New Year's Day

This day used to be all about the end of the College Football season. There were bowl games all day and at the end of the day or early the following one we all knew who was the best team in the country, as voted by the sports writers.

Today we have so many tournaments and games I can't keep count and have stopped trying. The bowl game to decide the national champion is being played on January 10th. It's little wonder that I have stopped following college sports entirely as it would take a monumental effort and I have better ways to spend my time.

When we were kids if the weather was mild enough on New Year's Day we might try to imitate the college guys and play a game of our own. Though usually it was tough to gather a gang on New Year's Day and the weather in northern jersey tended to make the football hard as a rock and not much fun to throw or catch.

Truth be known our football season ended with the first blast of prolonged cold weather. This is when we turned our attention to indoor sports like basketball. The YMCA/YWCA on Oak Street had supervised basketball on Saturday and Sunday afternoons so that's where our parents would drop off Bill Barnett, Bill Steen, and myself and pick us up several hours later. It was a good way for us to mix with the kids from the other side of town as the Y was centrally located and attracted a cross section of people from both George Washington Junior High School and Benjamin Franklin Junior High School.
These long names were always shortened to GW and BF.

Today I will be in Ridgewood with my in-laws, exchanging Christmas gifts and renewing old acquaintances with family members we see only at the holidays. Of course, the college bowl games will be on in the background but nobody at this party will have any "skin in the game" as the old saying goes. It's just hard to break the old childhood habits, especially while we are creating new traditions. I like our new tradition of going back to my old hometown and seeing how it has changed. The changes have mostly occurred on the inside of the houses as the town itself still remains a charming place to visit. The biggest difference between now and when I lived there over 30 years ago would be in the tremendous number of ways people have to spend their time. Back in the 1960s and 1970s we had more in common and were distracted less by the wondrous options which are available as a matter of course. No doubt all these alternatives are a good sign and one we should be glad to live amongst. My only concern is for people who have only known plenitude and whether this will make them resistant to the misfortunes which strike all of us at one time or another. In other words, are the houses today filled with a bit of empathy for those less fortunate or are they only safe fortresses which block out all signs of our sometimes harsh existence?  I hope the former is true and will go on believing that until proven otherwise.

Happy New Year! Make a difference where and when you can as we are all in this together.