At the top of the stairs going down to the Athletic Field on the nights we had a home game, one of the local farmers would sell cartons of freshly pressed apple cider. Rumor had it that occasionally some of the cartons would be left-overs from the last home game, and had turned hard in the interim. That none of the cider ever was hard did nothing to diminish the feeling that perhaps this carton was the one. Hard or not, the taste of fresh apple cider on a crisp autumn evening was unforgettable.
At that time football was, for me, a few classmates in uniforms and helmets throwing themselves against other uniforms and helmets under some garish lights on an Friday evening. More important to me was the taste of that cider, the warmth of my band uniform, and the way my date's hand felt in a wool mitten. Otherwise it was just a game whose objective made very little sense to me. I had spent a lot of time in hospitals, and purposefully doing things that could very easily put you, or the other guy, in the hospital was, in my opinion, not the hallmarks of a reasonable, or even fun, sport.
