Cotton Bowl Please Dont Speak Again

On Friday morning, Oct 11, a bright, warm Texas solar day, Elbert Joseph Coffman woke up with a squirrel in his stomach. In his good life as a football fan there had never been a weekend quite like this one. In the next 55 hours he was going to see three college games and one pro game, and the excitement of it, the bigness of the games, made him nervous. Nervous but delighted. Football to Joe Coffman, and thousands of other Texans, is as essential as air workout. It is what a Texan grows up with, feeds on, worships, follows, plays and, very often, dies with. Joe Coffman, 32, married, father of ii boys, businessman, Academy of Texas graduate, football enthusiast, was either going to live a lot this weekend or die a little.

The first game—SMU against Navy—would be played that evening in the Cotton Bowl in Dallas, just 35 miles abroad from Joe Coffman's home in Fort Worth. The next twenty-four hours he would go dorsum to the same stadium to see the biggest one of them all, Oklahoma, ranked first in the country, against Texas, ranked 2nd. He would drive to Waco (90 miles south) Saturday dark to watch Baylor against Arkansas. And on Sunday he would return to the Cotton Basin to see the NFL's Dallas Cowboys play the Detroit Lions.

If Joe Coffman'south schedule seemed arduous, it was little more so than that of many others in the land. Thousands less fortunate than Coffman in getting tickets to the large games would settle for a game or two on tv set and radio and perhaps see a couple of high schools play. But Joe Coffman as well knew that in that location would be more to his weekend than football game. He knew that it was going to cost him at to the lowest degree $200, that he would be running into old friends, that there would be as many parties as kickoffs and that he would probably swallow as much beer equally might have been served in a London pub on V-J day. But Joe Coffman had been waiting months for this weekend and, as he prepared to leave home for his office at the business he owns, Terrell (medical and surgical) Supply Co., Inc., virtually downtown Fort Worth, the only thing that concerned him was whether everybody was as ready equally he was. Everybody included Joe's wife, Mary Sue; another couple, Pat and Cecil A. Morgan Jr. (he is a stockbroker for Rauscher, Pierce and Co., Inc. and a former University of Texas basketball star); and the Coffmans' baby-sitter. "I'll tell you ane affair, Mary Sue," said Joe. "We got to exist suited upward and ready to go by five o'clock. Nosotros're gonna be in Dallas by half-dozen or I'one thousand gonna raise more than hell than the alligators did when the pond went dry out."

Joe Coffman is a mod Texan. This means that Mary Sue is a pretty, loving and agreement wife, that his sons Bobby, 6, and Larry, iv, are good for you and happy, that his business is successful (4 other branches in Austin, San Antonio, Lubbock and Amarillo), that his ranch-type dwelling is comfortable, with all of the built-ins manufacturers sell these days, that he has a 1963 Oldsmobile Starfire and a 1962 Impala (both convertibles), that his close friends are mostly the ones he grew up with or knew in loftier schoolhouse and higher. Beingness a modern Texan also ways that Joe Coffman might not recognize a cow pony if it were tied on a leash in his backyard, that he despises Stetson hats, that he likes cashmere sport coats, pin-collar shirts, Las Vegas, playing golf game at Colonial Country Guild, Barbra Streisand ("Recollect she can't sing?"), skilful food, good booze, Barry Goldwater and, more than anything else, the Texas Longhorns. And does he like those Longhorns!

Texas autobus Darrell Royal talking to Tommy Nobis (60) and rest of the team in locker room before game vs Oklahoma at Cotton Bowl Stadium.

Neil Leifer/Sports Illustrated

"They got too much graphic symbol to lose that game," Joe said about Texas as he browsed through the mail on his desk at the office, drank some java and talked on the phone. Like any loyal Longhorn, his preoccupation with the OU game was all-consuming. The other games, they were good ones, Joe Coffman felt, but his good wellness, he said, his well-being and welfare would be riding with the Longhorns. It was not a very good twenty-four hours for work.

"I got to think a Bloody Mary's the answer," he said, heading out to Colonial Land Club. At that place would be friends there, talking football, "getting downward" (making bets), and the fourth dimension would pass more quickly through the endless football game arguments that take identify in Colonial's 19th hole the day before the games.

"Hey, Coffman," someone called as Joe entered Colonial and headed toward a table. "What are the Sooners gonna practise to those T-sippers?" Joe Coffman removed his sunglasses, postured with his fist raised like Mussolini and said, "Nosotros're gonna ship those Okies back across the Red River, boys." He greeted a table of friends, ordered drinks and replied to every statement about the strength of Oklahoma'southward squad with his message of the week:

"Take to win, boys. As well much character. Nosotros got too much character to lose that game." Several Bloody Marys subsequently, Joe Coffman had got through the day. Now the long, exhausting—and utterly perfect—weekend began.

It is roughly 35 miles, or 25 minutes, by way of the cost road from Fort Worth to Dallas. The first terminate on Friday night for Mary Sue and Joe Coffman and Pat and Cecil Morgan was Gordo's. Gordo'southward is to Dallas what the Cafe Select is to The Sun Also Rises. It is a tiny beer-pizza-steak-sandwich parlor across from the SMU campus. Through its portals stroll many of Dallas' prettiest girls, its brawniest athletes, its newspaper columnists, flacks, poets, politicians and anyone, in fact, who is in enough to know nigh the identify or who likes the world'south best pizza or steak sandwich or who wants Gordon West, the owner, to greenbacks a personal cheque.

The dilemma of the company to Gordo's is what to swallow. "I got to have a steak sandwich and a cheeseburger between two pizzas," said Joe. "It's all so good, I can't stand it."

Mary Sue, a small blonde who went 2 years to SMU and then graduated from Texas, suggested that whatever they were to have they have information technology quickly, because the traffic to the Cotton fiber Bowl for the SMU-Navy game was going to exist pretty barbarous.

"I hope SMU does good," she said. "Do they have a chance to shell Navy, Joe?"

"Flattop Fry, boys," said Joe in his sepulchral phonation, as if he had been asked to answer the entire room.

"Old Flattop," said Cecil Morgan. Information technology was Joe and Cecil'due south private way of making fun of SMU's crew-cut Omnibus Hayden Fry, who somehow acquired that nickname from them. Coffman and Morgan, given time, can make fun of every motorcoach in the country—except Texas' Darrell Regal.

"Can they, Joe?" Mary Sue asked.

"Hell, yes," said Joe. "They haven't got any athletes, simply they'll get after 'em. Like to see it. Be the start of an upset weekend, boys. The one we gotta accept is tomorrow, though. Got to send 'em dorsum across the Red River." Joe ordered another beer. And another. And one more.

"We ameliorate move out," Cecil Morgan said shortly. "They're gonna hang us upward in that state fair traffic."

"Yawl want newspaper cups?" Gordo asked, thoughtfully.

"I 'magine," said Joe. "Take that pizza with you, Mary Sue. Grab that beer, Cecil. We got to go come across the Ruby-red Helmets play the Navys."

"Former Flattop," said Cecil.

In that location is no like shooting fish in a barrel style to achieve the Cotton Basin in Dallas except to exist dropped into it past helicopter. The stadium sits squarely in the eye of the Texas State Fairgrounds, and all roads lead in confusion from downtown Dallas virtually ii miles away. This calendar week the off-white was in full swing. Indeed, that was the reason for three games in three days. It was almost as though somebody said, "There's no employ bringin' 'em in from halfway 'cross the country for 1 li'50 ol' extravaganza." Complaining well-nigh the traffic and the parking at the Cotton wool Bowl is 1 of Dallas' favorite pastimes. It is not so amusing when one wants to make a kicking off.

Behind the bicycle of his Starfire, Joe Coffman sighed, "Man, human being. Merely stadium in the whole world where y'all accept to go here on Wednesday to brand a Friday nighttime game."

Mary Sue said, "I can't believe all these cars are going to the SMU game."

"They aren't," said Cecil. "They're goin' to buy balloons. I'll guarantee y'all, there's seven one thousand thousand people out here tonight to buy balloons."

"Primary thing they're doin'," said Joe, "is driving in front of me."

By the fourth dimension they had reached a parking place inside the country fairgrounds and trudged through the dust of the carnival midway, with only one beer stop, so reached their seats, the game was five minutes old.

"Await at that!" Joe said, pointing at the SMU demote. "Flattop Fry don't know how many players he can send in or take out. He but sends in 10 men every time."

"St. Darrell knows the rules," said Cecil.

"I 'magine," said Joe.

As the SMU-Navy game wore on, information technology became clear that SMU was in no mood to lose as easily as the odds (13 points) had suggested. In fact, past the start of the quaternary quarter Joe and Cecil had get enraptured with SMU's blazing-fast sophomore, Tailback John Roderick, whose running was exciting them more than than the passing of Navy's Roger Staubach. Although there simply as impartial observers, saving their enthusiasm for the Longhorns, Joe and Cecil could not resist blending themselves into the madness of the occasion every bit SMU won rather miraculously 32-28. The wives, Mary Sue and Pat, might have enjoyed it more if they had not been so fascinated by the chat of an elderly Dallas lady in front of them, who kept talking to a friend about the "common people from Fort Worth."

Once Mary Sue giggled to Joe, "You can't believe what this woman is saying. She's saying that no saleswoman in Dallas will wait on Fort Worth people because they come up over here without hats or gloves on. But common as can be, she said." Joe roared. He leaned down the alley and repeated it to Cecil. Cecil roared. It gave them a theme for the weekend, and some get out lines from the stadium.

"Naw," said Cecil, "nosotros jest gonna git our common footling ol' wives and go git drunked up on thet ol' beer."

"Skilful Lord, Cecil," said Pat. "You audio country plenty without talking that fashion."

"Hell, we jest mutual," Joe laughed. He looked at Cecil. "You 'tour one-half country, ain't yous, boy?"

They were desperately in need of a beer.

"Information technology'd be gooder'north snuff," said Cecil equally Pat frowned, and they walked to the parking lot.

The Friday night before the annual Texas-OU game is a night that Dallas must caryatid for all year long.

Even without another football game to farther overcrowd the metropolis, which considers itself a cultural oasis in a vast wilderness of oil workers' helmets and Levi'southward, the downtown area is declared off limits by every sane person, cultured or not. Throngs of students and fans gather in the streets, whisky bottles sail out of hotel windows, automobiles jam and collide and the sound of sirens furnishes eerie background music to the unstill night. Joe Coffman skillfully managed to commit his group to a mail-SMU-game political party (or pre-Texas-OU-game party) in the cultural suburbs, where the status symbols are a lawn of St. Augustine grass and a full-growing mimosa tree.

"Joe, are all of those funny people actually going to be there?" Mary Sue asked as they drove out the Primal Throughway.

"Love, I got no idea. All I know is, they said come on out and they'd give a homo a drink. And I know a man who really wants ane."

"What's the proper name of the apartments?" Pat asked.

"I got the address," said Joe. "That'south all. Information technology's one of those Miami-Las Vegas names. Every apartment in Dallas, I'll guarantee you, sounds like a Polynesian drink. The Sand and Ocean, or the Ski-Sky-You lot, or something."

"I call up it's The Antigua," said Cecil.

"Well," said Joe, "that figures."

Through the night the political party was both visible and audible before Joe parked the car. People were standing on the lawn, sitting on the steps of other apartment units or gathered around a clump of trees. The door was open. A Ray Charles twist record poured out. Inside there was a curious mixture of "stewardi," as Joe described the girls, along with SMU fans, Texas fans, Oklahoma fans, Dallas Cowboy fans, Dallas Cowboys, bartenders, musicians, entertainers from the city'southward private clubs, models and artists.

Joe observed the oversupply and turned to Cecil and said, "Go anywhur, do anythang." And they inched toward the bar.

Joe saw a man he had been with in the Army. Mary Sue saw a girl friend she was supposed to have met at the game. Cecil calmly studied the wall. On it were a Columbia pennant, a bizarre unidentified brute'southward head with a sign hanging effectually it that read, "Joe Don Looney," a bullfight poster and a hand drawn sign that proclaimed, "If the Lord Didn't Want Human to Drink, He Wouldn't Have Give Him a Mouth." In the bathroom hung a replica of the Mona Lisa. Joe saw an old fraternity buddy from Austin, an SAE. "Sex Above Everything," said Joe, shaking hands. Somebody said Henny Young-homo had been there but left because nobody wanted to talk to him. Somebody said strippers were coming over from The Carousel club. A man who kept introducing himself equally "Sandy Winfield" and "Troy Donahue" said it had not turned out to be a bad party, because he had not chosen anyone. No one always found out who lived in the apartment.

Joe Coffman was making coffee at home by seven a.m. Saturday morning on four hours' sleep. He stared blankly at the Fort Worth morning time Star-Telegram, which had the starting lineups for the Texas-OU game, and said, one-half to his sons and one-half to the western globe, "They outweigh the states, simply we got also much character." By 9 o'clock he was dressed and ready, except for his lucky cuff links. "Tell you 1 thing, honey," he said. "If I can't find my cufflinks, there's gonna exist more than hell raised than there are Chinamen." Mary Sue went to a drawer and got them. "You just won the game," said Joe.

Everything moved briskly now. Joe took the 6-twelvemonth-old, Bobby, to a political party, and arranged for him to get domicile. Cecil called and said he was on the style with the car already gassed up and the beer iced down. Joe told him the sitter was due nigh the same time. It was Eva Mae, he said. "All I know is, she's the caput pie lady at Paschal High. Bakes 20 to 30 a twenty-four hour period." They hung upwardly, laughing. The two couples were on the road at 10 a.m.

Cecil was plugging along nicely on the price road when Pat reminded him that he was going fourscore mph. The speed limit is 70.

"Tin can't get at that place too soon," said Joe. "Got to go hear Hank Thompson. He'south always singing on the fairgrounds at apex."

"Yeah," said Cecil. "That's nigh like you common people from Fort Worth. You lack them hillbilly sangers."

Said Joe, "Can't crush information technology. Drink beer, listen to old Hank then warp the Okies. Perfect day. I had to have well-nigh $50 worth of that 5½ points."

"Did you bet, Joe?" said Mary Sue in a concerned vox.

"I 'magine."

Mary Sue looked out of the window.

"We're gonna warp 'em," said Joe. "Guarantee you St. Darrell's gonna drown 'em. Also much character. I don't care who they got. Joe Don Looney. Jimmy Jack Boozer. Anybody. They don't take Scott Appleton. They don't have Tommy Ford or Mr. Knuckles Carlisle," he said, referring to Texas' finest players: Appleton, the vivid tackle; Ford, the swift, chunky tailback; and Carlisle, the resourceful quarterback who prefers to run rather than pass.

Mary Sue and Pat opened the beer, and Joe and Cecil sang a parody on a hillbilly melody: I don't care 'bout my gas and oil,/Long every bit I got my Dare-e-ull Imperial,/ Mounted on the dashboard o' my car.

They sang it several dozen times until the Cotton wool Bowl traffic slowed Cecil to a creep forth G Artery, ane of the master entrance streets. "Joe, baby," Cecil said, "we're gonna accept to sell the machine, 'cause we got no place to park information technology."

"Go on goin'. We're gonna become in a lot right upwardly here."

"No chance," said Cecil, observing maybe 5,000 parked cars.

"Go on," Joe said. "I'm gonna show yous how to ease right on in. Go on goin'. Continue goin'."

Joe said, "Correct at that place! That lot right on the corner, merely across from the main archway. Right at that place, Cecil, where it says, 'Full House.' "

Cecil turned in amid the frenzied waving and shouting of parking-lot attendants, but Joe leaned out of the window and hollered, "I got a five and a cold beer, podna, if you'll permit usa in."

Parking was no problem.

The Texas State Fairgrounds on the day of the Oklahoma game are no more crowded than the recreation deck of any ordinary troopship. The ground seems to sag from the weight of hundreds having picnics. "Fried chicken, boys," said Joe, pushing along a walkway and observing the people sprawled on the backyard. "Two necks and a back and a piece of cold staff of life."

"And some black French chips," added Cecil. "Best meal they always had. Boy, it's fun."

They stopped and bought vi beers, two extra, and finally the vox of Hank Thompson greeted them as they came near Big Tex, the giant cowboy statue that is emblematic of the fair and would make fine kindling wood. Hank Thompson was singing a familiar hillbilly ballad that went, "Nosotros got time for one more beverage and a...six-pack to become." Joe and Cecil whooped.

Texas Tommy Ford (24) in action, rushing vs Oklahoma at Cotton Bowl Stadium.

Neil Leifer/Sports Illustrated

Past prearrangement, the Coffmans and Morgans had planned to meet Joe'due south sister, Shirley, and his brother-in-law, David Change, to straighten out the ticket situation. Joe had decided that Mary Sue and Shirley would sit in the terminate zone while he and David would have the two seats on the 50-yard line. Joe thought that seemed fair plenty, and no back talk. Cecil and Pat had their own tickets. The Alters arrived, and Joe acknowledged them with, "Too much character, boys. We got too much character to lose that game." Several beers and Hank Thompson songs later, they were moving into the Cotton Bowl, again singing, I don't intendance 'bout my gas and oil, I Long as I got my Cartel-e-ull Royal,/Mounted on the dashboard o' my car.

The Texas-Oklahoma game is one of the maddest glasses of sport. This was the 18th consecutive sellout of the series, with 75,504 seats of the stadium crammed with the throatiest, about enthusiastic partisans in football, evenly divided between Texans and Oklahomans. Regardless of the squad records, the excitement is there each yr; the game matches land against land, school against school, fraternity against fraternity, oil derrick confronting oil derrick. Some rooters become so emotional that they tin see only blackness on the other side of the field. One who did this year was Fullback Harold Philipp of Texas. Before the game, talking about the Texas boys playing on the Oklahoma team, he said: "Why that's merely similar somebody from the United States playing for Nazi Germany." During the game an immense roar wafts upward from the stadium on every play, and the two large bands play Boomer Sooner, the Oklahoma fight song, and Texas Fight, the Long-horns' song, an innumerable number of times, always to the accompaniment of a cheering, jeering mob of singers. Occasionally fights suspension out in the stands.

The game did not provide any opportunities for Joe Coffman to fight, or even to officiate or mutter. Texas was meliorate than even he had expected, and simply swept Oklahoma abroad, winning 28-seven. Joe even so managed several excuses for leaping cries of, "Hook 'em Horns," simply mainly he occupied himself with pointing out to David Alter some of the more subtle, polished tactics of Darrell Royal'south 2nd-and third-teamers. Every time Oklahoma's Jim Grisham, a superb fullback from Olney, Texas, carried the ball, Joe hollered, "Become that turncoat!" And when an OU fan near him would yell encouragement to the Sooners, Joe would quietly remark to his blood brother-in-law, "Jimmy Jack Drunk back there thinks he's even so got a chance to win."

After, in the usual postgame playing of The Eyes of Texas by the Long-horn band down on the field, Joe stood silently proud, pleased and even touched that his team had been so great on the big day. "That song chokes me upwardly every time," he said, forcing a grinning. "Man, Dare-e-ull had 'em hot today. Yous know what Joe Don Looney got? Mr. Scott Appleton gave him zip. Close him out."

Blithesome cries of "Hook 'em Horns" were billowing out of the apartment in north Dallas, the good side of town, or rather, the only side, when the Coffmans, Morgans and Alters got there. Unlike the party the night before, this ane was strictly for Longhorns. Platters of ham and turkey were laid out on a tabular array. A bartender in the kitchen was mixing drinks and opening beers as fast as possible. Wives and girl friends congregated on the sofas. The men pushed into the kitchen and spilled out onto a balustrade, drinks lifted, in a continuous toast to Dare-due east-ull Royal and Scott Appleton and Duke Carlisle and Tommy Ford and to the retentivity of college days at Austin. "Hey, Cecil," called Joe. "Only got the score. Florida vanquish Alabama!"

Cecil slumped back in a chair, laughed heartily, and said, "All I know is, Texas is No. ane, 2, 3 and four."

After a while, Mary Sue quietly asked Joe if, in the light of the Texas victory, he yet intended to bulldoze to Waco for the Baylor-Arkansas game.

"They're withal playin', aren't they?" said Joe.

"Well, we'd better practise something most dinner," said Mary Sue.

"Get after that turkey and ham," Joe nodded. "Tell you what. Make upward some sandwiches and take hold of six or eight beers out of the icebox and we're gone."

Waco, Texas, is noted for but two things. 1 is that it is the domicile of Baylor Academy. The other is that Waco, from time to time, has tornadoes. From Dallas it is about one hour and 20 minutes across the flat n central Texas farmland and, since the Baylor-Arkansas game was mercifully scheduled for 8 p.m., the Coffmans and Morgans should have had plenty of time to brand the kickoff. Merely they overstayed the Texas commemoration political party, and Cecil was moving along also briskly on Highway 77 when the flashing red spotlight on a Texas highway patrol auto encouraged him to pull over.

"It'south the fuzz," Joe said. "No bad mouth at present, Cecil. Don't give him any lip. Just 'Yes sir, Officeholder, don't hit me no more.' or he'll take us to the Waxahachie jail and nobody'll ever hear from us again."

Cecil Morgan put up a strong argument, just the patrolmen decided that he probably ought to have a speeding ticket for $20.fifty, payable past postal service. Cecil had, after all, been driving 75 mph in a 55-mph zone.

Joe Coffman writhed in the backseat.

"Don't mind the money, just hate to miss the offset," he said.

They missed the whole commencement quarter, as information technology turned out. Information technology was merely as well. Although Baylor'southward passing sorcerer, Don Trull, and its excellent receiver, Lawrence Elkins, staged a wonderful exhibition, the Coffmans and Morgans could not take cared less. They were rooting for Baylor to upset the Razorbacks, which they did 14-ten, but the Texas-OU game had drained them of all enthusiasm. "I'd feel O.K.," said Joe, "if I didn't take grit in my hair, dirt in my nose and sores in my mouth."

The group laughed faintly. Mary Sue and Pat yawned as Don Trull completed a 53-yard pass to Elkins that brought 40,000 other people to their feet. Cecil and Joe pondered quietly the ability of Arkansas to defeat Texas. "No way," Joe decided, sleepily.

"Baylor's sure a swell place," Cecil said, sarcastically. "I saw i of their biggest and oldest fans a while ago, and he's sitting on the goal line. Can you imagine that? The man can't become meliorate seats than that. No wonder they can't win a championship."

They all yawned over again, and shortly the game ended. Cecil said he "might could manage" to drive abode. Joe said he would pay $100 if Baylor would let him sleep all night in the parking lot.

"Shame to be this shut to Austin and not go," Joe said. "Cecil, what would you give for some crispy, chewy tacos at El Rancho correct at present? You think El Rancho'southward chili con queso sounds proficient? Skillful Lord!"

Texas coach Darrell Royal talking to team in locker room afterwards game vs Oklahoma at Cotton Bowl Stadium.

Neil Leifer/Sports Illustrated

The ritual of a football fan, the real football fan, in Dallas on Sunday is to attend the Cowboy Club, both before and after the NFL games in the Cotton fiber Bowl. Texas existence a dry state (many arraign the Baptists and some Texans therefore blame Baylor), the owners of the Cowboys long ago took the precaution of seeing to it that their loyal fans (those who purchase memberships) can go a "mixed" potable and something to eat at the club on the state fairgrounds. During the off-white and the big football weekend, withal, so many people were in town that the club had to move from air-conditioned indoor quarters to a tent just outside of the Cotton fiber Bowl. It was yet the place to be on a lazy Dominicus that dawned as clear and warm and at-home as Friday and Saturday had been. The Cowboys had not won a game and had lost 4, but Joe Coffman kept telling people that they were a sure-fire to beat the Lions. "It'due south a sure thing," he said to Bedford Wynne, part possessor, along with Clint Murchison Jr. of the Cowboys. "Information technology'south an upset weekend, boys. It but figures."

"Hell, I'm startin' to get nervous, now that you lot told me that," said Bedford.

When a college game has been played in Dallas the solar day before, the Cowboy Club serves some other purpose. It is sort of a hangover haven. Bloody Marys outsell whatever other drink, 20 to one, and frequently spectators bring their ain Bloody Marys in giant thermoses. Since Bedford Wynne, like Joe and Cecil, is one of the most ardent Texas fans in captivity, the Cowboy Lodge is also a haven for University of Texas fans.

From table to tabular array, the talk was all about the "Horns and that terrific thing they did to Oklahoma Saturday." Mary Sue and Pat sat with a long tabular array of women, discussing the other women across the tent. Joe and Cecil stood, table-hopped, drank, laughed and finally ate two barbecue sandwiches.

"You think the eyeballing ain't something in this place," said Joe, looking effectually at the women, who, even though going to the game, were dressed as fashionably as if they had just stepped out of Neiman-Marcus. "Got to be headquarters for world champion pretty," he said. "Tin't wait for the game to be over so we can come up dorsum."

As Joe Coffman had said, it was the Cowboys' day to win. The game lulled along for three quarters, but finally exploded into an offensive spectacular in the fourth quarter, with the Cowboys winning a close one, 17-xiv.

The crowd was thin. "Had to exist a guts-up fan to make this i on pinnacle of all the others," said Joe, moodily. "I got to think the oversupply's bigger in the Cowboy Order—if they're yet serving booze."

Generally at the insistence of the wives, Mary Sue and Pat, there was yet to be one more stop for them all before the weekend would stagger to a halt. Mary Sue and Pat noted, without an excess of enthusiasm, that they had non eaten a hot meal in 2 days. The Beefeater Inn would be prissy, said Mary Sue, and it was seldom crowded on a Sunday evening.

"Got to have it," Joe said pleasantly. "Steak, asparagus, coffee and cognac. Got to take it correct now." They were there in xx minutes.

It was a quiet evening, spent mostly in reflection on the 4 games, and all the people they had seen and in forgetting how much each had drunkard. "Guarantee you," Joe said, "we saw everybody but Nasty Jack Kilpatrick."

"Who?" Pat Morgan asked.

"Nasty Jack Kilpatrick," Coffman laughed. "Toughest man I ever knew. Hitchhiked all the way from Miami to Austin in one case with nothing but an old toothbrush and a Johnnie Ray record of Cry. Think he wasn't tough?"

In the drawn subsequently-dinner silence Mary Sue thought it would exist a expert idea if Joe chosen Fort Worth long distance to check up on the children.

"Why don't you call, Dearest?" Joe asked.

"Delight telephone call, Joe," she said.

"Keep, Honey," said Joe.

"You tin can do it quicker, Joe," Mary Sue said, pleadingly.

Joe Coffman frowned, shoved himself away from the cognac and java with a groan.

Walking off, he turned and said, "One affair, Mary Sue. You but lost yourself a fistful of dimes." A little less than two hours later, tired but total, aching simply pleased, oversmoked, overlaughed, dusty-weary only all-victorious, they were home. All four teams had won, all iv people had survived.

"Don't forget," said Joe, equally he left Cecil and Pat, "we got to get abroad from here early Friday."

Pat said, "Are we really going to Little Rock for Texas-Arkansas?"

Joe Coffman looked offended. "They're playin', aren't they?"

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Source: https://vault.si.com/vault/1963/11/11/the-disciples-of-st-darrell-on-a-wild-weekend

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