Ye olde football
At first it just looked like every other pile that periodically appears just inside our backdoor. A closer look revealed shoulder pads secured inside a red practice jersey. A helmet protruded through the neck opening. I was certain other practice gear was neatly compacted inside this impromptu carrying case. I smiled because it was exactly the fashion in which we packed our football equipment back when before tossing it into the belly of a yellow hound and leaving for an away game.
At first it just looked like every other pile that periodically appears just inside our backdoor. A closer look revealed shoulder pads secured inside a red practice jersey. A helmet protruded through the neck opening. I was certain other practice gear was neatly compacted inside this impromptu carrying case. I smiled because it was exactly the fashion in which we packed our football equipment back when before tossing it into the belly of a yellow hound and leaving for an away game.
Almost 200 years ago a French Journalist, Jean-Baptiste Karr famously penned, “ The more things change, the more they stay the same.” He was correct both then and now. I looked at the pile created near our backdoor by Dason, my eighth-grade great-grandson. I pondered the eighth grade. I remember the eighth grade. The fall of 1950. A long ago. In Stigler there was no middle school football, football didn’t begin until the freshman year.
By the eighth grade, I was sweeping out my grandfather’s store each evening and washing the windows with a squeegee, brush and a pail of water each morning. I’d wave and exchange words with Jim Franks who was cleaning the windows at Dr. Head’s Pharmacy. Over the years, Jim and I would laugh about the advantages of nepotism.
1950 was a fine year to be a football fan and a 14-year-old boy in Stigler, Okla. The Stigler Panthers of 1950 were excellent. There were Tom Williams and Robert Hickman, a couple of Army veterans who were granted eligibility through their 21st year. They were not unique. It seemed over the next few seasons every team had a few returning veterans.
There was some doubt about the 1950 team after the departure of the Wiggington twins, Harper and Henry, the two Paul W’s – Wise and Wyers – and stellar running back Bobby Beene.
The word quickly spread around town that Tom and Robert were organizing early practices. I was curious. I went to the Dust Bowl – the trendy name for a practice field that had no grass remaining – to see for myself.
I sat on the rare blades of grass that bordered the ever-widening grassless practice area. After their “practices,” they would pile into the back of pickup trucks, race to the “new pits” and a cold-water swim.
The Williams (Tom and his brother Goob), J.W. Loudermilk, Donald Duke, John Bunyard, Charlie Coppage, Robert Hickman, Dean Garland and Sears Gabbard.
The Panthers were District champions, and made a deep advance in the playoffs. 10-1-1 as I recall. Now I wonder just how much winning had to do with it. I had great boyhood heroes who never won a championship. They ran businesses. They won a war.
There is no bad season to be an eighth-grade boy.
I dream of painting and then I paint my dream. – Vincent Van Gogh
Hal McBride writes a column, Just Thinkin’, published each week.
