In this fourth column, the year is 1935. We are visiting the Northampton High School football team, who are preparing for their traditional Turkey Day Thanksgiving football game with our good neighbors from Catasauqua. The upcoming game is a welcome respite from the gloomy days of the Depression, which find many of our citizens unemployed.

The Kids have a new young dynamic coach, J. Elwood Ludwig, who became a legend in the Cement Borough, when he coached and shaped probably Northampton’s most famous football team — the 1937 Wonder Team.

Ludwig was a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania. His goal was to rebuild a team with very little previous success on the gridiron.

Since the inception of the annual Thanksgiving Day game, the team only managed two wins and the most points scored in the traditional game were seven.

Coach Ludwig took young green men and instilled confidence in team play.

“We learned to be good losers,” Ludwig said with a grin. “Now we are ready, it’s time to win.”

Ludwig resided in the apartment above Sinatore’s Main Street store in Northampton. Ludwig was a likable man, full of energy. He conveyed this to his players.

Old-timers recalled when the coach had the boys in tip-top condition. They would run down 18th Street when the high school was located at the corner of 18th and Lincoln. They would run down to a wooden fenced in field — Miller Field behind the present-day Roxy theater. The field was owned by Henry A. Miller who owned Miller’s Department Store on Main Street.

Mr. Miller also sponsored semipro football and baseball teams on the field. One of the most famous athletes to play on the field was the great Satchel Page.

Sorry! Now back to football. Many youngsters wanted to see the game, but because of the Depression, they didn’t have money to buy a ticket. They had two options: climb to the top of the boxcar and view the game or dig a hole under the fence in a remote section of the field. Somehow, they saw the game.

This writer’s former teacher, Pete Schneider, played both on offense and defense. He later played for Muhlenberg College and semiprofessional football. He would star on the 1937 Wonder Team.

The Catasauqua football coach was Mr. Secor, and the faculty manager was Mr. Sheckler. The teams that played in 1935 were evenly matched. Like all Thanksgiving contests, it was a hard-fought game. The Konkrete Kids won the game 13-12. When the game was over, both teams gave everything they could on that memorable day.

Soon many of these young men would exchange their football uniforms for the uniforms of the U.S. military in World War II. They took their teamwork and courage to the battlefields of Europe and Asia. The traditional game has been played for more than a century.

In two weeks, we’ll talk about community events in 1935 and the Sunday movies.