McClendon Studios Presents: Football Helmets and Cleats

McClendon Studios Presents

Football Helmet and Cleats

Robert Bruce McClendon Jr. was also known as “Bones”.  He was a scrawny, skinny teenager.  He still went out for football.

When he first made the team, there weren’t enough helmets to go around. Bones went to the equipment area and found an old helmet.  It was scuffed up and beat up and very dirty.  He asked the coach if he could wear it if he cleaned it up.  The coach told him yes.

He painted it and polished it and got it looking really good.  He wore his helmet to the next game. He was extremely proud of that helmet.  

Not long into the game, one of the starters broke his helmet. The coach made Bones give his pretty helmet to the starter.

Sad and disappointed, Bones went back to the equipment room the next chance he got and found another helmet and fixed it up.  He got to keep this one. It wasn’t too long before he was a starter

Years later, Bones and his brother Carl were on the same football team. 

Johnston High School Varsity Football 1953

During one game, Carl was in and two large opponents decided to try to take Carl out.  They kept hammering at him and hammering at him.

After a few plays, Bones went to the coach and said “Put me in, coach.” He did this even though it would have him playing, “The opposite side of the ball”.

The coach got an evil grin and sent Bones in to play.

On the first down after Bones went in, he looked across to the opposing line and said to the bigger of the two offenders, “Get well soon”.

The ball was snapped and he made contact with the first of the two offenders.

He hit him so hard that the opponent could not get up.  They found his helmet on the other side of the field, split in half.  It was a very hard hit. The opponent just laid there in agony.  

Being the polite Southern boy he was, Bones decided that stomping on him with his football cleats would aid the guy in getting up.  Back in those days, football cleats had sharp, metal spikes.

Bones stomped on the first boy’s arms and legs with those cleats and did so much damage they had to load the boy in an ambulance.  No penalty was called.

Second down.  Bones crouched and looked across the line at the second boy

and said, “There is room for both of you in that ambulance”.

The ball was snapped and Bones made hard contact.  Down went the second of the two offenders.  Bones began his celebratory dance on the offender, stomping hard on his arms and legs.  The ambulance was called back.

Bones yelled across the line, “This is my brother Carl.  When you mess with him, I mess with you.”  He went back to the bench and sat down.  No one, not even his teammates, touched Carl the rest of the game.

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Driving Mrs. Crazy

McClendon Studios Presents:
Driving Mrs. Crazy

There are some people in this world who do not make good passengers.  My mother is one of them. No, I do not really think my mother is crazy.  I just thought that the title was a good play on the title Driving Miss Daisy.

When my sister went off to college and I was still in high school, it was normal that my mother and I would drive down and move my sister into her dorm at the beginning of a semester.  When the semester was over, we would move her out.

A side note here is that no one in my family has ever helped me move anywhere.  When I moved in to my trailer in Spartanburg, South Carolina, my friend Phil Brown helped me move in.

My dog, Abby, and I moved all by ourselves from the trailer to the house on Burnett Street in Spartanburg.  My girlfriend and now child-bride Suzanne, along with our friends Roger and Debbie, helped me move out of the Spartanburg house.

At the beginning of one semester, I drove the truck from Iva to Columbia to move my sister into her dorm at the University of South Carolina.  All along the way, my mother had comments about my driving.  “You are following too close.”  Or, “You are braking too hard.”  Finally, I stopped the truck in the middle of the road and asked my mother, “Do you want to drive?”  She responded, “No, you are doing just fine.”

We spent a couple of hours unloading the truck and carrying the crates, refrigerator, television, etc., up the elevator at my sister’s dorm.  Of course, all of this entailed enduring snippy comments from her suitemates and other residents of her floor.  I don’t make a great presentation when I am hot, sweaty, and forced to endure stupid and rude.

My mother and I climbed back in the truck and proceeded to go to my Grandmother Ruby’s house in Johnston, South Carolina.  We were going to move some of her stuff back to our place in Iva because my Grandmother Ruby was moving there.

My mother has a way of making work much harder than it has to be.  Rather than letting a person proceed in a way that makes sense, she attacks it all at one time. 

She started taking things apart and hauling them to the front porch. I had to work around all this clutter to load the truck with the larger, heavier stuff on the bottom.

I finally got the truck loaded with the stuff and everything tied down.  I gave my Grandma Ruby a goodbye hug and off my mother and I went for the longest 76 mile drive ever taken.

The posted speed limit along most of the route was 55 miles per hour.  Every time I would get the truck above 35 miles per hour, my mother would get on to me about driving so fast.

Every time I would try to move the truck away from the center line of the road, my mother would tell me I was getting way too close to the edge of the road and that I was going to run off in the ditch.

Due to the slow speed, cars were piling up behind us.  Sometimes one would pass, but not often.  About halfway home, our ever-increasing line of cars was joined by the most welcomed man of the hour, Super Trooper.

Super Trooper lit me up.  That is the rolling blue lights came on and I was pulled over.

Super Trooper had me step out of the truck and to the back of it.  He asked me how much I had to drink that night.  I told him I had not touched a drop, but I would be happy to go to jail for DUI if he would just get me out of there.

Super Trooper then asked if there was something wrong with the truck.  I told him, “Mechanically, the truck is running perfectly.”  He asked me why I was driving so slowly.  I told him that every time I approached 35 miles per hour my mother would yell at me to slow down.

Super Trooper then asked if I was having trouble with the steering.  I told him that the truck had this problem that every time I moved away from the center of the road, this alarm would go off to tell me I was getting too close to the edge of the road and that I was going to run us in the ditch. 

Super Trooper said, “I guess that alarm is your mother?”  I told him yes.  I told him I was fully capable of driving the truck home without any intervention from my mother and that the last half hour of the journey had just about driven me crazy.

Super Trooper went to my mother’s door and asked her to step to the rear of the truck.  He told her he was issuing her a warning.  He told her that she was not to tell me to slow down, speed up, or otherwise tell me how to drive.

He further told her that he was going to follow us to the county line to make sure his orders were followed.  He also indicated he would radio ahead to make sure the troopers between where we were and our house were alerted to the situation.

We climbed back in the truck and my mother said, “I’m sorry.”  In fact, she repeated that every time we crossed a county line.  Every time we passed a county line, there was a trooper or deputy somewhere just past it.

We made it home.  We did not lose one single item.  To this day, I have never lost anything off the back of a truck.  It is a source of pride for me. And, to this day, I will not let my mother forget about this little adventure.

What about you?  Do you have a driving story you would like to share with us?

 

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Grandpa and the Rat

Grandpa and the Rat

One time when my father was just a wee lad he went into his house and got his father’s rifle. He started out the door and my Grandmother Ruby intercepted him. My father told her that Grandpa had sent him to get the rifle. She told him that his father would not do such a thing. My father kept trying to convince her that Grandpa did indeed want the rifle.

As it turns out my grandfather was being attacked by a huge rat in the barn. He had yelled for my father to bring him the gun quickly. He managed to escape and was very upset with Grandma for not allowing my father to bring him the rifle. How  was she to know?

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McClendon Studios Presents: Football Helmets and Cleats

McClendon Studios Presents

Football Helmet and Cleats

Robert Bruce McClendon Jr. was also known as “Bones”.  He was a scrawny, skinny teenager.  He still went out for football.

When he first made the team, there weren’t enough helmets to go around. Bones went to the equipment area and found an old helmet.  It was scuffed up and beat up and very dirty.  He asked the coach if he could wear it if he cleaned it up.  The coach told him yes.

He painted it and polished it and got it looking really good.  He wore his helmet to the next game. He was extremely proud of that helmet.  

Not long into the game, one of the starters broke his helmet. The coach made Bones give his pretty helmet to the starter.

Sad and disappointed, Bones went back to the equipment room the next chance he got and found another helmet and fixed it up.  He got to keep this one. It wasn’t too long before he was a starter

Years later, Bones and his brother Carl were on the same football team. 

Johnston High School Varsity Football 1953

During one game, Carl was in and two large opponents decided to try to take Carl out.  They kept hammering at him and hammering at him.

After a few plays, Bones went to the coach and said “Put me in, coach.” He did this even though it would have him playing, “The opposite side of the ball”.

The coach got an evil grin and sent Bones in to play.

On the first down after Bones went in, he looked across to the opposing line and said to the bigger of the two offenders, “Get well soon”.

The ball was snapped and he made contact with the first of the two offenders.

He hit him so hard that the opponent could not get up.  They found his helmet on the other side of the field, split in half.  It was a very hard hit. The opponent just laid there in agony.  

Being the polite Southern boy he was, Bones decided that stomping on him with his football cleats would aid the guy in getting up.  Back in those days, football cleats had sharp, metal spikes.

Bones stomped on the first boy’s arms and legs with those cleats and did so much damage they had to load the boy in an ambulance.  No penalty was called.

Second down.  Bones crouched and looked across the line at the second boy

and said, “There is room for both of you in that ambulance”.

The ball was snapped and Bones made hard contact.  Down went the second of the two offenders.  Bones began his celebratory dance on the offender, stomping hard on his arms and legs.  The ambulance was called back.

Bones yelled across the line, “This is my brother Carl.  When you mess with him, I mess with you.”  He went back to the bench and sat down.  No one, not even his teammates, touched Carl the rest of the game.

Read My Child-Bride Suzanne’s Blog.

Watch This On You Tube.

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Carl the Friendly Ghost

Carl the Friendly Ghost

My Grandmother, Ruby, told us a story of back when my father was a young man. Evidently my father was late

coming home from wherever he had gone and Grandma decided to play a little trick on him.

She dressed my Uncle Carl up in a sheet and waited to hear R. B. coming up the front walk. She lowered Carl out the side window and told him to go up front and yell “Boo.” 

Carl obeyed his mother and from the shadows of the side of the house yelled as loud as he could “Boo.” R. B. Could hear the boo and see the porch light faintly illuminating the figure of a ghost just off the front porch.

R. B. took off running back up the front walk to the neighbor’s house where he beat on the door crying and yelling and begging to be let in. Carl chased after him the whole way yelling “Boo.” 

My grandmother laughed so hard she cried as did Carl and the neighbors. The only one not laughing was the little boy who missed his curfew.

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