December 26, 2000 — Growing up in the small northern Pennsylvania town of Bloomsburg, there were often times when I couldn’t wait to leave. I wanted to get out.
Well, I’m out. I’ve been out for several years. And now there aren’t many things I look forward to more than my infrequent trips back home.
It’s nice to have a place to call home. A place that, regardless of the duration of your absences, seems immune to change. A place like Bloomsburg.
Sure, there are always subtle changes, things that merit a second glance or a scratch of the chin.
And some of the changes are for the better. Like the Columbia Mall now has a Gap. That’s good, and a pretty big deal in these parts.
But other changes are bad, very bad. Like Hess’ Tavern got rid of its bumper pool table. That just plain stinks.
A Yuengling Lager will soothe the pain, however. Or a Berrigan’s sub, some Sal’s pizza or Middleswarth bar-b-que chips. These things will never change.
It’s the simple pleasures — constants — that make home home, and they are many: haircuts at Terry’s, breakfast at the Texas Lunch, pool at the Paddock, shuffleboard at the Little Dutch Inn … and tackle football at the Turkey Bowl.
It all started in the late 1980s. A group of high school buddies got together to play some football. Little did they know that more than a decade later they’d still be playing.
A small, grassy park conveniently lit by a crooked street light beside Brian Glanz’s West Main Street home was the original playing field. It was the Yankee Stadium of backyard football, complete with monuments and shrubs to dodge. An errant pass was liable to end up floating in Fishing Creek.
Glanzy League football, as the games soon became known, lasted until 1992, when the majority of the regular players graduated from Bloomsburg High School and headed off to college or the real world.
But for some reason (perhaps a subconscious attempt to maintain some sort of stability to their suddenly changing lives) the Glanzy Leaguers didn’t let the games end there. Each year, no matter what, they would get together on Thanksgiving Day and play tackle football — just like they did when they were growing up.
Thus, the Turkey Bowl was born.
And for the first eight years, nothing stopped the Turkey Bowl. Not rain. Not snow. Not ice. Not even, um, a late night out on Turkey Bowl eve.
Sure, there have been changes. No longer are the games played on the original field. Rosters — and players — have grown too much for that small pitch. For several years the game was played at the high school near the Susquehanna River. Then Old Athletic Park was the field of choice, until the YMCA fenced it in and erected a macadam jungle gym in what used to be the west end zone.
And there have been roster changes, as well — several of them. Players come, players go. That’s life. Faces change, but the game lives on, largely due to the insistence of four of the guys that got the whole Turkey Bowl thing started back in 1992: Glanz, Justin Gage, Brian Laidacker and me.
Last year’s Turkey Bowl was 12 players strong. Not a bad showing. But there were some key figures missing. No Glanz. No Gage.
It seemed so simple when we planned it all out at the age of 18. Every Thanksgiving we would play, no matter what. Things happen, however. People move to Georgia and Montana. People get serious girlfriends, who turn into fiancées and wives.
Life at 26 was not quite as simple as it was at 18. Could family be more important than football?
Well, no. Football is family, we realized. And last December, the Turkey Bowl evolved into the Christmas Bowl — and the turnout was larger than ever.
You need to cultivate the constants in your life. You need to protect them.
So on Sunday, Christmas Eve, 16 Bloomsburg boys layered up and hunkered down in six inches of snow at the Town Park. Time for Christmas Bowl 2000. Temperatures didn’t leave the 20s, but for the first time ever, spectators outnumbered players. One of the mothers suggested we serve hot chocolate next year.
The game has taken on a life of its own. There is much hype and build-up — certainly more than the level of play on the field calls for. I now receive holiday cards that read “Good luck in the Christmas Bowl” and nothing else. A friend of mine encountered a similar greeting from a stranger on the Main Street. Bloomsburg is a very small town.
We have a cameraman, a statistician, even a Web site. There are pre-Christmas Bowl parties for socializing and strategizing, and post-Christmas Bowl parties for reliving and recovering.
Last year the MVP was awarded a frozen turkey. (I had to take it back, though. Seems mom needed it for the next day’s dinner.) This year the MVP got a custom-made T-shirt. (He got to keep that.)
The game itself was an ugly grudge match, a defensive struggle. The snow played a bigger role than any one player. But, rest assured, the Turkey/Christmas Bowl has survived its share of ugly games over the years.
There was a winner. There was a loser. But more importantly, there was a game, and the promise of another.
So I sit here — somewhat sore — typing on my mom’s computer in the home of my childhood, and all is well.
It’s Christmas Day, my stomach is full of turkey … and there are only 364 days until Christmas Bowl 2001.
