|
|
|
|
|
|
Resources |
|
|
|
Back to Bethlehem: Tell it Again, Dad
| Article
# : |
15434 |
|
|
Section : |
LIFE
|
| Issue
Date : |
12 / 1989 |
2,778 Words |
| Author
: |
Bradley D. Ross
Bradley D. Ross is a free-lance writer residing in Sherman
Oaks, California. |
"When we were kids, we were so poor that … When we were kids, our neighborhood was so tough that … When we were kids, we walked miles though the snow to get to school, and it was so cold that …" For thirty years I listened patiently, but skeptically, to my father's tall tales of his hometown. At each retelling, Dad's old neighborhood grew colder, tougher, and poorer. This year I decided to call his bluff. We would take a surprise trip back to Dad's hometown--a town I had never seen and a town Dad hadn't visited in forty years.
My father was born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, north of Philadelphia. He moved to Los Angeles when he was fourteen years old. The youngest of three children, he grew up on the doorstep of Lehigh University. Although Lehigh was known for engineering and not football, my father's stories always recalled those ever-so-cold autumn afternoons when the Lehigh Engineers played their dreaded rivals, the Lafayette Leopards. Of course, my father was "too poor" to afford a ticket to the big game. Instead, he would stand "in the cold" outside the looming wooden stadium gates. Hearing only the roar of the crowd, he and his friends would take turns squinting at the game through the jagged cracks in the wood. Finally, two minutes before the end of each game, the ticket attendants would open the gates for the crowd to depart, and my dad and his friends would flood in, racing to catch a last-second glimpse of the field and players.
Although he never attended Lehigh as a student, he surely adopted the school as his own. Later, as we sat in front of the television each week in Los Angeles watching college football games, he would always wait anxiously for the Lehigh score. His yells of approval or dismay could be heard all the
... (1999 of 15184 Characters)
Read Full Article
|
|
