A guy in Mount Vernon sent this to one of our staff members today. He’d written it for the little paper there in 1998 or so. Here it is raw.
Head today that Meredith suffered from Alzheimer’s. I hadn’t known that.
A Ride to Gray Rock
When it is autumn in Texas, football is in the air both literally and figuratively. Break-time conversations around the office frequently are about football, or some activity related to the game. On any given day many of us visit at least a little bit with our coworkers about what’s going on in high or college football, or maybe even the the professional game; sometimes for us diehards a little of all three is covered in the same conversation.
For me, my thoughts these days are often of my young years when I was privileged to be able to play a little football myself. I grew up in the 1950’s near a small town over in East Texas, where as a high school freshman I was a member of our high school varsity football squad. Now, it was not that I was really good enough or had the size to be playing with the “big boys”, it was just that there were not enough boys in the high school at the time interested in playing football for the school to justify having both junior and senior varsity teams. So, for those high school boys of us who really wanted to play football, this was our only option.
It those days of “one-platoon”, “play both ways” football, the “first string” of our squad consisted of 11 to 15. The “second string” consisted of about the same number, and scrimmaged against the first team most practice days and provided substitutes for individual first team players during games. The rest of us, who were mostly freshmen, were relegated to the sidelines during scrimmages to stand or kneel and pay attention, to shag errant kicked or overthrown footballs, or to run errands to the field house for the coaches.
But, on Thursdays before the Friday night games, it was a different story for us underclassmen. The Thursday workout for the squad usually consisted first of a light, run-through workout, after which the first team was dismissed for the day. Then, us freshmen and other “sub-substitute” players would get in some practice in a “full-pads” contact scrimmage with the second string.
With the “first-string” players off the field during these scrimmages, the coaches could then give their full-attention to us underclassmen. I also recall, that often during these scrimmages some of the first string players would come back out in their street clothes and sit in the stands to watch and yell encouragement, one of those varsity players being the team quarterback. Some of us called the quarterback “Doblin” because he “was such a hoss”. He was only a sophomore at the time, but he was already being talked about for all-district honors. Doblin not only was our offensive quarterback with great ball-handling and passing skills, he also handled all the punting and place kicking. He also ran the defense as a tough linebacker.
A few of the players had cars; that did not include me, but it did include Quarterback Doblin. Doblin’s car was actually what I suppose we called a “jalopy” at the time; a black, 1930’s vintage Chevrolet sedan which for some unknown reason had the finders removed leaving the exposed tires to sling mud, water, rocks and whatever as Doblin and pals often joy rode about town.
Our family lived about three and a half miles out of town in a little community known as “Gray Rock”. Since most of our football practices were not over until well after the regular school bus to Gray rock had left for the day, for me that meant I had to walk or find a ride home on my own. But, on one of those Thursday late afternoons after a particularly grueling football scrimmage when I was trudging out on the edge of town toward home, I heard Doblin’s jalopy coming up behind me. The jalopy coasted up beside me and Doblin yelled above the sound of the puttering engine with his usual flashy grin, “Get in, Poot, I know you are tired after that great scrimmage you just had.’ Well, up to then on my daily walk, I hadn’t thought much about how well I had performed in the scrimmage, but here I was being offered a ride and being paid a compliment on top of that, so I was not about to raise any question. After all, here I was riding along with the team quarterback in his trusty jalopy as he whistled through his front teeth, as he often did in idle time.
On the way home that day, the few things Doblin had to say about our team, our offense and basic football strategy, showed me a whole side of him I had not known before. This guy knew football; every position on both offense and defense. And, he was a leader, both on and off the field. He showed this by giving me a ride home after practice that day as well as many times afterward. And, he must have passed the word to other players on the team to help out with giving rides home for underclassmen players like me who were “afoot”. So, I seldom had to walk all the way home after that.
Doblin later went on to greater acclaim in football. Before he left high school, he was named to all-district and all-State teams in both football and basketball. Then, he went on to greater football acclaim at Southern Methodist University, and the Dallas Cowboys professional team. Lots of people called him “Dandy Don” (Meredith), of Mount Vernon.
(published in the Mount Vernon Optic-Herald newspaper about 1998)
