The McClellan High School football team entourage, aside from the coaches, cheerleaders, and the perky Pep Squad, included the Mighty McClellan Marching Band and Door-to-door Candy Sales Associates.
Our football adversaries that evening were the Mills Comets. Mills High School, considered out-in-the-boonies to us worldly and refined Little Rock suburbanites, was named after Wilbur D. Mills. Wilbur was an Arkansas congressman who served from 1939 until scandals with stripper Fanne Fox, treatment for alcoholism, and an unfortunate resemblance to The Three Stooge’s Shemp Howard forced him to change vocation.
After traveling via yellow school bus the few miles to Mills, we climbed into wooden bleachers apparently constructed from old moonshine shacks. We sat down carefully, avoiding splinters large enough to pound through Dracula’s heart.
Richard Manson, Clark Isaacs and I all played tenor saxophone, so we sat together for the game. My girlfriend Elaine, who played French horn, was made an honorary sax player so she could sit beside me.
We all stood for the National Anthem played by the Mills Band, and were asked to remain standing for the invocation. Since we were not playing Catholic High, it would consist of a simple prayer without candles, incense and holy snacks.
“Oh, Lord,” it began. While Christians disagree over the middle names of their deities, Jesus H. Christ and Lord R. God, that never prevented them from being on a first-name basis.
After a few moments, the preacher continued, “Please bless these boys tonight. Hold them in the palm of Your Holy Hand and shelter them from the evils that young men fall prey to in these sad and terrible times.”
So far, so good. Nothing out of the ordinary. Easy to ignore.
He hiccupped. Or maybe it was a belch. The minister then cleared his throat like a cat with a persistent hairball.
“Oh, Holy Father,” he said, “please bless these boys tonight…” Then he took a long pause. Clark and I looked at each other, eyebrows raised like Spock finding a tribble in his underwear drawer.
The holy man began slurring his words. Was it an inconveniently timed stroke? Had he sacrificed too much sacrificial wine on his way to the stadium?
Before long, Clark and I were overtly cackling. Richard kept his eyes closed, vainly tried to stay in the spirit of the thing, tears running discreetly down his face with the effort of not laughing. Elaine squeezed my hand, scandalized by behavior unbecoming a Good, God-Fearing Southern Baptist Boy, as I supposedly was.
It just got funnier and more outrageous as the fellow droned on.
I have no idea how the game went. The band never paid much attention to happenings on the field other than to estimate how long until our half-time performance or cast a leering glance at the cheerleaders.
Riding home afterwards, between bouts of low-grade hanky-panky at the back of the bus, I pondered the events of the day. The prayer stand-up act and my unpunctured buttocks could only be viewed as gracious gifts from a normally-uncaring universe.
All in all, it was a pretty damned good seventeenth birthday.
