Tags
Ara Parseghian, campus, college football, Edison Elementary, Football, Good Year, Ironwood Road, Michigan State, New Years Eve, Notre Dame, Snow, South Bend, Sugar Bowl
John Adams 1974 yearbook…
Independence and autonomy sent my parents to South Bend, Indiana from Michigan when I was two years old. They needed to regain the freedom they’d enjoyed as students at Michigan State. Inexplicably, both sets of parents were criticizing their parenting choices, dropping in at all hours, and calling the police if more than a day passed without a phone call. I remember an exciting move to a newly constructed house, on a street full of kids, on the eastern edge of Notre Dame’s campus.
Peachtree Lane pooled in a cul-de-sac toward the wooded campus, but it began on Ironwood Road. This forbidden boundary, a two-lane artery, shrouded in lead exhaust, hosted traffic as steady as a pop-over jump rope. To reach Edison Elementary, we needed to cross it. Taking a detour to the crossing guard crimped our style. With the good toe planted on the edge of the curb, arms raised, eyes scanning right, left, right, left, we’d hear heavy metal bearing down on thick tires. Like the whirling jump rope, we’d wait for our chance. “Go!” We’d span the asphalt, spurred by fear. Every crossing raced my pulse and stabbed my heart. I always breathed a sigh of relief to gain the opposite sidewalk.
Ironwood hugged us to the University. Like a strong-arm, it gathered our senses toward marching bands, referee whistles, crowds roaring, and Good Year blimps hovering. On game days, we lined Ironwood’s sidewalk and rattled newspaper pom-poms, stained in thick blue and gold paint. We sang the Fight Song for laughing, drinking adults hanging out car windows. Frequently, they tossed us extra tickets. We’d hop on our bikes and head for the stadium, not needing to cross.
For ten years, my confidence grew with every crossing while Ara Parseghian led Notre Dame to consecutive wins. On New Year’s Eve, 1973, TVs tuned to the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans. Our team faced Alabama as a football independent. It was a nail-biter. When the victory occurred we headed outside to hear the campus roaring. We met silence instead. Huge fluffy flakes, fresh from Lake Michigan, muffled the winter night. They floated gently as white kaleidoscopes on wool coats, doily patterns on black asphalt, and knitted white rows upon bare branches. We knew our boundary would soon span across town to John Adams High School. We sensed the end of Ara and the beginning of Devine. But, as snowflakes collided in the night and stacked into airy piles around us, we reveled in our own quiet victory of independence and autonomy. We slowly walked the center line of Ironwood Road.
campfirememories 
Initially, I chuckled a the prospect of remembering a football game, particularly one on New Year’s Eve in high school. As usual, your words took me back to a time where I too, was racing across a busy street to avoid that extra block to the crossing guard and when Elaine and I played games with the cars parked on our street on the other side of killer hill. We along with Ellen, would make lists detailing where all the license plates were from and who had travelled the furthest (Nancy, you would have loved this.) No one EVER offered us tickets to the games though! Casually as I read and reflected, I became curious, “could I really remember a football game?” I asked Matt, ” is Alabama known as the Crimson Tide?” Then I knew yes, I did remember a specific football game and New Year’s Eve 1973. It was quite a game and quite an evening. One of the loudest evenings ever spent on White Oak…. our dear family friends shared in the evening and the excitement was powerful. It was soon immortalized in a poem presented to my parents and hung proudly underneath layers of modgepodge in our family room. The poem was titled “Ode to the Crimson Tide.” It was a masterpiece of humor and rhyme that I tried to find at my Mom’s over the weekend with out success… Thanks, Nancy for again bringing back moments in time.
I would love to know that poem! (Thanks for trying.) I really appreciate you validating my memory and adding your rich memories to it, of White Oak and the Woodded Estates. It makes that New Year’s Eve even more alive. Ah, Killer Hill, now that’s another touchstone worthy of a blog post beyond its cameo mention in Memory Lake 😉 Have a Merry Christmas, Beth, and thank you for a wonderful comment.