Neighbor Grover sez if your job on the farm is taking care of the chickens, does it makes you a chicken tender?
Idid not walk five miles to school and back every day, uphill both ways, as you have undoubtedly heard old-timers say.
But I did grow up in the grassburr-goathead era of Tiger Field.
Tiger Field is undergoing a massive reconstruction and transformation. Driving down Miller Street daily, I’m amazed at how fast the demolition part of that project is proceeding.
Someone posted a video of the pressbox tumbling down last week. Made me think how many hours that I, then Editor Mike Brown and now Sports Editor Bill Martin have spent in that facility. That pressbox was designed by Henry Tyler who at the time (late 1950s) was The Reporter’s advertising manager and a member of the school board. It served its purpose well.
Back to the grassburr-goat head era. Not many around remember it now, but David Yount and Pete Taylor can tell you about it if you don’t believe me. Both were far better footballers than me. I changed jersey numbers every year, hoping nobody would remember me from the previous season.
In the late 1940s I was in junior-high and learned much about the maintenance of Tiger Field. The Rockdale ISD was on a frayed-shoestring budget. Alcoa and industrial taxes were a still a few years away.
Tiger Field was watered only by the good Lord. It was “mowed” by vocational agriculture teacher H.D. “Farmer” Maxwell’s FFA sheep that grazed it year-round. It was fertilized only by those sheep, too.
The west end of the field, from about the 10-yard-line on through the end zone, was full of grassburrs and goatheads. At the start of each school year, junior-high P.E. classes were dispatched daily to pick the stickers and drag that west end with toe-sacks. We never did get ‘em all.
My eighth-grade class drew the first football uniforms ever issued to junior-high students, and not more than a dozen shoulder pads, helmets, pants and jerseys. Coach Pete Owens drilled us a little on blocking and tackling but mostly just let us choose sides and play. We did so on the old three-story high school campus, and we played in an area that now houses one wing of the elementary school.
As ninth-graders, we got real uniforms and played on the B-team. Varsity years followed and, if coaches got a little hot-under-the-collar at us, they’d run goal-line offense and defense on that west end. We’d pick stickers off each other after each play.
Over the decades since, when I’ve seen that lush, irrigated Tiger Field turf, I’ve wondered if these modern Tigers really appreciate their facilities, with no goat-heads, grassburrs or sheep pills.
And it’s about to get even better.
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