Small Town Friday Night

If you ever want to know a large amount about a small town in a short period, let me recommend that you attend a high school football game. There, you will find an eclectic mix of both the best and worst a community has to offer. In no other single location, can you expect to meet the bank presidents, pastors, police, and principals, cheerleaders and cowboys, honor students and dropouts, and everything between.

As was the case this past Friday night, as the Foley Lions took on the Daphne Trojans on a humid, lovebug-filled South Alabama gridiron. Children in near grown bodies paraded around the field throughout four hard-fought quarters, nearly oblivious to the action on the field. Their primary missions for the evening were to see and to be seen; nothing else seemed to matter.

There was one low point in the night when I looked over and read the back

of a young girl’s T-shirt that read, “Class of 2014. You talk about making you feel old.”

My wife Joan and I are now two weeks into our homeless odyssey, having closed on the sale of our Melbourne Beach home of twenty-three years. Today, we call Bella Terra RV Resort of Gulf Shores, Alabama, our home and the source of electricity, water, and the very important sewer dump for our 40-foot Country Coach Inspire motor coach.

Without the burden of keeping up a home, we reason that we will both have much more time to spend together and plan to take advantage of many more low-pressure, high-enjoyment events such as this. I must admit that this high school football game was a blast and certainly brought back many memories of more than forty years ago when my personal universe revolved around a Friday night football game and, of course, the “events” that followed. Yes, four decades ago, our little beachfront community of Ft. Pierce, Florida, was small-town America at its best, and today, not much has changed.

The game was played in the Ivan Jones Football Stadium in downtown

The Great Ivan Jones

Foley, Alabama. Because I’m new in the area, and I was born with enough curiosity to kill a room full of cats, my initial question was who the heck is Ivan Jones?

In the old days, it would take a bit of local knowledge to figure this out and maybe even require a trip to the corner barbershop to get the skinny on old Ivan. Alas, technology is a two-edged sword, and today, it cut my fact-finding mission to a few clicks on Google.

In no time, I was strolling through the 1960s in this sleepy South Alabama town in wide-eyed amazement of the most impressive record of one Coach Ivan Jones. It was easy to see why the stadium so proudly bears his name.

I learned that Coach Jones became the Foley High School coach in 1955 and served as a teacher coach and administrator for the next thirty-five years. His 1961 and 1962 teams were both named Alabama State Champions. The 1961 team outscored their opponents 433–6 and ended the year with a perfect 10–0 season. I believe they call that dominating the field.

1961 Foley Lions - 10 & 0 Perfect Season - Total Points 433-5

Just for kicks, Coach Jones’ 1962 team also finished with a 10–0 perfect season, although they only scored 264 points to their opponents’ 88 for the season.

And before you think that these two years were great because of a few outstanding players, you should look at Coach Jones’ record from 1960 through 1964 where he won an impressive 47 out of 50 games. Yes, that meant that 1960, ’63, and ‘64 bookended his back-to-back perfect seasons with 9–1 years. In fact, all 14 of Coach Jones’ teams had winning records. I found the below stats most impressive:

During the same period, there was another coaching legend making a name for himself in Alabama. That would be Paul “Bear” Bryant, who was busy marching his University of Alabama Crimson Tide to six national championships and thirteen conference championships. Through this all, Ivan Jones was quietly amassing a high school football record that some would say was just as impressive as “The Bear’s.”

But on this Friday night, the Foley Lions would come up short. They could certainly have used a dash of Coach Ivan Jones as the Daphne Trojans rolled up a 23–2 score by halftime. The small-town crowd ignited their hometown “boys of fall” as they ran from their halftime locker room, past the Coach Ivan’s bronze plaque, and rallied with 22 unanswered points in the third and fourth quarters. But the night would belong to the Trojans with a 32–24 win over Foley’s finest.

We believe we will!

It was a bit refreshing to enjoy the game, both on the field and off without really having a dog in that hunt.

Joan and I look forward to many more nights like this past Friday. I guess our outlook on life can best be summed by a spare-tire cover on the dingy vehicle for the motor coach parked next to our rig. It stated a most profound statement: One Life, Live It. Come to think of it, I believe we will.

Keep Rollin’,

Richard & Joan Parker