Post 53: Goodbye, Saint Paul!

    Back to St. Paul. The mountains around there are nearly all hardwood, and they look pretty bland in the winter. But when spring comes, they are awesome. The bright fresh leaves! Barb and I roamed the mountains a lot in the spring, going to a new place to picnic regularly.

    We decided not to return to St. Paul, and we moved to Fayetteville. I worked at a factory while looking for a new coaching job.

    The Viet Nam war was raging. I knew if I didn't get a teaching job soon, I would be drafted. Well, if it happens, it happens. The war would probably be over by the time I finished basic training, I reasoned. Little did I know, it would go on for six more years. I applied to Officer Candidate School. If I was going, I preferred to be in the air above it. I did pretty well on my tests, I thought, then I got to the part where you look at a map, then recognize the target from a photo. I was lost as a goose on that part. But, unbelievably, I qualified as a navigator, not a pilot. Me, a navigator? Get real. I decided to take my chances with the draft.

    Well, the draft struck. I loaded Barb and all our stuff up and headed for Watson. She would stay there for the duration. We stopped at Pine Bluff and spent the night with her sister, Sugar, on the way. Somehow, the superintendent at Fayetteville traced me down, and called me there. He asked me if I wanted to coach at Woodland Junior High. I explained I had been drafted and was now on my way to the induction station. He asked if he could check about a deferment. With no real hopes of that happening, I said “Sure.” Ten minutes later he called me back. “Be at Fayetteville at 8 o'clock Monday. You will be the head basketball coach, assistant track and football.”

      I knew basketball and track. But I had never had anything to do with football. It didn't exist at Fourche Valley High.

Football came first. I struggled through, pretending I knew what I was doing. Just to give you an insight into my football prowness at that point, My first 8^th grade game was with Rogers. We were ahead 7-6, only moments to go. We were threatening. I called on my deep play calling savvy, and called a tailback throwback. Their little defensive halfback cut it off, and the ball hit in his open hands, and he had only 90 yards of only green grass between him and victory. But, the football Gods smiled on me, (or, more likely, felt sorry for me) and the ball bounced out of his hands, and into my tailback's. He waltzed in for the score. A brilliant play call, a play nobody in the world would have expected at that point. Our two children, Corey and Kinley, were born during the seven years I coached there. Barbara finished her degree at the U of A, between babies. We bought a mobile home, a fancy name for a house trailer. We lived on a small shoestring, and I worked each summer at whatever I could find. A carpenter's helper, telephone line construction, a plumber's backhoe, loaded and unloaded furniture. I worked at Zero Mountain, a maze of limestone caves blocked off and turned into a giant fridge, for storing chickens and turkeys. Whatever I could get.

    Barbara found her sports calling while finishing up her degree. Would you believe----Fencing! Yes! She had great hand-eye coordination, and lightning reflexes. She was the champ. Those reflexes helped her become a really good table tennis player in later years, and Corey, many years later at OBU, relished bringing his friends out to get "Smeared by a mom" in table tennis. Those reflexes enabled her to trigger her camera shots at exactly the right moment in her life profession years later.  Thanks for reading! I will begin THE POINT OF NO TOMORROW next post. While chronologically correct in my life story, It stands alone as a very special little story to me.