Press Boxes and Peckerwoods

“Greenberg, I had to show them how to put the pads on.” Coach Paul Hudson’s voice betrayed his disappointment and disgust. He transmitted this information to me in his annual mid-August phone call, the one that notified me summer was coming to an end, and another fall high school football season was about to get underway. I was the cameraman for the football team, and was paid an extra 25 bucks or so (on top of my teacher’s salary) for each game I filmed with the 8 mm. movie camera that had been issued to me, and had to be manually wound up every minute or two to keep it running. Coach Hudson had been a fullback for Woody Hayes’s Ohio State Buckeyes in the mid 1960’s, and he did his best to produce a tough, disciplined squad at Linden-McKinley High School in Columbus, but he was handicapped by the lack of a community youth league that would have introduced players to the game at an early age, and a general dispiritedness and alienation common to many inner city schools.

Nevertheless, once I received the phone call, I readied myself for another season of climbing atop stadium press boxes, and filming games in whatever weather conditions prevailed on a given Friday night. The first task I faced was getting up on the roof. This was the only way filming was done in city schools during the 1970’s – ‘80’s. Some schools had a ladder that led from the press box to the roof. Others presented more of a challenge. One required me to place my foot on top of a chain link fence and leap on to the roof. I was fortunate to be able to execute that maneuver several times without ending up on the disabled list.

The second requirement was to make room for yourself and your equipment (camera, tripod, film packs). When the opposing team’s cameramen arrived first, Coach Hudson would become concerned that we were going to be denied a good filming vantage point. “See those peckerwoods up there? Don’t let them take up all the space.” When it became crowded on the roof, I learned to dispense with the tripod and hand-hold the camera. I could be more mobile that way and cover more ground. I never learned if the coaching staff appreciated this new cinema-verite film style.

Balmy evenings in late August gradually gave way to chilly ones in October and the cold of November. Rain was not uncommon, although I don’t remember having to put up with snow. Occasionally, we played an away game at a school that had an enclosed press box area reserved for the cameramen. Such was the case at Zanesville High School where they even supplied us with a complimentary hot dog and drink. Perhaps this was to compensate for being humiliated when the Zanesville High School band, 80 strong, took the field at half time. For a moment, I thought I may have accidentally wandered into a local university stadium. They made our 25-member, ragtag outfit look pitiful, but Linden’s band director Sidney McLaurin soldiered on admirably, refusing to concede the obvious, that he was outgunned. In any case, we were not embarrassed during the game. True, we lost, but the score was 21-17. We were very competitive despite the fact that the Zanesville squad outnumbered ours as badly as their band did. How did Linden manage to come close to beating such a behemoth? Simple, it was 1977.

The vicissitudes of laboring at Linden ceased that year. In 1977, the Panthers won the city football title, and the state track & field and basketball championships. A small group of very talented track athletes who won enough running and hurdling events to lead Linden the track & field glory also took the football team to the city championship game against Eastmoor High School which was led by Keith Griffin, Archie’s younger brother. The game was played in Franklin County Stadium (now Cooper Stadium), home of the Columbus Clippers AAA baseball team, and the victory made school history. Vindication! Celebration! A year to remember! And three days off from school – one for each championship.

But dynasties are for storybooks. Two years later, court-ordered racial desegregation ended the neighborhood school concept. Flight to the suburbs increased. Additional well-intentioned but questionable changes were played out in the schools, and by 1983 I had moved on to a different occupation.

Paul Hudson is no longer with us, but some things do not change. I would not be surprised to learn that Linden’s current cameraman received a call recently from the football coach informing him that the kids, many of them Somali and Ethiopian, don’t know how to put the pads on.