A New England Childhood: Framingham, 1969

In 1969, Framingham was a mill town of around 100,000 residents.  Oldsmobiles were assembled, paper was milled, beer was brewed and convicts were rehabilitated.  I listened to the Boston Red Sox and Janis Joplin on a transistor radio.  Life Magazine showed pictures of Wood stock, Buzz Aldrin and Charles Manson.  Vietnam was on TV with Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In. A quarter bought a can of Coke, a Milky Way and two packs of Topps baseball cards.  Washing the dishes was a daily chore, mowing the lawn a seasonal one.  Many Summer evenings bedrooms were too hot for sleep so the entire neighborhood lived on the front lawns. I prized my bike, radio and baseball glove above all other things. Oakvale, my neighborhood, was a small haven within the enormity of Framingham.  Oakvale was a sub-division of a large baby boom housing development that spread across the Northern end of town. My neighborhood was built on an orchard.  Every Autumn, leaves fell with apples and the whole place smelled like cider. We skated on the pond and played baseball in Parkas.

Kids in our neighborhood organized Oakvale's baseball and football teams.  We played baseball without umpires and tackle football without pads in what we called the Parks League, an intensely competitive neighborhood versus neighborhood saga.  We played fiercely without any adult involvement, rarely knew the exact score at the end of each contest yet knew which team won.  The sun was the clock, many games ran from midday until dark allowing baseball games running into twenty innings and football games to five or six straight hours.  We were skilled passionate athletes long before we hit Little League and Pop Warner.

Organized athletic programs had to accommodate the enormity of our town.  Little League baseball cut and sifted thousands of kids into leagues and teams of ability and age.  For each age group there was an elite 'A' league and participants eagerly tried-out hoping to be selected to a top team. Rostered  'A' league ballplayers were celebrities in their neighborhoods and schools.  Except for All-Stars, baseball players represented a team in town, but Pop Warner football players were different.  Pop Warner had open try-outs.  There were only 3 teams of 50 players each in each of 3 age groups; half of the kids who tried-out were cut.  There was no room for them on the roster.  Tough for them but wonderful for us.  The lowest 'C' team rostered 50 superior athletes.  The 3 Framingham 'A's, one in each age group won all 3 state titles in 1969.  I played on the Hawks.  We were unbeaten and unscored upon.  We weren't just a team in town, we were the town. Framingham as in Framingham wins state championship.  Framingham to face Massapequa, NY for right to play in New Orleans (we lost, 7-6 in an extraordinarily hard fought game) .  All this at ten years old.

We grew-up as we played.  I learned that superior effort was laudable, unlike today when all effort is praised.  Back then the distinction between failure and success was clearly and loudly maintained.  If I failed, screwed-up, dogged it the critique was bellowed in my ear-hole.  And it was okay, there was always the next play.  The litmus test for hard-nosed play was simple, if I had a headache the morning after a practice or a game then I had played.  So I hit so hard that my helmet rang.  We all did.

I tried very hard to be my father.  I was a kid and my impression of him was a heroic figure, powerful and supremely confident, limited only by his own desires.  In turn I was powerful among boys, optimistic in the small paradigm of Little League and Pop Warner Football.  I was drilled to achieve in the school of competition.  Play was a code-word for compete; every at-bat on the diamond and every down on the football field was an opportunity to be better than the next kid.  It was possible through hard work and focused attention to come out ahead.  I think my dad always wanted me to do more than he had.  I had no thoughts of that then, I only wanted to be him. 

Becoming Dad was a constant state of failing to attain an impossible end.  Regardless of my achievements I was always disappointed and it pissed me off. I wasn't alone, this was the sixties, the decade of disappointment.  Men walked on the Moon and half a million people tripped out in the mud at Yazgur's Farm.  Soon the Beatles would split-up and the Ohio National Guard would open fire on students at Kent State.  Anti-war protests became violent and the SDS at Columbia seized buildings and shot the dean. There wasn't enough love to sooth the wounds of the war in Vietnam, racial inequality, virulent poverty and social injustice.  The country was pissed and so were the kids; as the discontents took their grievances to the streets of Washington and Newark, we took ours to the playgrounds.

The energy required to fix the world so drained parents that a ten year old was often left alone to solve his own problems.  The peace and love generation got angry and came out slugging while the Black Panthers sniped at cops.  Everyone was in for a fight and if no adversary was available a riot would do. I was angry too, but I didn't know why. And like everybody else I fought back, not against my parents but against other kids.  I found a an outlet in sports and an unanticipated solution.  Play, hard play, turned struggle into victory.  Anger, rage then fury was loosed one beautiful Autumn in 1969 when my Pop Warner Football team, the Hawks of Framingham, thrashed the entire state of Massachusetts.  We beat them all and not one point was scored against us.  We were harder and tougher than anyone else and over that one perfect season we showed our fathers that we had become them.