Today, mention the game on the streets here and you’ll likely get a lot of blank stares. And then every conceivable guess from the Patriots-Vikings clash this weekend to one of the longstanding Turkey Day high-school rivalries, like Boston Latin versus Boston English.
Harvard-Yale may no longer rule this roost (though perhaps still the world), but, for the 119th time since the football rivalry began in 1875, the Ivy elites will contest The Game this Saturday. Harvard Stadium is sold out in advance for the first time in years, partly a reflection of two decent football teams, at least by the Ivy League’s shrunken standards. But it is also the first time ever that students have been given free tickets to The Game, as they are for every other home football contest. It is a nice democratic touch, treating the “boola-boolas” as if this fray was no different than those with, say, Cornell or Brown.
But it is very different. Certainly in my heart. Because when I was a kid, The Game was the one time I could count on seeing my grandfather smile. He was a quiet, dignified man, but, above all, a very sad man. I sensed that as a child, but only came to understand it much later. He was something of a rare bird, a turn-of-the-century American-born Jew who, along with his two brothers, went to Harvard. But even rarer, in an era when a Harvard diploma meant certain entree to an exalted world, my grandfather lived the last half of his life in genteel poverty. He was a New York stockbroker when the market crashed in ‘29 and he returned home to Boston defeated. For all time. More than a decade later he still couldn’t afford to send his only child, my mother, to college. Instead, she went to work to help support her parents.
None of this was really discussed in my family except in the broadest terms. I knew my mother stood in bread lines, but this was offered up only as a history lesson on the Depression, certainly not as an indictment of my grandfather. At least with her kids, there wasn’t a hint of complaint or judgment. But there wasn’t all that much information either. While I knew grandpa had won the coveted Latin Prize at Boston Latin, I didn’t even know what he did for a living or where he did it. I gathered it was some kind of clerical job and it seemed to shrink him bit by bit each year. Still, though my grandparents had clearly suffered a crushing descent, it was mostly lost on me. My brother and I thought their fourth-floor walkup was neat, particularly the rickety balcony from where we watched the trains rumble by.
I might never have recognized his lifetime’s sorrow if we hadn’t, from the time I was 7 years old, shared this biennial date to The Game. (I never questioned why we didn’t join the hordes on the trains to New Haven in the alternate years. I suspect he couldn’t afford it.) It provided me with a glimpse of a man I really didn’t know. Once he and I boarded the T–he didn’t own a car–and headed to Harvard Stadium, he was a man transformed. For just that one afternoon, my grandpa was once again a Harvard man–effusive, with a confident “the world is my oyster” stride and a broad smile on his face.
We always arrived early, relishing our entitlement to superb seats. Nothing less for the distinguished class of ‘12, many of whom, like my grandfather, would go off soon after graduation to make the world safe for democracy. My grandfather had remained quite distinguished looking. So I don’t think he stood out in any fashion among the swells in their lush overcoats with silver flasks sticking out of their pockets and their fur-clad ladies beside them. Grandpa always made a point of looking around for his classmate Joe Kennedy. The one time they did talk, Joe-to-Joe, Kennedy seemed quite gracious, even if I was certain he had no recollection of my grandfather. And he nodded–but, of course–when grandpa assured him that I too would one day be a Harvard man.
My memories of those games are hazy (though apparently nowhere near as hazy as those of my pals who went as Harvard students in the late ’60s). I remember some wins, some losses, the riotous Harvard “marching” band and my favorite player, Charlie Ravenel, an undersized and pugnacious quarterback who went on to some prominence in South Carolina politics before being convicted of bank fraud. And I recall my grandfather, uncharacteristically, laughing, cheering and even singing: “Then hit the line for Harvard, for Harvard wins today. We will show the sons of Eli, that the Crimson still holds sway.” Regardless of who held sway, grandpa was so delighted to be immersed in all that glory again that we’d stop on the way home for an ice-cream splurge at Friendly’s.
It absolutely devastated him when I didn’t attend Harvard, though Harvard rejecting me had an awful lot to do with my decision. By the time I departed for college, his mind was slipping into what, back then, we called senility. Neither of us ever went to a Harvard football game again. A few years later, grandpa had to be moved into a V.A. home. My senior year, 1968, was the last Harvard-Yale game for which he was alive–and perhaps the greatest Game of all. Two undefeated teams met in Cambridge, with Harvard rallying for 16 points in the final 42 seconds to gain a 29-29 tie. It was a tie that, recalling my friends’ tales of the frenzied celebration that ensued, was decidedly not like kissing your sister.
I came home the following week for Thanksgiving break and visited grandpa. He no longer recognized me and conversation was very difficult. So I just sat there and told him in great detail and, I’d like to believe, lyrical fashion about The Game. I know he smiled the whole time.
