***Of This And That In The Old North Adamsville Neighborhood-In Search Of…..Fast Guys   

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

For those who have been following this series about the old days in my old home town of North Adamsville, particularly the high school day as the 50^th anniversary of my graduation creeps up, will notice that recently I have been doing sketches based on my reaction to various e-mails sent to me by fellow classmates via the class website. Also classmates have placed messages on the Message Forum page when they have something they want to share generally like health issues, new family arrivals or trips down memory lane on any number of subjects from old time athletic prowess to reflections on growing up in the old home town. Thus I have been forced to take on the tough tasks of sending kisses to raging grandmothers, talking up old flames with guys I used to hang around the corners with, remembering those long ago searches for the heart of Saturday night, getting wistful about elementary school daydreams, taking up the cudgels for be-bop lost boys and the like. These responses are no accident as I have of late been avidly perusing the personal profiles of various members of the North Adamsville Class of 1964 website as fellow classmates have come on to the site and lost their shyness about telling their life stories (or have increased their computer technology capacities, not an unimportant consideration for the generation of ’68, a generation on the cusp of the computer revolution and so not necessarily as computer savvy as the average eight-year old today).

Some stuff is interesting to a point, you know, including those endless tales about the doings and not doings of the grandchildren, odd hobbies and other ventures taken up in retirement and so on although not worthy of me making a little off-hand commentary on. Some other stuff is either too sensitive or too risqué to publish on a family-friendly site. Some stuff, some stuff about the old days and what did, or did not, happened to, or between, fellow classmates, you know the boy-girl thing (other now acceptable relationships were below the radar then) has naturally perked my interest.

Other stuff defies simple classification as is the case here in my cutting up old torches with some of the guys I used to run around on the streets with and run with on the track team as well. No, not cutting up old torches about old love affairs like normal guys or about midnight shifting (don’t ask about what that is if you don’t know it is better left unsaid)but back in the day running prowess (or on certain days when the anaerobic impulses got the better of you or the allergies kicked lack of prowess). That is what we AARP-worthies apparently are reduced to in our dotage in trying to bring back the glory days when every ache and pain took just a little liniment and a brush-off of the knees unlike now where half the medical staff at some local hospital has to be called in and even then that nagging pain will hang around and kick you for about six months. Glory days too when a quick two-mile run was in fact a quick two mile run without working up, except in high summer, a sweat, or without gasping for breath having to reach for a respirator.

Glory days too when somehow, early on anyway,  we got the impression that track guys were worthy of adulation (and it was all guys back then women it seems were meant to be too busy looking beautiful to run more than about eight yards). We were out there on the roads  before our time, before the great 1970s forward running boom (now with a little edge taken off of that cachet cut off except at major marathon time due to another generation coming of age, the age of knee operations and being warned to keep off hard asphalt running roads). And so we suffered in the shadow of such august school athletic powerhouses as the intramural volleyball team and the interscholastic golf team. Jesus.

Here is one little tale that made the guys laugh when I told them this in a collective e-mail blast. Like most guys back then (and now too I am sure) part of sports for guys was, well, to get a little edge with the girls, the young women around school or town once they saw or heard about your running prowess. Gave you a little something to talk about when you were honing in on a certain she that you had sleepless nights over. Football and basketball clearly held that allure for young women then and not just the random cheerleader or baton-twirler (or I just remembered what they called them, majorettes, sorry) but any young women who wanted to be seen with the goliaths of the field or magicians of the parquet. The rest of us sportsmen though had to fend for ourselves, provide our own publicity, and public relations.

Now I was as interested in girls as the next guy, although overall I was a lot shier than that next guy so I was all for trying to break the ice with any girl that caused me sleepless night by using my running prowess as a talk-starter. This one girl, Linda, had me in tizzy for a while. We would talk in class a lot, she was easy to talk to, but mainly it was about things like should Red China be admitted into the United Nations (yeah, it was a while back) or will computers or robotics replace humans in the workplace. Yes, I know not stuff that is going to get anybody past first base, hell, past strike-out.

One winter day, it was probably a Monday, because we had our winter track meets over in an armory in Boston on Saturdays, I decided since I had done very well the previous Saturday to tell Linda about it. I did so, probably pumping the thing up a little too. Her response, “Oh, does North Adamsville have a track team?” Totally deflated. So, yeah, it was tough being a track guy back then but fortunately I loved to run in order to get about twenty tons of teen-age angst and alienation off my shoulders. So a few defeats in the women department were also rubbed off with a little liniment and a brush-off of the knees unlike later when it would take major heart surgery to mend me in order to get over some affair and the nagging pain from that would still be kicking around six months later.

Well enough of old torches, except this exchange among the guys got me thinking about writing a little something for the Message Forum about those old glory running days for all to see.  I titled it there The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner after an old movie from that period:                                 

“In the 1960s runners were “geeks.” You know-the guys who ran in shorts on the roads and mainly got honked at, yelled at, and threatened with mayhem by irate motorists. And the pedestrians were worse, throwing an occasional body block at runners coming down the sidewalk outside of school. And that was the girls, those “fragile” girls of blessed memory. The boys shouted out catcalls, whistles, and trash talk about maleness, male unworthiness, and their standards for worthiness did not include what you were doing. Admit it. That is what you thought, and maybe did, then too.

 

[And then too it was mainly guys, girls were too “fragile” to run more than about eight yards, or else had no time to take from their busy schedule of cooking, cleaning, and, and looking beautiful, for such strenuous activities. Won’t the boys be surprised, very surprised, and in the not too distant 1970s future when they are, uh, are passed by…passed by “fast girls” of a different kind]

 

In the 1970's and 1980's runners (of both sexes) became living gods and goddesses to a significant segment of the population. Money, school scholarships, endorsements, soft-touch “self-help” clinics, you name it. Then you were more than willing to “share the road with a runner.” Friendly waves, crazed schoolgirl-like hanging around locker rooms for the autograph of some 10,000 meter champion whose name you couldn’t pronounce, crazed school boy-like droolings when some foxy woman runner with a tee-shirt that said “if you can catch me, you can have me” passed you by on the fly, and shrieking automobile stops to let, who knows, maybe the next Olympic champion, do his or her stuff on the road. Admit that too.

 

And as the religion spread you, suddenly hitting thirty-something, went crazy for fitness stuff, especially after Bobby, Sue, Millie, and some friend’s grandmother hit the sidewalks looking trim and fit. And that friend’s grandma beating you, beating you badly, that first time out only added fuel to the fire. And even if you didn’t get out on the roads yourself you loaded up with your spiffy designer jogging attire, one for each day, and high-tech footwear. Jesus, what new aerodynamically-styled, what guaranteed to take thirteen seconds off your average mile time, what color-coordinated, well- padded sneaker you wouldn’t try, and relegate to the back closet. But it was better if you ran.

 

And you did for a while. I saw you. You ran Adamsville Beach, Castle Island, the Charles River, Falmouth, LaJolla, and Golden Gate Park. Wherever. Until the old knees gave out, or the hips, or some such combination war story stuff. That though is a story for another day.

Still taking a close look again [at the yearbook photograph of the cross-country team] I would not want to be walking in a dark alley at night with this crowd on the loose especially that guy in the front row second from the right with that tell-tale smirk on his face. [Me] The others can speak for themselves.