I had inherited a senior boys team that didn't win a game last year, and my task was cut out for me. However, we had a nice crop of sophomores. I started all sophomores, the tallest being 5' 10”. They worked hard, and we won the first three games. I was the town hero. But that cooled quickly when we started losing one game after another. We won only three more. My senior girls, and my junior teams, were fair. They won enough that all told, the teams won one or two more than they lost, enough for me to proclaim a winning year.
Frank Broyles flung a major insult at me that year, though we had never met. After a particularly bad Razorback practice, he was so mad he told the press, “We looked like St. Paul out there today.” Well, I was the only coach St. Paul had, and as I looked around to see if maybe he was insulting someone else, I didn't see anyone but me.
Barbara wrote me a letter. She said she was in her dorm room, having just walked in after talking a minute to a construction worker outside. Then she interrupted herself with a new post. “You will never believe what just happened! That guy I was talking to just walked right in my room! I couldn't get him to leave! I had to threaten to scream before he finally did leave!” He seemed to have taken her friendly talk as a positive sign, and was there to collect. That letter worried me some. Barbara was always just a little too friendly and chatty to be so pretty! Was I destined to be constantly defending her honor?
Well, as it has turned out, I shouldn't have worried. She was young, still 17, and she quickly learned about such things, and mastered the art of the one line turnoff, when necessary. That sort of thing has never happened again.
We decided to marry during Christmas break. I brought her up in the fall to show her the housing prospects. The first one was right in the middle of downtown, all 3 or 4 buildings of it. It was pretty much a small box. She nixed that quick. For the other one, I drove her way back in the mountains near the Orval Faubus birthplace. No other houses were anywhere around. The only neighbors were in the graveyard across the road. She suddenly got a liking for that cute little box in town.
We got married on Dec. 26, at the Watson Baptist Church. My good college buddy, now the Rev. Jimmy Draper, officiated. My long time roommate was best man. I think every member of Barbara's extended family showed up. I guess its a good thing that only my mother and brother Harry showed up, because Barb's family about filled up the place.
Waiting for the ceremony to start, I glanced out the window, as someone said, to get my last glimpse of freedom. Her Dad Sport and her brother JD were chaining our car to a power pole. Well, needless to say, the rest of 1966 was a busy time, and I focused all my attention on Barbara. We spent our wedding night in Vicksburg, then headed to New Orleans the next day. Arriving close to there late at night, I tried to get directions from a cajun dude at a gas station, I couldn't understand a thing he said, and before we knew it, we were on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. We found a little motel and spent a couple of days there. We never did find New Orleans. Not that we looked real hard for it. Geographical location was not the main focus at the time. That officially ends my story about 1966, I guess, but being long winded as I tend to be in front of a computer, (never in talking or praying) I want to go on while I'm at it and tell you a few more things that happened along about that time period. Please bear with me!
Not long after school started back, we had a surprise visit from a ton of my school kids. I had never heard of a Shivaree, but they were still a custom up in the Ozark mountains .While a few kept us talking, others scattered out and put sand in our bed, relocating everything in the house, and just generally causing Havoc. Some of the guys had the idea of throwing me in the White river, right behind our house, just a rushing little stream there. I explained that I knew there were enough of them to do that, then I patiently explained what would happen to the first one who touched me. Nobody stepped forward to be that person. I managed to bluff them out of that. Like I say, I was never a fighter. But they knew I could run all day, and they just connected that strength to general physical ability, thank goodness. Anyway, a man that can run fast and far, and is not too proud to do it, doesn't need to be a fighter. After I thought they had all gone home, I stepped outside and one of my kids was just finishing up letting the air out of all my tires. He started running, and I knew he was faster than me. So I just set a pace to keep him in sight, and after half a mile or so he collapsed. I hauled him back to my car, and extracted a promise from him to come back the next morning to reinflate my tires. He did. Continued Thanks for reading! Judging from your response to post 50, I guess I should have been a romance writer! But since right now I'm trying to tell you about my life, I'm afraid that would run very thin quickly, as you may have guessed by now!
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