2021
Football in Chelmsford d av i d p e r r y
A
nd so it begins. The first white SUV pulled up on the grass behind the backstop at the Parker Middle School field. Football is here in Chelmsford. It is a sunny 83 degrees at 6:35 p.m., and there are more than 100 kids on the field, which slopes lazily from home plate along Crooked Spring up to Graniteville Road, where other trucks and SUVs are pulled off the road and onto the grass. This is football, sport of flatbeds. No parking lot can contain them. If there are rules for others, fine. Parents, mostly moms, are clustered aside the field in folding chairs, protected by visors. Daughters run in gaggles around the action, surveying it without noticing a bit. The dads mostly stand in little circles, talking football. Hands on hips, legs open as if they will sprint at any moment. One of them is always twirling a whistle in a circle, like a cop on a beat once did. Another one inevitably holds a clipboard. Every one of them wears a cap. From somewhere, a whistle blows at five-second intervals. Nothing on the field seems to be happening in five-second intervals. This is just the order of things, an ambient annoyance. The kids, in helmets, run. It is not clear if there is a specific pattern, just around, and they have already devised coping mechanisms. “Slow down, slow down,” says one, lagging in the sweating pack of what look to be middle-schoolers, far from their coach. There are packs of them, presumably teams. Another pack gathers in the corner nearest the beacon of butterfat, Sully’s, kneeling. “You RUN ON MY FIELD,” barks a coach. “NO WALKING!” They approach—running now—a tall man with a kind face. “How we doing boys?” He is the head coach. Toot! You always loved baseball. The subtleties. The leather, the wood, the way you could make a curveball break. You love the time it took, the thing everyone else hates. You did some of your best work on a baseball diamond, and some of your worst. Football was something your dad leaned in and said, “Hey, just give it a try.” Easy for him. Star quarterback. Went to UC Berkeley to play after a couple years at J.C. No one really knows or said much about it, but you have a photo somewhere of him, one of those official team pictures, of him in a “Cal” uniform, hair perfect. 156
The Lowell Review
