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Hunker Down with Kes

The Greatest Game Nobody Ever Saw!

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I played in my first Super Bowl in 1953. Against my will! It was freezing cold that December in West Tennessee. I had just opened my Christmas present. Good gosh, it wasn’t even daylight yet!

I lined up my shiny new Matchbox cars on the braided rug in the living room….in front of the roaring fireplace! I was fixing to find out which one was the fastest—

“Get your clothes on, we’re going outside.” Leon was using his authoritative big-boy voice. He was also holding a brand new genuine NFL approved Revelation football in his hand.

I was six years old. I didn’t know enough to tell him there might be a slight drop in television revenue with a 5:45 AM kickoff. And we didn’t have lights in the front yard.

David Mark was literally shaking when he got down on one knee and put a finger on top of the ball so I could kick it to Leon. Only he wasn’t Leon anymore, he was Elroy “Crazy Legs” Hirsh.

This football stuff was pretty confusion and we hadn’t even run a play yet.

Elroy picked up my weak kick and sprinted past me and David like we weren’t even standing there. I have thought back on it over the years and I believe there were two main reasons we let him run untouched from the maple tree out by the gravel road all the way across the front yard to the hedge on the far side of the house.

One, he was five years older (six and a half in Dave’s case) and he was bigger, stronger and faster. And it was so dark out there, we couldn’t see him!

He kicked off to us. About the time I picked up the ball Elroy hit me so hard he broke both of my legs, my neck, one arm, knocked out some teeth and gave me a concussion. As he was getting up off of me he said, “Don’t call me Leroy. When I’m playing defense, I’m Bronko Nagurski.”

Talk about a brave new world! I’m laying there, half-dead with my face mashed into the snow, trying to find an eyeball that’s rolled off somewhere, thinking, “How many people can you be in this game and how did he find me so quickly in the dark!”

My mind instinctively went to how safe and warm those two Matchbox cars were in there by the fire...

Elroy scored 17 touchdowns in a row. And Bronko hit me and David Mark so hard we completely forgot about the cold.

As daylight slowly crawled upon us Dave had a thought. Elroy had been running over us one at a time. Dave allowed he was going low for his ankles. He told me to jump on his back and maybe we could “double team” him to the ground.

It took a few tries. But with a little teamwork we finally toppled him over! We didn’t know you could “high-five” back in those days. But I remember that feeling of accomplishment like it happened just this morning…right at first light!

Dave and I lined up with a new energy. We tried a few passes. Of course, most were knocked down or intercepted. But one or two got past Bronko. We were, at least, making a little bit of a game of it.

I faked a pass to Dave and when Leon turned, I took off for the maple tree and the gravel road. I got hit from behind just as I stepped across the goal line and went sprawling face down into the gravel.

It was a small price to pay for our first score!

Leon didn’t give us time to celebrate, the game went on. We weren’t interrupted by glitzy commercials. And our halftime show consisted of picking shards of gravel out of my chin, and yelling some quick insults towards Bronko.

You’d think we were killing each other out there in the front yard; on an extra cold Christmas morning three score and ten years ago; when we should have been inside drinking warm eggnog; and playing with our own presents.

But then, we would have missed the memory!

You couldn’t count with the best Texas Instruments calculator, the highest speed computer and a supped up Acme logarithms machine the number of times me, Leon and David Mark have revisited that morning. Always fondly. Always with laughter. Always with as much love as three brothers could muster up in their collective hearts.

And now that “Bronko, ‘Crazy Legs,’ Elvis, Luke the Drifter, Superman, Tarzan, the Dark Knight/Leon” is no longer physically with us, it has moved from a precious memory...to a sacred one.

The world has its Super Bowl. And that is wonderful and fine.

But please don’t discount ours...

Lovingly,
Kes