Coach Kirk Summer 1968 Letter to Beat Dumas

Coach Kirk Summer 1968 Letter to Beat Dumas!

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Bus Trips 

 Bus Trips. High School Bus Trips. High School Sports Male only Bus Trips… dynamite waiting to explode. 30 brawny guys (yes I said brawny), in a confined space of maybe 400 cubic feet spells disaster. 

 I can remember one trip my junior year going to El Paso for football. I sat behind Emmerson Bell and in front of Mike Hammock. I don’t remember who sat next to me. He was our token sophomore and curled up in the fetal position for fear of his life. Mike ate sophomores alive and Emmerson picked the bones. They were two tough hombres. 

The trip to Wichita Falls Rider was the turning point in our senior football season. Sure we had won three games previously but we really hadn’t played anyone very good. Rider if I remember right was good, they were ranked pretty high in the state. The trip there was somber, no horsing around, almost no talking, coaches and everyone really wanted this game. 

The high light of the game for me was Bobby’s quarter back sneak (I didn’t put his last name, you know who I’m talking about). We were on our 40 yard line, 4th down, a yard to go for a first. The game was pretty balanced up to that point. Then Darryl Johnson ran in with the next play and said ‘quarter back sneak’. “Quarter Back Sneak”, what’s that? What do we do? High school teams rarely if ever practice quarter back sneaks, so we really didn’t know exactly what we were going to do. Bobby looked across the huddle at me and said, Doug fire straight ahead, I’ll follow you. We ran up to the line as we usually do and to my amazement there was no defensive nose guard, no one in front of me that could stop us. Bobby immediately called for the ball. I hiked it, we both took off straight forward gaining the yard and more before we encountered opposition. I felt relieved we had made the 1st down, but also felt Bobby’s hand grabbing my shoulder pads behind my neck. He wasn’t satisfied with the first down, he was going for a touch down and using me as a guided missile into any on coming tackler. We raced down field and there was this one last defensive tackler, we approached one another and Bobby forcefully pushed me into him while he jutted the other way, all the way for a touchdown. Yeah! 

You know the game’s going good when the coaches are happy at half time. Coaches never smile unless they’re winning, and we were winning, big time. Coach James, the offensive and defensive line coach came over to me and said “good job Doug, way to take out that tackler for a touch down”. I didn’t tell him Bobby had pushed me. 

 My most memorable trip was to El Paso for baseball my junior year. For some reason the team met at Dick Bivins stadium to board the bus at 5:30am in mid March with a dusting of late snow on the ground. It was an 8 hour trip on a slow bus, with one lunch stop at sandy Santa Rosa NM. We arrived in El Paso around 3pm exhausted from picking at one another the whole trip. It was 62 degrees and sunny so what do we do… we immediately unpacked and went swimming of course. Our game wasn’t until noon the next day. I believe this was the trip where we circled the pool to watch Mason try to splash all the water out. He jumped in the pool and immediately either broke or severely sprang his big toe. He didn’t play the next day, and I think he didn’t play the remainder of the year. 

After the pool party we ate dinner then coach McElduff looked us in the eye and said, you’re free to roam, but stay close and be back at 10pm. Marty Keeler, Johnny Parker and I took off, we spotted some blinking lights across the freeway and headed in that direction. It was hilly, and the freeway had chain linked fences atop each of it’s three meridians. No problem, we dogged the traffic, climbed the fences and arrived somehow unharmed. 

We approached a rickety shopping center with a cinema. At the movie house there were no outside picture advertisements, but there were flashing bulbs stating… “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang”. We had no idea, and could only imagine what this movie was about. We had money, they let us in, piece of cake. Once in the foyer we saw the ad placards, showing Dick Van Dyke and an old car. Johnny being completely disappointed immediately left. Marty hem hawed but I asked him what else have we to do, so he stayed… for a while. 

After about 30 minutes of intro and ads, and maybe 10 minutes into the movie Marty left. There I was frugal as ever, wanting to get my money’s worth. I sat thru the whole show never once looking at my watch. The movie was over, I was completely disappointed, and the clock said 11:15. I knew I was in trouble. I scrambled back across the freeway, ran up to the motel, everything was dark, no sound, but there right in front of me was a fuming coach McElduff. He grabbed my arm, read me the riot act, pranced me up to an empty room, closed the door, continued to shout and asked me where I had been. I told him I was watching “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang”. He went ballistic. He had no idea what the movie was about and only assumed the worst, and was completely bewildered at his wrong assessment of my moral character. He marched out, slamming the door behind him. 

Probably about 30 minutes later there was a commotion. Lights came on, coach ran up the steps. Danny Reynolds had almost asphyxiated when someone squirted shaving cream down his snoring throat. After Danny recuperated and things calmed down a bit, Marty and Johnny reluctantly told coach I was missing. He told them I was locked up for breaking curfew and watching a jeopardizing movie. They laughed and told him it was a Dick Van Dyke family movie. Coach unlocked my door, came in, jokingly smoothed things over and told me to join my compadres. From that point on coach and I enjoyed a special memory. 

 PS – Harry Burrier, if we have a 2030 reunion, your bus trip episode is next 😊 

 Doug Lightfoot 

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