Life in the Ville by Jimmy Del Ponte

We’re all a little bummed out that the Pats’ season ended on a low note. But when I was a kid we had nothing like all the excitement the Patriots have given us over the past 20 years.

Growing up in the 60’s we tossed a football around the yard after school. We had no Super Bowl runs, and the most thrills we got from football were the pickup games out in the middle of the street.

The Boston Patriots, as they were known back then, played their games at various venues. They held games at BU’s Nickerson Field, Fenway Park, and Harvard Stadium, eventually moving games to Schaefer Stadium and finally Gillette.

Back then the big name players weren’t Tom Brady, Tedy Bruschi, and Rob Gronkowski. The stars of the old Boston Patriots were Babe Parilla, Nick Buonoconti, and Gino Cappelleti (Pisans!). As I said, we never had anything that even slightly resembled the incredible run of our modern day Patriots or other Boston teams. The closest we came was collecting bottle caps. Huh?

In the early 1960’s the Coca Cola company sponsored a promotion involving bottle caps. About 35 Patriots players’ likenesses were on the inside of Coke bottle caps. If you saved the entire set, pasted them on the official collector’s sheet and turned it in you’d get a real leather football. Pretty sweet deal.

So how did my friends and I gather these special Patriots bottle caps? Well. we couldn’t very well drink 35 bottles of Coke! But we could have all our aunts, uncles, cousins and friends (who weren’t collecting themselves) save the caps for us.

The secret weapon to retrieving the sacred bottle caps was a magnet on a string. We would drop the magnet into the bottle receptacle and pull out the sticky caps. It was like fishing for gold! I’ll never forget the feeling of excitement we had when we hooked a few treasured Patriots bottle caps.

The completed set of bottle caps, when glued onto the official sheet could be cashed in for a football at the old Coca Cola Bottling Company on Memorial Drive.

We would hit all the local gas stations including Tony Bents, Bowie’s Sunoco, and Tony Grasso’s. My dad would even drive me around to gas stations in Medford, Arlington and Cambridge seeking the valuable Coke bottle caps. Thanks to dad and my magnet on a string I ended up with about four full sets netting me four footballs.

Back in my youth, we had nothing like the string of professional sports championships. I still remember crying when I was 14 and the 1967 Red Sox lost the World Series. Thankfully, our great Boston teams made up for it big time. But I’ll never forget the kick I got when that magnet on a string pulled up a couple of Boston Patriots bottle caps that I needed to complete a set.

The thrill of the hunt, the smell of mucilage glue and a brand new free football was great!

And just for the record, I hope Tom Brady stays here in New England and retires after his seventh Super Bowl win. That would be the perfect way to … cap off a stellar career.