My age shows on the gridiron.

Byline: Bob Welch / The Register-Guard

AND SO BEGINS the nostalgic season, the Thanksgiving-to-New Year's season, reminding us that if time flies, we're all earning zillions of frequent flier miles.

For me, the passing-time theme has already come home for the holidays in a photograph. I took it of my wife and two sons on a Thanksgiving morning 15 years ago, after our traditional two-on-two Turkey Bowl football game.

My younger son, then 4, is awash in the agony of defeat; tears streak his face as if he's been stung by bees. My then-7-year-old towers next to him, arms crossed, face smug: the Victorious Older Brother. My wife comforts her youngest with a mother's compassion.

Me? I'm safely behind the camera, being the guy who probably dropped the would-be game-winning pass that turned the tyke into emotional jelly.

We all have our touchstones of the season, benchmarks that remind us that, for better or worse, we're growing older. Turkey Bowl football games are among mine.

I am to Thanksgiving football games what the swallows are to Capistrano; rain or hard rain (the only two Oregon options), I've played in them for nearly four decades, the games as integral to my Thanksgiving as turkey or relatives.

In fact, my life - like geologic time - can be divided into four Turkey Bowl eras: the Youth Era, the Macho Era, the Family Era and the Pathetic Era.

The Youth Era meant two-generational street football - games that pitted us fleet-footed whippersnappers against fortysomething has-beens. My father always played in wingtips. His passes fluttered like wounded ducks. But I'll say this: He got out there every year and gave it his best shot.

Next came the Macho Era, in which we home-from-college kids, now steeped in intellectualism, distanced ourselves from the Oppression of Family and played our own muddy games.

BEFORE I KNEW it, the Family Era arrived; I had kids of my own and on Thanksgiving - living in Huskyland, far from home - the four of us continued the yearly tradition.

My fondest memory came after a Seattle TV news station offered to show scores of Turkey Bowl games. Being a benevolent father, I purposely took it easy on my sons so they would win. And there it was on the 6 o'clock KIRO sports news: Ryan & Jason 35, Mom & Dad 28. (Hey, I wasn't going to allow a wipeout.)

After moving to Eugene, I was playing opposite Ryan, then 12, in our church's annual Turkey Bowl when I nailed him with a beautiful crack-back block. He writhed in pain, the actual realness of which has been disputed each Thanksgiving since.

"He clipped me, he clipped me!" he screamed in his alleged anguish.

Players on both teams looked at him with wounded-puppy eyes, then turned to me as if I'd just robbed a Salvation Army Santa. (It was a clean block, I swear.)

The years passed. Times changed. I began showing up for games still nursing pulled muscles that I'd re-injured the previous year.

Suddenly, I was the receiver the quarterback would throw to only if the other 15 receivers (our church has big games) were covered. I was the fortysomething has-been, the comedy act slipping around in tennis shoes while fearless teens in football shoes zigged and zagged. When covering me, my sons purposely took it easy on me.

The Pathetic Era had arrived.

Last year, I realized that I was the oldest guy on the field - by nearly 10 years. My youth was, in Paul Simon-esque terms, slip-sliding away. Maybe it was time to hang up the mud-tinged tennies and spend Thanksgiving morning watching the Macy's parade, not falling face down in the mud.

Then came the e-mail last week that forced my decision. It was from a friend my age who I'd played against in the Macho Era, a guy who could zip a wet, cold Turkey Bowl football like nobody I've ever seen.

"I went out and threw the ball with my son the other day," he wrote, "and for the very first time since I was 13 years old, I did not feel like I could throw that thing with a spiral, velocity and accuracy. Very hard to accept this getting-older stuff."

Though simple, it touched something deep inside me. I realized the time had come. Time to do the only thing I could do, given the circumstances:

I bought a pair of football cleats.

I don't expect to keep up with the fleet-footed whippersnappers today, but it's Thanksgiving. No time to be sliding into remorse, lamenting that we're not what we once were; time, instead, to be thankful for what we are - and still might be.

Like the guy in the wingtips, it's time to get out there and give it our best shot.

Bob Welch can be reached by phone at 338-2354 or by e-mail at [e-mail].