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

we would pile into the car, a fifty Ford with a shimmy in the front end, and zigzag the ten miles back to the “Lilac Inn”. There was a lilac bush down by the outhouse and so that was my father’s name for our hovel.
I attended the local public school, beginning in first grade. When I say local school I may be exaggerating. It was seven miles away. Each morning, three other children from the nearby farm and I would walk out to the dirty road and board a school bus for the hour journey to the school.
The school itself was as tough a place as was the hick burg that contained it. Two, locally notorious families, their legitimate children and the more prevalent illegitimate offspring populated the town. It was hard to tell which group was dumber or more pugnacious than the other.
Needless to say, school life was a survival experience. Recess was like the yard at Attica. I began to think fighting was a school subject like reading and arithmetic because it occurred as part of the daily routine.
Well, after three years of torn shirts, scrapes and bloody noses it was decided that I give up hand to hand combat and attend parochial school. So, after about three years into my father’s country living experiment, I was transferred from my local school and enrolled in the parochial school at Highburg.
It was here that I first learned about football. Most of the kids in my class were crazy for the game. Most all of them played what they inappropriately called “Midget Football”. To be honest, I never really met any midgets and I guess the true midgets began to protest the term, so today it’s Little League Football.
After two years of the daily ten mile commute to my new school, I think my father became weary of the back and forth shuttle to town and decided that we would give up our ‘back to nature’ existence and move to town.
My parents bought a lot on the edge of town and my father began to build our permanent home there while we lived on Main Street.
We moved into a small, two-room apartment, which was really a converted office space, above a cleaner’s shop. It was cramped quarters to say the least, even tighter than our country house but – it had electricity, indoor plumbing and maybe, maybe TV!
For me it was a dream come true. Electricity, indoor plumbing and even television! I could hardly wait.
Then, it finally happened. I can still remember seeing my first show on “my TV” - Rocky Mariano in a fifteen rounder. I was transfixed in front of the set, staring intently at every black and white pixel of every second. Even the Gillette commercials held me awestruck.
It was during that first few weeks of living in town that I began to really understand my classmate’s fascination with football. I discovered their enthusiasm for the sport to be well justified.
The town itself was football insane. The high school team was revered, as was its coach. Good players, of which there were many, were cast as local deities. The team had earned a litany of successful campaigns, undefeated seasons and state titles.
Several of the boys who had graduated, played for big name colleges and one had even made it to the pros.
“Coach” as he was called had been at the school for twenty-five years and never experienced a losing season, not even close. The loss of even one game was viewed as a catastrophic event by the town folk and rarely did such a catastrophe occur.
Coach ran a tight ship. Both practice sessions and punishments for poor play were the stuff of local lore.
The incident of a star halfback who was disciplined for finding the wrong hole in two successive carries during a practice session was repeated many times over the years. The punishment - “take a lap” - Coach commanded. After forty laps and ten miles, with full equipment in the September heat, the punishment ended. That story was often told and served as a strong deterrent to poor performance.
Coach was the only Physical Education Teacher in the school. During football season and sometimes even after the season, PE, if you were on the team, was comprised of watching game movies in Coach’s office.
Coach’s grading system for PE was simple and unique. Played football, A, played any other sport B, came to class and caused no trouble C, caused any disruption F. There it was, simple and efficient.
It was just like his coaching philosophy, no frills. The game was blocking, tackling and hardnosed play, those were the only things that mattered in achieving success.
In 1953 the town took up a collection and bought Coach a brand new Cadillac. I can still see it in my mind’s eye. Gray with a gray interior, modified fins and the large, tooth-like chrome grille and Coach behind the wheel, cigar clinched tightly, driving up to the field house to begin the day’s practice session.
Well, in any event, this is the environment into which I was cast when I arrived at my first day of football practice as a freshman in September of 1956. I was being given the opportunity to play on the same team as the town’s heroes and I was thrilled to say the least.
It was here that I met a kid with whom I would remain friendly throughout my high school days, Ricky White. Ricky and I and another boy, Bart Craig, a.k.a Tojo, whom I knew from grade school became friends as we toiled our way through the grueling, two sessions practices of the first September days.
The torment was both physical and psychological. After a two-hour period, just when the end was anticipated, Coach always seemed to identify a player who performed poorly or a play that was run incorrectly.
“A team is only as good as its weakest link,” he would announce through the bullhorn, which he carried at each practice. Everyone knew what that meant, practice would be extended for another half hour, at the least.
Stress was even greater for the freshman. The team trainer frequently used a methanol-laden liniment, which smelled and felt like Ben-Gay. It was customary for upper classmen at the beginning of the season, to get to practice early. They would then scoop fingers full of the irritating salve into the jocks of the unsuspecting freshmen before they arrived. The first day of football was made unforgettable for most Highburg freshman! Needless to say, everyday thereafter, each of us was sure to check all our equipment with the utmost of care before donning our uniform.
Five punishing days passed, classes began and football was reduced to single, after school torture affairs. Practice began at two thirty every afternoon, long before school was officially dismissed.
Period eight at Highburg was designated as club period for the entire school and of course we were in the football club thereby allowing for our early release. Eighth period began at two o’clock, providing a half hour to get to the field, dress and be on the practice field by two thirty. Failure to be there at that precise hour was met with series consequences, those being multiple laps or the ‘pit’.
The ‘pit’ as it was notoriously called, was the sawdust filled depression at the far end of the field. It actually was the high jump site for the track team in the spring.
When one was ordered to the ‘pit’ it meant at least an hour of blocking and tackling, generally two on one. The sawdust was invasive. It crept into every nook; cranny and crack bring its rasping irritation to every part of the body, both public and private.
After a drill in the ‘pit’ it felt as if a hair shirt had been covering the body. It must have been how medieval, penitent monks had suffered.
The school itself, small town stuff; it enrolled less than four hundred kids total. Out of the about two hundred boys in the school, seventy-five of them played football. It was more or less a required subject at Highburg High.
The school building was a one hundred year old structure, which housed the town’s grade school on the first floor and the high school on the second. The basement consisted of the gym, cafeteria and boiler room.
Upper level classmates explained the location of the boiler room to us on the very first day. It was right next to the detention room. Detention required those who were to be incarcerated, be assigned to that room during lunch hour or after school. If one was an athlete, it would be during lunch so as not to miss practice.
Unfortunately, the warnings of the upper classmen failed to sink in and that location became well known by myself and most all of my friends throughout our years at H.H.S.
During detention time, silence was to be maintained and only the rhythmic sound of the janitor’s coal shovel was heard as he fed the school’s boiler. There we sat, the heat pouring through the walls from the adjacent room, with sweat dripping while listening to the cadence ticking off the hour of our stay.
Well, anyway, as for football, the days crept forward towards our first game. Then it arrived. To me, it was spectacular. The stands were packed, the band played loudly and the cheerleaders pranced, provocatively about the sidelines as we entered the field. It was the thrill of a lifetime. It was even better than the day in eighth grade, when Nora Simpson let me feel her up in the coat closet. In was grand!
We romped as usual. The score was thirty-five to seven at the half. At the start of the second half the field was a sea of mud. The night before the game the temperature had dropped into the mid twenties and the turf had frozen into a concrete hard surface. Every tackle and every block resulted in bruises and abrasions.
As the day warmed so did the field turning it into a gooey, slimy quagmire. Bruising and scraping was replaced by twisted ankles and wrenched knees.
Coach was not one to run up the score. He always said that he didn’t want to discourage kids on the other teams. He had the ultimate respect for any boy who was willing to play the game on any team. I had seen one game when he purposely sent in the third team on a series of downs so as to let a boy from an opposing team break his school’s scoring record.
At the start of the third quarter he had sent in all of the second team and the score still continued to mount.
The clock ticked down to the final four-minute mark I saw Granger go down. My name was called.
“Crane, in for Granger, forty-eight right on red” Coach barked and waved me onto the field.
I scurried towards the huddle at top speed.
“Okay guys. Granger. Coach said forty-eight right on red” I stammered.
“Jesus Christ, I think he said right” I thought to myself.
In all the excitement I was unsure. All I could do is hope as I ran to the line of scrimmage “Red eighteen, red eighteen! Signals, down, ready, set, hut one, hut two” and the play began. I roared from my starting position straight towards the other skinny fifteen year old on the opposing team. My block was precise, executed just as I had been trained during the four preceding weeks of hell. My man fell to ground as Benny Dragos picked up ten yards.
I walked back to the huddle, relieved that my instructions from Coach had been correct and feeling like Roosevelt Grier on a Sunday afternoon.
As the game concluded we left