Reminiscing
.
As I continue to age, sometimes I wonder how long I will be able to remember some of the things lurking back there in my brain. When I reminisce a little, I feel the need to write it down so those memories won’t be lost forever if Alzheimer’s moves in on me. Here are a couple of memories that popped up this week.
.
Reminiscing
Flag Football
When I was 14 years old living on Stark Street in Phillips, Texas, many times in early September before school started back again, the neighborhood boys would meet up at Philtex Plant Office for a fall flag football game. The Philtex Office was about two blocks from our house and had a well kept front lawn with thick green Bermuda grass about 50 yards long and 30 yards wide which made it perfect for flag football. A kid named Charlie always played with us and his dad was the superintendent of Philtex Plant so they never ran us off. Our games lasted for about three hours in the afternoons and we were pretty good, so the games were fun to watch. All of the windows on the front side of the office were full of employees watching and cheering for us instead of doing their jobs, but they always let us play as long as we wanted without bothering us. This may have been their way of promoting good will in the community for all the nasty smells that were always being released in the air by the plant.
This kid is making an all out effort to grab the flag as he goes down. The flags we used weren’t as fancy as the new ones shown in the picture. We used flags made from an old sheet about 2 inches wide by 12 inches long. One time Rocky tied the flag to his jock strap under his shorts and the opposing team pulled off his shorts, jock strap and all leaving him standing there on Philtex’s lawn raw naked below the waist. All the guys watching in the windows cheered him.
The Light Stanchion
At the Blackhawk Football stadium (Chesty Walker Stadium) in Phillips, Texas, the light stanchions were mounted on structures that looked a little like oil derricks, but they were taller and were made out of eight inch steel pipe instead of structural steel. There was one light stanchion that stood very near the food and drink stands on the south end of the main bleachers. One Friday night at the football game when I was about 11, I was standing by the metal cotton candy stand and I stretched my arm out and could barely touch one of the support poles on the light stanchion. When I made contact with the support, it shocked the crap out of me, so something was obliviously not grounded properly. Well, we were going to have some fun with this tonight. Every time someone we knew came by, I would say “I bet you can’t touch the support pole and the cotton candy building at the same time.” We would stand back and watch as they got the crap shocked out of them. We had fun with this about an hour until one of the guys that got shocked double dog dared me to climb to the top of the light stanchion. Well, I couldn’t pass up a double dog dare, so up I went. As soon as I got started up, the kid went and found the sherif and told him there was a guy climbing the light stanchion. When I got down, the sherif was waiting for me and I had to listen to his lecture about the dangers of climbing light stanchions and he called my parents, so I got it from them too. This kid named Phillip had put me through the ringer for that one little shock. Some times paybacks are hell.
This arial view of Phillips Schools and the Blackhawk’s Football Stadium shows the light stanchion I climbed that night which I have labeled in blue. The gravel parking lot just behind the stadium is the one we cut backwards doughnuts in that old Studebaker floor boarded in reverse for about 15 minutes so many years ago.
Thanks for reading Reminiscing,
Bill