Change Signals: A Story of the New Football

by Ralph Henry Barbour

The curving path took him past the fronts of Whitson and Oxford and Merle. Below him The Prospect fell away to the green meadows and a half a mile away was the little railroad station of Wissining where he had left the train two days before. Beyond the station lay, a blue ribbon in the afternoon sunlight, the Wissining River, with the town of Greenburg beginning at its further bank. Behind him, over the tops of the trees, lay Long Island Sound, blue and hazy, and dotted with sails and streaked with smoke from distant steamers. Past the Kingdon Gymnasium he went, and then the path descended toward the river, between the tennis courts, and he paused for a minute behind one of the back-stops to watch a game in progress between two white-flanneled youths whose dexterity with racquet and ball made him wonder. At his right, a quarter of a mile away, figures moved over the rolling hillside, now stopping for some mysterious reason and then marching determinedly away again. Kendall had never seen golf played and the movements of the fellows in the distance seemed exceedingly strange. But, for that matter, there was a good deal that was strange to him here at Yardley. And perhaps the strangest thing of all was being here! It still seemed more like a dream than a reality, and he was constantly in fear that he would wake up.

The field was almost empty when he reached it, for it still wanted more than a quarter of an hour to four o’clock, and many of the upper class fellows had three o’clock recitations. But a few boys were scattered around, some on the stands and some, in football regalia, waiting for work. The gridiron had been freshly marked out and the lime lines were dazzlingly white against the grass. Kendall wished there was somebody he might talk to, but so far he had formed no acquaintances beyond those we know of, and to address any of the careless, laughing fellows about him without overtures from them was quite beyond him. So he seated himself in the sun on one of the steps leading into the grand stand and waited. Behind him and about him there were many amused glances and whispered remarks, but Kendall never noticed. On the river a canoe with two boys at the paddles was working slowly against the current toward Flat Island. Beyond the stream a wide expanse of marshland was showing the first signs of autumn, stretches of yellow mingling with the green of rushes and grass. Singly and in groups of two and three the boys, players and onlookers alike, began to appear around the corner of the stand. Then came Dan Vinton in earnest converse with John Payson, the coach. They passed him only a few yards distant and he wondered whether the captain would recognize him. But he didn’t, although his eyes rested idly for a moment on his face as he passed on. Then a little red-haired Irishman appeared with a push-cart which he wheeled to the front of the grand stand amidst facetious greetings from the audience:

“Hello, Andy! how’s the boy?”

“The top o’ the morning to ye, Andy!”

“Well, see who’s here!”

“Andy, I believe your hair’s faded!”

The trainer waved a freckled hand toward the seats and began to unload his cart. There were dozens of gray blankets, a gunny sack full of footballs, nose guards, pails, sponges, a can of water and numerous other treasures. Andy inverted the gunny sack and the footballs came tumbling out and went bobbing about in all directions to be pounced on by eager hands. A whistle blew and order resolved out of chaos. The candidates clustered around the coach and captain, Kendall following the others. He couldn’t hear very well what the coach was saying, since he was quite on the fringe of the crowd, but he caught occasional fragments:

“... Necessary to learn the rudiments of the game ... seem like hard work, but it’s work that pays well in the end.... You can’t build a house without a foundation and you can’t build a football team without.... Men who played last year report to Roeder.... New men stay here.... On the jump, now!”

I don’t intend to weary the reader with a detailed account of Kendall’s experiences that afternoon. They were uninteresting, or would have been save for their novelty. Kendall found himself one of a group of twenty fellows in charge of a quick-spoken, gingery little chap whom he afterwards discovered to be Holmes, the second-choice quarter-back. Now and then Payson made his appearance and looked on for a moment, sometimes dropping criticism or encouragement. The work for the awkward squad consisted wholly in accustoming themselves to the handling of the ball. They passed it about in a big circle, passed it at a walk, passed it at a trot. Then they tried dropping on it as Holmes rolled it along the ground, and finally they were made to catch it on the bound and to pick it up on the run as it dribbled along in front of them. Later they were formed in a line on one of the white marks and taught to start quickly as the quarter snapped the ball back.

It was tiresome work, although Kendall only discovered that when it was all over and he was walking back up the hill, walking alone amongst more than a hundred boys and wistfully wishing that he had someone with whom to talk over the practice. It seemed to Kendall that he was the only boy in school who hadn’t friends or acquaintances. He had been instructed to stop at the gymnasium and have his name entered in the manager’s book. So he followed the crowd through the big oak doors, down a flight of broad steps and into the locker-room. The manager proved to be an harassed-looking youth whom the others addressed as Cowles or Mister Manageer. It seemed the proper thing to do to confuse Cowles as much as possible, and the manager was continually begging mercy.