Notes from the Editor's Desk -- 6/5/22
Football practices, on display in Park Ridge’s abundance of open fields, past which ran major thoroughfares, must have seemed to me what farm labor did to denizens of insignificant hamlets throughout human history. Here were forms engaged in an activity essential to the culture, around which much of a town’s life and social life was organized. An absence of deep ecological experience contributed to the general emphasis on football as a worthwhile, and even important, activity, the most important to many of Park Ridge’s patriarchs. Park Ridge did not attract robust intellects. It was a place to settle, to varying degrees of success. Esoterica was irrelevant to every career that was likely to furnish an income, and complacency, sufficient for a house in Park Ridge to seem attractive. As such, there were no academics, no engineers, or software developers, few entrepreneurs, but many was the average lawyer, real estate developer, accountant, salesperson, and middling financial type. As such, the adults of Park Ridge were, provided beneficial economic conditions, adequate enough to keep up with the world’s demands, but insufficient to decide where it would be going. Hobbies were not prevalent amongst the parents of my peers. They prepared their children for the same station in society that they enjoyed, albeit their overall satisfaction may have been intermittent. The idea that the world’s economic landscape would change drastically within the generation went unconsidered. In the meantime, there was football.
A guarantee that a significant part of one’s life would be spent in a bland, indifferent corporate setting, or in commute, meant two things; one, that there would be sufficient resources to invest in youth sports; and two, that there would be insufficient time, energy and inclination to investigate the nature of one’s emotional being. Religion, which seems practically quaint to those of use that had access to the internet growing up, and adopted atheism therefore, was, as yet, a grounding force for the professional class of Park Ridge. Football was the other remedy for the emotional and intellectual void brought on by the professional biome of the township. Tom Brady had already won his first Super Bowl by the time I began my journeyman career as a lineman. Whether or not he would win another was discussed with considerable frequency on ESPN and talk radio, which formed the background noise of many of the households I frequented. My own house was indifferent to the sports media complex. Thinking on it now, it would seem that most households came to consume an inordinate amount of sports because the dad played football himself, which meant he likely attended either St. Pats or Main South, or because they shared the normative experience of attending a Big Ten school. Neither was true of my parents.
All the same, I, too, joined the line of Park Ridge’s youth outside the Hinkley field house on a summer’s day, entering the stifling structure to receive shoulder pads and a helmet. The largest youth size helmet rested on my crown and did not yield at all to the efforts of the equipment manager. A coach, smoking a cigar, as was every coach, had to find the largest helmet they had in any class, and this, too, did not quite fit, but they sent me on my way. Within days, we were doing Oklahoma Drills at Centennial Park, running laps or up the hill as punishment for missed tackles, and enduring core strength exercises after dark by the light car headlights. At the time, the industry of coaching books was still prevalent, and much of the regimen was likely ill-advised or outright self-defeating. The dynamics of football, and its centrality to our social understanding, influenced the collective perspective on the world and influenced our behavior. Rap was prominent, and recitation of the lyrics, occasionally accompanied by the mimed presentation of a gun to the temple of the person being rapped at, marked select persons, generally those in the skill positions, as with it. I was far from with it. Still, I spent years playing football, and I comprehend its interests. It is useful to me, not only as a means of entertainment, but also as an instrument of study. Our environment shapes our genesis to such extents as are difficult to reconstruct.
