BEHIND THE MICROPHONE : Where dreams die hard

Telling scenes of America at its very best

By Jess Smith <a href="mailto:email@nwarktimes.com">e

Posted: October 16, 2009 at 6:52 a.m.

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FAYETTEVILLE — I recently ran across a little book written by Carlton Stowers. He was a reporter for The Dallas Morning News in the late 1970s when I was running the news department at WFAA across the parking lot. Both were owned by the Belo Corp., so I felt compelled to read it. And I am glad I did. Carlton not only captures the ups and downs of the high school football team and its coaches but paints a vivid portrait of small-town Americana. It turned out to be an unexpected jewel.

The book, “Where Dreams Die Hard,” is a chronicle highlighting a year in the life of a small, central Texas farm town and its six-man football team. It is the dedication the community in Penelope has to its football team that keeps its dreams alive.

Penelope, Texas, had around 200 residents when Carlton spent the 2004 football season amid the cotton fields of central Texas. The trip to buy groceries was a 45-minute journey. The town had no traffic lights. The major intersection was where two farmto-market roads crossed.

Penelope is a place where people care for one another. Where, as one of the teachers at Penelope High School put it, “One person’s success is everyone’s success.”

After a 37-year hiatus, students at Penelope High petitioned the school administrators to field a football team. A six-man football team. Carlton’s book follows the team and town through a season where they hope to win their second game in four years. But despite the dismal won/lost record posted by the hapless Penelope Wolverines, the entire town continues to support them. It’s not just a sports book about a football team, but also the life and values of small-town America. Values we fear are being eroded almost on a daily basis.

If you have never seen a six-man football game, you have missed a spectacle. Six-man football was invented in the early 1930s in Nebraska. The idea was to allow small rural schools to field football teams. At its height, there were around 30,000 sixman high school football teams playing in the United States and Canada. They were mostly in Western states where farm and ranch towns had small populations.

A six-man football team is made up of three linemen and three backs. Every player is an eligible receiver. The ball must leave the quarterback’s handsby either a hand-off or backward pass before it can be thrown downfield. The field is 80 yards long, and it takes a gain of 15 yards for a first down. Usually the combined score is in excess of 100 points.

Back in the mid-1960s, I was news director of a radio station in Temple, Texas. I was also officiating high school football and basketball. The officials chapter got a call asking for three officials to work a six-man football game in the town of Buckholts. Not having an assignment that week, I was one of the three. Only one oaf had ever seen a six-man game much less officiated one. We read the rule book while driving from Temple to Buckholts.

To say six-man football is a wide open game does not do it justice. Sometimes there are five would-be receivers running to every corner of the field. The referee has to stay with the quarterback and the pursuing defender. That leaves two officials to cover the five receivers and their defenders all over the field.

The good thing is in six-man football the quarters are only 10 minutes long. But on the other side of the coin, every play is a pass play - or at least it was that night. They almost had to scrape us off the field when the final gun sounded. I think the score was 64 to 56.

But what was more impressive than the score was the atmosphere. Everybody in town was there. The Baptist preacher reached the field two hours before game time to line it off. Parents and teachers grill hamburgers and hot dogs and patrol the concession stand.

The history teacher had gone to the home of the starting center to bring him to the game because he had to stay and help his father repair the sheep pen before he could go to the game. He arrived just before kickoff. This was America at its best.

The book “Where Dreams Die Hard” is not as hard hitting as “Friday Night Lights,” which is about the almost religion that is Texas high school football. But it has more heart and soul. If you can find a copy at the Dickson Street Bookstore, get it. Before you are through reading it, the folks in Penelope, Texas, will become your friends, and you’ll be rooting for the Wolverines to win one more game.

Jess Smith was a broadcast journalist for 47 years. He lives in Fayetteville.

Opinion, Pages 4 on 10/16/2009

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