Dad's Football Uniform

  I have one other sports set that was my dad's. This is his high school football uniform- most of it anyway. Again, like the baseball uniform from yesterday, this is 98 years old. Here are the pants. Oddly enough, I remember Dad wearing these to work in the garden because the knees were padded. But I guess he didn't wear them out- no holes. Maybe he decided that he didn't want to wear them out.

The mice did not get into this!

There are two surviving pieces of undergarments that went with it. There is a sort of jerkin-like top, and undershorts. Both lace up the front. The pants and undershorts are both made of canvas.

I do not have any kind of jersey that would have had an "I" or other logo on it. And these clothes do not have a manufacturer tag. However... how cool is this? I have the shoes.

You might be interested in seeing the thigh pads. These tie inside the pants. They are quilted cotton, like ancient Chinese armor! It seems to me they don't have enough places where they are secured. I think a player would have had trouble keeping them in place! But maybe they were to be worn inside those brown shorts.

I do not know what position he played. However, he was tall and very thin, so probably not one of the backs!

In other news: It was a beautiful day, and I should have walked. But somehow other things just filled the whole day. I did another tub of cement in the well pit and did some cleaning up. Now the cement just needs to set up for me to finish this fall's jobs down there. The temps in the 40s is not great for that, but hopefully, it will be ok in a few days. I have suddenly been hired for quite a few editing jobs, one of them a rush, so I'm spending quite a bit of time on that. And then there is my other project... having fun... may reveal it soon.

See Dad's Baseball Uniform

Dad's Baseball Uniform

  One of the things I re-homed in this great sorting project of the last few weeks was my father's high school baseball uniform. He graduated in 1922, so this is 98 years old. I was very, very unhappy to discover that the mice had been in it. I carefully washed everything, but it has holes it did not previously have. This is the warm-weather uniform- cotton pants and top. The socks are in rough shape- the mice really used them for the potty room, but I gently washed them multiple times until the water finally came clear.

There are wool pants, and a wool jersey undershirt too. I don't know if there was a wool shirt, or if the undershirt was just worn under the other one.

The uniform included underwear. They are plain cotton with a button fly. The back has a lacing to adjust the waist, taking the place of elastic. Actually, I think that would be comfortable. Elastic itches.

Everything was made by Treman, King & Co. of Ithaca, New York. Athletic Outfitters. They were still in business in the 1930s, and I found one article that said the building eventually became Montgomery Wards. The building is a big square half block in downtown Ithaca, and is now on the National Register of Historic Places.

And you can see the "I" on the front of the shirt for Interlaken, the hometown. It seems subtle, but maybe that was the style at the time. Or, there was a different piece of fabric for the "I" that has completely disappeared and the color difference is showing the original color of the uniform. We have no pictures to give us a clue.

Dad was a big baseball fan. In fact, he played in the minor leagues in the late 1920s. For a Rochester, NY team. I am not sure of the team name. He played 3rd base, and the story is that he was told he'd never make it in the majors because he was too lightweight. He was six feet tall and weighed 135 pounds.

You've seen it before, but this is a picture of Dad, Ray F. Leary, from about the time he would have been wearing the uniform, although this might be from his college years. Still- fairly close.

In other news: I did a lot, but you'd never know it. I didn't get to sleep last night till 4 am, so the morning was a waste. But I did do some editing for other people, wrote a pathetic 254 words- but at least it was progress, did the next to the last tub of cement for this year in the well pit (I was hoping to finish, but although it was above 40 degrees, the cement doesn't set up very fast), and I did a lot on the big project I've been hinting at. Not ready to 'fess up yet, though. You'll have to wait. Paid some bills, made phone calls, blah, blah...

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Couldn't Put it Down

 
There aren't too many books I read any more that I find compelling. I still love to read, but now that I'm "really" a writer, I've also become a critic. That has it's drawbacks.

After I finished the previous blog post, I thought I'd read myself to sleep with the book by Judy Updike, Broken for His Glory. Ha! Stayed up most of the night reading and then had to go to work half asleep in the morning. As soon as I got home from work, did I take a nap? Heck, no. I finished that book.


To be truthful, I'm a little too close to the story to be totally objective. Judy and I grew up in the same church. I remember the folds of land at her farm, the roads and houses. I know most of the people in the book. That said, these events happened after my mom died in 1995, and I haven't been back to that village more than a couple of times since then.

Judy's uncle Harlan was our pastor until I was 10. He had a dry sense of humor that I was just beginning to appreciate at that age, but he was always gentle and caring. Her aunt Rachael filled many roles (as pastor's wives often did) but I remember her most clearly as the leader of Junior Church. Thinking back from an adult perspective, I've realized what a gift she had, because the church was small and all the kids from preschool to 5th or 6th grade were thrown together for about 40 minutes. She handled them all with skill, and learning occurred despite the huge age range.

This picture was in 1958, the year they left our church.



They later came back to the area and were good friends with my mother in retirement years. Here they are again in 1983.


I'm sorry that I don't have any pictures of Judy's parents. Her dad was quiet and probably avoided pictures (at least at church), but her mom, Dorothy, was a Sunday School teacher, and VBS teacher. She taught 5th grade SS for so long that it was just a given that you had Mrs. Updike in 5th grade.

Judy was ahead of me in school. But we both played field hockey. Even though this was long before Title IX, because New York required physical education, there were at least some interscholastic sports for girls. That doesn't mean we got any respect. Haha. I just went through all the yearbooks from my highschool years, and the best field hockey (any girls' sport) got was an unlabeled snapshot or two. I loved field hockey. I called it blood and guts for girls.



But Judy loved it more. She went on to play in college, and then she became a phys ed teacher and field hockey coach.

As I said in the previous blog post, we weren't close friends. I suspect we were both too busy being shy and trying to figure out where small, extremely independent girls fit into the world back then. But I apparently worked up the courage to ask her to sign my yearbook. I was such an outlier on the fringes of the social world that it was a major accomplishment for me to make such a request. I was always afraid people would say "no," (some did) or write something unkind.

I haven't seen Judy since around 1965. But Facebook is great for some things, and we've reconnected. As it turns out, as adults we've enjoyed a lot of the same kinds of activities.



Anyway, enough of the reminiscing. My familiarity with the people and places may be the reason I found the book so compelling. Nevertheless, this is a book that is sure to resonate with anyone who has found themselves at the end of their physical and emotional strength while caring for the needs of people they love. Beginning with a critical and eventually fatal injury of her oldest brother, through the deaths of her uncle, mother, father and aunt, over only 17 months, Judy shares honestly how these events took her to the end of her own strength. Her faith was tested in ways she never expected. Yet God always upheld her. She learned that the roller coaster of emotions is a separate "thing" from faith- not everyone gets that.

Her smile? Pictures I see of Judy now show an even bigger one than back then. Mine too, I hope. God is good.

If this stage of life is heavy on your heart, or looming in your near future, I highly recommend Broken for His Glory. It can be ordered from Higher Ground Productions, 771 Turk Hill Road, Fairport, NY 14450

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Highland Games

 
I promised you pictures of the Highland Games from Saturday, so I'll produce them tonight. And there are too many pictures, but it needs them all to give you a sense of even the three events we saw.

We watched parts of the stone shot put, the light weight for distance toss, and the caber (log) toss.

Here's the correct form for holding the stone.



I was delighted to see there was also a women's division! I think they used the same stones as the men for this event. As you can see, Americans wear compression shorts under their kilts (so did the guys).



This fellow came in either first or second. It was hard to keep track of the announcements, but both threw over 40 feet! Having always been a Yul Brenner fan, I liked his style (smirk).



We were there for the beginning of the light weight for distance toss, so got to hear the explanation. A Scottish "stone" is actually 14 pounds, and these weights are 4 stone, or 56 pounds. That's for the "real" men. The masters (over 50) get to throw 3 stone, or 42 pounds. The women throw 1 stone. The weights are fastened to a chain because the originals were used as balance weights for bags of grain, and the sport probably began by some guy saying, "I can throw that farther than you can." You can see the weight on a chain in his right hand.



They moved much farther away from the audience for this event! Here's another guy on his way around. They do 1 1/4 turns before releasing the weight.



After another concert, we came back and saw part of the caber toss. Again, the women's logs were lighter, but we didn't catch the beginning, so don't know the actual weights. In either case, it took two people to carry the logs to the contestant and get them set up for the lifting.



The idea was to lift, get it balanced slightly in front of you, run with it, then heave-ho! It's supposed to flip over, so the end you were holding ends up farther away than the top end. This guy got his to flip correctly. You can see he had a good angle, which gave him good momentum. This was right at the end of the run, just as he was beginning to flip the log.



And the girls got in the act too! This gal was "older" and smaller than the others, but she did herself proud. There's no doubt she has muscles of iron. But none of the women were able to flip the log. I'll tell you a secret. I only saw one man (the one above) do it either. I think there is a LOT of technique in this event, as well as brute strength. And being tall helps too.



How do you like the expression on the other guy's face?

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