Girl Games

Adventures in football

Barbara Rose Rust is a Cape Girardeau native writing vignettes about her childhood for her children and grandchildren, considering her growing up was very different from theirs. Extended by popular demand, this is the fourth in a five-part series in which she shares these anecdotes with TBY readers, too.

There were more boys in my neighborhood than girls. Girls were not allowed to play boys’ games unless they agreed beforehand they would play by boys’ rules — some of which were made up on the spot — and if there wasn’t the right number of players to make a team, the girls might be invited to play. No, it was not a sexist society, but unless a girl agreed to play by the boy’s rule, she was not invited to participate, unless you were Avis. Avis was tough as any of the boys, just as big and just as good — in fact, she was better than most and was always picked first when choosing sides.

If a girl was invited to play, it was with the tacit understanding that if she got hurt she had — via being invited to play — promised not to run home to her mother to cry and tattle. If the invitee broke this unwritten rule and the boys got into trouble, the door to playing with the boys was closed forever — well, almost.

This was the era of half-court basketball for girls — it was deemed they were too delicate to play full court. Girls could play softball but not baseball. Girls were to play with dolls, board games, hop scotch and sometimes marbles. Marbles with its many variations was a dusty, dirty game. Girls that played marbles were “tomboys.” They didn’t mind getting dirty. It was played on a spot of bare dirt where the grass had been completely worn off by foot traffic. Such a place was pretty easy to find in August in Cape Girardeau.

One hot summer morning, I went to the park to watch the boys play football among the trees. There was no field, just agreed-upon boundaries — that stump over there is the goal line and the rocks at the other end the same. The sidelines were a couple of Catalpa trees on one side and a picnic table on the other. The space in between was fairly flat, grassy and big enough for six or eight kids to play football. No pads, no helmets. No flag football — it was the real thing. Tackle. Granted, it wasn’t full-blown knock-down football, more like a hug-and-fall-down or a tripped-up-foot-and-fall-down type of football. But there were grass stains on skin and clothes, sometimes scrapes, and once in a while, a skinned knee. You know the kind (we called it a strawberry) where the top skin is just burned off and the pink flesh below waters and stings. Sometimes, we had a few cuts and bruises but nothing a Band-Aid and a swab with MercuroChrome — or if Mom was really concerned, the dreaded iodine — couldn’t take care of.

On this particular day, I was invited to play football. I was a pretty good athlete for my size, and I was not a “tattle tale” or a “cry baby.” However, I was really chosen because these boys were hard up for another player. When I said I would play, at least the sides were equal in number, but not necessarily in skill level.

All was just fine until a long pass flew through the air right into my arms. Grabbing it tight, I ran fast toward the goal line (or stump). Just as I was almost there, an unseen hand barely grabbed my ankle with just enough grip to cause me to fall and skid right into the base of the stump with my right hand — into a broken Coke bottle hidden in the roots.

I got up with a hand deeply cut, dirty and very bloody. The oldest boy named Norris — unusual name, Norris — grabbed me by the wrist and all but flew me over to the round house in the middle of the park where there was a metal container filled with ice and sodas. He grabbed a large chunk of ice, slapped it on the bloody hand and told me to hang onto it. He flew me home, thankfully a short block from the park, and luckily, both of my parents were home. Taking one look at the injury, they bound up the hand in a clean dish towel (ice and all), and off to the hospital we went.

It took a surgeon sometime to clean and suture the injury. My parents were concerned about whether the thumb could still play the piano. It could and did for many years after — but my football career was over.

And Norris? He basked in the light of his good deed. Both kids and parents in the neighborhood commended him for his cool head and quick thinking. He was definitely the hero of the family who lived at 383 North Park.