go against Ernie?” I did not know Roger well. He was from New Jersey. St. Joe had kids from all over the United States who boarded there, though I was a local. He was a junior, a cocky kid and a good deal bigger than me. Though not as big as Ernie.

He must have seen how totally Big Ernie destroyed me that other time. He must have grimaced and shuttered with that crunching sound when Ernie drove his shoulder pads into my gut, his helmet into my chest. His own backbone must have quaked a little when Ernie lifted my frail self and drove it down into that hard, grassless field.

I looked across at the other line, and I swear there was smoke coming out of Big Ernie’s nostrils. He was in his 3-point stance, and he was positively pawing the ground with his cleats.

Next in line, after Ernie, was Beano Spalding, with whom I was more evenly matched. We couldn’t hurt each other if we tried. He was almost as little regarded as me.

Though I did not do it often, I decided to give myself a break. Just this time. Wisdom over valor.  “Sure, Roger. Have at him,” I said. Like I was giving Ernie a break.

I stood back. Roger took the ball and charged Big Ernie. Ernie fired out, thoroughly thumped him in the chest, wrapped him up in his arms, lifted him up on his shoulder, carried him back, Roger’s legs flailing, for a couple of yards, and then drove him mercilessly into the ground. A perfect form tackle.

There was then emitted the most blood-curdling scream I have ever heard, before or since. Everyone on the practice field froze in place. The coaches all began running over.

Roger’s right leg and ankle had been curled under him as they went down. And the combined weight of the two of them, plus Ernie’s finishing force, had done things to Roger’s ankle that I still do not want to know about.

And Roger continued to scream--a pitiable, soul wrenching scream--for as long as it took them to carry him off the practice field and into the locker room.  A long time.

Well, we resumed practice. The whistle blew, I took the ball and ran at Beano, who made a very pedestrian tackle on me. We switched lines and I drug him down in a most inglorious fashion. The whistle blew again, and my blisters and my bruises and I moved on to another painful, humbling drill.

And a couple of weeks and several years went by, and I had a most respectable high school football career. I gained a little weight, though I remained an undersized middle linebacker. Got good at the drills, was voted co-Captain, accumulated an All-Conference trophy and a mention or two for All-State. It was a mission accomplished. A Dream realized. I recall it with some pride, even now.

I am not sure what happened to Roger. A couple of days after his injury, his father drove down in a big car and piled Roger, his crutches and all his belongings into it. And then they drove off.

I think about him from time to time. He didn’t know of course that he was saving my Precious Goals. Salvaging my Dreams. And I don’t know that he really did save them, Human Events being what they are. But it’s hard not to think of it that way.

What he did know was that he was saving me from being annihilated by Big Ernie. He did know that I was seriously overmatched. In a bad spot. And he stepped in and took the hit for me. Which did not work out well for him.

I don’t know if he ever played football again. Perhaps he had his own dream. If he did, I certainly hope he realized them somewhere. I hope he ran on that ankle again and was able to fulfill his destiny. I surly do.

In any case, imaginably, somewhere out there this Holiday Season, perhaps in New Jersey, there is still a 79-year-old guy, with possibly a slight limp, whom I would like to thank for letting me accomplish my goal and live out a dream.

Merry Christmas, Roger. I owe you one.