I played six man football in the late 50’s in North Carolina.   Recently  I googled you tube six man football.  Texas has about 200 small high school six man teams.  The clips posted vary in length.  Some are game film.  Some feature the small Texas towns and youngsters who play today.  One team has only six players on the squad.  Yet state playoffs feature the same rabid atmosphere as all high school teams.While the kids are mostly small, there is some “de-cleating” out there.  The field is 80 yards long rather than 100yds.   Think about it, six players  (or 12 on both teams) on 80 yds vs eleven (22) on 100.   Lots of space and speed and fun.   Check ’em out–the youngsters are great.

And no, they don’t play 3 man basketball.

There was another church character that demanded attention. Fremont Yow was a retarded man who looked like “Crazy Guggenhiem” from the Red Skelton Show. He was harmless but quite dirty and tough to understand. Fremont rarely missed church and sat on the front row, which pushed the Baptists even further back in the pews. Often unsuspecting newcomers would locate near him. He would soon get their attention by groaning, making unrelated audible comments, or rolling and flipping a booger across several aisles. Again I lived for these moments.
My dad would drive him home after church. In 1957 my dad, for some unknown reason bought a ’57 Chevy, the classic aquamarine and white one. Gorgeous. And it had two four barrel carburetors. Why he selected this creature for our family who knows, but I was the envy of the neighborhood NASCAR wannabees. Stock car racing was growing and we were twenty miles from Randleman, Level Cross, and the Petty family. Once I could drive that beast Dad was fairly free with it. He began to ask me to drive Fremont home. Here’s the scene; after church mom sat shotgun by me, I’d drop them at the parsonage, and drive Fremont – seated in the back – to his home.
Once out of sight, and on and the “straight” to the crossroads, Fremont and I would roll the windows down and I’d floor it. I can see him now; hand on his cruddy man’s hat, laughing toothlessly as we roared upwards of 100 MPH.
When I’d Blues Brothers the newfound jet into his dirt yard, he’d giggle and waddle up to the front porch, where from behind a screen door his mom in flour sack dress peered suspiciously at me.
I never went in.

Jack always had a handful of money. One trip he and I made featured me get- ting off work at 9:30 pm, riding 157 miles to the Myrtle Beach Pavilion. Jack told me “I’m going down there and play every pinball game they have until I beat each one.” My allowance went fast but I watched the sun rise at the same time I watched Jack complete the whole Pavilion circuit. We rode back to Robbins.
The beach was magic. We’d sneak into El’s Pad at Ocean Drive and watch the big kids. I remember hearing “Don’t Be Cruel” continuously for three hours at the outdoor jukebox and dance floor across from El’s, next to the ocean. We had a white guy who could rock. Actually, Jack was more like Jerry Lee Lewis and all
those songs remind me of Jack today. I sent him the Jerry Lee CD last year (2006). “Great Balls of Fire”.
I owe Jack. He hauled me everywhere, caught my passes, lent me money, and took me to the Rock and Roll Shows.
Sure enough, if you watched the Raleigh News and Observer in the mid to late fifties soon you’d see an ad for a show at Memorial Auditorium in our capitol.
This wouldn’t be one act. Sure there were “head liners.” Mostly “Fats” Domino, Little Richard, Ray Charles, Chuck Berry, Marvin Gaye, The Sherelles, Ruth Brown, and on and on. All the great ones and they’d come in bus loads. Sometimes as many as a dozen different performances or groups. We’d go early and watch them pile out of the buses. Occasionally Jackie found a glass jar full of quarters and half-dollars, his grandfather had buried on the farm. The old man didn’t trust banks because of “The Depression”. Upon finding one of their treasures we were apt to follow the shows from Raleigh to Greensboro or Winston-Salem, over to Charlotte on consecutive nights.
This was pre-integration. The blacks sat in the balcony and fought with the cops who wouldn’t let them dance in the aisles. One night the ruckus got so bad they dropped the stage curtain on “Fats” as he sung “Blueberry Hill”. Another highlight featured a golden suited Marvin Gaye, who while singing a medley, be- gan to discard garments of gold. First, a coat, then shoes, a golden tie and shirt. Finally, as he revealed golden boxer shorts, Marvin and the band switched to “I’ll be doggone.” Classic!
Jack had a “56 black and white befender skirted Mercury and it would fly. And he’d let it. Minimum 80 mph. The route to Raleigh featured a long sharp curve that Jackie had set the record on while rounding it, and he’d try to top his “personal best” every trip.

There were periods of sobriety. But there were times when one simply needed a drink. Once, Walt, the needy, arranged a deal with Uncle Harvey who was “on the wagon”.
Harvey needed a difficult bull loaded on to “Old Dodgey” his pick up truck. The deal was Walt would use an electric prod on the bull’s rear end as Harvey backed “Old Dodgey” to the bull. For his part Walt would be driven to the booze store and given a pint of WRL (Walk, Run and Lay Down) liquor. Otherwise, known as cheap stuff. Walt, already considerably tight, miscalculated and prodded the bull’s testicles. The bull leaped over the bed of the truck on to the top of the cab, crushing it down. Old Dodgey on Harvey.
The bull fell back into the bed, winning the argument for Walt over Harvey, contending the bull was in the truck, and that was the deal.
The boys recall seeing the bull tied in the back of Old Dodgey, both 300 pound Harvey and Walt squatted low in the crushed cab, on the way to deliver the bull with a brief stop at the ABC store.

The Browns were famous in Robbins. Frank, Cotton, Bobby, Charlie, and of course, the youngest Leon, were pretty damned formidable in 1952. There was another uncle and cousin I never met. They had then been gunned down earlier on the main street of Robbins. My future brother-in-law, Harold Ritter, gave me a firsthand eyewitness account of the event, having been in the general store where it occurred at the time.
Harold recounted the fact that the town policeman, a man named Moxley, tried to arrest the father-son combination within the store. They gunned Moxley down, and he fell behind the counter. As they drew a breath and relaxed, Moxley rose with two bullets in him, and put one each of his own in each Brown. The Browns never moved, one hit between the eyes. Moxley died in the street on the way to the doctor. The building later became the town’s water plant office. The front windowpane, shattered by one of their stray bullets, was bound and boarded and bolted back together. You were thus reminded of town lore as you walked past the water plant and Frye’s Store, one of the town hubs. Frye’s Store, at that time, was a simple shot-gun general store and shoe store. It endeared itself to me first for its outside sign: “Frye’s Shoes. Boys, we got’em.”

The Ritters were the real deal for a boy. Their garage housed possums, shot guns, dead squirrels, a “telephone” for electrifying scale-less river critters, and boundless fire crackers (near dynamite).
And they were adventuresome. Both Harold and Paul joined the Marines and served in Korea. Pete and Otis were Navy.
Amazing all survived although Paul, later died of Agent Orange.
Wednesday night was a big night later at the Ritters. Gillette’s Cavalcade of Sports (Boxing on TV). Remember the big parrot carrying the round numbers?
Walt, the old man was a big burly, funny guy. And sober he was a treat. Sober didn’t happen with a lot of mill workers, but on Wednesday night we watched the fights. Walt pulled for whoever the white guy was. For me, Kid Gavilan, Jersey Joe Walcott, Joe Louis, and Rocky Marciano, were the gods.
Once the boys built a tree house nailing wooden refrigerator boxes stacked on one another, nailed only to the pine tree with a 10-penny nail or two.
To test the safety of the ascent, Otis, at 70 lbs. and 10 years, was comman- deered to climb the boxes. Things went well til the sixth and highest box, where the angle of Otis’ weight, such as it was, caved in the architecture.
The gash in Otis’ head caused concern only because Ruth was due in soon, and Mother Ruth was tough. Harold, who had always been able to fix anything, was nearly through sewing up the wound with Ruth’s needle and thread when she walked in on everyone’s observation of Harold’s needlework.
Hell to pay. Otis didn’t really care.
There was safety in being a Ritter boy. Plus I got first access to all the stories about Walt and his brother, Uncle Harvey.
Walt and Harvey bought some Moore County farmland and called their spread “The “Ponderosa”.
The Ponderosa provided a weekend respite from the grind of mill work. White liquor was the catalyst for brotherly love.
Once Harold and Paul were dispatched to retrieve Walt and Uncle Harvey. It was Tuesday and they’d “laid out” of work for two days. Enough Ruth decided. Go get ‘em.
It was a hot Sandhills day in northern Moore County. No Yankees at the end of the county. As the sons rounded the dirt road to the Ponderosa gate Uncle
Harvey was seen driving the John Deere tractor calmly dragging Walt, who was unconscious and tied to the tractor by a ten foot chain.
“Uncle Harvey, what are you doing to Dad?”
“Well boys, he’s been so drunk I couldn’t move him out of the sun, and damn, it’s hot. I was afraid he might have a heat stroke, so I’m moving him over into the shade.”
There were periods of sobriety. But there were times when one simply needed a drink. Once, Walt, the needy, arranged a deal with Uncle Harvey who was “on the wagon”.
Harvey needed a difficult bull loaded on to “Old Dodgey” his pick up truck. The deal was Walt would use an electric prod on the bull’s rear end as Harvey backed “Old Dodgey” to the bull. For his part Walt would be driven to the booze store and given a pint of WRL (Walk, Run and Lay Down) liquor. Otherwise, known as cheap stuff. Walt, already considerably tight, miscalculated and prodded the bull’s testicles. The bull leaped over the bed of the truck on to the top of the cab, crushing it down. Old Dodgey on Harvey.
The bull fell back into the bed, winning the argument for Walt over Harvey, contending the bull was in the truck, and that was the deal.
The boys recall seeing the bull tied in the back of Old Dodgey, both 300 pound Harvey and Walt squatted low in the crushed cab, on the way to deliver the bull with a brief stop at the ABC store.