Codicil:

Jung reference.

I thought about this, explaining my inference…but then it’s more fun just leaving it to interpretation. I mean, if you posted it, it’s a good likelihood that I would try’n put scene to your extrapolation. So I’m gonna leave it be, for anybody who may have a mind to giving it some thought. I will hint that it leans into the arenas of archetypes, primitive practices, and raw stimuli. I wouldn’t go so far as call it profound. It’s just that it’s too easy to discount the craft of football. The man. There are generations of families without life changing injuries who found great joy and camaraderie in the game.

A peripheral example: My father saw absolutely NO logic or use for the game of basketball. He loathed the game. Bounce a ball. Throw it into a hole. Yeah I know, he was being shortsighted. Although he was a streetwise, smart & capable man in other areas, he was an idiot as far as his lack of appreciation for a sport that may well be the most extraordinary way for ten men to express their athleticism in so small a space. Anyone who has spent a lifetime honing the skills necessary to manipulate a basketball the length of the court, pick & roll, pick & pop, head-fake, slip a dribble & drive, box-out, hit above 80% free-throws, fade a jump-shot or fast break for a lay-up, post up, or dish a perfect alley-oop (and then there's defense, yikes) knows the depth of craft involved. No- matter how much it wrangles your personal sense & sensibilities, Peter, you can’t merely discount tackle football. It is in some people’s blood. In high school (we were a small team) I played defensive tackle. But for pick-up games my entire life, from elementary to marines to college, I was always picked first or 2nd as QB because I had a knack for that certain skill-set, just not in school because there were a coupla guys who, although they couldn’t throw an out-pattern or streak as well as me or drag as many guys on their backs while trudging a few extra yards off a sack, they were better all-round athletes (and their dads were better connected in the community). I will be fifty in a few months if I live that long, Peter, and if some ol’ friends call me up to play a pick-up game of dustbowl football I’ll ask ‘em if they know of a place with less hard dirt and more soft grass…then I’ll meet ‘em there and bust some ass, guaranteed. Just as long as it’s tackle and not flag (not that there’s anything wrong with flag, it’s just that I prefer the increased option to break tackles that one isn’t afforded with flag—— savvy).

Tackle football’s in our blood. Was in our hood. Tackle on the street too. Used to say go to the Nova and cut left. Sometimes that was on partially iced side-street so the tackles were real doozies (when you didn’t make it out to grass in time).

AND whoops I’ve passed it on to my progeny, but had a field-sized yard beside the house...so street-games were strictly of their own musement and I never saw it.

It’s also a fact that I reserve the right to defend your right to sustain the things that you enjoy, Pete, just as well as glad to hear your side of the story. In fact it’s my duty as an American. You know, like in the song: Stranger