Stories from the football front
One of the fun things about my job is the stories I get to hear. I hear some live. Others I get by email. Some I got when I took calls on my radio show.
Not every story makes the paper, but that’s not necessarily because they’re not worthy. They just don’t fit. But this blog offers another option to place a tale that bears telling. R.J. has been an occasional caller to my radio show and also corresponds via email from time to time. Here’s a story he sent me this week:
“It was sometime in the mid 1950s, and I was probably 10 or 11 years old. OU was getting ready to play Texas, and the game was blacked out in Oklahoma but televised in Texas. I lived in Clinton, and my dad, a big football fan, ran a salvage yard south of town. Everyone was disappointed that the game would not be on TV.
“My dad came up with an idea. So we spent Saturday morning building a make-shift 30 foot antenna that we erected outside the shop. We were determined to pick up the signal from Wichita Falls. Well, come game time, our 17” Motorola got a faint and fuzzy picture going. Everyone was pretty excited about it. Word got around town, and before long we had a mix of lawyers, doctors, plumbers, and mechanics crowded around the TV.
“I remember that afternoon and how much fun everyone seemed to be having. It’s kind of like a Norman Rockwell painting etched in my mind. An 11-year-old boy learned some new cuss words that afternoon. The funny thing is, I can’t remember who won the game that day.
“It still amazes how people can come together and forget their troubles for a few hours while watching their favorite team. It’s kind of like the story you told once about your neighbor, whose house burned down before the Texas game. Yet, there he was happy as could be in the Cotton Bowl.”
Good stuff, R.J. And as for my neighbor, that’s a story I told on the radio but I don’t think I’ve shared it in print. So here goes.
2003. A fire struck my neighbor’s house, two doors down. The house wasn’t leveled but was mostly gutted and much was lost, though thankfully no one was hurt. Anyway, the fire hit on Wednesday of OU-Texas week. Saturday, I was at the Cotton Bowl, and that’s the year, remember, the Sooners routed the Longhorns 65-13. Near the end of the game, I went to the Cotton Bowl floor, standing in the end zone, waiting out the final gun. I heard someone call my name. I turned around, and about 10 rows up, my neighbor waved. I went up into the crowd, and all he could talk about was how great was the game.
One of my favorite OU-Texas stories.But not as good as R.J.’s.
-------------Berry Tramel can be heard Monday through Friday from 4:40-5:20 p.m. on The Sports Animal radio network, including AM-640 and FM-98.1. You can e-mail him here and follow him on Twitter @BerryTramel. Visit Berry's website here.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
This entry made me think of the biggest OU fan I ever knew, John Wilcox, who I worked with here in Austin. Into his 60s when I met him, he passed away the week after 65-13. John was the type of guy who would walk the halls of the hospital where he stayed toward the end telling all who would listen about OU. But he wasn’t just talking football — he was RECRUITING! Telling people why they should send their kids/grandkids to school at OU. What a good school and great place it was, in an endearing way that made everyone smile. Never a negative word about other schools. He’d be getting wheeled into surgery, telling the doc what a great med school we have. When I visited him right before 65-13 his heart was failing, and he’d been allowed to go home as there wasn’t much to be done at that point. He couldn’t talk easily anymore; so I just chatted with his wife Jane, talking football while John listened, and letting her tell me how he was doing — how she wished she could get him to eat more, and things like that. He’d gotten pretty thin. It was the last time I saw him. At the viewing at the funeral home, Jane told me that the last thing he’d been really alert for was the Texas game; and as halftime hit of 65-13, Wilcox surprised her when he softly pronounced “fire up the grill!” He celebrated the second half by eating a decent-sized burger as he watched; went to sleep that night, and never really woke back up — passing away a couple of days later. I swear, I think Wilcox just wanted to see that last OU-Texas game before he went. Oklahoma never had a better fan than John Wilcox, and I love those 2003 Sooners who let him go to sleep happy that night.