New Year's meant Rose Bowl, Arena Bowl

Ted Escobar The Royal Register Editor

by Royal Register Editor & Ted Escobar
| January 2, 2013 5:00 AM

If you're like most people, you're really tired on New Year's Day, or maybe even hung over.

I'm not. As usual, I slept through the party. Which is in keeping with my father's old admonition: "New Year's is just another day."

It's also in keeping with my nerdy ways.

I was not a party boy as a teenager. I blended into the walls like taping compound.

My celebration was on New Year's morning, from the time I was 12 to the time I was 24. My brothers and I and about a dozen boys from around town had a football game.

We started at 8 or 9 in the morning so we'd be done in time for the Rose Bowl on TV.

This was not touch. This was real football made better by fresh snow and freezing temperatures.

The score mattered, but not as much as the perfect hit, one that would send you sliding and spinning across the gridiron.

"Great hit," even the player in the snow would say.

It was the Escobar boys - four of us - and our friends who introduced arena football to the world. We played the game in at horse riding club that bordered on our property.

We were fortunate it was winter. The horse droppings were either frozen as hard as rocks or covered in snow.

In summer we had to take some chances playing baseball or golf. The ball usually didn't finish as white as it started.

We played football on other days, if work didn't get in the way. But the big game was on New Year's Day. Our preparations drove mom crazy.

We never had more than just enough money to get by. We couldn't afford gloves. So, to protect our hands, we used socks, layers of them.

Mom tried to stop us, but we persisted until she gave in, usually after the third layer.

"Well don't leave the socks out there. Make sure you bring them back in," was about the last thing mom would say.

We'd all grin at mom and tell her not to worry, fully intending to bring all of the socks back. But after we warmed up and needed better grips, we'd start shedding socks.

We'd go back to the house with as many socks as we could find in that mixture of snow, dirt and horse stuff. Mom never counted. So she never knew how many were missing.

We'd find the rest of the socks after the snow melted and baseball season started.