Coach by Walt Sautter (mobi reader android TXT) 📕

the field amidst a flurry of cheers and congratulations. I can still clearly hear the clacking of the metal cleats on the cement floor as we entered the field house and sat down awaiting Coach’s words.
“Well boys, today was a good day. I liked what I saw but don’t get too cocky. We got a bunch of games left and a lot of work to do.
Go home and get some rest and I don’t want to see anybody uptown, hanging around the bowling alley or Snookie’s after ten o’clock.
Now, take a shower and get out of here” and with that he walked into his cubbyhole office and slammed the door behind him.
I, as well as all the others, dutifully obeyed Coach’s command and immediately began to undress and head to the shower room. Once cleaned, I went back to the freshmen dressing area and finished drying myself.
Then, as I began to dress, I suddenly realized, “Where was my other shoe?”
I scurried around the locker room looking for it without success. After ten full minutes of searching a voice called out.
“Is this what you’re looking for Sonny?”
I was Howie Green waving my shoe over his head. Howie was a junior, starting halfback and last year’s leading scorer.
“Come and get it,” he shouted as he continued wave it.
I moved towards him and as I did, he threw it.
“Blue forty-two” he yelled. That was one of our favorite pass plays.
Jake, another junior player, caught it and continued the taunting.
After several minutes of back and forth, Howie took the shoe and threw into a crevice near the ceiling. With that, they both walked down the hall towards the exit, laughing as they left.
I went to the other dressing room, got a chair to stand on so as to retrieve my shoe. It was a struggle but after a few minutes of reaching and stretching I reclaimed it from its hiding place.
I walked down the hall, passed Coach’s office as I left the field house. The door was slightly ajar and I remember hearing Howie’s voice in a low whisper and then Coach’s reply, also in a low whisper. I couldn’t really make out what was being said but I could tell it wasn’t football talk.
Coach’s warning about the bowling alley and Snookie’s, the two favorite hang outs for all of the town’s teenagers, was unnecessary. None of us would be there tonight.
Our right tackle was Harry Barnes. Everyone called him Zip. Zip was the slowest of the slow. He never placed any better than last in every wind sprint or running drill thus the paradoxical nickname, Zippy. Although slow, he was big, tough and agile, an All-Stater.
After every win, there were never any losses; Zip’s father always would hold a football party at his house. There was a full keg of beer and the entire team and cheerleaders were invited. Most often, it turned into a drunkfest with guys throwing up in the backyard or lying semi comatose in a corner.
At one such event, Willie, our star fullback, vomited in the toilet. It was not until the next morning that he realized that his dental plate with his two front teeth had been subsequently flushed into Zip’s septic tank.
Zips lived near the outskirts of town and rarely were there any complaints. Police were called only a few times and when they arrived, they generally had a beer or two with the rest of us and talked over the day’s game. Most of the conversation however usually centered around their playing days at Highburg, the championships they had won and their great respect for Coach and what he had done for the town.
After they exalted their tales of bygone football prowess, they called back to the station.
“Everything’s okay here Chief. Just a little noise problem. We just had to quiet ‘em down a little.”
Then, they jumped back into the police car and drove off leaving us to continue our drunken escapade.
Monday morning found a dozen players hobbling about the school with injuries sustained on Saturday’s rock hard and bemired playing field.
The pungent odor of “pink stuff” filled the air throughout the school on Monday morning. “Pink stuff” was the concoction of Doctor Haller, the team doctor. Every injury and aliment imaginable was treated with this magical goo. It was spread on the afflicted area with a tongue depressor in copious amounts and then bandaged with wrappings of white gauze topped with layers of adhesive tape. Most often, its vivid color oozed through; staining the bandages and everything they touched. Its smell was unmistakable and everyone so mediated was immediately identified by its stringent vapors. Everything from mild scraps to torn ligaments got a slather of the potion. The odd thing about it was that it actually seemed to work. Most of Docs patients returned back to practice within days of the application. Was it a true medical miracle or merely psychosomatic? Who knows but it worked.
Doctor Haller was known to go on an extended vacation in the spring of every year. He had severe allergies to plant pollen and to escape the torment of the symptoms; he left the area during the days of high pollen count.
The story, which circulated however, was that he actually went to Africa to visit a witchdoctor friend and obtain his yearly supply of “pink stuff”.
Weeks passed and Highburg remained unbeaten as usual. Thanksgiving Day was the culmination. It was a cold, sunny day and the entire town turned out. Every seat in the stands was filled and every inch of the fence surrounding the field was packed five deep. As usual, Coach and his team gave the fans what they were accustomed to, a serious beating of the opposition, forty-two to fourteen.
At the conclusion of the game, we all herded into the field house amongst the cheers of the wildly enthusiastic crowd. Once seated, Coach stood before us, granting us almost begrudging praise for another stellar season. At the conclusion of his brief accolades, Howie rose and delivered a short but emotional statement as to how Coach had been the one responsible for our success and without his wisdom and skill we would have been lucky to win but one game. As he finished his exultation, the team stood and applauded excitedly for several minutes. There, for a moment, I felt as if I was one of the Russian Commissars, applauding Stalin and being afraid to be the first one to stop.
Well, that was it. Football was over for another season. We all left the field house that day feeling both relieved and nostalgic. Relieved that the days of daily grinding practice sessions were over but missing the excited anticipation of the weekly games.
Fall turned to winter and the thoughts of football faded, except for the daily hour of films in Coach’s office during PE. Snow was on the ground and the air was cold. It was hard hanging around Lefty’s Hot Dog Stand as we did during the warm weather since the only seating area was outdoor tables and benches.
In this kind of weather, everybody was forced into Jack’s Bowling Alley or Snookie’s Luncheonette. Several of the guys were pin boys at Jack’s and were always found sitting their nightly vigil at the back of the allies waiting to be called to set a game. The going rate was fifteen cents a game. When one got to set two allies with four bowlers on each, big money was to be made. It could add up rapidly, with tips, sometimes three or four dollars for a nights’ work.
If you were on Jack’s good side you could even work the Leagues. Now we were talking five dollars or more.
The guys who were the hang arounds, were usually found crowded around the town’s sole pinball machine at the corner of Jack’s lobby. They all gazed incessantly at the silver ball under the glass as the player attempted to “rack up” games on the machine. The machine awarded free replays for exceptional scores and every player sought to register as many replays as possible.
Replays allowed the current player domination of the machine while the others were forced to continue watching. Even better, those with high scoring ability could sell the remaining free plays to the highest bidder when they became tired of the game. There were always willing customers. The going rate for pinball was a nickel a game however replays could often be had for two or three cents bid.
Players would push and shove the machine, left, right, back and forth to put “english” on the ball without invoking the fateful “tilt” sign. Whenever the “tilt” appeared a roar would arise from fans and a plethora of curses from the player.
Many players went to extremes in their attempts to obtain free pinball, often carefully placing the legs of the machine on the tops of their shoes so as to level the machine without “tilting”. Others simply, day after day, used a pen knife to surreptitiously, bore a small hole in the side of the machine so as to insert a wire against one of the bumpers and rack up the score. Still other resorted using a wire through the coin return to trigger instant replays.
Jack himself was an old man and paid little attention to the machine or its eager crowd so he rarely noticed the holes gnawed into its walls. That discovery was left to the repairman who came once every other month or so. As soon as he alerted Jack to the tactics used by the assault of pinballers, Jack would screw a small metal plate over the hole. He would then unplug the machine for a week as punishment for the violator and non-violators alike. After years of repair the machine bore dozens of these plates along its sides, each one covering a tiny entry into the machine’s internals. I never understood why he didn’t just cover the entire side with a large piece of metal but I certainly wasn’t about to suggest it either.
During these periods of withdrawal, when the machine was unplugged, Snookie’s Luncheonette became unusually crowded, not with paying customers but with teenage hang-arounds exiled from Jack’s. Most sat around playing matchbook football on the tables near the front window waiting for the day when the machine at Jack’s would be reenergized.
Snookie was an older woman who ran her business right next to Jack’s Bowling Alley. Her trade was generally takeout. The bowlers would order hamburgers, sandwiches and the like during their play and carry them into the alleys. Aside from this, business was thin. I often wondered how she paid the light bill.
Well anyway, there we sat hour after hour engaged in our mindless pass time while volumes of unattended to schoolwork accumulated.
Needless to say, all these activities fell out of the purview of my mother. As I have always said, “If I would have gone to the library even half the times that I claimed, I would surely have become president of Yale University”.
The town library itself was a one-story building, the size of a small gymnasium. It housed on the order of five hundred to a thousand books at most. I am quite sure that my mother must have believed that I had read all them, at least twice, based on the number of my supposed visits.
The only thing that possibly could have given my deception away was the reek of cigarette smoke that followed me everywhere after my trips to the “library”. The foul stench completely enveloped me. It arose from my own use of the “devil’s weed” and from the heavily laden air that constantly surrounded me.
In those days, tobacco smoke was an acrid perfume found in every nook and cranny.