For the Weekend Warriors
By Chuck Sudo in Miscellaneous on Nov 25, 2010 9:00PM
By now the turkeys, hams, pork roasts or whatever you're cooking should be ready for carving and serving. And, if you're with a large number of family and friends, the weekend warriors are returning from the parks caked in mud, scratches, a few pulled ligaments and maybe a bill from one or two emergency room visits.
growing up on the Northwest side, my friends and I sometimes didn't wait for Thanksgiving for a good muddy game of football. It was two end zone, five-count rush, tackle football in layers of sweats with one quarterback who could handle the pummeling, often me. It wasn't the ideal situation to quarterback for two teams in the same game. There would always be someone on each team who would give you a good natured something extra if he felt you were favoring the other team. Anyone who wasn't good natured about it ran the risk of getting the Ray Nitschke "Mean Machine" treatment from The Longest Yard (the original, not the ca-ca Adam Sandler remake). Thankfully, it never came down to that.
There was also street hockey and fieldhouse hockey. No pads, gloves or face masks were used, the puck was a hard rubber ball that might as well have been a puck, and rather than check people into the boards the game took on the fluid grace that hockey so often does in Olympic and international competition. Or when the Blackhawks puck possession game is in working order. Here in Bridgeport and in nieghborhoods throughout the city, local kids who were nurtured to be Blackhawks fans long before the team's current resurgence in popularity repurpose tennis courts and commandeer intersections to imagine themselves on the top line with Toews and Kaner, the same way my friends and I thought we were skating wing alongside Denis Savard back in the day.
These shots from McGuane Park on the South side this morning brought back a lot of good old memories. Hope they do the same for you.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. Check in tomorrow if you aren't shopping.