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Six-Man Football at Christoval High
I moved to Christoval in 1956 as my father had decided to join his older
brother Pate in running the only blacksmith shop in town. It was the
summer before my freshman year in high school and I spent the summer
tearing up the streets in my homebuilt three-wheeled motor scooter.
(Think of a 45-mile-per-hour golf cart on steroids.) Christoval had
football fever after coming off the very successful season which
graduated future NFL star Jack Pardee only that spring.
As I got
to know the others who would become my classmates, there was no question
but that I would go out for the football team, with a high likelihood of
making it even with my beginner's skill level. The sophomore class,
including Doug Roberts, Jack Skinner, and Butch Kirk, and the upper
class, with Earl Calhoun, Carl Shannon (who would later save my life at
the old tree swing on the river), Curtis Vaughn, Wayne Soloman, and
Clyde Wilkerson, would work as hard to teach me six-man football as did
Coach Harold McGehee. We had brand-new uniforms and brand-new helmets
for game day but of course still practiced with the old leather-style
headgear. I wore number 57 and the coach worked hard to improve my
skills so I could at least get a few minutes of play even in that first
game.
We practiced football every afternoon at the field in the
park between the South Concho river and the Toe Nail Trail. I remember
our first game was at home in the afternoon against the Miles Bulldogs.
It was so hot that I commented to our coach they should air-condition
those uniforms. He laughed and said I would be wanting a coat before the
season was over--and I did, and we had them to stay warm on the
sidelines on those cold November nights at Sterling City or Robert Lee.
Our season was unexceptional, as our opponents were out for revenge from the
preceding year, and our team was heartbroken at falling from the
pinnacle. We had great fun anyway, working hard all week at practice,
then taking the school bus to some small West Texas town for a game,
then afterwards to Zetner's Steak House in San Angelo for dinner.
Lettering in three sports at Christoval meant you won not just a letter
but a letter jacket. I played basketball with the same lack of skill as
I played football and in the same year in which Andrews High School was
setting world high school track records my five-minute-ten-second mile
was unremarkable. My letter and letter jacket were awarded that spring
at a sports award banquet by none other than that recent graduate and
football hero, Jack Pardee. He had yet to earn his statewide or national
fame so to me at the time he was just the excellent football guy who
graduated the year before.
Also on our team in 1956 were Artis
Cansler, Charles Kolb, Tom Clay, Freddie Gauntt, and Eugene Gibson. I
lived in Christoval through my graduation in May of 1960. We never
reattained the athletic successes of 1955. By 1959 we were playing
eight-man football but my class had shrunk to only three guys and I was
the only one going out for the team. Very remarkable to me was that no
matter how skilled my teammates were and no matter how klutzy I was,
whether in football or in basketball, the guys made me feel like I was a
teammate and they were glad I was there. Christoval was a great place to
come of age.
Our school was small and our classes were small; I
never remember having more than twelve in a class. The teachers seemed
interested in our success, even offering some classes with only two or
three students if there was interest. I feel fortunate to have been able
to study not just normal classes but honors physics, honors chemistry,
and even solid trigonometry in high school. Today when young men or
women graduate well from a big-city high school it is not uncommon for
them to enter college with some advanced placement credits. It was very
exceptional in 1960, yet I was able to enter Texas Tech with sixteen
credits.
I had a part-time job with Doug Roberts at Gene Hale's
brand-new Gulf station on the main street. We sold purple Gulf Crest gas
to those who could afford the high-performance engines. However messy
and hot the job was, we were on main street and we knew everything that
was going on in town.
In my sophomore year, I traded the
three-wheeled scooter for a 1952 Hillman Minx, a British four-door sedan
of about the same horsepower. My classmates celebrated my driving it to
school the same way they had celebrated my driving the scooter to
school: they picked it up and set it over the two-foot rock fence in
front of the school, necessitating my driving out through the creek on
the north side of campus.
An elderly Dutch lady with her two
grown daughters ran a small grocery store on the north side of town. It
was said that in the garage next to the store was still sitting the 1939
limousine--used only once--which she and her husband had bought in New
York City when they landed after escaping from Hitler's Germany. All us
guys dreamed of seeing it or even buying it, but it remained an elusive
phantom.
One other interesting thing I remember was a mysterious
old lady who lived down by the river who was said to be the former
sweetheart of the famous train robber Black Jack Ketchum. She would
still come into the post office wearing a gun on her hip even in the
late 1950s.
Doug Boone
Plano, Texas
Published:
November 14,
2005
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