September 22, 1966
Jocie Brooke here reporting from Hollyhill, Kentucky. Do you like football? High school football? Holly County High School has a football team. We’re not big time winners or anything, but Dad says the boys try hard. I don’t think that counts on the scoreboard. Whether we score or not, we keep cheering them on. Last week they played a tough team from Wayfield High. I didn’t think Holly County had ever beaten Wayfield, but Zella says she can remember way back when she was in school that Holly County was the team to beat instead of Wayfield. She says our team back then beat everybody because they had kids that knew about fighting for something. That was while the World War II was going on and the boys were thinking about getting out of school and joining the Army. Zella said they were hard-nosed kids ready for anything. I guess maybe they were if they had to think about going overseas and fighting a war.
Of course some of our boys are staring the draft in the face too and thinking about having to go fight in Vietnam. Dad gets sad every time he watches the news and sees the reports of the war. Who wouldn’t? He says at least when he was fighting in World War II the country was behind him and the other soldiers. Now, it’s like nobody wants to talk about the war still going on and how our boys are dying over there in the the Vietnam jungles. Some of the boys playing football last night will have to go fight the Vietcong next year. That’s hard for me to think about. It just doesn’t seem right.
So at school, we just push all that aside and instead worry about whether we’re ever going to win a football game this year. Last week, we stood up and cheered like we’d scored a touchdown when the quarterback ran for a first down. You have to admit that was a start.
This week we play Jackson High. They got beat bad by Wayfield. I know. We did too. But if Wayfield beat both of us by about the same points, don’t you think that means our teams might be evenly matched? I guess we’ll find out tomorrow night.
Win or lose, I love going to football games. The band playing in the stands and then marching at halftime. The cheerleaders jumping around and cheering these chants they’ve made up that rhyme but don’t make much sense. I’m so glad I didn’t want to be a cheerleader. It’s more fun being the football game photographer for the newspaper. The kids are always waving at me and trying to get me to take their pictures. I take pictures of some of them and just pretend to take pictures of others. I only have so much film and a limited number of flashbulbs. So I have to pick and choose the right pictures to take. One I don’t choose is Vanessa. That is, unless she’s got a goofy look on her face and her ponytail is flapping down in front of her face. I guess that’s not very professional, but…
Do you like football games? Did your high school team win or were you like us at Holly County High and just cheered if you got a first down or made it to halftime only two touchdowns behind? You got to cheer about something.