Coach, Walt Sautter [ereader for android .TXT] 📗

Coach

By: W. Sautter


Copyright Sautter 2010

Preface
The Story
“Coach” takes place in a small, rural town in mid the nineteen fifties. It is the story of the town, the high school football coach and his players.
As was with most small towns of that time, Highburg was its own little world. Everyone knew everyone else and they all knew Coach.
Coach Carter has been at Highburg High for many years and has built a legendary program. His teams never fail to reach the heights of success, year after year. He has molded star players out of farm boys and has sent many on to notable college careers.
The town’s people and his players idolize Coach. The opportunity to have played for Highburg and Coach Carter is savored by all who have done so. To be a football player for Coach is the ambition of every Highburg boy. It is worn as a lifetime mark of honor. It insures respect in the eyes of all.
The Background
The story begins in the nineteen fifty-six. It was a time when World War II was a recent memory for most and the Korean War had just ended. Civil rights were yet to be claimed by American minorities and communications were primitive by today’s standards. Authority figures at all levels stood tall and endured little, if any, questioning, criticism or confrontation.
Television was in its infancy and entered each home as a small, fuzzy black and white picture on huge, unreliable machine. Touch-tone dialing was the latest telephone innovation and mobile phones were nonexistent. Radios were often plagued by static and poor reception. Portable radios were large, heavy and not easily carried in spite of their being sold as “portable” and recording devices were rare. Local communication relied primarily on newspapers and word of mouth. Rumors were relentlessly conveyed, either correctly or incorrectly, over backyard fences or at the town watering holes.
Thus, is the setting of Highburg, its inhabitants and the story of “Coach”.
The Disclaimer
As is the case with most writers, “Coach” incorporates some personal experiences of the author. The characters are all fictional, however many are based on real people. Actions and incidents contained in “Coach” are also fictional, but again frequently based on actual occurrences.
As you read, please remember that the language and biases in the book reflect those of rural, small town America in nineteen the fifties. In no way do they portray the views of the author himself.
Thanks for reading “Coach” and I sincerely hope you enjoy it.

Coach
“Holy shit!” I thought to myself over and over through my deep, labored gulps of air. My lungs and throat were burning as I felt my chest rise and collapse with rapid cadence. My legs ached and I could feel the stream of sweat pour down the small of my back as I ran.
“God damn! It sure wasn’t my fault.
Shit! I sat the bench for the whole fucking game!”
It made no difference. Up and down the field we raced, full speed, in response to the shrieks of Coach’s whistle.
In the background, chanted the spectators who remained, flailing their arms and posing gestures of ridicule as they shouted.
“You losers!”
“You’re a disgrace to everyone in Highburg.”
“My grandmother could have played better!”
Coach stood stoically by the sideline, chewing incessantly on his half lit cigar, and all the while barking commands at us, his defeated players.
We ran and ran. An hour of wind sprints on the victor’s field while our hometown fans continued booing and catcalling from the stands.
How did it all happen?
Well, here’s the story.
Our team had remained unbeaten for years. The streak was legendary in Highburg. It lasted seventy-two straight games.
Today was our first loss in five seasons and through no fault of my own, I had become part it. The date was October tenth, the third game of the season and the first day of deer season. Hunting was a big deal in the rural town of Highburg. During the season, kids regularly brought their shotguns to school and kept them in their lockers so they could go hunting immediately after school. Football players couldn’t; they went directly to practice when the school day ended. As a result most of the team hunted at every other possible opportunity.
Today’s game against Burton High was predicted to be a usual pushover. The only players eager to participate in the game were those on the second team. They thought themselves assured of ample playing time. The score would likely be at least thirty to nothing before the second half and then the JVs would get their turn through the rest of the game.
Well, things didn’t work that way. Exhausted from the morning hunt, our best players arrived at the field house and struggled to even pack their equipment before the ride to the field of the opposing team.
At the conclusion of the game we had endured a stunning thirteen to seven loss!
The anger of the town persisted well into the weeks after our post game torment.
For weeks, the town’s people shunned us. Adults would routinely turn their backs as they passed us on the street. Several of the players received beating from their parents. We had sullied the town and all of its inhabitants! We had stabbed a knife into the heart and spirit of the community.
Let me introduce myself and my friends who are part of my story. My name is John Crane, they call me Beamy. In my day every kid had a nickname and Beamy was mine and I was thankful for it. Some of the names were far from benign and Beamy was certainly not even close to the worst. The source of many was easily discernable, others not so obvious.
It was the fifties and the War was a very recent memory. One day, one of the guys decided that Bart Craig, a friend of mine, who wore heavy black-rimmed glasses and squinted frequently, looked Japanese. His chronic squinting was probably the result of the lens prescription becoming too weak and his parents could not afford new ones. As a result of his supposed oriental look, Bart was dubbed Tojo.
My friend Larry’s overweight brother, Ronnie was named “Lard”, short for “Lard Ass” and Larry himself didn’t escape the nickname curse. He was “Stinky”. Stinky was constantly pulling at the seat of his pants, why I’m not sure but it earned him the title Stinky. In retrospect, Stinky’s family like most, was poor and it was likely he had out grown his underwear thereby giving him constant wedgies. That’s my best guess anyway but in any case he was burdened with “Stinky” throughout his boyhood years. Then too, there was Frankie Albo, a.k.a., “Banana Nose”. I don’t think I need to explain this one.
“Johnny Cromag” was one of the best nicknames. Johnny Freed had a pet crow. It was huge, about the size of a full grown chicken. Everywhere Johnny went he took the crow. The crow had a name but I can’t really remember it.
Well, anyway, Johnny always wore a black leather jacket and carried the crow on his shoulder. He looked great coming at you, tall, slim, shoulders back, the black leather glistening in the sun and the crow perched regally on his left shoulder. As he passed, a less august sight came into view. The back of Johnny’s shiny, black leather jacket was streaked with streams of white crow shit from the shoulder to the waist.
One of the guys was in Latin I. He was the only one of us with the kind of grades that qualified him to take Latin. Of course, he thereby became a Latin scholar in our eyes and who were we to question his authority in the arcane intricacies of that ancient language. So when he told us that “Cromag” was Latin for “big crow shit”, who amongst us could challenge him. None, that was for sure and thus “Johnny Cromag” was born.
Why was I Beamy?
It arose from the time that I walked across the rotted rafters of the old mill down by the river. The mill had long since been abandoned and it was a favorite playground for many of the town’s kids. The outer shell of the building was barely standing and inside, many of the floorboards of the three levels were missing or weakened by age. Below, through the wide gaps, could be seen the racing water which once powered the mill wheel.
Tag was the game of choice at the mill. Many hours were spent climbing from one precarious landing to the next. During one such adventure, while my being “it”, I spied Jackie Strawbridge on the same floor as me with a gap of several missing boards between us.
Impulsively, I ran towards Jackie across a narrow rotted rafter, which separated us. As I reached the other side I heard the sound of the falling timber splashing into the raceway waters thirty feet below.
Every kid in the mill that day froze, looking downward, as the wooden fragments were sweep away by the turbulent rush. All were simultaneously struck with the reality of the dangers the mill possessed. That was the last day we ever played at the old mill and the day I became Beamy.
Well, anyway, I’ve got more of a story to tell. Let me go back to the very beginning.
I was born in the forties, the exact year, well forty-three. My father was elderly, sixty-four, when I arrived. I guess I was his last chance to carry on his DNA although I don’t think he actually realized that was what was happening. DNA hadn’t even been discovered yet! I’m sure it was just primitive biological urges that prevailed.
My mother was over twenty years his junior but certainly not young. She was in her early forties.
The reason that I’m telling you this is to help explain what happened next.
When I was four, my father, much to the dismay of my mother, decided that we would move to our country home to live full time. Let me define “country home”. A two room shack, set off the nearest dirty road by a quarter mile or so, with no electricity, running water or indoor plumbing. Our water source was a spring about fifty yards from the house. I can still see my mother carrying pails of water to the house.
Why this decision was made, I’ll never know but I truly believe it was a sign of the onset of dementia. Why my mother went along with this scheme, again, I’ll never know why. I never asked and she never offered a reason for her cooperation with this absurd plan. I guess, I can only surmise, that in those days women generally did what they were told by their husbands and she acted accordingly.
Well, we moved, lock, stock and barrel to our “country home” and lived as if we were existing in the nineteenth century. We did so for the next for seven years. During this time, we went to a small, nearby town, Highburg, for our weekly shopping. It was always on a Saturday. My mother would go to the food store for the groceries, I would be given twenty cents for the movie matinee and my father would park himself on a bar stool at Tiny’s.
Once the shopping was completed and the movie ended we would all meet at Tiny’s and spend the remain two hours of the afternoon with my father getting loaded while watching professional wrestling on the bar’s small, snowy TV. Then