Bills coach Joe Brady watches as Josh Allen is about to score the first touchdown at the new Highmark Stadium against the Detroit Lions in the stadium’s first game on Thursday night, September 17, 2026. Photo by Chris Carosa
For as long as I can remember, my brother and I wanted to go to a Buffalo Bills game. We couldn’t go. It was to
o expensive.
My parents went once during the Bills’ AFL Championship season. We couldn’t go. It was just for adults. We stayed home with the babysitter, my great great aunt (that’s not a typo, she was my grandmother’s aunt).
Every week, we’d listen to the game on the radio. Those were the days of “blackouts.” Back then, local television often couldn’t show the games. So the radio was the only choice. My father, my brother, and I. No matter where we were.
We’d listen in the car on a radio that had only the AM band. We’d listen in the spare room on a radio embedded in the Show and Tell. My mother would serve the three of us little sandwiches to make the event a special family event. We’d listen outside on a portable radio while my father laid bricks for a raised flower bed at my great aunt’s house (that would be my mother’s aunt).
I remember that last one. The Bills beat the Jets. It was 1968. That was their only win that season. But they beat the eventual Super Bowl champs.
What I don’t remember is when we first asked our father if we could go to a game.
“Someday,” he promised. “When you boys are older.”
My brother and I wondered when we’d be older.
Then, one day in early 1973, my father finally sprang the question on us. “Boys, do you want Continue Reading “Destiny Is Calling Me”
The Last Manila Folder
Doesn’t matter. Every year around this time, I start filing away manila folders. It generally begins in mid-September, with the last one archived by the first week of October.
What’s in these mysterious folders?
A very small slice of my life.
Small.
But intense.
For, though the time may seem short, the mileage isn’t. And, if there’s one thing you have to remember, it’s not about the time, it’s about the mileage.
Now, here’s the misleading thing: this collection of folded manila card stock doesn’t even tell Continue Reading “The Last Manila Folder”