Thanksgiving eve burning of the "S" in Sparrows Point

A young person growing up in Sparrows Point looked forward to rites of passage. For some it was to cheer the Pointers at the big Thanksgiving Day football game at Penwood Park. For others it was to compete in that game after months of strenuous training. Still others spent their childhood dreaming of a time when they would wander on foot through the streets of town, in the dead of night, in bitter November cold. (This in a town where bars were prohibited.) More to the point, there were those of us young people who aspired to play in the Sparrows Point High School band, to learn music from the brilliant and charismatic director, Emil Rusinko, and one day to march in the annual Thanksgiving Eve parade through the streets of Sparrows Point. 

Sparrows Point was a town of walking scale. Wherever you lived, you walked to elementary school or high school (or junior high school). My family walked from home at 7th and F street to church at 5th and D streets. People walked from their houses to the shops on D street. It was not uncommon for us to walk our dog past the Main Office and on into the Bungalows. Yet the thought of walking through the whole town, through the Bungalows, all the way over to 5th street, the length of D street, up 9th street to the baseball field, was daunting. But it was not just a long walk on a winter's night. It was a march. It was a parade. It was Emil Rusinko walking beside us in the shadows, bouying us with his spirit. We were all in it together, friends, schoolmates and family. 

When we assembled for the parade on Penwood road in the Bungalows, it was already dark and cold. As the football players and band members milled around waiting for some leader to organize a parade, we asked ourselves before it began if it was over yet. We band members didn't memorize our music. We read from small sheets attached to our instruments by brackets. In those days the streetlights were dim and widely spaced, so there would be infrequent opportunity to actually see our music sheets were it not for the fire truck which followed behind us. Whenever the band began to play, the fire truck driver would switch on his big spotlight, washing the band in light. It wasn't a perfect scheme, but we could see our music much of the time. The spotlight produced another effect which made us wish we could play music continuously. The great beacon produced heat as well as light. Whenever the fireman switched on the spotlight, our backs and heads were instantly warmed. Thus all the while we marched to drum cadence in darkness, our fervent hope was for the the drum major to raise his baton and blow his whistle for the band to play, so that the spotlight would ignite again.

The parade's destination was the baseball field across from the fire house where a large podium had been set up. Disguised as it was in bright crepe paper and posters, one could gladly disbelieve that the podium was in fact an orange flatbed trailer from the steel mill, permanently tinged with Sparrows Point red dirt. Behind the podium was a towering framework suspending a twenty-foot tall letter 'S' high in the air. "S" to signify the home team, the home town, Sparrows Point. The parade quickly dispersed upon arriving at the ball field. The football players piled onto the podium. There were speeches and cheers interesting to those who aspired to such things. After all the speeches had been said, the speakers went silent, the lights were extinguished, the crowd hushed, and a fireman set fire to the lower end of the giant "S". The flame crept along the "S", rightward, upward, leftward, upward and rightward again until the entire letter "S" was aflame. The community clapped and cheered the burning "S" in the sky as the flames flickered in the wind. A light smoke drifted into the night. Another Thanksgiving eve burning of the "S" had come, another rite of passage. For some it was braving, and surviving, the long march through town. For others it was tomorrow's football game. Each young person met their own rites of passage growing up in Sparrows Point. Decades later we look back, each down our own path, each path leading back to the little town of furnaces and red-hot steel, the burning "S" of Sparrows Point.

When the cheers and flames had receeded, when awe of the glowing "S" no longer overpowered the numbness of feet, we walked to our homes, to the warmth and light of Thanksgiving eve. The holiday season had begun.