Heroes
Our football field was maybe fifty yards long, running north-south. It was situated along the southeastern edge of Clarence Foster Park in a pleasantly dull corner of Arlington, Texas. Our field was at most twenty yards wide with clusters of pecan trees on either side forming the boundary markers. Starting in early autumn, pecans rained down from those trees like cheerleaders tossing candy into the stands at an Arlington High School pep rally.
We had no real cheerleaders, except maybe Jon’s younger brothers, who sometimes joined in the games or stopped by for a moment to laugh at a wayward pass or an awkward stumble by me (or another member of our less-than-sure-footed football crew). In our high school days, Stephen, Jon, and Lance sometimes brought their girlfriends to watch. In the final days of our contests, Graham’s wife, Kelly, took in our antics, too. I never had a cheerleader there to watch me play. But it was just as well. No date would’ve been particularly impressed by what passed for my football-playing prowess.
But it wasn’t about impressing girls anyway. Our games, beginning in our junior high days in the early- to mid-1990s, were about the guys in our neighborhood and the bond we forged in a pecan-lined clearing on the edge of a little park. It’s easy to get there. Enter the park at the south end, park at the curb, and amble north across the wood-planked bridge that spans a usually dry drainage ditch. The drainage ditch leads down to the normally placid Rush Creek. Our field is the grassy clearing just north of the bridge.
In my early thirties, I still found myself regularly crossing that bridge on evening jogs. I never ran up to find a game of touch football in progress. And even if I had found a contest going on, it wouldn’t have been our football game. Our games survived through our college years and even carried on into our mid-twenties. It really felt like the games would go on forever.
But the storm probably ended things for good. It’s funny to think that a rainstorm would do in our touch football tradition, because, as teens and college kids, nothing excited us more than a little nasty weather. A grassy field in Texas becomes dry and cowhide tough during the long, scorching summers. When the October rains came, we viewed the change in conditions as a sign from nature to grab the leather ball and pick our teams. When it rained hard enough, and the field became a soggy mess, we abandoned our two-touch rules and played tackle football without the pads. No animals or teenagers were harmed in those occasional tackle games, but I’m not sure how we survived presenting our grimy sweatshirts and mud-caked Nikes to our mothers afterward.
Everyone had a role to play in our football games. Lance was the all-time QB. He was the only varsity football player among us. He was a standout linebacker and safety and quarterback and receiver and running back and punter and kicker for the Arlington High Colts. To save his knees and limit the many easy touchdown catches he’d snare against a hapless defender, we kept him at quarterback, a position he often played for both teams. QBs in touch football can’t rush unless they’re blitzed. So their role is to stand behind the line of scrimmage and deliver the ball to the open man.
The steadiest receiver, not counting Jon’s youngest brother — who would grow up to play varsity football — was Graham. Short, stocky, and deceptively quick, Graham could scoot and juke past most of us with ease and accelerate at the end of routes to snag slightly overthrown passes. Jon, who was a cross-country star for the Colts, brought a burst of speed and an unfortunate tendency to injure his wrist or other body parts diving for the ball. Stephen and Nick were good runners, too, and showed a knack for making all but the most difficult catches.
My brother, Rob, was three years older than us but still played occasionally. We let him play QB for one of the teams. He mostly lobbed the ball, but it generally reached its intended target with a fair amount of accuracy and good timing. Other guys dropped in occasionally: Rhoads, Frazier, Chandler, Jay. Everyone was welcome to join in if he wanted — as long as we could keep the talent level fairly balanced between the two teams. For example, Reser and I were rarely placed on the same team.
We were a special class of player, Reser and I. We had the distinction of being Heroes. We contributed some during the games. I mostly caught short passes when faster players were covered. I tended to have trouble getting open downfield or catching a ball thrown with some mustard on it. So, any QB other than my brother hesitated to throw my way more than necessary. Reser sometimes disappeared during the games, too. Gentle and quiet by nature, Reser seldom exuded fierce competitive fire on the field. But I’m glad he consistently kept his cool. After all, in the short-fused, high-testosterone world of neighborhood sports, he was the one player likely to compliment a teammate for a quality catch or an opponent for his smothering defense. Sometimes Reser played a significant role in the game. I remember him snagging a fair amount of short touchdown tosses from Lance, who was admirably protective of Reser, both at school and in the neighborhood.
Whereas Reser was noncompetitive by disposition, I cared deeply that I was perhaps the worst player. A touch football game usually included cursing fits in which I scolded myself for a dropped pass on offense or a missed assignment on defense. And I am ashamed to admit that I shoved Reser hard on more than occasion out of anger that he — the one guy who didn’t care if he played well — had gotten the better of me on a play.
Much of the time, though, Reser succeeded in keeping my spirits up and my emotions in check simply by being calm and supportive. It was only a game, after all, he’d remind me. It was only a game, and it held us in rapt attention for maybe two hours at a time. Often, after the seriousness of the sport had worn off — the usual rules were first team to five touchdowns wins (and that was about the ideal length for our young attention spans), Reser and I became the featured attraction. I don’t remember who made up the contest, but Lance decided to call it Heroes. And in Heroes it was almost always me against Reser with Lance at quarterback. The rules were similar to college football overtime. The goal was to score a touchdown within four downs and then stop your competitor from scoring or vice versa. If you both scored or both got shut out, the game continued until a definitive winner emerged. Since my late teen years, I have gone through lulls in physical activity when I was a bit out of shape. Whenever I was exercising regularly, I tended to prevail in Heroes. And if I lost, passersby within four miles of the park were treated to a long string of four-letter words shouted at the top of my lungs.
Regardless of how a Heroes match turned out, our friends were sure to get a good laugh. Reser and I knew the joke was on us. My clumsiness and our lack of athletic prowess were the primary sources of their amusement. But, in junior high and high school, these same friends defended us against the far crueler intentions of schoolmates on a number of occasions. That is to say, I really didn’t mind being teased a bit by my fellow members of the Foster Park clan in exchange for their support in the gladiator pit that is public school.
Besides, any mockery dissipated soon after the Heroes match was over. Really, nothing about those games left our field. We forgot the score or who caught the winning pass. Any tensions that flared on the playing surface cooled by the time we gathered for dinner at TGI Friday’s or Chili’s. We never carried a grudge into our next game. Every time we played, we re-picked teams so no real rivalries ever formed, except maybe the epic recurring clash that was the Heroes matchup.
We played basketball at Jon’s far more often than football at the park. But I formed a stronger attachment to our football games. They primarily happened in the fall and winter, whenever temperatures were below one hundred and above freezing. I do think we played in the snow once or twice, but this was mainly a game for when the weather was mild and football was in season. When we left for college, Foster Park football was a bonding activity on those one or two weekends a month when most everyone was back in town. And when my friends started moving to Houston and other outposts after college, the football games were limited to Thanksgiving, Christmas, or other special occasions when a large number of the guys were visiting their parents.
But the guys don’t visit much anymore. On September 8, 2010, a few months shy of my 31st birthday, ten inches of rain fell in a twenty-four-hour period in west Arlington. In the heavy downpour, Rush Creek swelled and spilled over its banks. The swirling waters enveloped a number of homes to the south and east of Foster Park. Graham’s and Lance’s parents lived on higher ground northwest of the creek. Nick, Stephen, and I grew up in homes situated another half-mile farther west of Lance and Graham’s, on the far side of a busy boulevard. But Jon’s and Reser’s parents’ homes stood in the path of destruction. Their houses filled with several feet of rushing water. In fact, Jon’s grandparents became trapped in fast-rising water and might have drowned, if not for a timely rescue by the fire department.
My friends’ childhood homes were damaged beyond repair, condemned by the city, and razed. Today, these once-residential lots have become part of the park. But it’s no longer our park. Reser’s mom and dad joined him in Oklahoma City. Jon’s parents moved into a nearby neighborhood, but their new place, as far as I know, is no longer a gathering place for neighborhood basketball games. Graham, Nick, and Lance have put down roots in the Houston area. Nick’s parents moved overseas awhile back when his dad got a lucrative job offer with an oil company. Graham lost his mom several years ago and rarely makes the four-hour drive up to Arlington. When Lance comes by, I don’t hear about it. Stephen lives about an hour away, north of Dallas in one of the tony Collin County communities. But he has a wife (who was his high school sweetheart), four boys, and little free time.
I’m still around. I used to run by our park somewhat regularly, but I’ve since found other fields to jog past. I prefer other grassy clearings less haunted by ghosts. But sometimes when the summer heat wanes and the early dusk returns, I come back to the south end of Foster Park. I cross the wooden planks and stroll quietly across that fifty-yard field. I don’t linger long. I simply take a moment to listen to the pecans raining down from the trees. And as I pause there, I recall the sensations and emotions of playing those games of touch football, if not the particular details. I don’t remember if I ever scored a game-winning touchdown or how many times I was on the winning team. But I remember how important I was. I always had a role to play. Sometimes, in school and in my writing career, I’ve wondered where I fit in. But I always felt like I belonged when I was on our field. There I was a hero.
