The Rolla Boys™-Chapter 8-B

Football played a significant role in my childhood between the ages of about 9 and 15. I acquired my first "genuine leather" football for Christmas in 1969. It was an official Ted Williams signature brand and it came from our local Sears Catalog store, located on Kings Highway-now a Chevrolet dealership. Ted Williams was a baseball player, but in the 60's Sears and Roebuck paid Ted for the use of his name and apparently put it on all of their sporting goods related merchandise until celebrities like Martha Stewart and Oprah Winfrey came along. I'm not an expert on Sears, but my Mom worked there for about 25 years, so and I recall a fair amount of related details.
I received a football helmet that same Christmas which also came from Sears. It was white with double red stripes running front to back down the center of the helmet. I was the only kid in our neighborhood with a helmet and the other kids sometimes complained if I wore it during one of our frequent games in Jim Ballentine's back yard. Apparently, it put them at a competitive disadvantage if I wasn't as concerned as they were about running head first into one of Mrs. Ballentine's 2 cast iron clothes line poles. My Ted Williams football, however, was a huge hit. I couldn't begin to count the number of touchdowns scored with that football-probably a thousand or more.
Before the Christmas of 1969, we played neighborhood ball with Ballentine's Voit football, made from extra hard industrial strength synthetic rubber. Jim's Mom was a gym teacher at the high school and his Dad was the Vice Principal as well as a former coach. As a result, they always had plenty of sporting equipment laying around. I don't know for sure where they got that darn football, but when Big Jim wound up and whacked you in the head with it at point blank range, you didn't forget it!
When we were kids, my little brother Mark and I used to play in the side yard at our Uncle Pat and Aunt Katherine's house in Jefferson City. I was 4 years older and a lot bigger at the time, so I'd play on my knees to make it more fair.
Unlike most towns today where kids start playing full contact football as soon as they can walk, we didn't have tackle football in Rolla until the 7th grade. We did have intramural flag football that pitted the 3 primary local elementary schools against each other in interscholastic competition (I heard about other ancillary elementary schools in Rolla like Eugene Field and Benton, but no one I knew attended either of these schools or even knew for sure whether or not the schools actually existed).
There were 2 flag football leagues-5th grade and 6th grade. We played several games each Fall at Green Acres Park, located just down from the main cemetary and across the street from the Delano gas station.
As a side note, the Delano gas station was owned and operated by the oldest set of twins I'd ever came across while growing up. These 2 guys were probably in their mid 30's at the time I started driving. I'd stop in every few days to put 5 or 6 bucks worth of gas in my car at their self service pump-a relatively new idea in 1975. I don't know what I thought became of twins when they grew up, but apparently I thought they stopped looking like each other. These guys didn't stop.
At the end of the elementary football season, the championship games were played at the high school under the lights There was a 5th grade boys championship and the 6th grade boys championship (girls were not allowed to play organized football in the 70's and boys were not allowed to play with dolls-unless of course the dolls were GI Joe or Johnny West and you didn't get caught playing with one past the 3rd grade or so).
Aside from a few basketball tournament title games, the only championship game I was ever personally a part of, was the "Rolla Elementary School 6th grade Intramural Flag Football Championship of 1971". As a young kid I'd watched several high school football games sitting under the lights at Lions Memorial Field and dreaming of some day myself being out there. I'll never forget the feeling of running out under those lights in front of my Mom and Dad, brothers, a small handful of class mates, and the parents of some of my friends. From the perspective of a 12 year old small town kid, I felt like The Rolla Boys and I were on a big time stage that night. I'm confident Johnny Unitas couldn't have felt much differently when he ran out onto the field at the Orange Bowl in Super Bowl V of that same year.
As if things could possibly get any better for me that night, I caught a long touchdown pass in the second half from our quarterback Randy Warrenton (it's my understanding that Randy still holds a tie with my brother Larry for being the biggest kid in history to graduate from Fort Wyman Elementary). Randy could throw the ball a mile as well as run like the wind. He probably could have just ran the ball himself and scored on every other play, but taking his Que from Broadway Joe "Willy" Namoth of the New York Jets, he knew there was more glamour in throwing the ball than in running it. As a result, he threw the ball a big part of the time. This wasn't good for our running backs Beaver Moses and Rick Milner, but they caught their fair share of passes as I recall.
I caught the ball on the run over my shoulder and when I looked down field I saw only one kid between me and the end zone. I'll never forget the look on his face as he focussed all his attention on the two red flags flapping in the wind from the belt around my waist. He was wearing gloves and a stocking cap and as I tried to run around him, he fell down on his knees and reached out with both hands, grabbing at my flags. It felt like he pulled both of them loose but I didn't hear Coach Wilson or Coach Whitick blow their whistle, so I kept running. When I hit the end zone and realized both of my flags were in tact, I couldn't believe it. I had actually scored a touch down in the Championship game, and it was an awesome feeling. I recall running back to the guys and jumping around giving each other "5's" (not high 5's as the high 5 wouldn't be invented for several more years-just the original old horizontal 5) and it was wonderful! It was the coolest thing to happen to me personally in my budding sports career.
The score went back and forth the entire game and late in the 4th quarter we found ourselves down by less than a touchdown (we didn't kick field goals in Rolla grade school football, so each extra point attempt was either a run or a pass).
It was a classic ending. We had the ball on about their 15 yard line, with just enough time on the clock for one final play. Randy of course called a pass-the classic "Everyone out", which in our play book meant everyone except the center and maybe the guards went out for a pass. The open man that night wound up being my old buddy, Larry Hodgey. Randy yelled out the predictable, "Down, set, hut" and we all took off running in the basic direction he told us to while we were in the huddle. I was covered and apparently so were Beaver, Rick, David and Shorty Harris. As I ran around on the left side of the end zone trying in vain to get open, I looked over and saw Larry standing there in the middle of the end zone absolutely wide open. Randy rared back and let fly with one of the sweetest spirals I'd ever seen him throw. The ball sailed threw the air as if on a rope. The perfect pass from my old buddy Randy, hit the sure handed Hodgey right in the middle of his chest. Oh the sweet, sweet feel of victory. How the Wyman girls would swoon and fawn the next day at school (and maybe even a few Mark Twain girls the next time we went to a show at 'The Uptown Theater'). I would probably have my choice between "going with" the famous Carrie Milner or the fabulous Vicki Volts. We'd be league champions of the Rolla Elementary grid iron. All those days playing football down on 'The Field' were now finally paying off. But these visions of granduer would prove to be premature. Randy's perfect pass hit Larry in the middle of his chest. As he attempted to wrap the ball up in his 11 year old arms, it bounced threw his hands and fell slowly but surly to the ground immediately at his feet.
The whislte blew, the other team started their championship celebration and poor Larry stood there, dejected and stairing at the dead ball laying on the end zone turf immediately at his feet. We just walked off the field, without fan fair and without saying anything. The first loss of our final season of elementary school flag football began to sink in.
It would'nt be the last time we'd taste the agony of defeat in an interscholastic event. But up to that moment, it was the most gut wrenching loss any of us had experienced in sports competition.
The Rolla Boys went through a character building experience that evening, and we all lived to tell about it. I wonder how many of my old buddies remember our championship game, on that fall evening of 1971? I don't think I'll ever forget it!