Our own frozen tundra: An Adirondack world, far removed
It was the middle of November in 1978 and our whole Inlet gang of kids descended on Fern Park for a Saturday afternoon pick up game of touch football. It took every boy and girl in our little school from fourth grade up to make a game of nine-on-nine.
The sides were chosen up as fairly as we could and we marked the field with our extra clothing, placing jackets, hats, sweatshirts and mittens as goal markers and yard markers for our Adirondack stadium.
The air was filled with millions of tiny falling snowflakes, each disappearing on contact with the wet ground.
The field itself was slippery and added a lot to the game as every child slid and belly flopped while trying to run or handle the ball. Every kid had a chance to get open for a pass, run the ball and count three Mississippi’s.
The game was played without coaches, adults, or even a good set of rules. But for us it was fair and honest and we worked out our own set of fair play rules.
These games always started the same, two teams pitted against each other, concentrating on plays, fighting to win the game.
The passing hours brought laughter and shrieks, tears and exhaustion.
Once the game had devolved sufficiently, a shout to “smeeer the queer,” would go out and the person with the ball would be chased by all, no matter the team tried. Everyone would try to catch the kid and pop the ball free for someone else to pick up and run.
In our world queer simply rhymed with smear, and meant “Get the kid with the ball.”
Nothing hateful or mean was intended, and we were naïve to the word’s meaning in the outside world.
Living in the Adirondacks we had never been to a football game, just watched them on TV.
We were not confronted hate words’ effects and the societal backlash. As kids there were probably some we didn’t like as much as others—but we all seemed kind of the same. So we treated each other in a way that was pure and caring no matter our size, age, grades, or looks. It was like that in our play, in our games, and in our day to day. We were sort of all we had.
I wonder when those kids I played with heard the word “queer” used for the first time in a hateful way.
I’m sure we all made the decision to choose our words more carefully.
It was easy on Fern Park’s Frozen Tundra to just be a kid, clueless about society’s angsts.
Mitch Lee, Adirondack native & storyteller, lives at Inlet. ltmitch3rdny@aol.com
