Established
in 1937
Bob's Corner
This was the week that El Jefe thought about relating his recently rewatching the 1951 movie, “The Thing,” sort-of starring Marshal Dillon; I mean, James Arness, as the vegetable critter from another plant; I mean, planet, possibly bent on conquering the Earth so that his fellow veggies could drink our blood.
The first time I saw the movie, in the Linda Theater in San Diego, I was probably 7 or 8 years old. No one knew that I was near-sighted, so I didn’t become “four-eyes” until I was in the sixth-grade. Which means that I actually saw little of the movie, although I remember getting a migraine headache trying to. So “rewatching” it last week in a colorized version was like seeing it for the first time.
But that’s not what I planned to talk about this week. A co-worker showed me an article in a national magazine about high school football memories. The article stirred some of my own recollections, and those are what I really want to inflict on you this time.
On one occasion, we were in the team bus at a public school waiting for a gate to be unlocked. We were good ol’ RC boys being taught by Augustinian priests. Under direction of the team captain, we began reciting the rosary, while public school students walked by on either side of our bus, staring in. The team captain got miffed, and right in the middle of our praying, he unleashed a rather harsh expletive at those staring in. I thought it was somewhat inappropriate, but being only a linebacker and guard I was outranked by the captain, who was our quarterback. I still remember the startled looks on the faces of those kids walking by.
During one practice on a hot San Diego afternoon, we were doing one-on-one drills where a coach would toss a ball at one of two of us maniacs, who would then gallop and try to smash past the other guy, who did his best to crème his opponent. I was matched with one guy who my dad would have called “a big bruiser.” I was 165 pounds and rather muscular at the time (brag-brag). We collided like two planets, and we both saw stars. As we “came to” after the smash, the coach said, with an evil smirk, “Good contact feels great, right?!” We both moaned in agreement. But it was just for show.
Playing high school football was mostly fun, except for the practices and losing most of our games. Also, we didn’t always have the best equipment, but we managed. Except for one 52-0 loss against San Diego High at our homecoming. That was awful. It was so typical of a small, private school playing public schools that had more students in one class than we had in our whole school. And the San Diego High Cavers were tough.
There are lots of other football war stories I could tell, but after thinking about them and the gruesome details -- swearing while reciting the rosary notwithstanding -- I think I should have stuck to “The Thing.”
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