Is this a real life, or just a fantasy?

 For 10 cents I'm on the way to Boston Garden. Winter 1959, I am 16 and on the way to watch the Bruins. Maybe a hockey match will break out...old joke. The NHL has 6 teams. There is no such thing as international play, except Canada. No masks, no visors and virtually no high sticks either. Hockey was a self policed game, break the unwritten rules and you pay. These cards are of players I paid to see. Bruins were just about to bust out, in other words the savior was only 14...Bobbie Orr. I saw him as well, plus all the greats of that 10 to 20 period. There were no lines at the turnstiles. Off the T, up the stairs, buy a ticket ($4.50) and in. Upgrading your ticket involved moving to the best available empty seat. No corporate boxes, nothing fancy. Hockey one step from the pond.

There are many obvious differences between what I've just described and today. The one single thing that nags me the most is that no 16 year would be allowed to hop on the T and do what I did then, even if cost and availability permitted. The prevalence of fear and paranoia today prevents that. Guess that I'm enjoying my youth more now than when I was young. If you could, you went and did things. You did them again if they were fun and didn't if not... an unstructured part of learning and maturing. My way.
 I look at these cards and return to the old Garden. These were real people, not fantasy players, not figments of a teenage or old age imagination. They played, they fought and they mostly lost. But it was real.