by Ray Collett

Hello Readers, As I promised last week, I will continue the article sent in by our "mysterious guest" who doesn't want to be identified...Here is part 2 of...

TOO OLD TO BE A MATADOR

"The B-Team was coached by Lawrence Baskin and consisted of seventh, eighth, and some of the ninth grade boys. What Coach Baskin seemed to enjoy more than the "Hill" was riding on something called a football sled. He would stand on that sled and have two of us push it as far as we could, and then he would have two more boys push it. I never knew a man could enjoy riding a sled as much as Coach Baskin did. Somedays he would have us boys push him around for hours on that sled, all the time yelling at us to push harder. Like I said, he liked to ride and we didn't have anything better to do. Reflecting back on those days, I think Coach Baskin never rode a real snow sled when he was a boy and that was his way of making up for it."
"After the Sunbright game that I wrote about last week, Coach took all of us boys to the Peggy Ann to eat. To this day that was the best hamburger steak and fries that I ever ate. Of course, before the meal at the Peggy Ann, I didn't even know what a hamburger steak was. What I did know was that if Coach was going to keep feeding us like that after a game, then I was going to work extra hard from then on out, to become a real football hero."
"Before I tell you about my 1958 football heroics, I guess I should at least mention something about my academic life as a freshman at Rockwood High. The Christmas of 1957 my main gift was a pocket size GE transistor radio with an ear phone. In 1957, pocket size transistor radios were a fairly new item on the market and not many people had one. When school started back up after the Christmas break, that little radio went with me. I would run that ear phone wire under my shirt and down my shirt sleeve, and then spend most of the time in class with my head propped on my hand listening to that radio. When the weather got warmer, I stopped wearing long sleeved shirts, so I decided what the heck, and just kept the ear piece stuck in my ear all of the time with the wire running down into the radio which was in my pants pocket."
"When I wasn't listening to that radio, I was prone to do a little talking and cutting up in class so most of the teachers started moving me to the front of the room so they could keep a closer eye on me, or at least that's what I thought. Of course, I wasn't known for my thinking back in those days as much as I was for my football skills. It was just my luck that the little plug pulled out of the radio one day in Ms. Faye Evans class, and that was the first and only time that I can remember we had rock and roll music during class. Well, needless to say, Ms. Faye wasn't none too happy about the music or my radio. She took me out in the hall and proceeded to tell me how disappointed she was in me as she had been the one to tell the other teachers that I had a hearing aid and for all of them to move me to front of their room. I always felt kinda bad about that connection pulling loose from the radio, because they just didn't come any better than Ms. Faye Evans. Now what I hated more was that my radio days were over, and there I was stuck up in front of all my classes with all of the teachers watching me like a hawk for the rest of my freshman year. When it happened, one thing I was thankful for was that Ms. Faye was my teacher and no longer the principal. I had first hand knowledge on how hard she could swing a paddle when she set her mind to it when she was the principal."
Well, readers, the space allotment has caught up with us for this week. Next week we will again follow the antics and hopes of this "mysterious guest writer", and his quest to become a "Football Hero." Tune in again next week............Ray