Ridgewood Bags

Long before it appeared that every school boy and girl was wearing a backpack to school, we were carrying our Ridgewood Bags at our sides. These were usually purchased at one of the two sporting goods stores in town, Perdue's or Bernard's.

We filled these bags with school books, gym shorts, gym shirts, and socks. What's more, they were only carried by guys. I don't remember what the girls used for their books, unless they held to that wonderfully, old-fashioned idea that the boys should carry their books. I know this happened because I remember doing it.

We starting carrying Ridgewood Bags to Junior High School because GW was much further away than Willard, and usually was a bus or car ride. The same was true for RHS, which was even further away for us folks who went to Willard.

The Ridgewood Bag was a rite of passage, in our small-world mindset. I think that it meant that one felt confident enough to go along with the crowd. It was much the same as the Varsity Jacket that guys wore in High School when they became a Letterman in a sport.

While I bought into the Ridgewood Bag I never purchased a Varsity Jacket, and I was a 3 Letterman in High School. The Varsity Jackets were more for the Football, Soccer, Basketball, Wrestling, and Baseball guys. I ran Cross Country and Track. The only Track guy I remember having a Varsity Jacket was my pal Kurt, and he was a 3 Letterman for his entire High School career. There were others who had purchased a Varsity Jacket, though for the most part, they had purchased the jacket while earning a letter in some other sport.

The pure Track guys were usually low-key, especially that select few who did nothing else but run. It's not that we didn't admire and respect the Varsity Jacket because we did. As I recall we were probably thinking more about the weather, and how to stay warm during our Track practices in sub-freezing weather and torrential rains. The Soccer and Football guys practiced in the rain and endured the same heat we did, but they never practiced in January at Veteran's Field, and had to wear long underwear, hats, gloves. I am sure they would have done it if Coach Sweeney or Coach Bennett had asked, but they were never called upon to endure these elements. Maybe this gave them more time to contemplate the aura which surrounded the sports in which they participated. These were the same guys who dressed in ties on the day of games, and were urged on by Cheerleaders who wore their uniforms to school to remind us that there were Football and Soccer games about to be played.

For those of us who participated in Cross Country races and Track Meets the necktie was optional, and the Cheerleaders never showed. This was fine with us because we all knew that Cross Country races and Track Meets did not lend themselves to the sort of excitement which the Cheerleaders produced. This all made for a different mindset among the Track guys. For the most part we knew that nobody was going to urge us on during our events, except our closest friends and family. It's not that it wasn't important to us. We just understood the world as it was. We knew all too well that our events paled in comparison to the Saturday crowds with hotdog vendors which the Football team had behind them.

We Track guys reveled in our individualism and enjoyed those quiet satisfactions which came with a turkey sandwich from the deli near Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx. We raced in all kinds of weather and lived to tell about it, as the cliche goes. If you had seen us run the Eastern States Championship race in 1976 in a monsoon, you would understand what we endured that day at Van Cortlandt, and how we had fun in our own special way despite everything.