Date: Fri 05-Dec-1997

Publication: Bee

Author: KIMH

Quick Words:

Hand-Football-Column

Full Text:

Kim Harmon/Column - Hand Of Madison

B Y K IM J. H ARMON

MADISON - For a little while there at the Dolly Madison Inn & Restaurant, we

were just three guys sitting at the bar, having a beer and a smoke, and eating

some free hors d'oeuvres.

For a little while there, almost like enemy spies perhaps, we watched and

observed and tried to get a little feel for this shoreline town of some 16,000

souls because, in only an hour or so, Newtown High School and Hand High School

would be clashing just down the road in the semi-finals of the CIAC Class L

football playoffs.

For a little while there, everything was okay. Our cover was working fine. No

one suspected a thing. We had another beer, another smoke, and ate some more

chicken fingers, lasagna, kielbasa and potato rounds.

Then one of our own broke ranks. Opened up. Started asking a lot of questions.

Before too long, it was clearly known (heck, we admitted it) that we were from

Newtown.

There to watch a football game.

There to - hopefully - watch Newtown beat Hand.

We were the enemy.

Although we were taken away in shackles or anything, dropped over a rack and

tortured until we told all our secrets, but we did invite a rather uninspired

boo from one woman and got the stink-eye from a fellow sitting about six feet

away from us.

After that, though - after they found out we were from the enemy camp -

everything was cool. Whatever topics were floating around the little pub now

seemed to switch to football . . . at least in our little corner of the place.

Not everyone was a football fan.

Not everyone was going to the game.

But everyone did have something to say.

Oh, the conversations shifted from time to time - from football to cigars to

property values to living on the Sound. But it always, even if for a few

seconds, drifted back to football.

The game.

The weather.

The guy who gave us the stink-eye was a football fan - a Hand football fan. He

heard stuff about Newtown and questioned us - obliquely, it seemed, as if he

were cleverly extracting secrets from us that he would later pass on to the

coach - but all in all it was his tone or manner that led us to feel were

being dissed in a condescending way and instead of knuckling this guy up, we

just stopped talking to him.

The couple next to us (we never found out what she did, but he was a paver for

Tilcon and did so much work here in Newtown that he even managed to run over

Director of Public Works Fred Hurley with his truck) were cool. Just talkin'

back and forth - a little of this a little of that.

About 40 minutes before the game, the Dolly Madison was besieged by more

football fans . . . Newtown football fans, as it were, and the whole thing

seemed to turn into some kind of tailgate party.

About 6:10 we were ready for the game, thinking that we were sufficiently

anesthetized, so maybe we wouldn't feel the bitter cold.

And so we left the Dolly Madison - the enemy camp - with few repercussions,

knowing that the pure thread of high school football and the enormity of a

state playoff game had made us a couple new friends somewhere else in the

world.